Irula Tribe

About Irula Tribe:

• The Irula, a Dravidian ethnic group, reside in the Nilgiri Mountains of the Western Ghats, spread across Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
• They are one of India’s oldest indigenous communities.
• They are Tamil Nadu’s second largest Adivasi community.
• They are classified under the “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups” category in Tamil Nadu.
• They also call themselves Erlar or Poosari, while their neighbours refer to them as Eralollu, Irulas, Shikari and Pujari.
• Language: They speak Irula, which is related to Dravidian languages like Tamil and Kannada.
• Religious Beliefs:
  • The Irula people don’t have a definite god for them. They are pantheists who make provision for the presence of spirits in humans and objects.
  • Their main deity is a virgin goddess called Kanniamma, who is deeply associated with the cobra.
• Irula houses are built together in small settlements or villages called mottas. The mottas are usually situated on the edges of steep hills and are surrounded by a few dry fields, gardens, and forests or plantations.
• The Irula community is traditionally associated with healing, traditional medicine, and catching poisonous snakes.
• Cattle production is another source of income. In the forests they collect wild resources like honey, frankincense, firewood and the like.
• Irulas’ knowledge of snakes and snake venom is legendary. They can even locate snakes based on their tracks, smell, and droppings.
  • They use traditional knowledge and skills to catch snakes, extract venom, and release the snakes back into the wild without harming them.
  • The Irula Snake Catchers’ Industrial Cooperative Society is a major producer of anti-snake venom (ASV) in the country. It supplies almost 80 percent of the venom that goes into making anti-venom in India.