The Doctrine of Charity in the Books of Aatruppatai

In the Aatruppatai texts, under the title of Eegai (Charity), it is examined how it has been developed from the position of the character to duty, with the change of meaning over time. It has been highlighted that hospitality is the foundation of Tamil culture. Out of the patthuppaattu, the information about the charity is discussed through the five Aatruppatai books: Thirumurukaatrupadai, Porunaratrupadai, Sirupanatrupadai, Perumbaanatrupadai, and Kootharaatrupadai, which is also known as Malaipadukadam, whereby poverty, on one hand, and prosperity, on the other, the unequal compromise that exists in society between the giver and the receiver, has been examined. It has been pointed out that the gift to the Panars differs from the gift given to the poets. It is summed up that the emperors, chieftains, and chieftains gifted them rich dresses, ornaments, their ruled kingdoms, towns, mountains, lotus made of gold, chariots, horses, elephants, and oxen, and food items to the people who came to them, and the ordinary people supplied food items and toddy in their possession in return. The Tamils who excelled in charity have been explained in detail

Comparison Of Modified Dual Ternary Indexing And Multi-Key Hashing Algorithms For Music Information Retrieval

In this work we have compared two indexing algorithms that have been used to index and retrieve Carnatic music songs. We have compared a modified algorithm of the Dual ternary indexing algorithm for music indexing and retrieval with the multi-key hashing indexing algorithm proposed by us. The modification in the dual ternary algorithm was essential to handle variable length query phrase and to accommodate features specific to Carnatic music. The dual ternary indexing algorithm is adapted for Carnatic music by segmenting using the segmentation technique for Carnatic music. The dual ternary algorithm is compared with the multi-key hashing algorithm designed by us for indexing and retrieval in which features like MFCC, spectral flux, melody string and spectral centroid are used as features for indexing data into a hash table. The way in which collision resolution was handled by this hash table is different than the normal hash table approaches. It was observed that multi-key hashing based retrieval had a lesser time complexity than dual-ternary based indexing The algorithms were also compared for their precision and recall in which multi-key hashing had a better recall than modified dual ternary indexing for the sample data considered.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure

Fraud Risk Assessment: A Tool for SME’s to Identify Effective Internal Controls

In recent years, the importance of good control mechanisms has increased significantly due to the number of high-profile corporate failures caused by top management fraudulent acts. Sarbanes Oxley Act 2002, Section 404 says that it is the management’s responsibility to maintain and assess the effectiveness of its own internal control structure for financial reporting. The Act also states that it is the auditor’s responsibility to attest and report on the management’s assessment and the state of the overall financial control. Previous research that had been carried out was from the perspective catered mainly for the auditors or audit committees that had been set up by the management of the organization.  Not many organizations, especially Small and Medium Sized Organizations are able to afford the cost of hiring consultants, auditors (external and internal) or set up audit committees to assess and manage the Internal Controls. Therefore, this paper expects to provide guidance to smaller sized organizations that prefer to set up and maintain effective and efficient Internal Controls in-house; on how to carry out a Fraud Risk Assessment and recommend Internal Controls based on the results, whilst trying to ensure costs, personnel and operations turnover are not affected in an unreasonable manner. Keywords: Fraud Risk Assessment, Internal Controls, Fraud Schemes, Fraud, Small & Medium Sized, Community Manage

Entrenched Fissures: Caste and Social Differences among the Devadasis

The religiously sanctioned Devadasi system in India exemplifies intersectional oppression of gender, caste, and sexuality. Historically, Devadasis, or “servants of God,” were women wedded to God who performed temple duties and were considered sacral women with ritual powers. As part of her duties, the Devadasis offer sexual services to her patrons, invariably the economically and socially powerful patriarch/s in society. The Devadasis were not a monolithic community; there were caste-based segregations within the Devadasi community which delineated their social positions. Devadasis were drawn from castes lower in the hierarchy (non-Brahmins) and the Scheduled castes (Dalits). To distinguish the two categories, the Devadasis from the non-Brahmin castes were referred to as Kalavantin/Isai Vellalar/ Kalavantulu and those from the Dalit castes were referred to as Jogini/Mathamma; their social and economic status were entirely different. The Devadasis from the non-Brahmin communities performed classical music and dance, while the Dalit Devadasis performed folk dances during temple festivals. Though the Devadasi system was outlawed in 1988, the practice of dedicating young girls as Devadasis continues to be prevalent among the Scheduled castes. This paper argues that the activists who fought for the liberation of the Devadasis from the oppressive system focused mostly on the Devadasis from the non-Brahmin castes, excluding the Devadasis from the Scheduled castes. This paper contextualizes the prevalence of the Devadasi system within the interconnected matrices of caste and gender structures in Hindu society. Drawing on the socio-historical trajectory of the emancipation of Devadasis in Goa, a state in Western India, this paper analyzes the caste hierarchies and social inequities embedded within the Devadasi system. Apart from discussing the legal interventions initiated by the State to abolish the Devadasi system, this paper also analyses the role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the emancipation and empowerment of Dalit Devadasis

In Perennial Oppression: Internalized Ideologies of the Devadasis

The Madras Anti-Devadasi Act was passed in 1947 with the primary objective of liberating women from the oppressive norms of the Devadasi system. Sanctioned by religion, the institutionalization of the Devadasi system within the Hindu community legitimated women from certain caste groups to become ‘servants of god’. Through ritualistic norms, the Devadasis were wedded to God and the caste Hindu patriarchs were authorized to control the sexuality of the Devadasis. Given their vulnerable status in terms of caste, class, and gender, women from the castes lower in hierarchy were forced into the system. Despite the legislative intervention of the Anti-Devdasi Act seven decades ago, there are newspaper reports, which substantiate the continuation of the Devadasi systems in some villages in Tamil Nadu, reiterating the power of caste and sexist ideologies within Hindu society. In contemporary times, the Devadasis are mainly drawn from the Scheduled castes, otherwise referred to as Dalits. Literatures by historically marginalized communities play a pivotal role in their liberation. On the contrary an analysis of the literatures by (or on) the Devadasis reveal the internalization of societal ideologies which impedes their empowerment and emancipation. Drawing on Simone de Beauvoir’s conceptualizations of the gendered body and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of “habitus”, which underlines the embodied nature of social positions, this paper discusses the physical and psychological conditioning of the Devadasis within the caste Hindu society. Through an analysis of two Tamil novels, Moovalur Ramamirtham’s Dasigalin Mosavalai allathu Mathi Petra Minor and Imayam’s Sedal, this paper argues that the Devadasis depicted in the novels are embedded in caste and gender norms that denigrate and oppress them. Hence, as a paradox, their resistance to the system results in perpetuating the oppressive and discriminative social system rather than enabling liberation

A significant energy management control strategy for a hybrid source EV

The conceptualization of Electric vehicles has been significant in solving the pollution due to the transportation problem. However, its design and working has not yet been perfected and can be optimized. An effective model of the electric vehicle is the integration of batteries and supercapacitors. In this paper, the optimal sharing of energy between the battery and the supercapacitor is provided by the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The results reveal that the proposed algorithm can better share the energy between the hybrid sources. The simulations are carried out in MATLAB Simulink platform and the results obtained for ECE-15 driving cycle is presented

Cost variation analysis of various brands of anti-retroviral agents currently available in Indian market: an economic perspective study

Background: The aim was to analyze the percentage cost variations among different brands of the commonly prescribed anti-retroviral agents in the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus.Methods: The cost of different brands of commonly used Anti-Retroviral agents was sorted out by referring latest Indian drug index online, drug today, current index of medical specialties, Indian drug review.Results: The percentage variation in the cost was above 100% with most of the commonly used anti-retroviral agents. Overall sequinafir 500 mg shows maximum cost variation of 1490.3%, while nelfinavir (625 mg) shows minimum cost variation of 6.1% in single drug therapy. Lamivudine 300 mg and tenofovir 300 mg combination shows maximum cost variation of 14055% whereas, lamivudine 150 mg, zidovudine 300 mg and efavirenz 600 mg shows minimum cost variation of 10% in combination drug therapy.Conclusions: HIV is the most common infectious, life-threatening disease and drugs are to be prescribed for life-long period. If a costly brand is prescribed, the patients cannot afford to pay more money for their treatment. This also leads to poor patient compliance, dissatisfaction and failure of the treatment. Ideally, therefore, the drugs should be prescribed in such a way, to save the patient's economic burden and enhance the compliance of the treatment

Beliefs and Faiths in Lamentation Songs

Folklore is a particular peoples’s culture characterized by beliefs.  Faith and beliefs are something that are far beyond the sense of human beings. Faiths and beliefs are created by the people in the society and they are protected by the own people in the society. Lamentation songs are sung in memory of the deceased people. Topics like different kinds of lamentation songs, the status of today’s generation not having interest to sing lamentation songs sungs in villupuram district, vanur taluk, karattai villege, different types of lamentation songs and their beliefs are described. Beliefs in morality, fate horoscope, astrology, omen and zodiac sing rather they give silent prayers and tribute to the deseased people. Few women take it as a profession to sing lamentation songs