Palu-Kurumbar: The Ethno Medical and Magico-Religious Practitioners of Attappadi Valley of Kerala

The rich medical lore preserved by the P?luKurumbar of Attappadi is a treasure of information on herbal medical practices, various kinds of nearly-extinct wild and common ethno-medicinal plants, and sorcery and religious rites applied by them in their healing system. The Kurumbar believe that illness is caused by the fury of the spirits of the departed who turned malevolent due either to their unfortunate deaths or to the neglect of their kinsfolk in conducting their post-burial funeral rites to convert them into ancestor-souls. Hence their curative system contains two important methods of healing practices – applying herbal medicine for the recovery of the immune system and performing rites/sorcery for containing the evil spirits who cause bodily diseases. Among tribes the medicine-men and sorcerers are the specialist functionaries who deal with diseases and the system of treatment; they claim to cure psychic disorders, barrenness and other minor and major diseases. Ethno-medical lore of the Kurumbar community is preserved in their oral tradition. But tribal custom does not allow them to disclose this rich heritage before the alien world and their younger generation is absolutely indifferent towards carrying forward this archaic practice. Hence this grand tradition is slowly vanishing from the tribal world.