dustbin genre of Pa ̄t.t.u, lending the latter a patina that is at once more indige-
nous and more piously devotional.
This notion that the erotic was somehow counter to religious perspectives (a
notion that one might argue is a back-reading of colonial and postcolonial epis-
temes) might similarly be eroded even by a closer scrutiny of those works explic-
itly focused on the courtesan culture. The main works of high Man.iprava ̄l.am
provide descriptive overviews of courtesan manors and their cultural life, which
are indeed completely imbricated with the social and religious life of Kerala’s
medieval temples. Institutionally, the strict primogeniture of Brahmanical inher-
itance patterns in Kerala worked to regularize recurrent sexual liaisons between
junior Brahman males and women of the martial and temple-servant castes.
This overlapped with the institution ofTe ̄vat.icci,theDevada ̄sı ̄known elsewhere
in India, where women were dedicated to the gods of particular shrines, serving
as ritual dancers and entertainers for the gods, and courtesans for higher
clientele among the worshippers. In Kerala, I believe these logics fused around
Brahmans as simultaneously the chief patrons of the temple arts and of cour-
tesans, as regular genitors among the higher families of royalty and temple-
servants, and, as “gods on earth,” the intellectual and spiritual heads of the
religious culture of temples. Temples and manors of the high-born were thus
thoroughly intertwined, with circuits of travel through the landscape of cour-
tesan manors that the Man.iprava ̄l.am works describe being largely congruent
with pilgrimage circuits through the sacred geography of Kerala.
Religiously speaking, these various courtesan works thus contain not just
descriptions of many temple-sites and sacred groves, but also dedication verses,
descriptions and praises (stutis) of many deities, in the context of relations with
courtesans. I believe a sustained study of this literature that takes its religious
ideologies seriously might demonstrate more pervasive connections between
these and the social structuring and sexual politics of caste Hinduism in Kerala.
The frequent mapping of religious devotion (bhakti) between devotee and deity
in gender relationships, the recurrent mythologies of high male deities linked to
violently dangerous and militant consort goddesses, and the S ́a ̄ kta or tantric
doctrines of liberation through harnessing the libidinal energies of the body
cannot, I would argue, be accidental in this historical context. Indeed, I would
suspect they were synthesized in the temple cult itself, which was avowedly
tantric in its ideology of worship and frequently focused on goddesses who were
Sanskritically upgraded versions of local warrior deities. The earliest of these
courtesan travelogues, the thirteenth-century Un.n.iyaccicaritam, for instance,
ends with a prose description, and then this final stanza of prayer to the goddess
of Pal
̄
añce ̄ri (vs. 26):Worshipped in fine purity, with her tongue a licking mass of flame, drinking the
blood that flows by her shining trident from the bodies of powerful demons, along
with the copious nectar that trickles from the crescent moon afflicted by her vig-
orous battle, may this daughter of Ka ̄ ma’s slayer (S ́iva), this Mother who dwells in
Pal
̄añce ̄ri, ever grant us protection.168 rich freeman