Book

South India: the Tamil people and their country

Druck'und Verlag von C. BertelsmannGⁿterslohPublished In 1899 • Pages:

By: Gehring, Hans, Schütze, Frieda.

AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This source presents a general descriptive ethnography of the Tamil people as they existed in South India during the latter part of the 19th century. Despite the at times rather ethnocentric view of the author (a Lutheran missionary) in dealing with various aspects of the native culture (e.g. religion, the Brahman caste, etc.), the researcher will find an abundance of data on such things as geography, material culture, agriculture, fauna, flora, sex status, and general information on Tamil character, manners and customs. These data comprise the first half of this work. In the second half, Gehring takes the reader on an excursion through Tamil Land, describing in turn his observations on the northern districts, the Kaveri River Delta, Tondiman country, the southern districts, and the mountainous western region. In the latter section, particularly in the section on the 'Blue Mountains,' the author presents additional ethnographic data on the Toda (AW60), and the lesser known ethnic groups of Badaga (AW50), Kurumba (AW56), Kota (AW55), Irula (AW53) and the Malayali (AW63).
SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
Castes
Culture summary
cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
Tamil
HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
2019
RegionThe area the document pertains to
Asia
Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
South Asia
Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
Book
Evaluation
Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
Missionary
Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
3: Good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent
4: Excellent Secondary Data
AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
John Beierle ; Jan Simpson ; 1983
Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
no date
NotesAdditional notes
By Hans Gehring
Translation of: [Land und volk der Tamulen]
Translated from the German for the Human Relations Area Files by Frieda Schütze ca. 1983
Includes bibliographical references
LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
Tamil (Indic people)/Tamil Nadu (India)--Social life and customs