Vedic learning. Importantly, this suggests that not all Brahmans shared in the
elite structures of socio-religious and political privilege, and it seems likely that
many of the déclassé sections among them may have fueled and provided their
intellectual capital to the various movements of S ́u ̄ dra-based, popular religios-
ity. In keeping with such a reading, there are barbed verses in the Jña ̄na Pinaon
the social degradation of Brahmans in their competition for courtly honors,
their wayward life in the temple, their hunger for women, and the greed that
drove their Vedic cultic expertise (Go ̄pikkut.t.an 1989: 77–8).
Such works sometimes explicitly aimed to reach the lower castes and women.
Pu ̄nta ̄nam is also supposed to have rendered the Kr.s.n.akarn.n.a ̄mr.taminto Malay-
alam for his friend of the Va ̄riyar caste, and another popular and more interest-
ing digest of Veda ̄nta, the Cinta ̄ratnam(Jewel of Reflection) is explicitly cast as
the teaching of a guru to his female disciple (Na ̄ra ̄yan.apil.l.a 1967: 7–10). This
latter work has also a fascinating Vedantic deconstruction of temple worship,
the backbone of Brahmanical and high-caste socioreligious claims to power in
Kerala. More antinomian aspects of worship surface more readily in the oral lit-
eratures and rich culture of non-Brahmanic folk religion throughout Kerala,
with its festivals of spirit possession by local deities, and its rites of liquor offer-
ings and blood sacrifice. In a number of cases from the worship ofteyyams, for
instance, certain Vedantic claims to powers of the mind or tantric notions of
bodily powers may be drawn upon and wedded to the empowerment of lower
castes in worship. It is further clear, in a number of cases, that higher-caste
devotees sometimes helped author such texts, in partnership with the lower-
caste performers who transmitted them orally.
From Religion towards Critique and Social Consciousness
Notions of satire and critique in the literate traditions of Kerala Hindu literature,
however, reached their highwater mark just at the brink of modernity with the
tul..lalgenre of Kuñcan Nambya ̄r in the eighteenth century (S ́armma ̄ 1982). This
also represents the culmination of that trajectory we have noted to popularize
the temple arts. The legend behind this genre is that Nambya ̄r was a temple musi-
cian who was once publicly criticized by his superiors for laxness in his accom-
paniment of a performance. To avenge his hurt pride, he invented the new
performative mode oftul.l.al, and took it out of the temple theater into more pubic
spaces where he stole away audiences. Modeled explicitly on the various forms of
“dance” in popular low-caste festivals (tul.l.alis literally “jumping,” often in the
context of spirit-possession cults), Nambya ̄r’s performance mode consisted of a
single performer dancing and singing, in a colorful costume, head-dress, and
make-up, to drummed accompaniment. His sung compositions, however, are
cleverly crafted and artful literature. All of them are taken from the Sanskrit nar-
rative materials of Epics and Pura ̄n.as found in the temple theater, but Nambya ̄r’s
genius was to cast into these roles all the characters found in his contemporary
176 rich freeman