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Copied from Talk:Kerala/Archive01#കേരളം or േകരളം ([1]):

• േകരളം - is not correct, even though it looks better than കേരളം on some computers.
• കേരളം - is correct, but if you see this incorrectly on your computer, please read ml:Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers to know how to enable east asian font viewing in your computer. -Bijee

-- Saravask 19:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's really misleading to say only Nairs were matrilineal in Kerala society along with muslims in Malabar(also in Lakshadweep). In fact, majority of the castes were/are matrilineal in Malabar, including Payyannor Namboothiris. In fact, matrilineality is not even unique to Kerala society in South India. Tuluvas were also matrilineal. And terming all Tiyyas as patriarchal is totally wrong as many of them were matrilineal(I suppose even in South Kerala).

Manjunatha (16 Mar 2006)

While the idea was alright, the line Many Keralites (especially the Hindus and Muslims of Malabar) follow a traditional matrilineal system known as marumakkatayam. now gives the impression that all Hindus, or all Hindus of Malabar, practice matrilinear system. Neither is right. I am going to change it to 'some Hindus'. This is will make 'especially' out of place, so I removing that too. If anyone changes this again, please make sure that the old effect does not come back. Tintin (talk) 14:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree 100% with Tintin. Saravask 22:13, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably, sentence should be rephrased or a new section should be added to give the present and past situation. I suppose, matrilineality is mostly dying out. Malabar in the article could be misleading. It should be, many Hindus throughout Kerala practiced matrilineal system. I suppose, historians even talk about matrilineal system in Travancore.

Manjunatha (21 Mar 2006)

We did have some discussion on how to phrase this. Can you also take a look at Talk:Kerala/Archive01#Matrilineality Tintin (talk) 04:53, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. Probably, article meant only Muslims of Malabar :-).

Manjunatha (21 Mar 2006)

Though it may not be obvious, the comma in Many Keralites (some Hindus, and the Muslims of Malabar) was intended to seperate Muslims of Malabar and the Hindus :-) Or should we change it to mention Muslims of Malabar first ? Tintin (talk) 04:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure of how many of you aware of Tulu people and their culture. Were there no studies dealing with Malayalee-Tulu connection? I'm from Mangalore and for me Tulu, Malayalee cultural connection is striking. Be it matrilineal system, spirit worship(Theyyam in Malabar and Nema in Tulu Nadu).

Probably, because of linguistic studies it's felt that Malayalees were infact Tamils before. However, we have to see that Tulu or Proto-Tulu branches out of South Dravidian language along with Proto-Tamil-Kannada(supposed to Proto-Tamil here). Please find the reference here. In my opinion a big chunk of Malabar Malayalees might have Proto-Tulu origins. Probably, Proto-Tamil origins dominates in South(As far as I know, Theyyam is restricted to Malabar region).

Well, it's bit naive to think Malayalees spoke Tamil before and developed their own language. India's linguistic transitions were always complex. Tamilakam need not to have ruled over only Tamil regions. People, might have adopted Tamil because of that. Don't we know how much Astro-Asiatic and Dravidian languages got replaced elsewhere in India?

Of course, if a linguist proves that Dravidian languages in fact originated in the region of Tamil Nadu, none of my words make any sense. At present, it still has Northeren origins. Kerala might not have been inhabited until neolithic times but that was not the case with Karnataka and Tulu Nadu.

PS: A present genetic study(Sengupta et al.) says Dravidian languages might have their origins in South-West of India and that is again coastal Karnataka, including Tulu Nadu.

Manjunatha (21 Mar 2006)

Please remove that picture from the article as it seriosly violates the neutral point of view of the article Bharatveer 08:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why does it ? And why is he labelled a politician in the picture ? He could be just anybody. Tintin (talk) 09:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because the same picture in the Commons was labeled as such; but I removed "politician" anyway. Saravask 23:27, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

well. incidentally; the first pic was m a Baby of cpim now it is cm oommen chandy of cong. either way, i don't get the point in using politicians as models for illustrasting how a mund is worn; if kerala article must contain oc's photo, why should it say, "pic of a man from kerala". also no point in switching from pic to pic to make a political point; ie which poitician more adequately represents the common man (in this particular case of two, forgive me, neither!). i don't see the need for the pic at all. -Pournami 10:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. Couldn't recognise Baby though I am familiar with the name. Been away from Kerala for too long, I guess :-( Tintin (talk) 10:12, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In case anyone is wondering, I wasn't the one who originally put that image in. I agree (now that I've found out who that man was) we should find an image of a non-political figure. Saravask 22:21, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Baby pic was put in the article by me. When User:Robin klein asked why there is no pic of Kerala dresses, I searched the commons and that was the only pic I could get. --Raghu 14:20, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problem — didn't mean to assign any blame, as I'm sure it was just an accident. :-) Saravask 02:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now that you are using the picture of Sri.Oomen Chandy , either label him properly as Hon.Chief Minister of Kerala or remove the picture altogether Bharatveer 05:59, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Got a pic of friend wearing mundu. Let me use that. Nowdays, is politician are the one only using mundu in Kerala:) Georsha 07:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Surely that is incorrect.. Can i remove that?? Bharatveer 06:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pachakam is Malayalam for 'cooking' or 'cookery' and the usage isn't specific to Kerala cuisine. So I guess Bharatveeer is right that it is wrong the way it currently appears in the article. Tintin (talk) 06:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am going to remove it now Bharatveer 08:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should be Malayalam calendar instead of Malayali Calendar. Bharatveer 10:59, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I support this. Though logicaly it would seem that Malayali calendar is better, that is not how the common usage is. A simple google search will show this.--Raghu 14:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

After looking around, I have no problem with restoring the original name ("Malayalam calandar"). Saravask 02:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pl join the discussion at [Articles_for_deletion/Kerala_image_gallery] on deleting the image gallery attached to kerala Pratheepps

I think that the sentence [Virtually all of Kerala's 3.18 crore (31.8 million)[47] people are of Malayali Dravidian ethnicity.] should be remoulded.

Kerala society has arguably major Indo-Aryan elements in it including infusion of Indo-Aryan blood in a not-so-insignificant way and it is this fact that makes it possible to distinguish Malayalees from the Tamilians. It is also true in the case of Malayalam language which has 70 per cent infusion of Sankrit in it. Hence i think it is not an anomaly to think that the Malayalis have at least 30 per cent of Indo-Aryan blood in them.

So what i am driving at is the enthnic and racial classification of Malayalis is very difficult to titrate. So wouldnt it be better to tread through the topic rather delicately and desist from sweeping statements that would only satisfy the taste of a particular ethnocentric agrument.

User:Maabahuka 12:30 April 4, 2006

Be WP:BOLD and make any necessary changes. Saravask 07:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand how my friend Maabahuka came to the conclusion of 30% Indo -Aryan blood in Malayalis. As DNA studies have proved the B$hitness of The Aryan Invasion Theory ; the whole references to it should preferably be removed Bharatveer 08:14, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Mr. Bharatveer please go through what i have written carefully in the talk page. I am not subscribing to The Aryan Invsion Theory but i am bringing to your kind notice that there was a peaceful migration of Aryan population into Kerala (No historian is denying this fact). So why are you so reluctant to accomodate what even the historians have recorded.

User:Maabahuka 2:10 April 4, 2006.

my dear friend Maabahuka , you are just clinging on to the Aryan migration Theory (As per scholars, it is a modified version of AIT ). You should understand that In Indic culture , Arya was just a word literally meaning "Noble". All other racial connotations ascribed to it is the creation of european scholars of nineteenth century. Bharatveer 09:02, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is so special ...I mean.. unique in Indo-Aryan blood? Please let us know male genetic lineages that are unique to Indo-Aryans(whoever they may be) but not found in Tamils. Please let us know the unique Tamil genetic male lineages that are not observed in Indo-Aryans. Kind enough to understand that Indian caste male and female genetic lineages derived from the same gene pool.Except for few historical West Asian and European lineages, Indian lineages make distinct set of Y-chromosomes when compared to Western European(Indians lack R1b and E3b) or North-Eastern European ( I) lineages.

Indo-Aryan and Dravidian must remain linguistic identities. Please do not bring bad blood into it.

Here ethnicity must been linguistically homogenous group. I have reservations about Proto-Tamils here because I feel majority Malayalees could have been Proto-Tuluvas, as Tulu not only branched from Proto-South Dravidian the earliest but also Tulu and Malayalee cultures resemble each other.

Manjunatha (11 Apr 2006)

True it cannot be said that Kerala is solely Dravidian, however there is not much substance in an Aryan claim. There is a tendency for people to attribute Aryan descent for even slightly pale skin colour, such correlations are illusory.

The diversity in the people of kerala comes becomes of its unique position of being the centre of the pepper trade between the mediterranean world and the east, in ancient times, spanning for over three millennia.

Through this long spice trade, Kerala has had the settlements of Levantine Jews and Jewish-christians from Israel and around the mediterranean world. It also had extensive settlements of Arabs in the Malabar coast. Kerala indeed has a diversity of people in terms of racial origins but that is because of its overlooked and understated long semitic influence, which many people try hard to deny.

Besides, it is the syntactic structures of a language that determines its linguistic influence and language family. The syntactic structures Of Malayalam language is that of ancient tamil. Languages might Include loan words from any language and to any extent, still retaining its syntactic structures.

The earliest reference of brahmins in the malabar coast comes only from the 8th century CE, while mediterranean coins and other objects from the mediterranean world from several centuries earlier have been found in kerala.

(see this article from south Indian newspaper 'The Hindu':

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/2104/coins.html

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2003/08/17/stories/2003081700370800.htm )

The studies of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in population genetics stresses the importance of studying genetic admixture and influence in terms of the proportion of world population. It is important to keep in mind that in population genetics, the estimated popualtion of the entire ancient world over two thousand years ago were few millions and not billions as today, while many nations and linguistic groups had populations in few thousands. Keeping that in mind one could realize the significant impact of the continious settlement and comixture of thousands of mediterranean-semitic people in the malabar coast. Robin klein 08:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So what do you want us to do to the article? Saravask 19:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Saravask,

You asked what is to be done about semitic influence to the article kerala, just look at it with NPOV and you will know what is to be done, if people are not caught up in the web of nationalism.

the above author User:Maabahuka seems to imply that people in kerala looks different from the people in tamil nadu despite both being of largely dravidian descent, because kerala has a high comixture of aryan- sanskrit (brahmin) etc.

the medieval Cholas circe 840 CE invited the brahminical families like parthasarathy, chakravarthy (common bengali and tamil brahmin names) in the 9th century. They are now the Iyers and Iyengars. So there is a significant presence of brahmin-aryan influence (that is if you consider bengal as aryan which is another contention) in tamil nadu and that too more so than that of kerala. so the explanation that kerala people look different from tamil nadu people because of aryan-brahmin influence is inaccurate. because if both of them have brahminical influence they both should look similar, at least going by the premise of User:Maabahuka.

However the premise of User:Maabahuka fails to explain as to why kerala in the malabar coast is so diverse than the rest of south India. The explanation based on the fact of black pepper trade and ancient navigation between the mediterranean world and the malabar coast even a millenniuum before 9th century CE as mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea explains quite logically why the malabar coast which saw trade with the mediterranean world for thousands of years and continious mediterranean-semitic influence of nasranis, cochini malabari yehuden, yehuda knanaya nasranis, mapilla, etc is indeed so amazingly diverse and distinct from the rest of south india. Robin klein 03:00, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could people (Maabahuka, Robin klein, Bharatveer) provide sources for their claims? I don't have an opinion on this, since I don't know how numerous or influential Indo-Aryans or Jews were in Kerala. Saravask 02:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Saravask,

The Cochin Jews or Malabari Yehuden are not the only source of semitic influence in kerala. The Nasranis are 5 million (according to the Indian census report of 2004) people in kerala (many of whom are descendants of levantine Jews and also local converts) thanks to the long pepper trade. Also the knanaya people belong to the same group of jews as the cochin jews called as Meyuhassim. The Knanaya are Jewish people who follow the christ, in kerala their population is over a quarter of a million. (according to the census report). The other source of semitic influence are the numerous Arabs that also settled and mixed with the local people in course of the pepper trade between the malabar coast and the mediterranean world. Combining the Nasranis, Cochin Jews, Knanaya and mapillas the total semitic-mediterranean influence today in kerala is in millions. Yet you have dismissed it as 30,000 by only taking the cochin jews. Also you assumed that Kerala's people are 25% aryan without any source. Robin klein 03:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Semitic influence... understated and over looked ....??? What next ?? my friend?? Bharatveer 09:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's true Robin Klein, Kerala is not solely Dravidian nor is its Semitic influence to be underplayed. But i think Maabahukka has made a pertinent point there. He has tried to acknowledge Kerala's Aryan influence without downplaying its predominantly Dravidian essence.

User: Mist_n_legend April 4, 2006

pls see Aryan_race Bharatveer

The problem here is you people want to create stereotypical Aryans and Dravidians. They never existed in Indian society. Even if the big chunk of Malabarees are light skinned that hardly means the founding population of light skinned people must be proportionate. Please understand that skin colour is one of the highly selected traits. Also, sexual selection plays a major role in it. So even with negligible light skinned population the selected traits could spread rapidly. To understand the Semitic or Arab influence in Malabar population we have to consider the major Y-chromosome Haplogroups in those populations and observe their presence in Malabar population. I am not sure any studies have been done in this regard. I suppose two of the major haplogroups of Arabs are J and E. However J is a major Haplogroup of South Indians(including Tamils), therefore, we have to observe occurrence of E. However, I'm not sure of any such studies. For the time being we should wait for further studies. But just because Malabarees are relatively lighter skinned should not be the criteria for any conclusions. Also, admixture analysis based on non-neutral markers are still controversial. So we should concentrate on the studies based on Y-chromosome lineages(or descent from the person carrying a particular muation).

Manjunatha (11 Apr 2006)

The problem is the whole 'circular' argument going on about the NON EXISTENT ARYAN AND DRAVIDAN RACES.Even the proponents of the AIT theory now say that the "aryan dravidian " difference is not a Skin colour issue any more; they say it is a case of two different languages/ culture issue.Just wait for some more years for this dumb theory to go as well Bharatveer 17:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

കേരളം is written as Kēraḷaṁ. What is the standard used for this transliteration? The letter 'r' does not really represent a ര properly unless there is a separate symbol or letter for റ. --Grammatical error 17:36, 6 April 2006

(UTC)

"Keralites, compared with most other Indians, are keen participants in the political process." This sentence have no factual basis and should be removed Bharatveer 18:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some examples: [2]; [3]; [4]; [5]. Saravask 19:04, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to a latest study, Proto Dravidian language was spoken first around Godavari basin. Therefore, the regions of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were speaking Dravidian languages before the region of Tamil Nadu. Tulu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam are part of South Dravidian-I(Telugu is part of South Dravidian-II). So when it comes to "Proto", we are not sure, the identity should be of Tamils. I have changed it to more NPOV Proto-South Dravidian. Please read this article discussing how the archaic nature of modern Tamil has led to its political construction of being the oldest.

Manjunatha (18 Apr 2006)

The following is copied from Talk:Thiruvananthapuram:

Trivandrum is the largest city in Kerala

I am talking about the cities of Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi. You must have noticed the areas of Trivandrum and Kochi. TVM is 184 sq KM and Cochin is 87.5 sq Km. These are considered as the city area. In this city area TVM is having around 8.5 lakhs of population and Kochi is 6 lakhs. Some guys must have added the population of the near by municipalities with Kochi. If we do the same thing with TVM, it will have around 2.5 million populations

I will post the detailed information about the population in these two districts soon.

Also you must have noticed contradictory things in the cochin site Area 87.5 km² ,Density 10840/km² then how come a population of 1,660,000 is possible?

So we must help this site to show the truths, not as some promotions

Thanks,
Sathya

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sathyalal (talk • contribs) 07:06, 20 April 2006.

Kochi does indeed have a population of 1.66 million as stated by the Kochi article and as referenced here, here and here. This is as per the Greater cochin census conducted in 2001. Also, according to [6], Kochi ranks as the 24th biggest metropolis in India, while Thiruvananthupuram is at 42. -- User:Deepujoseph/sig

But still Trivandrum is the biggest corporation in Kerala--Altruist 09:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Either way, the density of population is a problem to be fixed. http://www.censusindia.net/results/miilion_plus.html has the population of Kochi as 1,355,406 and looks fairly authoritative. Tintin (talk) 09:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

See this http://cyberjournalist.org.in/towns.html .Trivandrum indeed is the biggest corporation in Kerala. And this population as on 1991 http://www.kerala.gov.in/dept_municipal/details.htm --Altruist 10:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]