Kerala’s Brahmans. It is therefore their literary culture and life-style that were
most closely reflected in this literature. The earliest poetic works, in ornately
accomplished and highly Sanskritized genres, are poems dealing primarily with
erotic themes addressed to their non-Brahman (S ́u ̄dracaste-grade) mistresses.
The earliest of these texts, from perhaps the thirteenth century, is the collection
of verses styled the Vai ́sika Tantra(“The Treatise of the Courtesan”), in the form
of a courtesan mother’s advice to her daughter (Ra ̄macandran Na ̄yar 1969).
This is followed in the next century by three major poetic compositions, each in
praise of a different named courtesan, and by other collections of short poems
on the same topic. Given the prominence of these themes and the voluptuary
life-style they portray, the major thrust of later scholarship has been to decry the
decadence of Man.iprava ̄l.am in comparison with the religious themes of the
Pa ̄t.t.u literature. Matters, however, are not actually so simple.
A work written in this same milieu, and somewhat before the Lı ̄la ̄tilakam
(which indeed cites it), is the Anantapuravarn.n.anam(Ratnamma 1986). This a
long descriptive poem on the Vis.n.u temple of Trivandrum and its surroundings.
Though similarly in high Man.iprava ̄l.am, and in Sanskrit anus.t.hubhmeter, it is
clearly religious in its intent. It recounts what a worshipper encounters in visit-
ing all the temples and sacred groves in a circuit around Trivandrum and its sub-
settlements, culminating in the religious encounter with Vis.n.u as Anantas ́ayana
in the main temple at the heart of the city (vs. 147). Though clearly a work of
Va i s.n.ava devotion, such as in weaving an account of the ten incarnations
(das ́a ̄vata ̄ra) of Vis.n.u into the final religious vision, it gives considerable space to
descriptions of S ́aivite shrines and temples, as well, continuing the earlier non-
sectarian impetus oftheTirunil
̄
alma ̄la. Ethnographically, the work is rich in
detail, celebrating the ritual procession of Trivandrum’s king into the temple (vs.
115–21) and devoting many stanzas to describing the extensive markets (vs.
41–104). It even eavesdrops on the dialogues between merchants and customers
as they haggle over merchandise.
Religiously, the work catches that phase of Kerala’s temple culture, in which,
in keeping with the Sanskrit idiom, Brahmanically A ̄gamic ritual had taken over
at such royal centers. This is clear from the description of temple rituals, the
Brahman “college,” and the Brahman mess attached to the temple (vs. 133 ff.;
148–9). It is interesting to note, in the context of sectarian affiliation, that the
only other extensive use of the term Man.iprava ̄l.amoutside of Kerala was in label-
ing the contemporary Tamil S ́rı ̄Vais.n.ava literature which used a very similar
lexical idiom in terms of combining Tamil and Sanskrit (though only in prose)
for commenting on Vais.n.ava scripture. Putting this together with such evidence
as the Lı ̄la ̄tilakam’scelebrating the Tamil Vais.n.ava Divyaprabandhamas the
“Tamil Veda,” and recalling that the Trivandrum temple was one of the sacred
centers of Vais.n.avism known to the Tamil bhakti corpus, suggests the consider-
able influence of S ́rı ̄vais.n.avism at this time. At any rate, the survival of at least
several other works in this Kerala-based Man.iprava ̄l.am, which were exclusively
dedicated to religious themes of praising gods or their temples, should caution
us against the stereotypic thematic equation of Man.iprava ̄l.am with Brahmani-
cal eroticism, as against all those works which modern scholars club into the
the literature of hinduism in malayalam 167