Before the entry of the British, Ooty was a land of indigenous tribes, such as the Todas,
Irulas, Kurumbas and Badagas, who had formed a unique social system based on symbiotic relationships.
Out of the 372
Irula tribes, 118 were males and 254 were females and the majority of them were in the age group of 21-30 years.
325) Generic name of protective deities of Mele Nadu
Irula tribe; also, 'worship'.
4) that the
Irula are not often mentioned in the literature, this is not quite correct.
Of particular interest and importance for the present reviewer is a comparison between two versions of the Billayan-Karayan ancestral story, one the
Irula, another the Jenu Kurumba, version (pp.
I may add that the
Irula of our days, too, manifests these two simple affirmative tense paradigms, cf., e.g., past pa:tte 'I saw', tinde 'I ate'; non-past pa:kke 'I see / shall see', tinge 'I eat / shall eat'.
DEDS 3155]) is questionable; another possibility would be
Irula akkara, kd:d'akkara ear-wax, Kurumba akara n.
387-97), Emeneau was kind enough to mention that "Nilgiri areal study has been begun by Zvelebil (1980), and already shows interesting results." Among the structural traits, he stresses the distinction in the verb between inclusive and exclusive (i.e., speaker + addressee [+ or -] referee: speaker + referee) in Toda, Kota, and
Irula. The
Irula evidence for inclusive -o: / -om- (Zvelebil 1973) "agrees perfectly" with the Toda-Kota reconstruction of *-om / *-om (Emeneau 1979), and I do now agree with Emeneau (contrary to my previous tentative opinion) that the suffix is, in the Nilgiri languages, probably an innovation (originating in Toda-Kota?).
Probably the most audacious effort came last year when two renowned snake catchers from India's mountain-dwelling
Irula tribe chanted their way across the Everglades for two months .
Old Tamil belongs to the southern branch of this family, which includes Malayalam,
Irula, Kota, Toda, Kannada, Badaga, Kodagu, and Tulu, as well as Modern Tamil" (50).
The
Irulas, another ancient and underprivileged Scheduled tribe group, inhabiting the forests of Tamil Nadu and other parts of south India number about 1000, speak the
Irula language and are also believed to belong to the Negrito race.
Two experienced snake hunters from the
Irula tribe in India were hired to catch snakes as quickly as possible.
Building a better rat trap: Technological innovation, human capital, and the
Irula. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 31, 953-963.
Also, the first author did not come across crania from many of the "tribal groups" that would be of potential interest for our study, groups such as the Munda, Santhal, Yanadi, and
Irula. Table 1 and Figure 1 present the language, language distribution [18,19], geographic location, and holding institutions of the ten series that could be included in this study.
