Saurashtrans, who are popularly known as pattunulkaras for their traditional occupation — silk weaving, have gone on to mix homogenously with the locals, absorbing the culture and lifestyle. Going by just their first names that vary from Krishnamoorthy, Soundararajan or Kubendran for example, would easily make them as passed off as Tamilians. But, observing their mother tongue more close would open the world of more than 1 lakh Saurashtrans who have made Chennai their home.
Originally hailing from Madurai, where a majority of them settled down in 1400 AD, today the significant population is scattered across Purasawalkam, Mylapore, Villivakkam, MKB Nagar and a few sporadic settlements in various pockets of the city.
R R Kubendran, former Chief Planner, CMDA, who migrated to the city from Madurai in 1976, says, “We have adapted ourselves completely to the place we live in. Most of us have settled in Tamil Nadu for several generations.”With close to 25,000 people in the late 70s, the population of the community has increased more than four folds.
C S Krishnamoorthy, retired professor (History), Tamil Nadu Educational Services and the founder of Saurashtra Cultural Academy, who is all set to release a book on the community and its history titled ‘Saurashtras of Tamil Nadu’ early next year, talks about the gradual migration of the community.
“The Saurashtrans of Tamil Nadu have settled in two waves. The first wave mainly constituted the craftsmen or the pattunulkaran or the silk-weavers who sporadically spread all over the Tamil soil on their own accord coming in search for their better livelihood. There was a continuous internal migration from one place to another until they developed themselves as merchants. Also there were merchants ‘born to wander’ as found in certain inscriptions among these people and they occupied the Tamil soil during this period,” he says.
In the early period, they were found in the modern districts of Pudukkottai, Trichy, Tanjore, and North Arcot and South Arcot, Salem, Kanyakumari as well in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
By 1400 AD, most of the population of the first wave should have become merchants and moved to the areas where there were the population of the first wave and formed their own settlements mostly to the East or South of the earlier settlements. This resulted in the formation of the ‘twin-type’ settlements in places already pointed, according to the author’s analysis.
However, the author suggests that there have also been anomalies, as regarding the classification, “Subsequent accounts on them describe them as silk weavers, which actually stand for a few communities such as Saurashtrans, Khatris, and the pattu-saliyars. Among them, the Khatris seem to have some sort of historical connection with the Saurashtrans of Tamil Nadu. The Khatris belong to the Khsatriya faction. Historically there was no social distinction between the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas and members belonging to these factions constituted the famous guild during Kumaraa.
R K Sumathi, a writer and editor of a Saurashtra magazine circulated in the community says that there is little knowledge among people about the language and they often mistake it for similar languages like Gujarati.
Krishnamoorthy echoes the same though, highlighting a few points of the origin of the language. “A deep study of the linguistic history of their tongue viz., ‘the Saurashtri’ will reveal that there is every possibility to connect their present tongue with the ‘Saurashtra dialect of Maharashtri Prakrit’ which was spoken all over North India and Deccan till 800 AD. With its special and unique features, it seems to stand proving that it is ‘pre-Gujarati’ and the mother of all the modern north Indian languages and in its antiquity may go back to the Vedic age,” he says.
(Starting this week, we are launching a series on communities that make Chennai a melting pot)