Castes and Tribes of Southern India/Chākkiyar

by Edgar Thurston

Chākkiyar.—The Chākkiyars are a class of Ambalavāsis, of whom the following account is given in the Travancore Census Report, 1901. The name is generally derived from Slaghyavākkukār (those with eloquent words), and refers to the traditional function of the caste in Malabar society. According to the Jātinirnaya, the Chākkiyars represent a caste growth of the Kaliyuga. The offence to which the first Chākkiyar owes his position in society was, it would appear, brought to light after the due performance of the upanayanasamskāra. Persons, in respect of whom the lapse was detected before that spiritualizing ceremony took place, became Nambiyars. Manu derives Sūta, whose functions are identical with the Malabar Chākkiyar, from a pratilōma union, i.e., of a Brāhman wife with a Kshatriya husband.^[1] The girls either marry into their own caste, or enter into the sambandham form of alliance with Nambūtiris.They are called Illōttammamar. Their jewelry resembles that of the Nambūtiris. The Chākkiyar may choose a wife for sambandham from among the Nambiyars. They are their own priests, but the Brāhmans do the purification (punyāham) of house and person after birth or death pollution. The pollution itself lasts for eleven days. The number of times the Gāyatri (hymn) may be repeated is ten.

The traditional occupation of the Chākkiyans is the recitation of Purānic stories. The accounts of the Avatāras have been considered the highest form of scripture of the non-Brāhmanical classes, and the early Brāhmans utilised the intervals of their Vēdic rites, i.e.,the afternoons, for listening to their recitation by castes who could afford the leisure to study and narrate them. Special adaptations for this purpose have been composed by writers like Narayana Bhattapāda, generally known as the Bhattatirippāt, among whose works Dūtavākya, Pānchālisvayamvara, Subhadrāhana and Kauntēyāshtaka are the most popular. In addition to these, standard works like Bhōgachampu and Māhanātaka are often pressed into the Chākkiyar's service. Numerous upakathās or episodes are brought in by way of illustration, and the marvellous flow of words, and the telling humour of the utterances, keep the audience spell-bound. On the utsavam programme of every important temple, especially in North Travancore, the Chāākkiyarkūttu (Chākkiyar's performance) is an essential item. A special building, known as kūttampalam, is intended for this purpose. Here the Chākkiyar instructs and regales his hearers, antiquely dressed, and seated on a three-legged stool. He wears a peculiar turban with golden rim and silk embossments. A long piece of cloth with coloured edges, wrapped round the loins in innumerable vertical folds with an elaborateness of detail difficult to describe, is the Chākkiyar's distinctive apparel. Behind him stands the Nambiyar, whose traditional kinship with the Chākkiyar has been referred to, with a big jar-shaped metal drum in front of him called milāvu, whose bass sound resembles the echo of distant thunder. The Nambiyar is indispensable for the Chākkiyarkūttu, and sounds his mighty instrument at the beginning, at the end, and also during the course of his recitation, when the Chākkiyar arrives at the middle and end of a Sanskrit verse. The Nangayar, a female of the Nambiyar caste, is another indispensable element, and sits in front of the Chākkiyar with a cymbal in hand, which she sounds occasionally. It is interesting to note that, amidst all the boisterous merriment into which the audience may be thrown, there is one person who has to sit motionless like a statue. If the Nangayar is moved to a smile, the kuttu must stop, and there are cases where, in certain temples, the kuttu has thus become a thing of the past. The Chākkiyar often makes a feint of representing some of his audience as his characters for the scene under depictment. But he does it in such a genteel way that rarely is offence taken. It is an unwritten canon of Chākkiyarkūttu that the performance should stop at once if any of the audience so treated should speak out in answer to the Chākkiyar, who, it may be added, would stare at an admiring listener, and thrust questions on him with such directness and force as to need an extraordinary effort to resist a reply. And so realistic is his performance that a tragic instance is said to have occurred when, by a cruel irony of fate, his superb skill cost a Chākkiyar his life. While he was explaining a portion of the Mahābhārata with inimitable theatrical effect, a desperate friend of the Pāndavas rose from his seat in a fit of uncontrollable passion, and actually knocked the Chākkiyar dead when, in an attitude of unmistakable though assumed heartlessness, he, as personating Duryōdhana, inhumanely refused to allow even a pin-point of ground to his exiled cousins. This, it is believed, occurred in a private house, and thereafter kūttu was prohibited except at temples.

It is noted, in the Gazetteer of Malabar, that "Chākkiyars or Slāghyar-vakukar are a caste following makkattāyam (inheritance from father to son), and wear the pūnūl (thread). They are recruited from girls born to a Nambūdiri woman found guilty of adultery, after the date at which such adultery is found to have commenced, and boys of similar origin, who have been already invested with the sacred thread. Boys who have not been invested with the pūnūl when their mother is declared an adulteress, join the class known as Chākkiyar Nambiyars, who follow marumakkattāyam (inheritance in the female line), and do not wear the thread. The girls join either caste indifferently. Chākkiyars may marry Nangiyars, but Chākkiyar Nambiyars may not marry Illōtammamar."

1. Pratilōma, as opposed to an anuloma union, is the marriage of a female of a higher caste with a man of a lower one.