The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism

today in the rituals themselves, and chartered by continuing links to prominent
families and shrines, on the one hand, and to historically Untouchable and
impoverished dancer-priests, on the other, that keep the tensions alive in the
present relations of patronage and performance.
It should be clear from such cases and others I have alluded to, therefore, that
though the distribution ofteyyams, as embodiments of divine power, runs the

the teyyam tradition of kerala 321

Figure 14.3: The goddess Kun.d.o ̄r.a Ca ̄mun.d.i confronts a small child in her shrine
compound