1 [published in 2018 in Manu V. Devadevan (ed.), Clio and Her Descendants. Essays for Kesavan Veluthat. Delhi: Primus Books, pp.454–478] On Cāttan. Conflicting Statements about a South Indian Deity Gilles Tarabout /p.454/ This essay aims at discussing conflicting representations of a South Indian deity, Cāttan (or Chathan, according to its popular rendition in English). Well known throughout South India for its magical powers, Cāttan is particularly invoked in Kerala. There exist regional variations, and I shall focus my study on observations and discussions I had during two ethnographic fieldworks limited to the Thrissur district in 1991 and 1994, complemented by various published materials. 1 I may have missed recent developments and I am quite unaware of the corresponding traditions in the former Malabar district; it is also clear that another specific study would be required to dwell upon how the media have recently developed their own treatment of Cāttan. As it is, I hope that the following observations may still be of some utility. One of the issues addressed by this study is how to characterize a deity who is the object of conflicting opinions and practices. As a way to sideline this difficulty in English, I shall use here ‘deity’, but Cāttan has also been variously described as a ‘spirit’, a ‘ghost’, an ‘imp’, a ‘demon’, and a ‘god’. The terminology itself implies a moral judgment—a condemnation, a disregard, a fear, or a devotional feeling, that is, socially and ideologically marked viewpoints. How then is the social scientist supposed to write about Cāttan? I take the case of this deity only as an example, as I trust that the question equally concerns the description of many other ones. 2 /p.455/ Generally speaking, there is already a first difficulty with the usual description made of ‘pantheons’ as constituted of (divine) persons. In a communication pronounced in 1960, the historian of Ancient Greece, Jean-Pierre Vernant, pointed out: The Greek gods are powers, not persons. Religious thought is a response to the problems of organizing and classifying these powers. It distinguishes among various types of supernatural powers, each with its own dynamic and mode of action, its own sphere and limitations. It imagines the complex interplay of their relations in terms of hierarchy, balance, opposition, and complementarity. It is not concerned with their personal or non-personal aspects. True, the divine world is composed not of vague and anonymous forces but of well-defined figures, each with its own name and status, its own attributes, and its own characteristic adventures. But that is not to say that this world is composed of separate individuals, autonomous focuses of existence and action, ontological units –