Gone are those days when there was a custom of christening girl children after the names of family deities like ‘Vellaiammal’ ‘Mariammal’ ‘Kaliammal’ and so on. Though the meaning behind the custom was to pronounce the deity’s name by calling the children, parents of the modern age are of the illusion that such names are funny and unfashionable. But decades ago, in the Kongu region, there was a custom of christening girls as ‘Vellaiammal’.
Gone are those days when there was a custom of christening girl children after the names of family deities like ‘Vellaiammal’ ‘Mariammal’ ‘Kaliammal’ and so on. Though the meaning behind the custom was to pronounce the deity’s name by calling the children, parents of the modern age are of the illusion that such names are funny and unfashionable.
But decades ago, in the Kongu region, there was a custom of christening girls as ‘Vellaiammal’. Though the name means a woman of white skin, it was given even to a dark-skinned girl. However, Vellaiammal, the woman-turned deity, who is portrayed in a Kongu folk epic, got her name because she was extremely white.
Like any other woman of the present day, Vellaiammal too experienced great atrocities afflicted by men, who were none but her brothers. Born to a wealthy man at Kaadayur near Kangeyam, when Vellaiammal came of age, none came forward to marry her due to her white complexion but for Kangeyan, a poor herdsman. Later, when she became a mother of three children, her four brothers, who were henpecked husbands, refused to provide her with a share of the family property. They separated the innocent Kangeyan from Vellaiammal and ostracized her from Kaadayur, denigrating her as a prostitute.
As the helpless pregnant woman was wandering with her three children, a Muslim ‘Sardar’ (A higher government officer of those days) who was heading on his horse to Dharapuram to collect tax, took pity on Vellaiammal and arranged accommodation for her at the Kangeyam fort. After Vellayammal gave birth to the fourth child in the fort, the Muslim Sardar took her to Kaadayur and inquired her brothers about the issue. They told the Muslim officer if Vellaiammal proved herself as a chaste woman by overcoming three experiments, they would give her the entire property. But the trials were all on impossibilities:
Vellaiammal must fetch water in an undried earthen pot, she must pour the water on a terracotta horse figure and bring the toy animal alive. Then she must water a dead tree and bring it back to life. In case, if she failed in any of the three trials, she would be impaled.
However, the Kongu folklore records that Vellaiammal, by her power of chastity, overcame all the three experiments and her brothers left Kadayur, giving her their entire property. Vellaiammal, to express her gratitude to the Muslim Sardar, got her children ear-bored only just before their marriage and not while they were children. From then on, her descendants have followed this custom and come to be called “Muzhukaadhu Porulanthai Kulam ''.