1 Intro

For a long time, it had been my desire to do a commentary on a book by Edgar Thurston. The book I had in mind was his Castes and Tribes of Southern India. However, that book was quite a voluminous one. I think around 7 volumes. Paucity of time was a major inhibiting issue.

I had done a very cursory reading of OMENS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF SOUTHERN INDIA a few years back. I had been impressed by the book then itself. However, only now did I get the occasion to go through it thoroughly.

The subject matter has been done in a very vast ambit and amplitude. The book is absolutely impressive in the way the various bits of information have been wiped out from the varying impermeable layers of a very complicated and cantankerous social system.

There is much to be said about that. I will do that. And much more.

Before going deeper into the dissertation, there are a few things that have to be mentioned about what the book contains, and what it does not contain.

A book that has recorded

As a book of records, there is a lot of information, which reach out from the most interior depths of the social system in this book. It is not at all easy for anyone to go deep inside the various closed social corridors in this South Asian peninsular region. The amount of intimate information that has been gathered about the varying layers of mutually repulsive or subordinated populations groups is something that might be quite pioneering.

There is a very definite reason why the social layers are impermeable. Actually there is a reason for everything. Pointing out these reasons is one of the aims of this commentary.

In this commentary I will try to bring out the inner virtual codes that might be working behind the magical powers of various mantras, tantras, homams etc.

I will try to find out if there is actually any possibility that the so-called superstitions do have any sense or machinery behind them, which might make them plausible.

I will try to explain the real, yet non-tangible codes that actually create the repulsive forces that create caste-based repulsions. An information on certain items that do explain such human repulsions and why they do have a logical basis, might be proposed.

Beyond that, this book can be discussed to bring to limelight the quaint fabulousness of the English-built nation called British-India (actually a small location confined to just three presidencies and a lit bit beyond.)

A depth of information on the ‘culture’ of the small locations inside the subcontinent can be scooped out.

These are the general things that will be discussed in reasonable depth.

However, before going into such formidable depths, I will have to tarry a bit, to deal with some quite frill issues that have to be mentioned, and done away with.