Editing Iyothee Thass (section)

== Ideas ==
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.<ref>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''.</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref> Ober presents this thesis as a cornerstone of twentieth-century Dalit Buddhist thought.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 139.</ref> 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.<ref>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).</ref> 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.<ref>Aloysius (2004), ''Dalit-Subaltern Emergence'', p. 27; Aloysius (2010), ''Dalit-Subaltern Self-Identifications'', p. 37.</ref>

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.<ref>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).</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref> He supported women's education and the ''Tamilan'' carried a women's column; Leonard calls him one of the earliest feminists of his time.<ref>Leonard (2021), "Caste-Less Tamils", p. 353.</ref>

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).<ref>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".</ref> 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.<ref>Aloysius (1999), vol. 1, item 56, pp. 118–119 and 133–134; Ayyathurai (2011), ''Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness'', pp. 59–64.</ref> 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".<ref>Geetha & Rajadurai (1998), ''Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium'', ch. 2, pp. 24–25, 30; Ayyathurai (2011), ''Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness'', p. 217 (paraphrase).</ref>

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.<ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>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).</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref> 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.<ref>Ayyathurai (2011), ''Foundations of Anti-caste Consciousness'', pp. 136, 218–219.</ref> 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.<ref>Geetha (2021), ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar'', pp. 269–270.</ref> 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.<ref>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.</ref> The continuing community of Tamil Buddhists at Hubli, which keeps ''Adivedam'' as a core text, is the clearest surviving institutional legacy.<ref>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.</ref>