Ethnohistory Through Intracultural Perspectives: A Study of Embedded History of Karaiyar Of Jaffna Peninsula (Sri Lanka) and Coromandel Coast (India)

Abstract

Anthropology and history are intertwined in many cultural domains in general and in the domain of ethnohistory in particular. Both these disciplines have strong inter-related dimensions in popular and local history that stress the study of particular caste or ethnic group from bottom rather than the history that is shaped by interpretations based on ideological impositions emanating from dominant classes (Smith and Smith 1987). Ethnohistory has particular focus in understanding folk genres that preserve variety of historical sources. Jan Vansina, who belongs to British anthropological tradition, in Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology (1965: 144) tries to reconstruct “folk” or “local” history through folklore materials. While historical sources available through epigraphy, documents, copper plates, coins or other archaeological evidences come under “hard” materials, folklore sources are termed as “soft” materials since they carry less definite and indirect sources. Though ethnohistory is not a distinctive discipline, it is a distinctive process of understanding. In the same way it is not exactly a rigid discipline, but divulges into figures inter-related disciplines on the basis of people’s own presentation and representation in tracing their history and culture that are always embedded in their oral tradition (Uddin 2001).