Abstract
This article is a preliminary analysis of the relations among time, space, and action in Tamil South India. Unlike common historiographical notions of time which presuppose a "clean break" between past and present, at least one mode of Tamil temporal thinking presupposes intertwined continuity between past and present, where past acts are understood to endure as material realities that stick (oṭṭu) to actors' bodies, pass on to their descendants, and sometimes inhibit capacity for action. In order to make acts finally past, persons dispose of their material traces in a two-part process: they transfer the enduring action trace from their body to an object, then they send that object to an exterior (veḷiyē or puṟam) place. This spatial removal of the material traces of past actions achieves at the same time a temporal removal. Hence, temporal distinctions are made through spatial operations, and time, space, and human action are shown to be mutually implicated.