Castes and Professions
The castes which comprised the Ambalavasi community each contained only a few members. They lived in villages either where the land was owned solely by one Nambudiri Brahmin family or where the land was owned by a temple, the running of which was in the control of a group of Nambudiri families. The latter villages were called sanketams.
The temples in which they worked comprised four basic types:
- those in sanketams were large and were dedicated to deities which were worshipped throughout India, such as Shiva and Vishnu.
- private temples, owned by Nambudiri families, which were smaller versions of those found in the sanketams.
- the private temples of the royal lines, feudatory chiefs and vassal chiefs of what is now Kerala, which were dedicated to Bhagavati and Bhadrakali
- village temples dedicated to Bhagavati and run by senior Nairs who had been appointed by local rulers
A brief description of each of these castes are given below:
Read more about this topic: Ambalavasi
Famous quotes containing the words castes and/or professions:
“Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measures by results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)