Note 78 — M (continued 3)

An outbreak, which occurred in 1843, was celebrated in a stirring ballad.78 A series of Māppilla war-songs have been published by Mr. Fawcett.79 In October, 1843, a peon (orderly) was found with his head and hand all but cut off, and the perpetrators were supposed to have been Māppilla fanatics of the sect known as Hāl Ilakkam (frenzy raising), concerning which the following account was given in an official report, 1843. “In the month of Mētam last year, one Alathamkuliyil Moidīn went out into the fields before daybreak to water the crops, and there he saw a certain person, who advised him to give up all his work, and devote his time to prayer at the mosque. Moidīn objected to this, urging that he would have nothing to live upon. Whereupon, the above-mentioned person told him that a palm tree, which grew in his (Moidīn’s) compound, would yield sufficient toddy, which he could convert into jaggery (crude sugar), and thus maintain himself. After saying this, the person disappeared. Moidīn thought that the person he saw was God himself, and felt frantic (hāl). He then went to Taramal Tangal, and performed dikkar and niskāram (cries and prayers). After two or three days, he complained to the Tangal that Kāfirs (a term applied by Muhammadans to people of other religions) were making fun of him. The Tangal told him that the course adopted by him was the right one, and, saying ‘Let it be as I have said,’ gave him a spear to be borne as an emblem, and assured him that nobody would mock him in future. Subsequently several Māppillas, affecting hāl ilakkam, played all sorts of pranks, and wandered about with canes in their hands, without going to their homes or attending to their work. After several days, some of them, who had no means of maintaining themselves unless they attended to their work, returned to their former course of life, while others, with canes and Ernād knives (war knives) in their hands, wandered about in companies of five, six, eight, or ten men, and, congregating in places not much frequented by Hindus, carried on their dikkar and niskāram. The Māppillas in general look upon this as a religious vow, and provide these people with food. I hear of the Māppillas talking among themselves that one or two of the ancestors of Taramal Tangal died fighting, that, the present man being advanced in age, it is time for him to follow the same course, and that the above-mentioned men affected with hāl ilakkam, when their number swells to four hundred, will engage in a fight with Kāfirs, and die in company with the Tangal. One of these men (who are known as Hālar), by name Avarumāyan, two months ago collected a number of his countrymen, and sacrificed a bull, and, for preparing meals for these men, placed a copper vessel with water on the hearth, and said that rice would appear of itself in the vessel. He waited for some time. There was no rice to be seen. Those who had assembled there ate beef alone, and dispersed. Some people made fun of Avarumāyan for this. He felt ashamed, and went to Taramal Tangal, with whom he stayed two or three days. He then went to the mosque at Mambram, and, on attempting to fly through the air into the mosque on the southern side of the river at Tirurangādi, fell down through the opening of the door, and became lame of one leg, in which state he is reported to be still lying. While the Hālar of Munniyūr dēsam were performing niskāram one day at the tomb of Chemban Pokar Mūppan, a rebel, they declared that in the course of a week a mosque would spring up at night, and that there would be complete darkness for two full days. Māppillas waited in anxious expectation of the phenomenon for seven or eight days and nights. There was, however, neither darkness nor mosque to be seen. Again, in the month of Karkigadam last, some of the influential Māppillas led their ignorant Hindu neighbours to believe that a ship would arrive with the necessary arms, provisions, and money for forty thousand men; and that, if that number could be secured meanwhile, they could conquer the country, and that the Hindus would then totally vanish. It appears that it was about this time that some Tiyyar (toddy-drawers) and others became converts. None of the predictions having been realised, Māppillas, as well as others, have begun to make fun of the Hālar, who, having taken offence at this, are bent upon putting an end to themselves by engaging in a fight.”