Chembōtti

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This article is an excerpt from Castes and Tribes of Southern India By Edgar Thurston, C.I.E., Superintendent, Madras Government Museum; Correspondant Étranger, Société d’Anthropologie de Paris; Socio Corrispondante, Societa,Romana di Anthropologia. Assisted by K. Rangachari, M.A., of the Madras Government Museum. Government Press, Madras 1909.

Chembōtti.In the Madras Census Report, 1901, it is stated that the name Chembōtti is derived from “chembu, copper, and kotti, he who beats.” They are coppersmiths in Malabar, who are distinct from the Malabar Kammālans. They are supposed to be descendants of men who made copper idols for temples, and so rank above the Kammālans in social position, and about equally with the lower sections of the Nāyars. The name is also used as an occupational term by the Konkan Native Christian coppersmiths. In the Cochin and Travancore Census Reports, Chembukotti is recorded as an occupational title or sub-caste of Nāyars who work in copper, chiefly in temples and Brāhman houses.

In the Gazetteer of the Malabar district, the Chembōttis are described as copper-workers, whose traditional business is the roofing of the Sri-kōvil, or inner shrine of the temple with that metal. They are said to have originally formed part of the Kammālan community. “When the great temple at Taliparamba was completed, it was purified on a scale of unprecedented grandeur, no less than a thousand Brāhmans being employed. What was their dismay when the ceremony was well forward, to see a Chembōtti coming from the Sri-kōvil, where he had been putting finishing touches to the roof. This appeared to involve a recommencement of the whole [26]tedious and costly ritual, and the Brāhmans gave vent to their feelings of despair, when a vision from heaven reassured them, and thereafter the Chembōttis have been raised in the social scale, and are not regarded as a polluting caste.” Chembetti, or Chemmatti, meaning hammer, occurs as an exogamous sept of the Telugu Yānādis.