performers have exclusive, hereditary rites to perform each particular teyyam
deity in any given locale. Teyyamshrines are often still the prominent, and some-
times the only, community religious institution among the lower castes. For the
middle and upper castes, however, teyyamshrines may be attached as adjuncts
to a larger temple structure for Brahmanically worshipped deities, sometimes
structurally set apart, sometimes accommodated within the walls of the former.
In addition to the lower-caste teyyamperformers who come to incarnate a
deity during a teyya ̄t.t.am, most of the lower and middle castes have additionally
members of their own particular caste who serve as priests to teyyamimages in
the shrine, ministering to them several times a month, or even daily. A class of
these, called Ve l.iccappa ̄t.us or Ko ̄marams, are themselves possession mediums for
theirteyyamdeities, dedicated each to his particular deity, usually for life. They
undergo ritually induced possession when worshippers come to the shrine at set
times once or twice a month to consult the teyyamdeities, though a few undergo
more spontaneous episodes of possession outside of the ritual context. They also
frequently perform their oracular rites in conjunction with the regular teyyam
forms during the annual festival. In contrast to the elaborate costuming and
make-up ofteyya ̄t.t.amdancers during the annual festivals, these priests always
have only a light and standardized costume of a few ornaments, weapons, and
other ritual insignia. Depending on their caste traditions, they may have special
red waist-cloths for these occasions of possession. Others wear only the regular
bleached cloth (mun.d.u) of daily wear, but in most cases there are preparatory
baths and purification rites before the onset of possession.
A typical lower or middle-caste shrine complex generally consists of a laterite
walled compound, with one or more free-standing wooden shrine-rooms,
slatted, brightly painted, fronted with wooden carvings of supernaturals, and
roofed in tile. Each shrine room is generally dedicated to one, though sometimes
more, teyyamdeities, whose spiritual power may be installed in a full image of
metal, a flat icon, a metal mirror, or simply a sword standing on a masonry plat-
form or a wooden stool. Except for the nightly lighting of lamps outside the
shrines, most teyyamimages are activated in worship only during the teyya ̄t.t.am
festivals or bi-monthly priestly rites, and so at other times these shrine-rooms are
closed and locked. Subsidiary teyyams often have their own loci in simple stone
or laterite altars, placed at other points in the compound, before which per-
formers dedicated to those deities incarnate their gods.
Some of the traditionally lowest castes, and those presently or formerly of
“tribal” designation, may have only a small altar in a forest clearing, or only a
clearing itself, into which a ritual stool (pı ̄t.ham) will be brought and set up for a
teyyamperformance. Occasionally these clearings are adjuncts to fuller teyyam
shrines of higher castes, the lower teyyams being done in conjunction with
larger and higher caste teyyams nearby, with rites of interaction between the
deities. In other cases, such clearings are for communities with their own rela-
tively autonomous performances and deities.
For the more prominent, permanently structural shrines, the occasion of the
regularteyyamfestival is conjoined with the caste or community that owns the
312 rich freeman