Iyothee Thass

From The Radical Buddhism Project

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Iyothee Thass (அயோத்திதாசர், Ayothidasar; 1845–1914) was a Tamil Siddha physician, journalist, and religious reformer, born into the Parayar caste, which was classified as "untouchable". In 1898 he founded the Sakya Buddhist Society in Madras (now Chennai), and from 1907 until his death he edited the weekly Oru Paisa Tamilan. He argued that the casteless Dravidians were India's original inhabitants and its original Buddhists, and that caste was imposed on them by immigrant "false Brahmins". Dickens Leonard describes him as the first to develop an anti-caste narrative by espousing and writing on Buddhism, which places him well before B.R. Ambedkar's conversion in 1956.[1][2] Thass combined Buddhism with anti-caste emancipation through institutional Buddhist activism and personal conversion. He praised British rule, opposed the swadeshi movement, and proposed self-improvement and institution-building rather than redistribution.

Biography

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Thass was born Kathavarayan on 20 May 1845 in the Coimbatore district to a Parayar family; he grew up in the Nilgiris and later settled in Madras.[3] He took the name Iyothee Thass in honor of his teacher, a Siddha physician, practiced Siddha medicine himself, and is described as proficient in Tamil, Pali, Sanskrit, and English.[4]

According to Aloysius, his public activity began in the Nilgiris with the Advaidananda Sabha organization (1870) and continued with requests, from 1881, that the "outcastes" be recorded in the census as original Tamils rather than Hindus.[5] Leonard credits him and the Rev. John Rathinam with starting the magazine Dravida Pandian in 1885.[6] In 1891 he helped to found the Dravida Mahajana Sabha, whose memorial of ten demands was addressed to the Indian National Congress in December 1891. The first demand would have made it an offense to call anyone a "Parayan"; others concerned separate schools, scholarships, public employment, and access to all public water tanks and wells.[7] In April 1892 he attended a meeting of the Madras Mahajana Sabha. In his own later account, a speaker repeated a legend that the poet Valluvar was born of a Brahmin father, and Thass retorted by asking from whose seed the Parayar B.A. and M.A. graduates, and the Iyer Brahmins held in jail, had been born.[8] Ayyathurai reads the episode as the point at which Thass concluded that the caste and casteless populations shared no common identity; Aloysius argues that the rebuff sent him on a "search and research" that led him to conclude that the outcastes had originally been Buddhists.[9]

In 1898 Thass and a colleague, P. Krishnaswami, delegates of "Paraiah" committees, approached Henry Steel Olcott of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, and on 1 July 1898 sailed with him to Colombo, where Thass took the Five Precepts from the monk Hikkaduwe Sumangala at the Maligakanda monastery.[10] On his return he established the Sakya Buddhist Society at Royapettah, with himself as general secretary; it opened branches at Kolar, Bangalore, Tirupattur, Secunderabad, Rangoon, and Durban, and Aloysius links its growth to miners, sappers, railway workers, and migrants to Burma and Natal.[11] In 1903 the Marathi Buddhist Dharmanand Kosambi, during a stay in Madras, described a "Pandit Ayodhidas", probably Thass, as the leader of the city's Parayar Buddhists, who "did not get on" with the members of the Madras Maha Bodhi Society, led by P. Lakshmi Narasu; Kosambi brought the groups together at a Bauddhashram in Royapettah.[12] Ober reports that after Thass's death in 1914 the leadership of the Shakya Buddhist Society turned to Narasu, who became its president, while V. Geetha writes that the two parted ways, Narasu being the more rationalist; Thass's own writings examined in researching this article do not mention Narasu.[13]

From 19 June 1907 Thass published and edited the weekly Oru Paisa Tamilan ("The One-Pice Tamilian"), later simply The Tamilan, which included a women's column and campaigned for women's education.[14] Through it he serialized his historical writings, attacked brahmin-led nationalism and the swadeshi movement, and campaigned for the 1911 census, in which he urged the casteless to be recorded as "Indian Buddhists"; the Madras government agreed to show Buddhists separately.[15] In May 1911 he answered a reader who asked why he did not attend the Maha Bodhi Society's meetings in Madras: he objected that its members, while preaching that Buddhism had no caste, said they would teach the "lower classes" and thereby raised themselves, and that they denied rebirth and held that death was the end.[16] His appeal of 1911 to Buddhists abroad says that honest co-workers are hard to find in "caste-ridden India" and asks European and American Buddhists to send missionaries.[17] In 1913 he described the Society's practices (images of the Buddha, the Five Precepts through monks, loyalty to British rule) and its achievements, including a separate census column and a separate burial ground.[18] His book Adivedam (the "first Veda") became, according to Ayyathurai, his most important work and remains the core text of the Hubli Buddhist community.[19]

Thass died on 5 May 1914; Burmese monks officiated at the funeral.[20] The Tamilan continued under his eldest son, C.I. Pattabiram, until 1917 and was revived in 1921 under G. Appaduraiyar.[21] The Society's successor, the South Indian Buddhist Association, held general conferences between 1917 and 1945, most of them under Narasu's presidency (see Tamil Buddhist Movement).[22]

Ideas

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Thass's central argument, made in the Tamilan serials and in Indirar Desa Sarithiram, was historical: the casteless Dravidians (his term for the people later called Parayars or Panchamas) were the original inhabitants of India, Buddhism was their religion, and caste was the work of foreign newcomers who took refuge in Buddhist monasteries as "false Brahmins" (வேஷபிராமணர்கள்), were expelled, and then slandered and degraded their hosts.[23] He read the old Tamil names of occupations and callings (valluvar, vanigar, velalar, and others) as Buddhist honorifics that the newcomers later converted into hereditary castes, argued that India's name derives from Indra, a name of the Buddha, and claimed that many Hindu temples were originally Buddhist monasteries.[24] Ober presents this thesis as a cornerstone of twentieth-century Dalit Buddhist thought.[25] Ayyathurai observes that the argument depends heavily on the theory of an Aryan invasion, although Thass treated Sanskrit and Tamil as sister languages derived from Pali, and Leonard calls that theory discredited; V. Geetha and S.V. Rajadurai call him an "amateur philologist" whose history follows imaginative rather than empirical rules of inquiry.[26] Aloysius compares the method, which he calls "going back along the route of degradation", to Freudian catharsis, the Marxian critique of ideology, and Habermasian hermeneutics — these are Aloysius's comparisons, not Thass's.[27]

Thass treated Buddhism chiefly as an ethical practice and a rule of conduct, not as a metaphysics or a ritual system. High and low, he held, are decided by conduct and not by birth.[28] He insisted that Buddhism is not atheism and criticized the "scientific" Buddhism of the Madras Maha Bodhi circle, and the rules he approved for his Society provided for a simplified lay-led ritual, the Five Precepts, abstinence from liquor and meat, and a marriage rite that he presented as the old Buddhist royal rite.[29] He supported women's education and the Tamilan carried a women's column; Leonard calls him one of the earliest feminists of his time.[30]

Politically, Thass was loyalist and hostile to the Congress. He described the educated casteless Dravidians, who had obtained degrees through missionary kindness, as acting in loyalty to the Raj, and he praised the British government, as "abounding in compassion and wisdom" (கருணையும், விவேகமும் மிகுத்த பிரிட்டிஷ் ராஜாங்கம்).[31] At the same time he recorded that caste Hindus barred casteless Dravidians from clean water and from barbers and washermen, and he accused Congress leaders of being "Brahmin" nationalists indifferent to the casteless.[32] Geetha and Rajadurai write that he failed to question colonial revenue administration and cast the casteless as a loyal vanguard of the Raj; Ayyathurai describes his position toward colonialism as not so radical, and the national movement as "not anti-caste but only selectively anti-colonial".[33]

Primary sources consulted in the research for this article contain no socialist, communist, or Marxist vocabulary and no demand for land redistribution, a wage increase, or labor organization.[34] Ayyathurai reports, from other issues of the Tamilan, a proposed company of "Non-Caste Dravidian Industrials", a bank for the poor, and a demand that land go to those who work it.[35] His programme was thus this-worldly but built on self-improvement, education, crafts, and the restoration of an imagined Buddhist order of occupations. It can be called radical in its attack on caste as an imposture and in its institution-building among the poor, but it does not satisfy the second test of radical Buddhism (a program of systemic economic change), and it should not be read as a precursor of Marxist or socialist Buddhism.

Whether Thass shaped later movements is disputed. Aloysius argues that Tamil Buddhism was the ideological antecedent of the Dravidian movement, that it was "certainly one of the several factors" that moved Ambedkar toward Buddhism, and that Periyar built on Thass; in an earlier essay he goes further and calls Thass the foundation of Dravidian nationalism and of the later Ambedkarite parties, without evidence.[36] Ayyathurai found "no direct archival evidence" that Thass influenced Ambedkar, and he adds that the Self-Respecters never adopted the Buddhist view of Tamil history.[37] Geetha is more confident that Ambedkar learned of the South Indian movement through Narasu's writings and through contacts of the Scheduled Castes Federation in Madras.[38] Valerian Rodrigues says that Ambedkar "studied in some depth" Thass's Sakya Buddhism alongside the Self-Respect movement, and that Ambedkar disagreed with Thass on regional political autonomy; Gail Omvedt wrote that Navayana Buddhism "follows" Thass in reinterpreting karma.[39] The continuing community of Tamil Buddhists at Hubli, which keeps Adivedam as a core text, is the clearest surviving institutional legacy.[40]

Writings

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Thass's periodical writings were collected in G. Aloysius (Ed.), அயோத்திதாசர் சிந்தனைகள் Iyothee Thassar Cinthanaikal [Thoughts of Iyothee Thass], vols. 1–2 (1999) and vol. 3 (2003), which are cited below by volume, item number, and page. The items are given as published in the Tamilan; many of his books were issued posthumously, so the dates of later editions can differ from the dates of first publication.

  • Thass, Iyothee (1898 or 1899). புத்தர் என்னும் இரவு பகலற்ற ஒளி Buddhar ennum Iravu Pagalatra Oli [Buddha, the Light Without Night or Day]. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 3: 10–26. [A life of the Buddha with an early statement of the claim that the casteless Dravidians were Buddhists, ending with a program of institutions (a temple, burial grounds, a medical hall, and a free college for boys). It may be the pamphlet of 1898 mentioned by Aloysius (1998, p. 57); the editor dates it to 1899 or earlier.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1907–1914). ஒருபைசாத் தமிழன் Oru Paisa Tamilan [The One-Pice Tamilian]. Weekly, Madras. [The weekly that Thass edited, which carried his serials, polemics, announcements of the Sakya Buddhist Society, and a women's column. Copies from the years 1907–1909 and 1911–1914 are held by the Roja Muttaiah Research Library in Chennai.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1907–1908). சுதேச சீர்திருத்தம் Sudesa Seertiruttam [Swadeshi Reform]. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 15: 27–72. [A selection of the columns in which Thass argues against brahmin-led swadeshi nationalism and for civic reform and British rule. Only a few passages state the Buddhist thesis.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1908–1909). [Untitled serial on the Buddhist origins of the casteless Dravidians]. Tamilan 2:21–2:48. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 56: 115–152. [His fullest statement of the thesis that the casteless Dravidians were the original Buddhists, with the theory of the false Brahmins and the claim that temples were Buddhist monasteries.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1910). சாக்கைய பௌத்தர் விவாக விளக்கம் Sakkaiya Bauddhar Vivaha Vilakkam [Explanation of the Sakya Buddhist Marriage]. Tamilan 3:33–3:41. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 44: 122–135. [A description of a reformed Buddhist marriage rite, with an appeal to curb wedding expenses and an invitation to readers to send proposals for reform.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1910–1911). இந்திரர் தேச சரித்திரம் Indirar Desa Sarithiram [History of the Indirar Country]. Serialized in the Tamilan, August 1910–November 1911 (sixty-five parts); book 1912; second edition 1957. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 20: 600–679. [His longest historical narrative, tracing the name of India to the Buddha as "Indra" and recounting how false Brahmins displaced the Buddhist kings and imposed caste.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1911). மகாபோதி பௌத்தம் Mahabodhi Bauddham [Mahabodhi Buddhism]. Tamilan 4:49, 17 May 1911. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 73: 168–169. [A reply to a reader in which Thass explains his objections to the Madras Maha Bodhi Society on grounds of caste conduct and doctrine.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1911). "An Appeal to Buddhist Societies". In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 82: 180–184. [An English appeal to Buddhists in Europe and America, with a history of the Sakya Buddhist Society and its branches, a complaint about caste-minded Buddhist leaders in India, and a calculation of the Buddha's date of birth.]
  • Thass, Iyothee (1913). நூதன பௌத்தம்! Noothana Bauddham [New Buddhism!]. Tamilan 6:51, 28 May 1913. In: Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 100: 439–441. [A report of the Society's practices, branches, and gains, and an attack on rival Buddhist and reformist groups that he does not name.]

Secondary Literature in English

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  • Leonard, Dickens (2025). "Iyothee Thassar's Buddha and Civilizational Memory". In: Banerjee, Prathama (Ed.), Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages: Hierarchy, Humanity and Equality in Indian History: 113–127. Bloomsbury Academic. [Reads Indirar Desa Sarithiram, cited directly, as an account of a civilizational conflict between indigenous Buddhists and "Aryan" invaders, and notes Thass's reliance on the Orientalist theory of Indo-Aryan migration.]
  • Ober, Douglas (2023). Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Stanford University Press. [Places Thass's Madras movement within a wider network of Buddhist revival in India before Ambedkar, and gives the Tamil movement's relations with the Maha Bodhi Society and Narasu.]
  • Ayyathurai, Gajendran (2020). "Living Buddhism: Migration, Memory, and Castelessness in South India". History and Anthropology (online first, 14 December 2020): 1–19. [An ethnographic study of the Buddhist community of Hubli, which descends from Tamil railway migrants and keeps Thass's Adivedam as a core text. Its claim that the community is casteless is the community's own account, which the author defends.]
  • Leonard, Dickens (2021). "Caste-Less Tamils and Early Print Public Sphere: Remembering Iyothee Thass (1845–1914)". South Asia Research 41.3: 349–368. [A short account of Thass's career, his press, and his ideas. Most of its quotations of Thass are the author's own translations from a secondary source (Ponnovium 1999), and should be checked against Thass's own texts.]
  • Ayyathurai, Gajendran (2011). Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness: Pandit Iyothee Thass, Tamil Buddhism, and the Marginalized in South India. PhD dissertation, Columbia University. [The most detailed English study of the arguments that Thass published in the Tamilan, including his critique of the Congress and the swadeshi movement, the 1911 census campaign, and the Sakya associations. All translations are the author's, and the study finds no direct archival evidence of an influence on Ambedkar.]
  • Aloysius, G. (2010). Dalit-Subaltern Self-Identifications: Iyothee Thassar & Tamizhan. Critical Quest. [An essay by the editor of Thass's collected writings on his journalism and on his rejection of the labels "Paraiah", "Panchama", and "Hindu". It is the clearest English statement of Aloysius's interpretation, and should be read as an argument and not as a neutral summary.]
  • Aloysius, G. (1998). Religion as Emancipatory Identity: A Buddhist Movement among the Tamils under Colonialism. New Age International. [The standard monograph on the Sakya Buddhist Society and the South Indian Buddhist Association, with a chronology, conference resolutions, and appendices of petitions and appeals. Its thesis that Tamil Buddhism was the ideological antecedent of the Dravidian movement is the author's argument.]
  • Geetha, V., & S.V. Rajadurai (1998). Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Samya. [A history of non-Brahmin thought in Tamil Nadu that begins with Thass and is critical of the empirical basis of his history. Chapter 3 is the main discussion of Thass; page numbers restart in each chapter of the electronic copy.]

Secondary Literature in Tamil

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  • Ponnovium, Anbu (அன்பு பொன்னோவியம்) (1999). அயோத்திதாசர்: ஒரு கண்ணோட்டம் Ayothidasar: Oru Kannottam [Ayothidasar: An Overview]. In: Aloysius (Ed.), Iyothee Thassar Cinthanaikal, vol. 1: xxiii–xlv. [An admiring biographical overview by a Tamil Buddhist writer, printed as the foreword to the collected writings. His quotations of Thass are condensed, and quotation marks in this essay do not guarantee verbatim text.]

How to Cite This Article

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Brons, Lajos (2026). "Iyothee Thass". The Radical Buddhism Project. Version of 27 October 2026. http://radicalbuddhism.net/wiki/Iyothee_Thass.

Notes

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  1. ↑ Leonard, Dickens (2021). "Caste-Less Tamils and Early Print Public Sphere: Remembering Iyothee Thass (1845–1914)". South Asia Research 41.3: 349–368, p. 351.
  2. ↑ Leonard, Dickens (2025). "Iyothee Thassar's Buddha and Civilizational Memory". In: Banerjee, Prathama (Ed.), Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages: Hierarchy, Humanity and Equality in Indian History: 113–127. Bloomsbury Academic, p. 114. The chapter is dated by the volume (2025); the chapter's own date is not printed.
  3. ↑ Aloysius, G. (1998). Religion as Emancipatory Identity: A Buddhist Movement among the Tamils under Colonialism. New Age International, p. 50 n. 1. Sources print his name in several ways: "Iyothee Thass" (used here), "Iyothee Thassar" (used by Aloysius in his later works), "Pandit C. Iyothee Thass" (Aloysius 1998, p. 58), "Ayothidasa Pandithar", and, in his own English signature of 1911, "Pandit C. Iyothee Doss". His birth year is given as 1845 by Aloysius (1998, p. 50) and in the portrait caption of the collected edition of his writings (cited below); LeVine and Gellner give 1865 (LeVine, Sarah, & David N. Gellner (2005). Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal. Harvard University Press, p. 9), probably a slip.
  4. ↑ Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", p. 352; Ayyathurai, Gajendran (2011). Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness: Pandit Iyothee Thass, Tamil Buddhism, and the Marginalized in South India. PhD dissertation, Columbia University, pp. 21, 216. All translations from Tamil in this dissertation are the author's own (p. 24 n. 51).
  5. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 54–55; Aloysius, G. (2004). Dalit-Subaltern Emergence in Religio-Cultural Subjectivity: Iyothee Thassar & Emancipatory Buddhism. Critical Quest, p. 24; Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", p. 351. Aloysius (2004) lists the Dravida Mahajana Sabha (1891) and the Advaidananda Sabha (1870) as the first organization without stating how they relate.
  6. ↑ Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", p. 363.
  7. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, p. 55 and App. 1, pp. 195–196 (a translation from the Tamilan of 14 October 1908, where Thass reprinted the memorandum); Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 59–60.
  8. ↑ Aloysius, G. (Ed.) (1999). அயோத்திதாசர் சிந்தனைகள் Iyothee Thassar Cinthanaikal [Thoughts of Iyothee Thass], vols. 1–2. FRRC, St Xavier's College, vol. 1, item 56, pp. 132–134 (Tamilan 2:34, 3 February 1909). The Tamilan issue number marks the end of the installment it names. Other versions of the meeting, including a temple-entry plea that was rejected, are in Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 22–24, and Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, p. 152.
  9. ↑ Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 22–23; Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, p. 152; Aloysius (2004), Dalit-Subaltern Emergence, pp. 25–27.
  10. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 50–53, drawing on Olcott's diary and on Thass; Thass's own English account of 1911 is in Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 82, pp. 180–181. Olcott's diary records that the delegates described their people as the aboriginal Buddhists of Asoka's time, and its editor remarks that this had not been proved (Aloysius 1998, p. 51 n. 4). Ayyathurai (2011, p. 216) calls the event a "baptism" by a Sinhala monk; Aloysius's account indicates that it was the taking of the precepts, not ordination.
  11. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, p. 55; Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 82, pp. 180–184, which lists the branches and their secretaries; on the social base of the branches see also pp. 45–47 and 183 of Aloysius (1998). The date of his Buddhist turn varies: 1890 in his own appeal of 1911 ("So long back as the year 1890 I came to be convinced ... of the truths of Buddhism") and in Aloysius (2004), p. 28; 1898 in Aloysius (1998) and in his own later account; 1899 in Ayyathurai, Gajendran (2020). "Living Buddhism: Migration, Memory, and Castelessness in South India". History and Anthropology (online first, 14 December 2020): 1–19, p. 9 n. 5, which also dates the first Sakya Buddhist Association at Royapettah to 1899.
  12. ↑ Kosambi, Dharmanand (1924). निवेदन Nivedan [Statement] (Marathi). Manoranjak Granthaprasarak Mandali, p. 115 (read from the page image). The page does not give the name "Thass"; the identification of "Ayodhidas" with Thass is an inference, as is the identification of the "Lakshminarasu Naidu" named there as president with Narasu (very probable).
  13. ↑ Ober, Douglas (2023). Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Stanford University Press, pp. 135–143; Geetha, V. (2021). Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 266. In his appeal of 1911 Thass names the American writer Paul Carus as the Society's president (Aloysius 1999, vol. 2, item 82, p. 181).
  14. ↑ Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, p. 21; Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", pp. 351–353; Aloysius, G. (2010). Dalit-Subaltern Self-Identifications: Iyothee Thassar & Tamizhan. Critical Quest, pp. 11–13, which puts its circulation at a couple of thousand at most; Ayyathurai (2020), "Living Buddhism", p. 14.
  15. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, items 175 (Tamilan 4:27, 14 December 1910; pp. 307–308) and 187 (4:34, 1 February 1911; pp. 321–322); Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 133–139; Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, p. 74.
  16. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 73, pp. 168–169 (Tamilan 4:49, 17 May 1911). The doctrine is attributed to the Madras members, not to Anagarika Dharmapala. See also Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 145, 160. In item 100 (below) Thass attacks two unnamed men who "keep caste yet preach new Buddhism"; the sources do not identify them.
  17. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 82, pp. 180–184.
  18. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 100, pp. 439–441 (Tamilan 6:51, 28 May 1913).
  19. ↑ Ayyathurai (2020), "Living Buddhism", p. 10; Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, p. 101 n. 158. The date is given as 1911 by Ayyathurai (2020) and as a public release on 31 August 1912 by Aloysius (1998, p. 75); Aloysius (1999), pp. xlvii–xlviii, treats Adi Vedam (1912) as the one posthumous book that the movement did not alter, because it appeared under Thass's own supervision.
  20. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, p. 79. Ayyathurai (2011, p. 75) gives only the year.
  21. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 81, 88; Aloysius (2010), Dalit-Subaltern Self-Identifications, pp. 11–13. Ayyathurai (2011, p. 21) and Leonard (2021, p. 351) give 29 April 1914 as the end of the weekly; the sources do not explain the difference.
  22. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 89–101 and App. 5–9, pp. 209–229.
  23. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 56, pp. 118–137 (Tamilan 2:23–2:37, 18 November 1908–24 February 1909), and item 20, pp. 600–679 (the serial Indirar Desa Sarithiram; the newcomers are Persians in this text). His account of the sequence of events is not always consistent across passages, including the derivation of the word paraiyar.
  24. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 56, pp. 119–122 (Tamilan 2:24–2:25) and pp. 134–136 (Tamilan 2:35–2:36); item 20, pp. 600–605; vol. 2, item 3, pp. 10–26.
  25. ↑ Ober (2023), Dust on the Throne, p. 139.
  26. ↑ Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, p. 48; Leonard (2025), "Iyothee Thassar's Buddha", p. 115; Geetha, V., & S.V. Rajadurai (1998). Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar. Samya, ch. 3, pp. 15, 20 (the page numbers restart in each chapter of the electronic copy used).
  27. ↑ Aloysius (2004), Dalit-Subaltern Emergence, p. 27; Aloysius (2010), Dalit-Subaltern Self-Identifications, p. 37.
  28. ↑ Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 28–33; Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", p. 355; Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 133–136. The glosses of his key terms differ: eegai is rendered "generosity" by Leonard (2021, p. 357) and "compassion" by Leonard (2025, p. 122).
  29. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 107–116, 145, 160; Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, item 44, pp. 122–135 (Tamilan 3:33–3:41, 26 January–23 March 1910), and item 81, pp. 178–179. Item 44 has the wife regard her husband as a god, which Aloysius (1998, p. 112) takes as part of his lack of a systematic position on women.
  30. ↑ Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", p. 353.
  31. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 56, pp. 118–119 (Tamilan 2:23, 18 November 1908) and pp. 131–132 (2:33, 27 January 1909). Original: "கருணையும், விவேகமும் மிகுத்த பிரிட்டிஷ் ராஜாங்கம்".
  32. ↑ Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 56, pp. 118–119 and 133–134; Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 59–64.
  33. ↑ Geetha & Rajadurai (1998), Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium, ch. 2, pp. 24–25, 30; Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, p. 217 (paraphrase).
  34. ↑ This statement covers Aloysius (1999), vol. 2, items 3, 44, and 82, and vol. 1, items 20 and 56, which were searched for Marx, socialism, communism, Narasu, Maha Bodhi, Olcott, Ambedkar, Periyar, and Singaravelu; the other items were read only in part. Item 20, pp. 644–648, traces the relation of masters and bondsmen to the estates of the immigrants, and item 56, pp. 132–134, blames rising rice prices on obedience to Manu's condemnation of farming (a verse he cites as Manu 84); neither passage uses a class analysis.
  35. ↑ Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 159, 175 (his reading; the passages are not among those examined here). Ayyathurai calls the first part of Indirar Desa Sarithiram "Buddhist historical materialism, so to speak" (p. 88; his phrase).
  36. ↑ Aloysius (1998), Religion as Emancipatory Identity, pp. 189–193; Aloysius (2004), Dalit-Subaltern Emergence, p. 24. Aloysius's evidence for the Periyar link is an earlier study by S. Perumal (1990) and the oral recollection of the followers of G. Appaduraiyar, and so is second-hand.
  37. ↑ Ayyathurai (2011), Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness, pp. 136, 218–219.
  38. ↑ Geetha (2021), Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, pp. 269–270.
  39. ↑ Rodrigues, Valerian (2024). Ambedkar's Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins. Palgrave Macmillan, ch. 1, pp. 5–6, and p. 249; Omvedt, Gail (2021). "Foreword". In: Gokhale, Pradeep P. (Ed.), Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste: xv–xviii. Routledge, p. xvii.
  40. ↑ Ayyathurai (2020), "Living Buddhism", pp. 2, 10–12. The community's castelessness and its descent from early Buddhists are the community's own account, which the author defends.
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