shrine. Not surprisingly, this will generally be the leading family deity of the most
powerful lineage who founded or who presently controls the shrine.
The Social Place of Divine Beings and Powers
The range of types ofteyyamdeities is quite great, reflecting their origins at
various levels in the social hierarchy and under different sets of historical cir-
cumstances. All of the data as to their various origins, natures, and histories
are preserved in the fixed liturgies which are sung to invoke their presence for
worship, and, to a lesser extent, in the ancillary legends that worshippers circu-
late about them. (There is, however, a fairly strict hierarchy of expert knowledge
operative here, where worshippers routinely refer one to, or cite, the liturgies and
professional performers or oracle-priests as the authentic sources of truth in
these matters.)
Many teyyams, those who represent the original prototype, I would argue,
derive from the apotheosis of formerly living human beings. In apparent
contrast, others are represented, from their birth, as gods, usually as localized
incarnations of Puranic Hindu deities, created for some special purpose in local
circumstances. The “human” teyyams themselves, however, seem to undergo
apotheosis, often after miraculous deeds and violent death, only because of the
divine power already inherent within them. Relatedly, many of the originally
godly teyyams, likewise, are reported to have wandered about in human form,
interacting with other human characters as members of their social communi-
ties. The essential point suggested here is that there is no clear ontological break
between the human and the divine in this cultural context, but rather a contin-
uum of expressions of powers, always divine to the extent they manifest an
awesomely heightened effectiveness, and always human, to the extent that they
emerge from social relations in a narratively historical context. This narrative
continuum of the human–divine power spectrum is fully consonant with, and
perhaps even necessary, as the discursive support for a performative mode of
worship whose whole rationale is the demonstrated transformation of low-caste
human beings into the tangible embodiments of living gods.
The worldview ofteyyamclearly implies that the entirety of human life at its
various levels – physical, social, and political – is suffused with unseen powers.
The varying organizational scale and levels ofteyyamrites indicate as much, for
they range from occasions of individually contingent vows, consummated with
teyya ̄t.t.ams performed in family homesteads, to prominent temple festivals, of
intricate social organization and calendrical coordination (sometimes planned
over decades), drawing on communities over an entire region. It is in the narra-
tive content of the liturgies themselves, however, that the varied levels of origin
and pertinence of divine powers are most clearly in evidence. Teyyams who orig-
inate in the political context of rule and warfare range from the tutelary goddess
of the Ko ̄ lattiri Ra ̄ja, who defeated an arch enemy-demon to secure the kingdom,
318 rich freeman