इस क्षेत्र का अनुवाद अभी इस भाषा में नहीं हुआ है, इसलिए यह अंग्रेज़ी में दिखाया जा रहा है।
Kongu Nadu · Deccan Inland Plateau
नृत्य
A processional line dance to a drum, performed without props in a slow synchronised step that speeds up through the piece. It is described in the folklore literature as a Kongu form descended from an older court dance, and it is danced at village temple festivals rather than on a stage.
कौन करता है: Men, in a line. मौका: Temple festivals
A decorated pot balanced on the head and danced with, to naiyandi melam. Its origin is a ritual water offering; the version now booked for functions is frankly a professional entertainment and its performers say so.
कौन करता है: Professional troupes. मौका: Mariamman festivals, village functions
Stick fighting with a bamboo staff, worked in circular patterns at speed. It survives here as a demonstration art at temple festivals and in village gymnasiums, and its practitioners keep the training vocabulary intact even where the fighting use has gone.
कौन करता है: Men, trained from boyhood. मौका: Temple festivals, demonstrations
A frame drum played with two sticks, one thin and one flat, whose players were historically both musicians and the village announcement system. The instrument has been deliberately reclaimed in recent decades and is now taught in urban classes.
कौन करता है: Hereditary drummer families. मौका: Funerals, processions, announcements
A slow line dance built on a repeated forward-and-back step, with handkerchiefs and bells, sung as it is danced. It runs across the southern Tamil country and is at home here.
कौन करता है: Men in a line with ankle bells. मौका: Temple festivals
संगीत
The village wind-and-percussion band — nadaswaram, thavil, dholak and cymbals — that plays processions, weddings and Karagattam. It is louder, faster and less formal than the temple periya melam, and it is a full-time hereditary occupation.
Bow song — a narrative sung by a lead performer who beats time on a large bowstring strung with bells, answered by a chorus. It carries the Annanmar epic in this region, and a performance is part story, part sermon and part topical commentary.
The classical wind tradition attached to the big temples, where the instrument is played outdoors and at length for processions, and where the repertoire includes the long alapana that concert halls rarely allow time for.
Women's circle songs, clapped or played with sticks, sung at Pongal, at weddings and in the Aadi festivals — the domestic music of the region, and where most of its surviving folk verse lives.
रंगमंच
The Kamadahana story performed over several nights around Masi, with the burning of Kama enacted and mourned by a village that then abuses the deity responsible in verse. It is one of the few Tamil ritual dramas where the audience is expected to take sides against a god.
The eighteen-night performance of the Annanmar epic, staged in front of the twin brothers' temples with the bow, the pot drum and a lead narrator, and attended as a religious obligation rather than as entertainment.
The touring Tamil commercial theatre of the twentieth century, assembled per performance from freelance actors booked separately — hence the name. The Kongu towns were a core circuit, and the form still plays village festivals.
शिल्प
Registered as a geographical indication in 2005–06. The craft began as a deliberate response to imported mill cloth and now defends itself against power-loom copies with the same name.
सामग्री: Coarse cotton yarn, and artificial silk in the finer grades. तकनीक: Pit-loom weaving with the weaver seated below floor level, working the treadles with the feet so the whole body weight can be used on the beat. Two grades are made — a coarse cotton carpet and a softer art-silk version that takes a decorated border.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2014–15, and a saree designed for a hot dry climate.
सामग्री: Cotton with silk and zari. तकनीक: Handloom weaving of a cotton body against silk or zari borders, chiefly at Sirumugai.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2005–06. The town has hundreds of manufacturers and makes the large majority of India's wet grinders, because it had granite, motors and lathes in the same square mile.
सामग्री: Granite, mild steel, electric motor. तकनीक: Granite rollers turning inside a granite-lined drum, crushing rather than cutting, so the batter does not heat and the fermentation survives. The tilting design was worked out locally in 1955 and the product has changed remarkably little since.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2007–08.
सामग्री: Mulberry silk, zari. तकनीक: Handloom silk weaving in a belt that also runs one of the largest power-loom clusters in the south.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2019. The Erode market complex is one of the largest turmeric trading floors in the world, and prices set on it are quoted nationally.
सामग्री: Curcuma longa rhizome. तकनीक: Boiling, a fortnight of sun-drying and drum polishing, then grading by colour and curcumin content.
Registered as a geographical indication in 2023. A South American root crop introduced in the colonial period, turned into a Tamil pantry staple by one district.
सामग्री: Tapioca starch. तकनीक: Tapioca is rasped, the starch settled and washed, then rolled into pearls and roasted on hot plates. The industry is organised around a single regulated market through which almost the whole crop is sold.
A handloom belt converted almost entirely into an export made-ups cluster from the 1970s onward.
सामग्री: Cotton and blends. तकनीक: Weaving, dyeing and made-up stitching of table, kitchen and bed linen for export.
A draught breed developed and maintained by the region's herding households, and the grazing system that goes with it, which is itself the rarer survival.
सामग्री: Live animals and the grazing commons that support them. तकनीक: Selective breeding on korangadu silvo-pasture — a fenced grazing system of grass, legume and thorn kept for cattle rather than ploughed — producing a compact, hard-hoofed draught animal suited to black soil and heat.
Kongu Nadu के नृत्य, संगीत, रंगमंच और शिल्प — शास्त्रीय शैलियों से लेकर गाँव की परंपराओं तक। (20)