Patrons, Devotees and Goddesses: Ritual and Power Among the Tamil Fishermen of Sri Lanka.

• Author: McGilvray, Dennis B.

In "Cattiyur," a large (pop. 4321) and tightly organized fishing village located on the west coast of Sri Lanka 75 miles north of Colombo, the Hindu inhabitants, most of whom belong long to the Tamil-speaking Karaiyar fisher caste, celebrate an annual firewalking festival for the goddess Draupadi which also attracts devotees from other parts of the island. In August 1982 the author saw approximately 1000 men complete their vows by walking across a sanctified bed of hot coals, their feet protected, it was believed, by the goddess. The aim of this ethnographic study by Masakazu Tanaka is to compare the symbolic structure of this renowned Draupadi festival with that of a similar festival for the local goddess Bhadrakali, thereby revealing how Hindu ritual, among other things, symbolically reinforces the economic and political elite in the village.

The residents of Cattiyur say that their village was founded in the 17th or 18th century by a group of Karaiyar fishermen who fled from Ramegvaram, Tamilnadu, in order to protect their chief's daughter from abduction by a local king. Even today, this village preserves a unique corporate subcaste identity which keeps it distinct from other Tamil Karaiyar (and Sinhalese Karava) caste groups in Sri Lanka. Tanaka devotes a chapter to village topography and population data, as well as to the nature of the local fishing economy, order to show the existence of a well-to-do class of beach-seine net owners, who often serve as sponsors, and political beneficiaries, of Hindu rituals. One of Tanaka's major contentions is that contemporary anthropological views of Hinduism place too much emphasis upon macro-ideological concepts of purity and pollution (Dumont) and biomoral substance-codes (Marriott), or upon collective cultural status-elevation through Sanskritization (Srinivas). He wants to bring our attention back to the uses of Hindu ritual in localized village arenas by wealthy individuals who trade their secular wealth for cosmic power (or at least the appearance of cosmic power).

The festivals in Cattiyur are characterized by the simultaneous presence of both a hereditary Brahman priest and a hereditary non-Brahman pantaram trance-medium at many of the rituals. This corresponds with the dual structure of these events, certain elements of which are text-based and Sanskritic in content, and other elements of which are trance-based based and infused with bhakti devotion. According to Tanaka, the key concept in...