Genetic study traces origin of Coorgis to three ancestral populations spanning millennia

The Hindu

20-05-2025

The Coorgi, or Kodava, community in Karnataka can trace its origins to at least three different ancestral populations, including as geographically diverse as the Palliyar, a tribe from the South Western Ghats, to north Indian Sikh-Jat. The oldest of these can be traced to roughly 3,000 years ago, and the most recent, to about 330 years, reports a first-of-its-kind study analysing genetic data from native Coorgis.
The study, published in the latest edition of the peer-reviewed Communications Biology,underlines that the several ethnic communities in India are not homogenous and are a result of the mixing of diverse ethnic groups over millennia.
The Coorgis, while a socio-culturally homogenous community, have evoked considerable interest among anthropologists whose origins and demographic history are much debated 'due to their stark socio-cultural contrast with surrounding populations', the study notes.
Their population comprises around 3,00,000 individuals, with 1,200 extended families.
Based on studying the genetic history from 144 individuals, the authors, comprising those from the University of Delhi, South Campus, and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, have found that the oldest — called Coorg 3 — had a shared genetic history with the Palliyar population and this lineage came into being about 98 generations before present (GBP).
One GBP is about 25 to 30 years, thus dating them to about 3,000 years ago. Then the Coorg-1 branched away 64 generations, or around 1,900 years ago. The third group, Coorg-2, is relatively recent — about 330 years ago — from the admixture of Coorg-1 and Coorg-3.
The authors came to their conclusions by comparing the frequency of certain genes in the Kodavas to the database of the genetic structure of other caste groups and tribes. The frequency distributions of variations in certain genes enable educated guesses at the times during which certain populations combined, or whether the individuals of a group were largely isolated from surrounding populations.
Traditionally a group of agriculturists with martial customs interlacing their day-to-day lives, the Coorgis practise family exogamy and caste endogamy, the paper notes.
However, the community's various customs prevalent among the Coorgis 'notably deviate from the Hindu way of life' and their cultural origin stories trace them to the Indus Valley during the Mohenjodaro period as well as migratory groups such as the Indo-Greek army of Alexander's India chapter, pre-Muslim Kurds or pre-Christian Georgian, and an off-shoot of the Indo-Scythian Sakas.
'These being entirely anecdotal or from the early population dating, scientific evidence is lacking,' the authors B.K. Thelma, K. Thangaraj, Anirban Mukhopadhyay, Loumos Kumar, and Kiran Sran note.
'These insights into ancient and diverse genealogies among Coorgis not only explain their unique status in the Indian diaspora but also encourage further research to identify unknown migrations to the Indian subcontinent and thus further unravel its unique demography,' the authors note.
India's population groups, several of whom maintain distinct physical and cultural practices, trace their ancestry to two large population groups: Ancestral South Indian (ASI) and Ancestral North Indian (ANI). The former trace their lineage to a hunter-gatherer Ancient Ancestral South Indian (AASI) group from 65,000 years and the lineages from the Indus Valley Civilisation. The latter, or the ANI, are a mix of IVC and late Bronze Age Steppe culture (of Central Asian origin).
The mixing of ASI and ANI intermixing between 1,900 and 4,200 years make up the main caste and tribe groups of North and South India.