ࡱ> 352%` bjbjNN .,,   .$7h0000F0 @wv"0 e ee Lr\  0000 Dying Traditions and Living Culture in the Up-country of Sri Lanka Dr. Daniel Bass [dbass6@fau.edu], Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Religious Studies, Lynn University In this presentation, I analyze different forms and transformations of the Hindu folk drama, Kaman Kuttu, in the central highlands, or up-country, of Sri Lanka. Up-country Tamils are descendents of migrants from South India, who came to Sri Lanka between the 1830s and 1930s to work on tea, coffee and rubber plantations. I explore the slow death of this ritual drama, local intellectuals justifications for its preservation, and one mans attempts to modernize it. Despite numerous hardships, this marginalized minority community has developed a distinct ethnic identity and a normalized, but still tenuous, position in modern Sri Lankas often violent ethnic politics. Up-country Tamil elites--politicians, trade union leaders, religious leaders, academics, and especially NGO workers--have been critical to this process, through their self-conscious formulations of defining and refining community identity and culture. With the active involvement of these culture workers, what is imagined to be traditional, authentic Up-country Tamil culture has been objectified, preserved, embodied and performed in the diaspora. Up-country Tamil culture workers tend to have good intentions of maintaining seemingly dying cultural practices, but in doing so, these aspects of Up-country Tamil culture are themselves transformed. I argue that Kaman Kuttu is actually not that critical to Up-country Tamil culture, or else it would not be a dying tradition. I compare the performance of Kaman Kuttu on a remote tea plantation with the development of a modernized version performed by school children. Significant portions of Kaman Kuttu, including deities embodiment in entranced actors, have gotten lost in the translation from religiously themed recreation to educational, ethnically identified entertainment. In preserving this ritual folk drama, culture workers have fundamentally altered it, turning it into a cultural artifact of Up-country Tamil tradition and heritage, rather than an artistic ritual of Hindu devotion. D  h!hhl_h6 hhl_hhhl_hPJhhl_h5PJD  dh`gd$a$gd,1h/ =!"#$% H@H SPRNormal CJPJ_HaJmH nHsH tHDA@D Default Paragraph FontRi@R  Table Normal4 l4a (k@(No List  D@0@0@0@0@0@00DZ00Z00Z00P00P000i80Vd 00   eeDFeeaebeDOe4;e,>eFee$::FF))  CCOO22 B *urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagscountry-region9 *urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttagsplace= *urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags PlaceName  33$ZU, "F(Qk*D[H^byg /UL2m<]i$PMbTm|y  iL 0 > ^S Pe q q   / ~0 ,E zJ  &6 "h p `Caec'iv>{` Odm%&8X<SQW*nt!*/Okk+,:NwAcIsvyF#P i)7/r}!FU(MhcZD pt|p" q q!h!&"^P""<#V#$v%$pj$%"%4r%D&$J&N&O&S&/=B/,w/s1/1(312-282pQ2X2?3Q3FW3-494G4+e4%5(6,6s78/'8698 y8,s9:*:2:;U; g;%<<=^>'?#?@@f*@,@kAOA\A!wAFB;)CAWCfC3Dy!E JEGJE3QEEuE;FqF2 G]GmG,H}zH ISJIJW:J:J8KdMKtKzKL)Ly,L*CL6M MMdM!N3N$=NBNeNaOYpOP#PRP2PoPQ QFQ:QZnQRKRSPR`RqcIqg r 'rW-rG9rPr`rpirwss8t_ tStctu4uu>>uzKuAru<~uvvGwxt-x@xrxGyd!z|r+|0|}BA}F}O ~]~io~ *$M%&K5I b,;:*\Qeoc%eLkRfVt B`ZyLe&'p`=fpx.4J`oy!,PyQSjUii()U,z!2F RR WE*H P)GJN/`w[]#.(Ojkqp<<9+\bdt>xq D!'>q!Qf: 4y1_Q%7DvJdM|9FSHbkyT2-Di,i2K(\~-8s7d}ur8s;T"(2et VO4Hm%# &>(&z'h*o4CY#py"C_^(s '1GpcKEG=Jfmq.2MwxU}lDTa:"T+!9eoq5 5>UPn D={]rjx~-!"FKebx~NuJ+0byti!+v,.8I:Vak c3Y^R} ENN}G4gj>2,TavHrQTZ^3ffVGae\"K&*PUf$8C')1-AdWf$lTPxY/CO?E a@26]dM'O0| 5,<3>7ձM~5t#4<P@q O,=_ug_v${1 ZM^U=35T:+oCQ{2;KItuA dSgB$0AJX=^2Q V8;FQX{ A+}$gdgowx*'B4H[TZ]s`jCp/LAd6~ 3,G@H@UnknownGz Times New Roman5Symbol3& z Arial;|i0Batang;SimSun[SO"qhxѦxѦIYIY!24d 2qHX)?SPR2>The Somatic Arts in China and their Conceptual Basis in RitualblabadieblabadieOh+'0 ( <H h t @The Somatic Arts in China and their Conceptual Basis in Ritual blabadieNormal blabadie2Microsoft Office Word@@Nw@NwIY՜.+,0@ hp  ý' ?The Somatic Arts in China and their Conceptual Basis in Ritual Title  !#$%&'()+,-./014Root Entry Fw6Data  1TableeWordDocument.SummaryInformation("DocumentSummaryInformation8*CompObjq  FMicrosoft Office Word Document MSWordDocWord.Document.89q