Abstract
The Irulas 2 are a tribal complex of four tribes inhabiting the lower slopes of the northern, eastern and southern parts of the Nilgiri mountains of South India. They speak a tribal language of their own—the ërla na:ya—in four dialects; it belongs, historically, to the Tamil-Malayalam group of South Dravidian.3 Two of the tribes intermarry, so that the Irula complex forms a tribal group of three endogamous units. Linguistically and from the point of social organization, the Irula situation may be thus symbolized asThe creativity of Irula-speaking tribes finds expression mostly in music,4 dance, and above all, in verbal art.5 They have a wealth of oral traditions characteristic for most pre-literary cultures; though modernization—thus far mostly in the socio-economic sphere—has had its impact on the Irula-speaking tribes, the absolute majority of the Irulas are still illiterate. Hence storytelling, oral rendering of myths, legends and genealogies, and other forms of verbal art are still very much alive.
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