Fortune-telling in Pondicherry

Today, Friday the 26^th of January is Republic Day in India and a holiday for the Indian workers. Women are dressed in their finest sarees and are accompanied by their husbands and family to spend a leisurely day by the seashore, where the air is cool and fresh. One vendor of every type mingles with the crowd, selling ice cream, snacks, and whistles for the kids. There is even a fortune-teller, who has taken the opportunity of a large gathering of people to make a little extra by reading peoples’ palms and telling them about their future for a mere sum of 20 rupees, which is less than 3 kr. The atmosphere is festive and the people are happy to be out with their families on a splendid afternoon in Pondicherry.

The fortune-telling woman belongs to the Lambadi caste in Pondicherry and practises a form of divination that has a long tradition in India, known as physiognomy or Samudrikashastra in Sanskrit. Dating from before the 6^th century A.D., fortune-telling by means of the examining the marks on the human body was used for two specific purposes:

1. to determine the right of succession of kings and noblemen, which is akin to the process involved in succession of Dalai Lamas in Tibet, and

2. to determine a suitable match in arranged marriages.

The process involved the examination of human body from the toes to the top of the head and included the reading of the lines on palms and soles, as well as on the forehead and neck. In all cases of palmistry, the woman’s left hand and the man’s right hand are used, as in the photo. This form of physiognomy seems to have been most prevalent in western India, but is encountered all over India. It may well have had it origins among the nomadic Romany of Gujarat and Rajasthan, where the knowledge was passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth.

Physiognomy came to Europe via the Romany or Gypsies in the Middle Ages and was taken up by the medical profession as means of diagnosis and prognosis. It surfaced again in the late 19th and early 20^th centuries in the form of Phrenology. In India, it never found a place in the traditional forms of medicine, Ayurveda, Siddha, and Unani.

Kenneth Zysk

11 April 2007