There is a rich interplay of images here of warfare, blood sacrifice, and con-
sumption, along with the confluence of fiery metabolic energy, female potencies
of blood and the seminal emissions of the moon whose tantric overtones are
unmistakable. Though research on the development of the tantric tradition in
Kerala has been negligible, its doctrines and practices clearly formed a primary
nexus in which an official Brahman ideology of worship came to terms with the
dominant religious culture of sexual fertility, violent militarism, and spirit pos-
session through the institutionalized rites and festivals of the Hindu temple. In
summary, it seems evident that the early phase of Man.iprava ̄l.am literature con-
tains much of this religious synthesis that has been overlooked in modern schol-
ars’ dismissal of and embarrassment at its erotic component, in comparison
with that other stream of the so-called Pa ̄t.t.u literature.
Poets of Non-Brahman Bhakti
While the Tirunil
̄
alma ̄laandRa ̄macaritamare linguistically distinct from the
nearly contemporaneous Man.iprava ̄l.am works in terms of eschewing Sanskrit
phonology, grammatical terminations, and massive amounts of vocabulary, the
subsequent works classed by modern scholars as Pa ̄t.t.u readily assimilate many
of these Sanskritic features of high Man.iprava ̄l.am. It is on the basis of their nar-
rative dependence on Sanskrit Epics and Pura ̄n.as, and in their Dravidian meters,
that they are most readily distinguished from their Man.iprava ̄l.am counterparts.
The next great stage or stratum of production in this tradition comes from the
members of a family known as the Niran.am poets, during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries.
These poets specialized in condensing the Sanskrit Epics into shorter com-
pendia of stanzas constructed of local Dravidian meters. These meters were
based on the same principles as those of Tamil (as opposed to the Sanskrit meters
of Man.iprava ̄l.am), but took simpler and more fluid forms in accordance with
their largely performative nature. Linguistically, the adoption of a Sanskritically
phonological script brought in the wholesale adoption of Sanskrit vocabulary.
This has been the single greatest contributor to the divergence of Malayalam
from Tamil down to the present. This script also enabled the Man.iprava ̄l.am trait
of using Sanskrit grammatical terminations, as well, but this was done sparingly,
and I am certain this was related to the different social authorship and presumed
audience of the Niran.am poets.
What is most remarkable about the Niran.am poets is that we know from their
recurring title, “Pan.ikkar” that they were non-Brahman, most likely of martial
caste, and reckoned as mere S ́u ̄ dras from the Brahmanical perspective. In
keeping with their own dedicatory and concluding verses, we can surmise that
their linguistic medium, which they craved their audiences “not to despise as
mixed language,” was intended to bring the salvific powers of Sanskrit religious
texts “in some paltry fashion” to their own communities of lower-caste wor-
shippers.^9 On the one hand, this stanza from the introduction to their
the literature of hinduism in malayalam 169