Karththiha Suvendranathan & Eva Ambos
The following is a preliminary reflection on some observations of the richness of ritual practices in Batticaloa. Batticaloa’s landscape is dotted with kōvils, each with an unique history and bountiful with meanings for the devotees flocking there to engage routinely in worship, in meditative reflection and/or to solicit one of the gods at the temple for help. As friends and research partners interested in ritual practices, we have been cruising around this landscape for several years but only very recently have we come across the kōvil this text is concerned with. While we were fortunate to be able to attend the festival on two days in addition to the Friday pujas and to have met some people who generously shared their explanations and ideas about the kōvil, we are just at the beginning of a longer research journey.
The kōvil under discussion is located in a quieter part of Batticaloa around 5 km from town. It is surrounded by a white-red painted wall with a poster announcing the annual festival specifying it as a Pattini Amman Kōvil. From the outside, it would not necessarily stand out. Yet this kōvil was mentioned by a friend as special because ‘different’ theyvams or deities would come to the place. Curiosity was compounded when another person referred to the temple as a place where people would speak with uttiyākkal, with the dead. Who are these uttiyākkal?
Staying in Touch with the Dead
The term ‘ākkal’ means ‘people’: quite an unusual connotation either when speaking about the dead who are still lingering as pēys, ghosts of the deceased, or when referring to the theyvams, the deities to whom supplications are made in kōvils. A context where the term uttiyākkal has come up, however, is in relation to Vedda practices and in areas such as Vaharai which are well-known for their Vedda population. As has been well documented, to stay in touch with the dead is an important element of social life in Vedda culture (Obeyesekere 2002; Seligmann & Seligmann 1911). Many Vedda communities worship their ancestors. This is true for both, Vedda communities living on the East coast as well as those living in the central parts of the island. Many of the complex rituals that have been described by Brenda & Charles G. Seligmann and Gananath Obeyesekere amongst others centre on the nä yakku as they are referred to in the central region of the island.
Yet to stay in touch with the dead appears to contradict what is commonly associated with Hindu ideology, especially in its more Brahmanic, orthodox, elite version, namely the necessity to sever bonds with the dead to enable them to be reborn and ultimately attain mōṭcham or mokṣa (Allocco 2020). This is also reflected in many Hindu practices linked with the dead as, for example, the cremation on the pyres at the ghats of Varanasi that have frequently been described as replicating the cosmic cycle of renewal and the striving for ultimate liberation; or the rituals aimed at letting the soul, ātmā, attain peace, shānti, to enable her to let go of this world that usually mark the end of the mourning period.
Vēdda Kalai
So how ‘different’ then is the kōvil mentioned above in apparently offering the opportunity to stay in touch with the dead? It seems that this kōvil is not the only site in Batticaloa marked as Hindu where people converse with the dead as references to other kōvils suggest. Also, on closer look, there are actually a range of practices many Hindus in Batticaloa engage in that are also conducted for the dead.
For example on Kārttigai Thēpam, the full moon day in the Tamil month Kārttigai (usually in November/December), Batticaloa is illuminated by lamps people lit at the entrances of their houses to invite the dead for a night back home to enjoy some special food. On Āṭi Ammāvāsai, the new moon day in July/August, when many of the bigger festivals in the East conclude with the water cutting ceremony or the bathing of the deity, at famous kōvils such as Mamanga and Thirukkovil special pujas are performed by children for their deceased parents. And most Hindus daily tend to photographs of loved ones who have passed away, sticking flowers and applying sacred ash, tirunēru, on their foreheads.
Yet at the kōvil under discussion, the staying in touch with ancestors takes a different form. First, the uttiyākkal as a common, unspecified group of dead have their own pandal, a small shrine that contains some symbols, not different from the one for other minor deities. Second, while the above mentioned rituals focus on conferring blessing to the dead and have in many cases a more commemorative function, at the kōvil the pūcāris not only serve the uttiyākkal together with other deities during the daily puja, but one of them also invites them into his body, i.e. he becomes possessed by them and acts as their oracle.
Here, the dead are not only invited and given food, but what is more they are worshipped and asked for protection. Hence, the uttiyākkal are not equivalent to the lingering ghosts of the deceased (pēys) or other malevolent beings for which kaḻippu ceremonies have to be performed to send them away and to ‘cut’ their influence. Instead, they are treated more like deities whose possession should be cultivated, for example by keeping the body pure through renouncing meat and eggs. As a female devotee of the kōvil said, the irantākkal – those who have died – are here. While this suggests a more opaque presence of the dead, practices at the kōvil point to their treatment as deified ancestors: the uttiyākkal, like deities on annual festivals at other Amman kōvils, take possession of human vehicles to utter prophecies (vākku) and bless the community. This, according to people we spoke with about the kōvil, is related to vēdda kalai, Vedda art or practice.
The Presence of Theyvams and Uttiyākkal at the Kōvil
On a normal week day, outside of puja hours, the special atmosphere that the kōvil emits can perhaps be best experienced. The kōvil, demarcated by a low stone wall that allows one to sneak a peek from outside, sits there then calmly and peacefully. Upon entering the kōvil, one is immediately captivated by its beauty. The huge, old trees cast shade on the multiple pandals, some simple, small structures without statues but only symbols e.g. the weapons of deities, others larger house-like structures with embellished roofs, as can be found in many kōvils in Batticaloa. There are two main Amman shrines, one on the left side upon entering the kōvil dedicated to Pattini, and one which faces the entrance with the depiction of Ambāl riding on a swan.
While it is interesting in itself how the smaller pandals mingle with the larger temple structures for the bigger gods to be found in almost every kōvil – a Pillaiyar Kōvil right at the entrance, followed by a Nāgapōsani temple lain back under a huge tree, and behind the shrine for the Amman sitting on the swan a newly built concrete structure with a gōpuram lurking – there are other items that strike one’s attention. A straight walk from the entrance one comes first across a carefully delineated small firewalking space. Next is a statue of a bear in a cage that faces the main Amman shrine. And to the right, there is a colorfully painted fishing boat, sitting there as if stranded and as if at any moment the waves might wash it back into the lagoon. Yet the lagoon is roughly 1 km away from the kōvil.
This allure was compounded during the penultimate day of the festival when the serenity became animated and was soon overtaken by bustling activity. The space was then filled with people wearing their nicest clothes sitting under the shade of the trees, with kids running around and playing, all imbuing it with a joyous atmosphere. The boat that felt odd at first sight within the temple premises was decorated with colorful paper stripes and almost naturally integrated into the ritual space. The firewalking space still emanated the heat from the tī mitipu, literally ‘the stepping on fire’, that had taken place in the morning when dozens of people had walked over the embers in order to fulfill vows they had made to the deity. The cage of the bear was open and a large piece of fur had been thrown over the statue so as to cover it almost completely. People arriving briefly stopped there to place flowers before the bear. Also the symbols and statues of the deities in the pandals were arrayed with fruits, betel leaves and flowers. The curtains ‘hiding’ the goddesses had been lifted, and the doors of the shrines opened (katavu tiṟattal), to allow devotees to see their Amman and to shower her with flowers.
All was set for the theyvams to manifest themselves in the body of the pūcāri to bless their devotees and the village for the year ahead. The pūcāri, a non-Brahmanic priest, was not recognizable at first sight. He wore a dress with a kind of ankle-length skirt and a crown-like head decoration, all made out of palmyrah leaves that devotees had gifted to the temple, a stunning sight and one of the centers of attention. A continuous flow of people would come to approach the pūcāri who stood, surrounded by other temple people, in front of the pandal for the deity Mara that is situated next to the one for the uttiyākkal. Both pandals are small, chest-high whitewashed simple structures, that carry the names of the respective deities they house in Tamil. The pūcāri first listened to the requests of the devotees. Upon receiving a bunch of betel leaves and the pucai taṭṭu – a tray or plate with banana, areca nuts and katpuram in a betel leaf – he would all of a sudden start to tremble and throw the betel leaves in the air. After checking whether they had fallen on the upper or lower side – the former being a good sign, the latter a bad sign – he would dance around the pandal under the booming sounds of the paṟai, a huge cylindrical shaped drum played with two sticks on each side.
The paṟai produces a sound quite different from the uṭukkai, a small hour-glass shaped hand drum usually played at Amman festivals that the drummers would hold up over their shoulder, ludically letting the fingers wander over the skin stretched over its upper and lower end. In order to invite the deities to literally dance (theyvam āduradu), the drumming is accompanied by the singing of verses to Amman. Yet in the case of this kōvil, a different set of songs was sung and often the pūcāri’s helpers would rather speak than sing in a low, almost inaudible voice.
Commonly in Amman kōvils, the oracles would be prepared for the deities entering their bodies through mantrams uttered by the pūcāri – who usually does not act as an oracle himself as he has to control and orchestrate the dancing of the theyvams, the theyvam āduradu. Water will be continuously poured over the oracles to cool down the theyvams. In this temple, however, possession ensued almost immediately after the first paṟai sounds wavered through the kōvil and the theyvam did not demand water. After a few minutes of dancing around the pandal, the pūcāri would stop in front of it to utter prophecies to the waiting people. As the deity usually speaks with a low, shivering voice and uses a special language with uncommon terms, the vākku, the prophecies of the deity, were interpreted by one of the pūcāri’s helpers, as in other Amman kōvils.
The uttiyākkal, as we were told, would in a similar, yet even more sudden way make their appearance, usually in the night. This is significant as it points to the presence of the uttiyākkal as not just symbolic but as corporeal and visceral as those of the other theyvams. Those uttiyākkal, as one temple visitor explained, would be only men from the pūcāri’s lineage, i.e. his own ancestors. This bears resemblance to the role of nä yakku who as ancestors are invoked through offerings to protect the community and consulted through oracular possession. And people seem to come to this kōvil to stay in touch with deceased loved ones, seeking to engage with them through the medium of the uttiyākkal.
Religious Practices of ‘the Other’?
The temple, while being grounded in Tamil Hindu conceptions of Amman worship, evinces also another interesting feature that is linked with vēdda kalai, namely the various aspects that deeply enmesh worship at this temple with the ecological environment. This is not to reiterate ideas about Vedda practices as closer to nature and as ‘other’, which is part of a long trajectory of a colonial and European obsession with radical alterity of so called ‘wild men’ (Obeyesekere 2004; see also Schär 2020). Rather, it attests to Vedda ideas, ways of living and everyday practices providing a base for worship in contemporary Batticaloa. While people frequently locate Veddas and Vedda culture in areas such as Vaharai and Kaluwankerny, practices at this temple reveal their influence in an area where probably only a few people, if at all, would designate themselves as Vedda nowadays.
For example, on the last day of the annual temple festival, the boat that stood out when first entering the temple, becomes a focal point. A woman we will call Selva with whom we had several conversations enthusiastically described to us in detail how one of the theyvams would climb the boat. From there, the theyvam would shoot coconut shells with a bow and arrow, alluding to a Vedda technique of catching fish with the help of a bow-like harpoon (Seligmann & Seligmann 1911: 333). We had spotted the bows and arrows on the penultimate day of the festival when they leaned, ready to be taken up at any point, on one of the pandals. On that day, fishermen are not supposed to go to the lagoon and fish. If they do, we were warned, they and the fish would get marks and people who eat these fish would fall sick. Many Veddas living at the East coast are, like their Tamil, Muslim and Sinhalese neighbors, fishermen, and thus it is perhaps not too surprising to find references in religious practices at the temple to fishing as a major source of livelihood as well as shaping everyday life. Yet the integration of the boat into worship during the festival appears to be quite unique and this may be read as a reference to Kapalpei, a sickness sending Vedda deity described by the Seligmanns (1911: 336 ff.) as being propriated in Vedda temples on the East coast.
Perhaps the most striking example of such references to livelihood practices associated with Veddas was when the chief theyvam–pūcāri, surrounded by a circle of men who held each other’s hands, released bees from a box that was stored for five days at the temple. The men, so as to show them the way, lifted their hands until the bees had vanished in the sky. It is said that they only breed in one of the temple trees and that it had never happened that they had stung a devotee. Bee hunting and honey collection is another skill associated with Vedda communities. Hence, rather than an evocation of a radical alterity of Veddas, one can detect in practices at the temple various references to livelihood skills commonly linked with Veddas that are grounded in a particular ecological environment.
Obeyesekere (2002; 2004), Brow (1996) and Thangarajah ([1995] 2009) have discussed the complexities of the classification of ‘Vedda’ and especially Brow (1978: 27) and Thangarajah ([1995] 2009) draw attention to the importance of self-identification that overcomes the reduction of Veddahood to essential features within a narrow frame of hunter-gatherers. There is no innate or even physical distinction between Veddas and Tamils or Sinhalese, despite the incessant claims in colonial and racial ‘scholarship’. Nor are ‘the Veddas’ a homogenous group who necessarily share the same lifestyle. The image of the hunter-gatherer ‘tribe’ living secluded from other communities in the jungle that gained leverage in colonial times and is still prevalent in contemporary notions of Veddahood cannot be upheld against historical as well as ethnographic evidence (Obeyesekere 2002, 2004; Thangarajah [1995] 2009; Brow 1978, 1996). Instead, many Veddas, Tamils and Sinhalese live in the ‘same ecological zone’ (Obeyesekere 2004) – which is not to deny the persisting economic and social marginalization of many Veddas (Brow 1996; Thangarajah ([1995] 2009) – and have shared cultural practices. And similar to the ways the bandara cult of deified ancestors, prevalent among Sinhalese in the up-country and the Dry Zone, bears reminiscences to practices surrounding the nä yakku (see Obeyesekere 2004: 284), popular Hindu religiosity in Batticaloa suggests ways of staying in touch with the dead ancestors. One may thus think that the threshold is low for the vēdda kalai of ancestor worship to slip into Tamil Hindu practices through possession at village kōvils. Hence, while they cultivate particular, unique skills including the invocation of ancestors, Veddas are not the utmost other. Moreover, the classification as well as labelling of Vedda is a political issue that needs to be viewed against the backdrop of colonialization, Sinhalese as well as Tamil nationalism and pressures to integrate into a colonial and later post-colonial state structure significantly impacting on their ways of living (Thangarajah [1995] 2009; Brow 1996). Obeyesekere (2004: 280, 289) points then to the hegemonic position of Sinhalese Buddhism vis-à-vis Vedda religiosity that is integrated on a lower level and in a similar way, Thangarajah ([1995] 2009: 206 ff.) has observed a Sanskritization of Vedda religious practices in the East. Yet the kōvil appears at first sight to bear no resemblances to such hegemonic practices of incorporation. Rather than using ‘Vedda’ in a denigrating manner or to exoticize, people we spoke with used the term to point to the specificities of the kōvil, in terms of skills, the particular theyvams making their appearance there and techniques such as the invocation of the uttiyākkal, that make up its allure for many who identify as Tamil Hindus.
A Rhapsody of Different Elements
From these preliminary observations, a set of analytical questions arise:
- Can this be read as the story of a temple that was earlier a Vedda place of worship having been mainstreamed into local Tamil Hindu practices?
- Is the temple even an example for the force of what has been called agamization, the mainstreaming of local religious practices into more orthodox Hindu religiosity, considering that the main goddess is nowadays referred to as Pattini, which according to Selva is a new development?
- Is the new temple with a gōpuram that is being built behind the main shrine supporting the above interpretation?
- Or can we rather think of agamization and mainstreaming not as straightforward, ‘evolutionary’ processes leading from A to B but rather as creating something new that is always in flux?
- Do the practices at this kōvil perhaps attest to the fact that people in Batticaloa who identify themselves as Vedda as well as those who identify themselves as Tamil share many livelihood patterns and existential struggles?
- And can one assume that the seemingly unorthodox practices found at this temple, that defy categorization as either agamic or non-agamic, Tamil or Vedda, are rather the rule than the exception?
In the end, this ostensible hybridity seems not to matter for many people. People we spoke with would assertively, yet almost incidentally use the term vēdda kalai to refer to practices there while at the same time rejecting for themselves the label Vedda. This discrepancy between practices people engage in and people’s self-description cannot (and perhaps should not) be resolved by arguing either against their self-identification or by relying solely on abstract, generalizing terms to describe what is happening at the temple. Rather, the trust in the theyvams who come to this particular kōvil and will protect their devotees, and the urge to stay in touch with deceased loved ones appears to generate a unique rhapsody of different elements which only looks like tabula rasa or a palimpsest if one does not take into account human passion such as the striving for protection in unstable social, political and economic circumstances or the desire to engage with deceased loved ones as a major drive for religious activity.
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