Kottar Oct. 10

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• Part 5
• Kottar (Oct. 10)
• Tirunelveli and Tuticorin (Oct. 11 - 12)

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• We went in this manner by ox-cart for two
  days to the great city of Kottar (kandhor) In
  Sapirs time, Kottar was a town with
  considerable traffic, visited by merchants far
  and near (The Imperial Gazetteer of India,
  1908). Today Kottar is a market area within the
  larger city of Nagercoil.

our route to Kottar, arriving in early morning
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but first, morning tea and fried snacks
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Kottar marketplace
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• Most of the labor is in the field and
  usually with cattle (or oxen), which are very big
  and of great strength, and they have a large fat
  back hump like a camel and they sway back and
  forth, and also large horns overlaid with brass.
  And they are swift like horses.
• There were some cows which the people of the
  land would venerate, exalting and honoring them
  and covering their horns with silver, and they do
  not do work with them because they are holy to
  them.

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Could Sapir have been referring to the Pongal
harvest festival, when, on its third day,
cows/oxen are decorated and venerated?
(internet photos)
This was the suggestion of Dr. N. Muthumohan,
of the School of Religions, Philosophy,
Humanist Thought, Madurai Kamaraj University
whom we visited on Oct. 15
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• All along this way from Kottar to Tuticorin
  is flat land and small hills, and all the land
  is full of grains, greens, grass, and trees from
  all kinds of food, rice, sunflowers, and cotton,
  and all fruits from trees.

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We traveled by train across flat red earth
dotted with wind turbines, and past ranges of
hills, to Tirunelveli
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• Sapir described the temple tower called gopuram
  in this way the roofs of their temples, all of
  them covered with graven images and gods of all
  kinds of living beast, and abominable bird and
  creeping thing, and everything that is on the
  earth.

The gopuram of Nellaiyappa temple in
Tirunelveli (which Sapir may have seen on
his way to Tuticorin)
A gopuram is a wedge-shaped tower rising above a
gateway into the temple.
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• We went in this manner by ox-cart, for
  three days to the great city of Tuticorin,
  which stands on the shore of the sea, and we
  arrived there on the day before the Sabbath of
  Parshat Matot, in the morning.

photos from Internet
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We traveled to Tuticorin by bus on a morning of
unceasing rain (Oct. 12)
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• Sapirs route to Calcutta
• July 22, 1860 He left Tuticorin by ship
  going to Columbo, Ceylon
• From Columbo by ship to Nagapattinam (Aug.
  1-6)
• By ox-cart for three days north to Madras
• Eight days later, Sapir sailed by ship to
  Calcutta.