with its particular configuration of elaborate costuming and crown, facial and
bodily make-up, and insignia that mark it as an immediately recognizable and
distinct being. If we range the various forms of possessed dancer associated with
teyyamdeities on a continuum we thus find a steady progression of increasing
ornamentation and complexity from the shrine oracle priests, through the to ̄r
̄
r
̄am
to the vel.l.a ̄t.t.amand into the iconographically elaborate teyyams proper. This
suggests that historically either distinct earlier forms of costume merged into
teyya ̄t.t.am, or that earlier forms of possessed worship have undergone this
iconographic elaboration in partial emulation of the fixed images of the high
temple (though influence in the opposite direction is clear as well).
Since the ritual transformation of the performer into the god is the most cen-
trally significant aspect of the teyya ̄t.t.am, I wish to dwell on a few of the most
important elements of these rites to mark some larger points. For the to ̄r
̄
r
̄amcel-
ebration of a particular deity, each dancer comes individually before the opened
shrine in which the priests have been performing pu ̄jato receive from them a
folded banana leaf containing sandalwood paste and a ritual vessel of water
(kin.d.i). The dancer uses these to sprinkle himself and daub the paste over speci-
fied parts of his body in a prescribed fashion, starting with his head and ending
at his feet. This sandalwood paste comes from the deity and being co-substantial
with it, helps to transubstantiate the body of the dancer into that of the god. The
places the paste is daubed are additionally said to correlate with the significant
nodes and portals of the body according to the physiological conceptions of
tantra, through which the performer absorbs, and is purified by, the divine
energy. Some compared this explicitly with the ritualized bodily purification, the
deha-s ́uddhirites of tantric priests (cf. Flood 2000).
Following this, a second folded leaf is passed out which contains raw rice, five
burning wicks, five betel leaves, and pieces of areca nut. The performer rever-
ently tosses some grains of rice into his mouth, over his head and towards the
shrine, then wafts the flames thrice towards his brow, inhaling the vapors. This
leaf kit is then carried to a special masonry altar off to the north of the shrine,
called the kalas ́a-tar
̄
a, or toddy-pot altar, and there the five leaves are laid out,
reverenced, and their essences ritually circulated through the dancer.
As informants said of these rites, “the conception behind this is not just that
when the teyyamperformer gets this (leaf-packet) he is made worthy to put on
the costume; rather, through that lamp’s flame, he is actually being given the
divine power.. .” Aside from the evident continuation of the theme of absorb-
ing the god’s energy through consumption of the god’s rice and of the divine
flame’s energy, the rites at the toddy-pot altar have added significance. This
structure is a sacrificial altar, named for the pot of alcoholic toddy (kalas ́am) that
sits atop it and that will later be carried with the teyyamin procession by a special
priest of the toddy-tapper caste whose presence is mandatory at all teyyams. It
is also the altar where blood sacrifices will later be offered, liquor and blood being
potent substances of empowerment in the non-Brahman worldview. In these
preliminary rites, the five wicks laid out are said to represent the five vital forces
or life’s breaths (pra ̄n.a) of the performer, with which he at once offers up his own
314 rich freeman