Chapter Four

Desperately seeking relative pre-eminence

REV. SAMUEL MATEER has, in his book, NATIVE LIFE IN TRAVANCORE, described the tremendous effort made by each caste to overtake other castes in various relative terms, by means of stories, relationship and claims:

QUOTE— the amount of research bestowed by each to discover local traditions, verbal derivations, analogies in ceremonies or usages, or anything whatever that might enable them to out-vie rival castes — the contempt felt for the boasting of others — and the age-long memories of reported or imagined honours once enjoyed by them. END OF QUOTE.

Even though this small quote is about Travancore Kingdom, the contents therein is equally relevant to the whole of this peninsular region, which currently includes Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

To clearly and effectively understand the history of this location, it is highly imperative that one has profound information on the language codes of this region. For, these language codes have influenced all the minor and major behaviour systems, lifestyles, and personal relationship in a major way.

For this very reason, it is necessary that a descriptive analysis of this subject is made before embarking on writing the history of the place.

This shall be commenced from the next posting.