History and historiography in

constituting a region: The case of Kerala

Kesavan Veluthat

The formation of regions is as complex a process as the formation of countries or nations.

Geography has much to do with it in some cases, languages in others. But political events,
commercial networks and tribal or caste dominance can also play their part. History, actual or
imagined, may be invoked to create regional consciousness. This article examines how owing
to complex factors Kerala came to be identified as a definite region by the sixteenth century, so
identified not only by its mainstream tradition but also by people external to it.

Keywords: Kerala, Malayalam, Cçras, Perumåls, Brahmanas, Paraśuråma, Zainuddin Makhdum, Barbosa

An interesting question for historians to ask relates to ‘parts’ and ‘wholes’. Units
of historical study range from vast entities such as the whole world itself or more
romantic ones such as civilisations to smaller and smaller ones such as regions,
localities or villages. In some cases, some are thought to form part of some other,
larger, units. It is not as if these units offer themselves as so many ‘natural’ objects
of historical inquiry. It is the historian, with his own axe to grind, who identifies
his units. The constituent–constituted relationship among them is often lost sight
of as also the changing nature of both. The present paper seeks to substantiate this
argument by looking for the identity of Kerala in sources from the Malayāḷam-
speaking region and to examine how the two categories—the ‘part’ and the
‘whole’, the ‘local’ and the ‘global’—were constituted, and interacted with each
other, from the time that evidence for notions becomes available in literature.
We shall also see how these two changed from time to time, the changes being
dictated by changing socio-economic and political scenarios. It will be seen that
the construction of such identities resulted from interests of particular groups,
since we find variations in the identities as articulated in expressions from other
groups.
When we speak of regional history in India, what we have generally in mind
is the history of a part of our country. Here the question, namely ‘what exactly do
we mean by region?’ will come up again. The usual lexical gloss is that ‘a region
is any space that is distinct from another area. The word region is from the Latin
regionem which means “direction, boundary, district”’. Regions are constituent
parts of a larger whole. In speaking about regions as constituting a country or such
geographical entities, one has to recognise that even the parts vary in their features:

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DOI: 10.1177/2348448918759852
14 / Kesavan veluthat

size, boundary, constituents and so on. To take the example of Kçra±a, we can see
at least three ways in which Kçra±a is constructed in history. First, there is the ter-
ritory of the Cçra kingdom of the early historical period, consisting of the present
day Palakkad, Thrissur and Malappuram districts of Kçra±a and the Coimbatore,
Tiruchchirapalli and Salem districts of Tamil Nadu. The second construction is the
land that Paraśuråma is said to have retrieved from the sea: the coastal districts of
Karnataka, the whole of present day Kēraḷa and the Kanyakumari district of Tamil
Nadu. The third is the present-day state of Kçra±a, which is sought to be histori-
cised in much of recent writing. What are we seeking to historicise? An attempt to
answer this question can be made in two ways. One can try and find out the forces
that went into defining a region, with clearly identifiable constituents and equally
clear causalities working towards it. A second way is to examine the way in which
historians have tried to constitute the region as a discursive formation.

I presume to take up both these aspects in this paper.1 I do it with the clear un-
derstanding that it is hard to differentiate between the two: it is increasingly
recognised that to distinguish history and historiography is well-nigh impos-
sible. To be sure, early sources do not use the term ‘Kçra±a’ to denote the land
that goes by that name. The term Cçra/Cçramån occurs in early Tamil literature
in the sense of a lineage of chiefs.2 The Prakrit/Sanskrit equivalent or corruption
of the term Cçramån, namely Kçtalaputa/Kçra±aputra, figures in the edicts of
Aś÷ka. The Graeco-Roman accounts of the early centuries of the Christian era use a
Greek variant, Kerobotros/Kaelobotros.3 Many places in the Malayå±am-speaking
region of today figure in the copious literature in Tamiḻ produced in this period;
and many lineages of that region are mentioned in this literature. But there is no
notion of Kçra±a as a geographical unit. Tamilakam—the land south of Vçnka»am,
north of Kumari and bounded by the seas on either side—was their homeland,
which subsumed the present-day state of Kēraḷa as its integral part. Nor does the
Malayå±am language or even a mention of it figure in any of the sources of this
period. There are occasional references to variations in linguistic usage described
as features characteristic of Malainå»u (malainå»»u valakkam, ‘the usage of the
Hill Country’), a purely geographical name by which the land west of the Western

1
I had tested this first aspect in a paper I have already published: Kesavan Veluthat, ‘The Evolution
of a Regional Identity’, The Early Medieval in South India, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 295–311. The second
aspect draws substantially from a paper I read in a seminar on ‘The Imagination of Politics and the
Politics of the Imagination’ held in Hyderabad, February 22–27, 2009. I thank Jyotirmaya Sharma and
David Shulman for commenting on these earlier drafts.
2
N. Subramnaian, Pre-Pallavan Tamil Index, Madras, 1990, s.v., Chērakulam, Chēramān, several
individual Chēramāns (20 entries), Chēral, Chēralan, Chēralādan, Chēran, pp. 392–95.
3
R.C. Majumdar, ed., Classical Accounts of India, Calcutta, 1960, pp. 305, 312, 339, 365, 376
and 381.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 15

Ghats was known. Even these references are of a much later date, occurring in the
medieval commentaries to the early Tamil anthologies, suggesting that they were
not aberrations for contemporaries.
The earliest definitive reference to Kçra±a as a separate geographical entity,
by that name, is arguably in the Avantisundarðkathā of Daµd[in.4 The author, the
eighth-century Sanskrit poet from the Pallava capital in Kåñci, speaks of his
friends including Måt¸datta, ‘the best of Bråhmaµas from Kçra±a’. In the fashion
characteristic of Sanskrit, Daṇḍin uses Kçra±a in the plural (Kçra±es[u), show-
ing thereby that it was already familiar as the name of a country. In the same
century or early in the next, Śaktibhadra, a dramatist from Kçra±a, composed
Åścaryacød[åmaµi, a Sanskrit play. Here the author speaks of his work as an impos-
sibility, as impossible as flowers in the sky and oil from the sand, as it came from
the South.5 This demonstrates not only its distinctiveness but also its affiliation to
a larger whole of a Sanskrit literary world. He does not, however, refer to Kçra±a
by name. A junior contemporary of Śaktibhadra does it, almost with vengeance.
He was Kulaśçkharavarman, a ninth-century king of Kçra±a, and the author of
Subhadrådhanañjaya and Tapatðsaṃvaraµa, two Sanskrit plays and perhaps one
more, Vicchinnåbhis[çka, as well as a work in prose, Åścaryamañjarð. He has been
identified with Sthåµu Ravi Kulaśçkhara (ad 844–883) of the inscriptions, and
with the Vaiṣṇava Bhakti saint known as Kulaśçkhara Ālvår, author of Perumå ±
Tirumoli in Tamil and Mukundamålå in Sanskrit.6 Kulaśçkharavarman describes
himself as Kçra±akulacød[åmaµi and Kçra±ådhinåtha in his Sanskrit plays.7 While
the former is a reference to the Kēraḷa or Cēra lineage to which he belonged, the
latter is an unmistakable reference to the Kçra±a country of which he was the ruler.
In fact, he calls himself Mah÷dayapuraparamçśvara, ‘Supreme Lord of the city of
Mah÷dayapura’, as well as Kçra±ådhinåtha, the ‘Overlord of Kēraḷa’, both descrip-
tions having far-reaching political implications. In any case, a slightly later text
clarifies that the king of Mah÷dayapurm protected the Kēra±avis[aya, ‘the land of
Kçra±a’.8 So also, a contemporary of Kulaśçkhara describes his patron as ‘ruling
the earth’, vasudhām+ avata°, punning on which he also says that he possessed

4
‘Mitrāṇi mātṛdattādyāḥ kēraḷēṣu dvijōttamāḥ.’ Daṇḍin, Avantisundarīkathāsāra, quoted in Ulloor
S. Parameswara Iyer, Kēraḷasāhityacaritram, Vol. I, Trivandrum, 1967, pp. 103–04. Kalidāsa, in his
Raghuvamśa, has an obscure reference to Kerala, so have others. They are, however, inconsequential.
5
The actress, introducing the play in the prologue says: ‘accāhidam khu edam. ā‘āsam pasava‘i
puppham, si‘adāō tellam uppādaya‘i, ja‘i dakkhiṇāō disāō āadam ṇāḍa‘aṇibandhaṇam’. K.P. Narayana
Pisharoti, ed., Āścaryacūḍāmaṇi, Trichur, 1967, Act 1, p. 2.
6
M.G.S. Narayanan, Perumāḷs of Kēraḷa, Calicut, 1996, p. 213.
7
‘Kēraḷakulacūḍāmaṇēḥ mahōdayapuraparamēśvarasya śrīkulaśēkharavarmaṇaḥ ...’,
Tapatīsamvaraṇam, prologue. ‘Kaḷamarāśipēśalakaidārika kēraḷādhināthasya kulaśēkharavarmaṇō
...’ Subadrādhanañjayam, Prologue.
8
‘Kēraḷaviṣayam pālikkānāy mahitamahōdayanilayē maruvum nṛpasimhasya ...’,
Anantapuravarṇanam.

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resources as well as his own city [of Mah÷dayapuram] (vasu+dhåmavataḥ).9

The Vya¶gyavyåkhyå, commentaries of the plays composed during the playwright’s
lifetime, describe the author as Kçra±avis[ayådhipa or the lord of the land of Kçra±a.10
In short, Kçra±a gets defined as a geographical unit with definite boundaries, the
territory of a political unit by the time we come to ninth century ad.
We begin getting references to Kçra±a as a separate political unit in the records
of the Cāḷukyas, Pallavas and Pāṇḍyas a little earlier and of the C÷las by the time
of these plays.11 Whether the early references are to the lineage of the Cēras or
the country of Kçra±a, the later ones, found in C÷la records, are certainly to the
Kçra±a country. It is significant that these references are coeval with, and take cog-
nizance of, the emergence of the state in what is now Kçra±a. The Cçra kingdom
of Mah÷dayapuram or Mak÷tai starts appearing in the records, at least from the
beginning of the ninth century.12
This kingdom is to be distinguished from the chiefdom of the Cēras found in an
earlier period, evidence of which is furnished in ancient Tamil poetry, Aś÷kan edicts
and the Tamiḻ Bråhmi cave labels inscriptions.13 The rise of the later Cçra kingdom
of Mah÷dayapuram was not just another ‘event’ in the political history of this region;
it represented the culmination of a series of complex processes with far-reaching
consequences for economy, society and polity. The territory of this newly formed
state comprised the entire area covered by the modern linguistic state of Kçra±a.

9
K. Kunjunni Raja, The Contribution of Kerala to Sanskrit Literature, Madras, 1980, p.20, nn. 95–96.
10
‘Kulaśēkharanāmnā kēraḷādhipēna ...’ Vyaṅgyavyākhyā, quoted by N.P. Unni, Sanskrit Dramas
of Kulaśēkhara: A Study, Trivandrum, 1977, p. 24.
11
Kēraḷa starts figuring in the lists of conquests made by the Cālukyas, Pallavas and Pāṇḍyas from
this period on. See Narayanan, Perumåls of Kerala, & c., 2nd ed., Thrissur, 2013, chapter on ‘Early
Wars and Alliances’, pp. 88–114. Much of this is in the style of conventional praśastis where long lists
of ‘conquests’ are given. Verifiable facts of political history are not to be expected there. In any case,
it is not clear whether Kēraḷa there stands for the lineage or the country.
12
The history of the Cēra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram was reconstructed only in the second half of
the twentieth century. The epigraphical sources were published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, but it was the work of Elamkulam P.N. Kunjan Pillai that was responsible for bringing out the
outline of the history of that kingdom. Pillai wrote largely in Malayāḷam. For a summary of his more
important articles in English, see Elamkulam P.N. Kunjan Pillai, Studies in Kerala History, Kottayam,
1969. Improving upon the work of Pillai, M.G.S. Narayanan wrote a somewhat exhaustive history of
this Kingdom, in his Perumāḷs & c., op.cit.
13
This lineage of the Cēras is celebrated in several early Tamiḻ songs, the Patiṟṟuppattu being
devoted exclusively to them. A few ‘cave label’ inscriptions from Pugaliyur near Karūr mention the
names of some of these chiefs. Iravatham Mahadevan, Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times
to the Sixth Century AD (Harvard Oriental Series) Harward and Chennai, 2003. Works like K.G. Sesha
Aiyar, Chera Kings of the Sangam Period, London, 1937 and S. Krishnaswami aiyangar, Śēran Vañji,
Madras, 1912, deal with the ‘political history’ of this early Tamil ‘kingdom’. It had its ‘capital’ in the
interior, in the Tirucchirappalli district, and it may have covered also regions on the west coast. It is
important to remember that the Cēra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram has to be distinguished from this
earlier chiefdom. In the Aśokan inscriptions (Rock Edect II) the Cçras are referred to as ‘Keralaputas’.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 17

A kind of uniformity, however loosely defined, is seen in this area.14 Inscriptions

from this period, discovered from the entire length of Kçra±a, bear the stamp of
a single socio-political unit, which was presided over by the Cçra Perumå±. The
same language and script are used in these records,15 which are dated in the regnal
years of the Cçra Perumå± or else followed some other means of dating such as the
mention of the positions of heavenly bodies, the use of the Śaka or Kali era, etc.
Conventions accepted all over the area emerged, and so did some kind of uniformity
in the matter of the organisation and functioning of the agrarian corporations of
Bråhmaµical groups.16 It is also significant that this identity and uniformity were
defined in contradistinction to what was obtaining in the Tuḷu–speaking regions to
the north and the Tamil–speaking regions to the south and east.
The emergence of the Cçra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram marks the beginning
of a new era in the history of Kçra±a, as indeed does the emergence of states under
the Pallavas or Påµd[yas in relation in their respective regions within south India.
An epochal transformation has been attributed to this process, and a ‘transition
debate’ has grown around it.17 The social formation of the early historical period,
described somewhat wrongly by historians as the ‘Sangam Period’, was character-
ised by a subsistence economy maintained by family labour, reciprocity and patron-
age. A highly differentiated economy and society, with extra-kin labour, production
of surplus and its distribution and notions of pricing and profit in exchange, came to

14
This is not to suggest that the Cēra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram represented a uniform structure
with complete political control over the entire territory of Kēraḷa from Kasaragod to Thiruvananthapuram.
An earlier fashion of historiography represented by Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai, op. cit., had believed
that this ‘Second Cēra Empire’, or ‘Kulaśēkhara Empire’ was a highly centralised polity. However,
M.G.S. Narayanan, Perumāḷs & c., op. cit., offered a major corrective to this. Recently, Narayanan
has taken a position on the other extreme, that the Cēra Perumāḷ had only a ‘ritual sovereignty’ and
the actual political power rested with ‘a bold and visible brahman oligarchy’ which was only ‘thinly
disguised as a monarchy to satisfy the sentiments of the lawgivers of India’! M.G.S. Narayanan, ‘The
State in the Era of the Cēraman Perumāḷs of Kerala’, in R. Champakalakshmi, Kesavan Veluthat and T.
R. Venugopalan, eds., State and Society in Premodern South India, Thrissur, 2002, pp. 111–119. While
this formulation not only negates his own copious research done earlier it is also self-contradictory,
Kunjan Pillai’s model of a highly centralised empire is not still acceptable. For a re-evaluation of the
evidence, Kesavan Veluthat, ‘The King as Lord and Overlord’, in The Early Medieval in South India,
op. cit., pp. 183–244.
15
The political importance of the use of a uniform script and language has not been adequately
recognized at least in the context of the history of Kēraḷa. Script, unless used for purposes of trade, can
be one of those engines used by a political agency to impose its authority over large areas in pre-modern
time when the use of literacy for purposes of communication was limited.
16
The Brāhmaṇical corporations of Kēraḷa had a pivotal role in the power structure of the Cēra
kingdom. This was adequately appreciated only in the work of M.G.S. Narayanan, Perumāḷs & c., op.
cit. The present writer has elaborated on this. See Kesavan Veluthat, Brahaman Settlements in Kerala,
Calicut, 1978, particularly, pp. 52–67. For a slightly different perception, see Raghava Varier and Rajan
Gurukkal, Kēraḷacaritram, Śukapuram, 1989, passim.
17
For a discussion, Kesavan Veluthat, ‘Into the ‘Medieval’—and Out of It’, in The Early Medieval
in South India, op. cit., pp. 19–60.

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18 / Kesavan veluthat

replace the older one by the time the new state, as, for example, the Cçra kingdom
of Mah÷dayapuram on the west coast, was established.18 The way in which the
two formations differed is well known. A characteristic feature of the state under
the Pallavas, Påµd[yas, Cçras and C÷las, is the highly Ks[atriya–ised monarchy
which presided over them, answering in every detail to the model available in the
kåvya–śåstra–nå»aka literature in Sanskrit. In the case of Kçra±a, there were further
differences from its counterparts elsewhere in south India.19
One of the factors responsible for the formation of the state and the peculiar
character it had as distinct from the rest of south India was the rise of Brāhmaṇical
settlements in the river valleys of Kçra±a. Although some Bråhmaµical presence
with the characteristic Paraśuråma tradition of the west coast and a Vedic sacrificial
background is noticed in Kēraḷa early in the age of the Tamil anthologies such as
Akanånøru,20 the majority of them took shape only in the period of the transition
from the early historical to the early medieval period.21 These were somewhat unique
in ways more than one. The Bråhmaµas of Kçra±a cherished the Paraśuråma tradi-
tion, something which they shared with their counterparts in the rest of the west
coast, but in contrast to those from other parts of the peninsula.22 They developed
a number of unusual practices, known as anåcåras, and these distinguished the
Bråhmaµas of Kçra±a from those in the rest of India.23 There was also some differ-
ence in the pattern of settlements, which was a function of the physiography and
ecology of the region.24 This Bråhmaµical character with the Paraśuråma stamp can
be seen from the statement in an eleventh-century C÷la record, the Tiruvåla¶gåd[u
Copper Plates, describing Kçra±a as ‘the land created by Råma who takes pleasure

18
Ibid.
19
For the image of royalty in south India and how it was different from what obtained in earlier
period, Kesavan Veluthat, Political Structure of Medieval South India, New Delhi, 1993, chapter on
the ‘Self-Image of Royalty’, pp. 29–69. The difference that the Cēra kingdom had enjoyed is discussed
there. For an exclusive discussion, M.G.S. Narayanan, Perumals of Kerala, & c., 2nd ed., Thussur,
2013, Chapter on ‘Nature of Monarchy’, pp. 149–176.
20
Akanāṉūṟu, 220. For an analysis, Kesavan Veluthat, Brahaman Settlements in Kerala, op. cit.,
pp. 12–20.
21
This transition could be located between the third–fourth and seventh–eighth centuries of the
Christian era. Kesavan Veluthat, ‘Into the ‘Medieval’—and Out of It’, op. cit. pp. 19–60.
22
For a study of the Paraśurāma tradition of the Brāhmaṇas of the west coast of India, see B. A.
Saletore, Ancient Karnataka, Vol. I, History of Tuluva (Poona, 1936). For a recent study, Pradeep
Kant Chaudhury, The Cult of Parashuram: A Study in the Making of an Avatara, PhD thesis, Delhi
University, 2001.
23
They are called anācāras not because they were ‘forbidden practices’ but because they did not
obtain elsewhere: anyatrācaraṇābhāvād anācāra itīritaḥ. A list of 64 of them is given in the law-book
of Kēraḷa Brāhmaṇas attributed to Śaṅkarācārya. For the list, William Logan, Malabar, Vol. I, Madras,
1886, pp. 156–57.
24
Joan P. Mencher, ‘Kerala and Madras: A Comparative Study of Ecology and Social Structure’,
Ethnology, University of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Vol. V, Part II, pp. 135–71.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 19

in exterminating the Ks[atriyas and where good people live with joy’.25 At the same
time, they also shared, with the rest of south India or perhaps the entire country,
many common features of what was laid down in the Dharmaśåstra texts in the
matter of their community organisation, even when the Dharmaśåstras were flouted
with impunity in the matter of many of the anåcåras as well as other practices.
The introduction of the Bråhmaµical element with the Paraśuråma tradition
seems to be the starting point of the distinctiveness of Kçra±a and its departure
from the rest of Tamilakam. The Bråhmaµical claim, that it was Paraśuråma who
created their (Brahmans’) land and donated it to them, is seen all over the western
seaboard in India. In the case of the south, it is the strip of land from G÷karµa to
Kanyåkumåri which is identified as the land retrieved by Paraśuråma. Gradually,
even this unit disintegrates, as the land between Perumpuḻa (in Kasaragod district)
and Kanyåkumåri is defined as actually the Malanå»u within the Paraśuråma–ks[çtra.
This newly defined unit was earlier a part of Tamilakam, but there is a conscious
rejection of this affiliation in the changed context. The historical tradition of this
new formation does not furnish details concerning the earlier Cçra rulers and their
exploits contained in early Tamil songs such as the Patirruppattu anymore. For
instance, a Malayå±am narrative called Kçra±÷lpatti, concerned with the history of
Kçra±a, is totally silent about this aspect of the past. The contents of this narrative
date from this period, although the date of its composition itself is problematic.26
One feature which distinguished the new formation was its ‘religion’. The
cults and practices of the earlier period, aimed at the propitiation of the deities
of the tiµais, gave way to the worship of Ågamaic deities consecrated in temples.
The Bråhmaµical element had a not insignificant role to play in this, for all the
Bråhmaµical settlements, which functioned as agrarian corporations controlling
vast estates of land, were centred on temples. The native population was brought
within their magnetic field, and this provided the necessary claims for the hege-
monic elements to command the acquiescence of the hegemonised. Taking place
in the period of the celebrated ‘Bhakti Movement’ in south India, of which at least
two leaders were Cçra Perumå±s themselves, this religious transformation was very
crucial for the realignment of identities as well. Gods worshipped by the people
were part of a larger pan–Indian tradition from now on, and all the traditions of the
epics and Puråµas in Sanskrit became part of the heritage of anybody who identi-
fied himself with this ‘new’ religion. Sanskrit was getting precedence over Tamil,
notwithstanding the fact that literary productions of the early leaders of the ‘Bhakti

25
‘Sarvakṣatravadhavratapraṇayinā rāmēṇa yannirmitam rāṣṭram śiṣṭajanābhirāmam atulam ...’,
South Indian Inscriptions, Vol. III, p. 398.
26
The date of this text is a matter of debate among historians; nor is there agreement regarding its
validity as a ‘source’ of history. For a discussion, and a plea to look at it as an expression of the histori-
cal consciousness rather than as a source of history, Kesavan Veluthat, ‘The Keralolpatti as History’,
in The Early Medieval in South India, op. cit., pp. 129–46. We will be using this text heavily below in
our discussion of the historiographical constitution of the regional identity.

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20 / Kesavan veluthat

Movement’ from Kçra±a were in Tamil. To be considered along with religion, if not
as part of it, is caste. It is here that Kçra±a presents its distinctiveness in the clear-
est manner. Interestingly, the Kçra±÷lpatti has a whole section giving details about
the innumerable castes and the relative status that each had, defining the norms of
purity and pollution and attributing the entire system to the inevitable Śa¶karåcårya.
The heavy Sanskritic nature of the ideas and institutions obtaining in this newly
emerged political–cultural unit is obvious. Prescriptions of the dharmaśåstras are
followed in matters of social conduct and statecraft. In fact, even in the laying down
of the details of the organisation of an urban centre under the Christian church at
Kurakkçµi Kollam, it is the model of the Arthaśāstra that is followed. In cultural
matters, the repertoire of the Sanskrit epics, Råmayaµa and Mahåbhårata, is used
heavily as the earliest dramas such as Åścaryacødāmaµi, Subhadrådhananñjaya and
Tapatðsa³varaµa would show. The temple theatre, which had its beginning in this
period, used these and other Sanskrit plays with their epic contents. Sculpture and
such painting as there was drew liberally on this repertoire. Arrangements for the
propagation of the epics were made through specialists such as the Mahåbhårata
Bha»»as who expounded the epic in temples. And, there is no evidence that the old
Tamil tradition was patronised any more. A comparison of the popularity of the
Sanskrit works of Kulaśçkharavarman and the Tamil hymns of the same author in
Kçra±a in this and later periods will eminently prove this point. So also, themes
from the equally rich treasure available in Tamil are not used by authors in Kçra±a
for their compositions in Sanskrit. The very first literary works in Malayå±am are
Råmacarita and a translation of the Arthaśåstra, both dated to about the twelfth
century. When more works were composed, the themes were either taken from the
storehouse of Sanskrit epics and other literary treasure or invented de novo. Thus,
the identity of Kçra±a that was crafted in the age of the Cēramān Perumāḷs (ad
800–1124) was clearly of an upper caste, Bråhmaµical, Sanskritic nature.
At this point, it is interesting to note a major variation in the course of history
in this part of the country. While the Sanskritic tradition in literature-mentioned
above was matched by the production of Sanskrit inscriptions elsewhere, Kēraḷa
used old Malayāḷam for inscriptions from the beginning of the ninth century.27
Inscriptions of the Cēras of Mahōdayapuram, starting from the very first one, are

27
Early epigraphists and scholars of language who read the inscriptions took them for Tamiḻ records
and edited them in the Tamiḻ script in the pages of South Indian Inscriptions, Travancore Archaeological
Series and similar publications. Most of the early scholars who edited and took up a linguistic study of
these records were themselves Tamiḻ Brāhmaṇas—K.V. Subrahmaya Aiyar, A.S. Ramanatha Aiyar, L.V.
Ramaswami Aiyar, Ulloor S. Parameswara Aiyar and A.C. Sekhar. Even A.R. Rajarajavarma was under
the heavy influence of this Tamiḻ tradition. They, naturally, failed to appreciate the ‘Malayāḷam-ness’
of these inscriptions. M.G.S. Narayanan recognised it in his Index to Cēra Inscriptions, a Companion
Volume to his PhD thesis on ‘The Political and Social conditions of Kēraḷa under the Kulaśēkhara
Empire’. This Index, which was left out in the 1996 edition of Perumals of Kerala, is available in the
2013 edition of that work. For an argument in favour of Malayāḷam, Kesavan Veluthat, ‘Epigraphy in
the Historiography of Kerala’, in The Early Medieval in South India, op. cit., pp. 147–67.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 21

in old Malayāḷam—not Sanskrit. In fact, there is only one inscription in Sanskrit

from Kēraḷa,28 and that too from the southern extreme and not of a Cēra king—the
proverbial exception which proves the rule. Thus, Kēraḷa presents a deviation from
the pattern which Sheldon Pollock has seen.29 The model of a ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’
affiliating regional cultures to it before the ‘vernacular transformation’ of regions,
is not empirically valid for the situation obtaining in Kerala. Even while inscrip-
tions used the ‘vernacular’ when a literate tradition emerged there, literature used
the Sanskrit language, made use of its rich repertoire and followed the science of
its prosody and poetics (alaṅkāraśāstra) that had developed at an all-India level.
In fact, contemporary as well as modern scholars have shown how even the Sanskrit
dramas of Kulaśēkhara are influenced by the dhvani theory of the Kashmiri writer
Ānandavardhana, which was barely half a century old at the time of their compo-
sition.30 So also, compositions from Kēraḷa are lauded by poets and critics from
other parts of the country not long after they were produced. Both these instances
show how the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ exerted its influence here on literate literature
in Kēraḷa from the period of the Cēramān Perumāḷs.
It is this historical baggage of unity and identity that Kēraḷa carried with it in
the subsequent periods, in spite of the heavy fragmentation which its polity expe-
rienced. Kēraḷa was referred to as Cēramān nāḍu, the ‘Land of the Cēramāns’ in
the literature of the post-Cēra period. The ghost of the Perumāḷ haunted the land
in many ways. Mahōdayapuram is still represented in literature as the town from
which the Land of the Cēramāns was ruled—a town of cultivated gentlemen and
comely ladies, an epitome of civilised life.31 A copper plate record dated a century
after the disappearance of the Cēra kingdom suggests a pan-Kēraḷa appeal that the
town had.32 It speaks, perhaps wishfully, of the endorsement that the important
political divisions and social units had made on the grant recorded in it. Each of
the large number of principalities that came into existence on the ruins of the Cēra
kingdom claimed to be not only a splinter of the old kingdom but also deriving its
authority from the donation of the last Cēramān Perumāḷ. Thus Vēṇāḍ in the south
and Kōlattunāḍ in the north, and all other ‘kingdoms’ in between, participated in

28
Pāliyam Plates of Vikramāditya Varaguṇa. Travancore Archaeological Series, Vol. I, Part xii, pp.
187–93. This document is, strictly speaking, a bilingual record in Tamil and Sanskrit. M.R. Raghava
Varier has recently reported the discovery of a Sanskrit inscription from the Malappuram district: see
report, ‘Ancient inscription throws new light on Chera history’ The Hindu, 11 February 2011.
29
Sheldon Pollock, ‘The Cosmopolitan Vernacular’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(1) (February
1998), pp. 6–37.
30
The Vyaṅgavyākhyā commentaries mentioned above acknowledge this. See also, Raja, op. cit.
p. 15; Unni, op. cit., pp. 33–38.
31
For a detailed discussion, Kesavan Veluthat, ‘Further Expansion of Agrarian Society: A. Political
Forms’, in P.J. Cherian, ed. Perspectives on Kerala History: the Second Millennium, Trivandrum, 1999,
pp. 62–78; Kesavan Veluthat, ‘Medieval Kerala’: State and Society’, in The Early Medieval in South
India, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 249–76.
32
Epigraphia Indica, IV, pp. 290–97.

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22 / Kesavan veluthat

the same historical tradition and shared the same identity. Many of these rulers
also claimed to step into the shoes of the Perumāḷ in claiming to be the overlord of
Kerala. Thus the ruler of Vēṇāḍ or the Zamorin or the rājā of Cochin staked this
claim in various ways. Māmākam, a festival in the temple of Tirunāvāya every
twelve years, was the occasion where this claim was ritually made, and contested.
So also, a local era, originating in Kollam in Vēṇāḍ in the ninth century and used
only locally for the next three centuries, gained acceptance as a standard for
reckoning dates all over Kēraḷa. The strong Brāhmaṇical character that the earlier
power structure had is not seen in most of the ‘successor states’ anymore, but the
cultural identity of Kēraḷa, which was forged in the earlier period of Brāhmaṇical
hegemony, continued. Ōṇam, which began as a Vaiṣṇava sectarian festival with a
strong Tamiḻ background, gets entirely ‘Malayāḷamised’ in this period.
All this would show that the clearly defined identity that Kēraḷa had acquired
in the Perumāḷ era continued in nearly every detail. In fact, this period looked
upon itself as a continuation from the earlier period whereas the earlier one did
not have any such notion. This period clearly represented a conscious break. These
differences, and the factors behind it, are a matter recognised by the authors of this
period. For instance, a medieval Maṇipravāḷam text speaks of the speciality of the
land on account of its fertility, also a gift of of Paraśurāma: ‘the rainy season, under
the orders of Paraśurāma, comes here frequently like a mother comes to breastfeed
her children’.33 The Śukasandēśa, a work in Sanskrit, puts the same thing slightly
differently. The messenger of love, on his way from Ramēśvaram to Guṇakā in
Kēraḷa carrying the message to the separated heroine, is introduced to the land
when he is to cross the Western Ghats: ‘Now you can see the brhamakṣatra land
which testifies to the might of Paraśurāma’s arms. This country, rich in pepper
and betel vines growing on tall coconut and areca palms, is what is celebrated as
Kēraḷa’.34 The distinctness of Kēraḷa, these texts set forth, was a function of its
geography and climate.
It is here that one sees a conscious attempt at defining Kēraḷa and its language,
creating a self–image, as it were. M.R. Raghava Varier has made a brilliant analysis
of a medieval text, Līlātilakam,35 a manual of the grammar, prosody and poet-
ics of Maṇipravāḷam, a ‘union of bhāṣā and Sanskrit’, where bhāṣā stands for

33
‘sakalaphalasamṛddhyai kēraḷānām pratāpam periya paraśurāmasyājñayā yatra nityam kanivoṭu
maḻa kālam pārttupārttarbhakānām janani mulakoṭuppānennapōlē varunnū’, Ibid., I, 51.
34
‘Brahmakṣatram janapadamatha sphītamadhyakṣayēthāḥ darpādarśam dṛḍhataramṛṣēr
jāmadagnyasya bāhvōḥ |yam mēdinyām ruciramaricōttālatāmbūlavallī
vēllatkērakramukanikarān kēraḷānudgṛṇanti” || Śukasandēśa, I, 34.
35
M.R. Raghava Varier, ‘Līlātialakatthinṟe rāṣṭrīyam’, Mathrubhūmi Weekly, 71(43), pp. 23–28
reproduced in Varier, Vāyanayuṭe Vaḻikaḷ, Thrissur, 1998, pp. 9–19. Varier takes the formation of the
identity of Kēraḷa to the post-Perumāḷ era after the twelfth century, which we do not accept here. So
also he does not appreciate the heavily upper caste character of this identity. It is interesting to see how
much of Varier’s arguments is used by Rich Freeman, ‘Rubies and Coral: The Lapidary Crafting of
Language in Kerala’, The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(1) (February 1998), pp. 38–65.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 23

Malayāḷam.36 The language of this text itself is Sanskrit, not Malayāḷam, although
the author exhibits his deep knowledge of literary texts in Malayāḷam as well as
the literary and grammatical theories in Sanskrit. He may also have been familiar
with Tamiḻ and Kannada. This, or any other contemporary text from Kerala, does
not call Malayāḷam by that name, it being used for the first time outside Kēraḷa as
in the fifteenth-century Telugu work, the Śrībhīmēśvarapurāṇamu of Śrīnātha.37
Curiously, another term that Līlātilakam uses to denote the language of Kēraḷa is
Tamiḻ, but the anonymous author hastens to explain that this Tamiḻ is different from
the language used in ‘the Cōḷa country, etc.’ A very detailed discussion, border-
ing on the polemical, follows in an attempt to demonstrate the distinctiveness of
‘Kēraḷabhāṣā’ as opposed to other languages of south India, so also, the same text
shows that people in Kēraḷa had acquired the necessary pride to ridicule languages,
people and institutions outside Kēraḷa.
One point that emerges from this discussion is that the conception of a Kēraḷa,
stretching from Kanyākaumāri to Gōkarṇa, is one permeated through and through
by Brāhmaṇical ideas. Even when in the more realistic perception of 32 ‘villages’
from roughly Chandragiri to Kanyākumāri, we note the Brāhmaṇical character of
the two defining points. The kingdom of the later Cēras, with Mahōdayapuram
as their capital, had Brāhmaṇical sanction and, therefore, the political identity of
this Kēraḷa matched Brāhmaṇical conceptions. Literature produced in this period
and later only confirmed and strengthened this. It will be interesting to contrast
this with the pictures in the literary expressions of other groups. Unfortunately,
literature in Malayalam unaffected by Brāhmaṇical ideas is not available, but we
have the extremely important works of Duarte Barbosa in Portuguese and Shaikh
Zainuddin in Arabic, both extremely useful for understanding how non-Brāhmaṇa
sections of society perceived this identity.38 To be sure, their informers too could
have been influenced by Brāhmaṇical groups and their tradition. This is all the
more possible in the case of Barbosa, whose usual contacts were with the Nāyars.

II

The historiographical discourse constituting Kēraḷa as a separate region with its

own identity can be seen to begin with the text called Kēraḷōlpatti, or ‘Origin of

36
Maṇipravāḷam did exist in the Tamiḻ country, too; but it has to be distinguished from that in the
Malayāḷam-speaking region. For a discussion on Maṇipravāḷam in Kēraḷa, Kesavan Veluthat, ‘Of
Ubiquitous Heroines and Elusive Heroes: the Cultural Milieu of Medieval Maniparavala Kāvyas
from Kerala’, Foundation Day Lecture of the Indian Council of Historical Research, 18 March 2013.
For Līlātilakam, See K.N. Ezhuthachan, The History of Grammatical Theories in Malayalam, Vol. I,
Trivandrum, 1975, pp. 61–129.
37
Śrīnātha, Śrībhīmēśvarapurāṇamu, I, 72, 73. Quoted in Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600–1800, Delhi, 2001, p. 20.
38
For Duarte Barbosa, M. Gangadharan, ed., Duarte Barbosa’s The Land of Malabar, Kottayam,
2000; for Zainuddin, M.J. Rowlandson, trans. and ed., Tohfat-ul-Mujahideen, an Historical Work in
the Arabic Language, London, 1883.

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24 / Kesavan veluthat

Kēraḷa’. The date of its composition itself is problematic.39 This text is crucial as ar-
guably the first attempt to historicise Kēraḷa as a separate unit, with its own defined
territory and peculiar institutions. It opens by giving an account of Paraśurāma’s
creation of Kēraḷa, the land between Gōkarṇa and Kanyākumāri, by claiming it
from the Arabian Sea with a fling of his axe and settling it by Brāhmaṇas brought
from the north in 64 grāmas, of which 32 are in Tuḷunāḍu and the remaining in
present-day Kēraḷa. The first thing we notice is the definition of territory: 160
kātams of land between Gōkarṇa and Kanyākumāri. Even here, the text makes a
further nuanced understanding. While the whole stretch is Kēraḷa, the land from
Gōkarṇa to Perumpuḻa is Tuḷunāḍu (where Tuḷu is spoken) and the land between
Perumpuḻa and Kanyākumāri is Malanāḍu (where Malayāḷam is spoken).
Speaking about the way in which Paraśurāma peopled the land of Kēraḷa after
raising it from the sea, the Kēraḷōlpatti says that the Brāhmaṇas, who were brought
and settled in the first instance, would not stay; they returned to their original
home in Ahicchatra for fear of serpents in the new land. Paraśurāma brought a
second wave of Brāhmaṇas, again from Ahicchatra. In order that they would not
be accepted back ‘home’ if they returned, he had their hair style and dress code
changed. So, the people of Kēraḷa here are shown as distinct from the rest of the
country with their own hairstyle and dress code. He also persuaded them to accept
the mother right so that he could expiate for his own matricidal sin. It is another
matter that only those of one village, namely Payyannūr, obliged him by following
matrilineal descent. Patterns of descent and inheritance, too, in any case, distin-
guish the people of Kēraḷa. Paraśurāma also established 108 temples each for Śiva,
Śāstā and Durgā. He chose 36,000 Brāhmaṇas from different grāmas (villages)
and conferred on them the right to arms (śastrabhikṣā), so that they could protect
their land all by themselves.
The difference between the situation in Kēraḷa and the land immediately to the
north, viz. South Canara, is crucial in this regard. It is a significant indication of
the way in which the text seeks to constitute the region in contradistinction with
the neighbouring land. The major factor behind this is apparently the role of the
Brāhmaṇical groups in the two societies. The landed wealth in South Canara was
not under the control of the Brāhmaṇical groups as much as it was in Kēraḷa and,
therefore, the importance that the Brāhmaṇas of Kēraḷa had in polity and society
was not matched by what their counterparts in South Canara had. As it was much
greater in the case of Kēraḷa, Paraśurāma is invoked not only as the creator of the
land but also as the donor to the Brāhmaṇa groups, the latter not being the case in
South Canara. The exceptional importance attached to the arms-bearing Brāhmaṇas
called śastra-Brāhmaṇas or cāttirar is another instance of the use of the past in

39
There are many versions of the text, a large number of them available in print. I have used the edition
of Hermann Gundert. Gundert, Kēraḷōlpattiyum Maṟṟum: Eight works published during 1843–1904,
ed. Scariya Zacharia, Kottayam, 1992.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 25

seeking validation of the Brāhmaṇical groups in Kēraḷa society. Paraśurāma estab-

lished a brahmakṣatra in Kēraḷa, where Brāhmaṇas did the work of the Kṣatriyas,
with every arrangement for the welfare of the people, including religion, administra-
tion and law. The Brāhmaṇical authority in Kēraḷa was so great that it took Viṣṇu as
Paraśurāma, a Brāhmaṇical avatāra with Kṣatriya pretensions, to do the job. And,
that underlined the distinctiveness of Kēraḷa with reference to the Tuḷu country, too.
If these are the geographical, ethnographical and cultural constituents of Kēraḷa
according to Kēraḷōlpatti, the political-historical constituent too is clearly defined
there in an unequivocal manner. Representatives of the Brāhmaṇical establishment
governed the land gifted to them by Paraśurāma as brahmakṣatra. In course of time,
however, they realised that the business of governance corrupted them, and they
themselves decided to get a Kṣatriya as their ruler. Accordingly, a Kṣatriya and his
sister were brought; the brother was anointed king who was made to swear habitual
allegiance to them. A monarchical state was established in Kēraḷa. The sister was
married to a Brāhmaṇa and it was agreed that the progeny would belong to the
Kṣatriya caste according to the matrilineal system of succession. The descendants
of this sister would be the successors to the throne. The conviction that government
was not the Brāhmaṇas’ cup of tea and that it belonged to the Kṣatriya is very much
in tune with the Brāhmaṇical principles and the theory of varṇāśramadharma.
And the upper caste, Brāhmaṇical character of it all is hard to miss, both in the
narrative and in other contemporary records. At the same time, there is no attempt
to latch the origin of the dynasty on to either one of the reputed Kṣatriya lineages
of Purāṇic fame or those celebrated in the Tamiḻ tradition, nor is an origin myth
in the tradition typical of the medieval court literature in Sanskrit invented or the
heroic deeds of the ruler or his ancestors recited. All this would show that Kēraḷa
had arrived as a separate political entity and that the Kēraḷōlpatti was historicising it.
At this point, contextualising this portion of the narrative will be in order. The
history of the Cēra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram (ad c. 800–1124) is now fairly
clearly known. A close examination of Keraḷōlpatti shows that its first ‘histori-
cal’ portion is an attempt to historicise this Cēra kingdom, sources describing the
territory which it possessed by the name of Kēraḷa for the first time. As mentioned
above, the word Kēraḷa does occur in the sources in the sense of a territory. All
these early references are to the lineage of the Cēras, known to early Tamil sources
as Cēral, Kēraḷa being a Prakrit-Sanskrit form of it. In fact, even after Kēraḷa came
to be used as the name of a tract of land following the establishment of the Cēra
kingdom, the alternative expression for Kēraḷaviṣaya was Cēramāṉ nāṭu, that is,
the Land of the Cēras, which clearly proves this point.
The post-Cēra narrative of Keraḷōlpatti, historicising the political entity realised
under the Cēras, is conscious of the identity of the region which it crafts. This is
demonstrated by the fact that even the social divisions of Kēraḷa that it speaks
about have a character distinct from the rest of the country. It tells of temples of
Śiva, Durgā and Śāstā that Paraśurāma had consecrated in the land. Moreover, the

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26 / Kesavan veluthat

most authentic thing of Kēraḷa is its peculiar system of caste, with its own norms
of purity and pollution. Certain castes are considered as so low that the approach
of persons of those castes and even the very sight of them is thought to be pollut-
ing. In fact the Kēraḷōlpatti is very elaborate in its treatment of jātis in Kēraḷa.40
Interestingly, the text attributes the ordering of the caste system in Kēraḷa to the
ubiquitous Śaṅkarācārya, a means of achieving legitimacy for the institution, not-
withstanding the contradiction involved in it. The narrative is emphatic about the
distinctiveness of Kēraḷa here: ‘in other countries (paradeśa) there is no distance
pollution among castes. It is as if they all belong to the same varṇa. That would
not suffice. It is only with rituals that this karmabhūmi can be pure. Hence things
were ordained like this’. Apart from being an apology for the great advaita savant
doing things against his own credo, this tradition emphasises that Kēraḷa was a
land different from ‘others’.
After Kēraḷa was so constituted historiographically, we see that this entity with
its new identity had acquired the necessary self-confidence in the post-Cēra period.
Kēraḷabhāṣā, or the language of Kēraḷa, had come of age, although the word
Malayalam by which it is now known is not used to describe it in sources from the
region.41 In any case, Malayalam had arrived as a distinct language, with its own
vocabulary, grammar, syntax and morphology. What is more, Līlātilakam, which
announces its arrival, was composed by the fourteenth century.42 The self-confidence
that Kēraḷa exudes in that text is such that it looks down upon other peoples as
inferior, such as inferior, the Tuḷuvas and the Tamils. This derives from the literary
expressions and practices, where Kēraḷa is represented as the best of lands.43
At a different level, however, there was another statement which formed part
of the discursive formation constituting the same region differently, even using
a particularly manufactured image of the past for its sustenance. That was the
identity of Malabar, which was a definite geographical region for Arab, and later
European, traders. It had the same geographical reach as the Malanāṭu or Kēraḷa
of Kēraḷōlpatti. One such statement articulating a clear consciousness of this

40
Gundert, Kēraḷōlpatti, pp. 182–187.
41
Although the word Malayalam to describe this language seems to have been used for the first time
outside Kerala, there are Cōḻa inscriptions of the ninth and tenth centuries, which while referring to
soldiers belonging to the chiefly houses of Kēraḷa, use the term Malaiyāḷar. See South Indian Inscrip-
tions, Vol. VII, Nos. 958, 960, 967, 971 and 973, pp. 466–71. For a discussion on the political context
in which they are mentioned in a Coḻa inscription, M.G.S. Narayanan, Perumals of Kēraḷa & c., 2nd.
Ed., Thrussu, 2013, pp. 88–114, chapter on ‘Early Wars and Alliances’. It is a moot point whether these
Malaiyāḷar were so described on account of the language they spoke or the country from which they came.
42
For a discussion on the early literary practices in Malayalam, Rich Freeman, ‘Genre and Society:
The Literary Culture of Premodern Kēraḷa’, in Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History:
Reconstructions from South Asia, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003, pp. 437–86.
43
For details see chapter on ‘The Evolution of a Regional Identity’ in Kesavan Veluthated, The Early
Medieval in South India, op. cit, pp. 295–311.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 27

Malabar is in an Arabic text by Shaykh Zainuddin Makhdum.44 Written primarily as

a call for a holy war against the Portuguese, the full title of the work is suggestive:
Tuḥfatal-Mujāhidīn fī ba’d Akhbār al-Burdughāliyyīn (‘Tribute to the Holy Warriors
in Respect of a Brief Account of the Portuguese’).45 Its primary purpose is to give
a call for jihad or holy war against the perpetrators of atrocities against Muslims,
but it presents a short history of Islam in Malabar and also describes a few strange,
‘detestable’ customs of the people of Malabar. It articulates the consciousness
regarding Malabar, with not only a characterisation of its internal socio-political
features but also a clear definition of its boundaries. According to it, Malabar is the
‘whole territory … with Kumhuri (Kanyakumari) as its boundary in the south and
Kanjirakut (Kasaragod) in the north’.46 Places like Calicut, Weliancode, Tirurangadi,
Tanur, Ponnani, Parawanna, the localities surrounding Chaliyam port, Kakkad,
Tiruwangad, Mahe, Chemmanad, the localities surrounding Dharmadam, on its
south Walpattanam and Nadapuram, on the south of Kodungallur, Kochi, Vypeen
and several other areas are said to have become ‘thickly populated and grew into
towns with thriving trade and commerce, all because of Muslims’.47 The Malabar
that the Shaykh constitutes discursively is the one centred on Muslim trading
groups. The other inhabitants of the land are described, as also their customs, in
great detail, with a view to defining this land authentically.48 This description also
enables the identification of the Muslim groups with the local population—they
are not mentioned as the oppositional other in any attempt to constitute the self.
Antagonism is directed towards the Portuguese, no swearword being spared in
describing them. Thus, we have a Malabar from Kasaragod to Kanyakumari in
this Arabic text, which is synonymous with the Kēraḷa of other sources and which
represented how the Muslim scholar wanted to constitute it.
In this context, the way in which the Portuguese saw Malabar is interesting.
One of the most detailed and authentic accounts of the Malabar Coast is contained
in the Book of Duarte Barbosa.49 Barbosa had acquired considerable familiarity
with the land he was describing, and he had cultivated the local language ‘so well,

44
This work has been relatively well known to historians, particularly because it was used by Firishta
in the seventeenth century. Lieut. M.J. Rawlandson translated it into English in 1833 and a more authentic
translation by S. Muhammad Husayn Nainar came out in 1942. I have used this translation, as reprinted
in Shayk Zainuddin Makhdum, Tuḥfatal-Mujāhidīn: A Historical Epic of the Sixteenth Century, translated
from the Arabic with annotations by S. Muhammad Husayn Nainar, Calicut and Kuala Lumpur, 2006.
45
Ibid., p. 6.
46
Ibid., p. 30.
47
Ibid., pp. 44–45.
48
Ibid., pp. 39–46.
49
The Book of Duarte Barbosa: an Account of Countries Bordering on the Indian Ocean and Their
Inhabitants, translated from the Portuguese Original into English by Mansel Longworth Dames, 1918,
reprint, New Delhi, 1989. M. Gangadharan has published excerpts concerning Malabar from the
book with detailed annotations: Duarte Barbosa’s The Land of Malabar, Kottayam, Mahatma Gandhi
University, 2000. I have followed this edition here.

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28 / Kesavan veluthat

that he spoke it better than the natives of the country’.50 According to Barbosa,
the ‘Land of Malabar begins from the place called Cumbola (modern Kumbla in
Kasaragod District), and in all from the Hill of Dely (Ezhimala in Kannur District)
and ending at the Cape Comorin in it is one hundred and thirty leagues along
the coast’.51 Barbosa repeats the tradition of the rule of Cēramān Perumāḷ52 and
shows how the constitution of Kēraḷa through that kind of a historiography has
been achieved. He knew that ‘in this land of Malabar all men use one tongue only
which they call Maliama’. Barbosa too, like Shaykh Zainuddin, gives a detailed
account of the different castes of the inhabitants of Malabar, and demonstrates that a
‘region’ is not just a geographical expression: it is constituted by people who speak
one language, share common cultural traditions and distinguish themselves from
others. The description of the castes in Kēraḷa, both indigenous and of outsiders, is
so vivid that it is clear that he knew who was in it and who was of it. The customs
of both the natives and the sojourners are described, not as ‘detestable’ as in the
case of the descriptions of the Shaykh. If there is less than accommodation shown
to any community, it is to the Muslims and that too to a degree much less hostile
than the way in which the Muslim scholar represents the Portuguese.
The difference between the Muslim and Portuguese perceptions is brought out
clearly by a comparison between the sense of belonging that the Shaykh shows
and the Portuguese writer does not. For Tuḥfatal-Mujāhidīn, Malabar was a land
of Muslims; the people of Malabar ‘had accepted Islam willingly’.53 Even when
the ‘strange’ and ‘detestable’ customs of Malabar are described, what informs such
descriptions is curiosity, and an eagerness to report the exotic. The land of Malabar
was ‘theirs’ and ‘they’ had to protect it by waging a jihad against the accursed
Portuguese. On the other hand, the Portuguese writer does not have any such com-
mitment: he just describes the land which he was very familiar with. Even when
he does not make a secret of his dislike for the Muslims,54 he does not take up any
commitment of cleansing the land of them. In other words, he had not made the
land his own whereas the Muslims had.55
At the same time, the eagerness to participate in the tradition of a larger whole
can be seen, too. At one level, it was the attempt to affiliate this region to a larger
unit of civilisation, depending on the point of view of the agency of imagination.

50
Gaspar Correa, Lendas da India, Lisbon, 1858–60, Vol. I, p. 379, quoted in Gangadharan, op.
cit., p. 2.
51
Gangadharan, op. cit., p. 13.
52
Ibid., pp. 13–18.
53
Tuḥfatal-Mujāhidīn, p. 4.
54
He describes them ‘this evil generation’. Gangadharan, op. cit., p. 73 and n. 147.
55
However, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were exercised that the
‘Christians’ of Malabar had gone back to heathenism and attempted to impose the Law of St. Peter on
the St. Thomas Christians through the notorious Synod of Diemper. For an account, from the Catholic
point of view, K.J. John, Calicut, 1999. By the time of the Synod in 1599 it was already a whole century
after the Portuguese had been here while Barbosa had come about 1500 itself.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 29

Identifying Kēraḷa as a janapada in Bhāratavarṣa can be seen from the period

of the Purāṇas on;56 but that is as vague as it is inconsequential. The attempt to
establish association with the larger unit from this side can be seen, again, in the
Kēraḷōlpatti. One of its recensions from Kōlattunāḍ in the northern part of Kēraḷa
has a pretentious beginning, with a claim to narrate jambudvīpōlpatti in bhāṣā
(Malayāḷam).57 Kēraḷa is clearly situated within the geographical horizon familiar
to the Purāṇic world and its ‘origin’, naturally, is part of the origin of Jambudvīpa.
This attempt in a narrative that seeks to constitute Kēraḷa is extremely significant.
But it goes beyond such technical texts. One of the medieval Maṇiparavāḷam
texts, Candrōtsavam, has a verse which seeks to participate in this tradition and
includes Kēraḷa within this geographical locus. It says that there are eight other
khaṇḍas around and that the southern one of Bhārata is more charming than them;
even in it, the Land of the Cēramāns [is] like the auspicious mark on the forehead
of the goddess of prosperity and god of love.58 By the time we come to Pūntānam
Nampūtiri, a poet who wrote in simple Malayāḷam in the sixteenth century, we see
this Purāṇic geography accepted without even an attempt to bring in any distinction
for Kēraḷa within Bhārata. He is happy that he was just living in Bhārata and that
it was in the present age that he was doing so.59
The idea of Bhārata or Bhāratavarṣa, which evolved through centuries in the
expressions of high culture in India, particularly in the period of the Guptas and
after, was something which Kēraḷa came to know about in the age of the Cēramān
Perumāḷs. To begin with, Tamiḻakam, of which present day Kēraḷa was an insepa-
rable part, did not have much consciousness of this idea. The copious literature in
Tamiḻ, although containing stray influences of the Vedic-Sastraic-Purāṇic elements,60
does not participate in this tradition in any significant manner. It was only in the
age of transition from the early historical to the early medieval that such an idea
makes its appearance in south India, perhaps through what Pollock has described
as the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’. However, in spite of the knowledge of this idea of

56
S. Muzaffar Ali, The Geography of the Purå¶as, 2nd edition, New Delhi, 1973, p. 153.
57
M.R. Raghava Varier, ed., Kerlolpatti Granthavari: The Kolattunāḍ Taditions, Calicut University,
1984, pp. 54–55. The document describes itself as ‘Jambudvīpōlpatti’.
58
The text says, parabhṛtamoḻi cuṟṟuṃ maṟṟu khaṇḍaṅṅaḷeṭṭunḍ / atilumadhika hṛdyaṃ dakṣiṇaṃ
bhāratākhyaṃ. This is to say, there are eight khaṇḍas, and greater than these eight is the (ninth) Bhārata
khaṇḍa. The paurāṇic cosmology has the idea of a world divided into nine khaṇḍas (navakhaṇḍa dharitri)
as opposed to the six khaṇḍas (ṣaṭkhaṇḍa) of the Jainas. Candr÷tsavaṃ seems to be invoking the idea
of navakhaµd[a. I thank Manu V. Devadevan for this suggestion.
59
‘Lavaµåmbudhi madhyç vi±a¶¶unna | jambudvðporu y÷jana laks[avum ||
çlu dvðpuka±i¶¶aneyuḷḷatil | uttamam i sthalam ennu våltthunnu ||
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
itil onpatu khanµd[a¶¶a± uµ»allō | atil uttamam bhåratabhøtalam ||...’ Pøntånam, Jñånappåna, in
Añca»i, Jñånappåna, ×µappāṭṭu, ed. Manoj Kurur, Changanasseri, 1996, p. 96.
60
M.G.S. Narayanan, ‘The Vedic-Sastraic-Puranic Element in Tamil Sangam Literature’, Proceedings
of the Indian History Congress, Aligarh, (1975, session), pp. 76–91.

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30 / Kesavan veluthat

Bhārata, there is nothing in the records to show that Kēraḷa sought affiliation to it
even at this stage. What it did at this stage was to wean itself away from the old
affiliation to Tamiḻakam. Gradually, however, Kēraḷa began to participate in the
common traditions of this larger unit of Bhārata as an affiliate. The post-Perumāḷ
era in Kēraḷa thus found itself as an integral part of Bhāratavarṣa, and it was the
Brāhmaṇical agency which achieved it. The land created by Paraśurāma was already
part of the land of Bharata.
In the case of Shaykh Zainuddin, however, we see that he looks at Malabar as
part of the Islamic cosmopolis (Dār al-Islām).61 In fact, the Shaykh is convinced
that it was to the Muslim rulers of the world that appeals had to be sent for help
when this Dār al-Islām was under threat; it was such Muslim rulers as the Sultan
of Juzrāt (Gujarat), the Adil Shahi Sultan of Deccan, the Sultan of Miṣr (Egypt),
the Sultan of Turkey and so on who were appealed to and gave help or refused to
help.62 This is obviously an Islamic Commonwealth—nothing especially Indian
about it. No wonder, he dedicates the book not to the Zamorin, king of Calicut, of
whom he speaks so kindly and with respect, but to the Sultan of Bijapur far afield:

Sultan Ali Adil Shah, the noblest and most respected of all rulers, one who takes
delight in the struggle against disbelievers and regards fighting to uphold the
divine word as a great honour. He sets his mind towards the service of the servants
of Allah. His lofty courage disposes him to destroy the enemies of Allah …63

In the case of Barbosa, there is no such attempt to affiliate the land of Malabar to
any larger whole such as Christendom. Even the later attempt of the Portuguese
in the Synod of Diemper was only to make the Christians of Malabar part of the
Roman Catholic Church, not Malabar itself.
The purpose of this somewhat long essay is to show how a particular region
in the Indian subcontinent was constituted. We have seen that a particular region
gets defined on account of the working of different forces at the levels of economy,
society and polity at a certain point in time, with a consciousness of an identity of
its own. This identity is defined in two ways: (a) in its own terms and (b) in contra-
distinction with its ‘others’. The next step is an attempt to seek validation to it. This
is done largely with an appeal to ‘history’——that is, by invoking a particularly
manufactured image of the past. The account varied each time, depending upon the
agency which articulated the account and the purpose for which it was articulated.
However, that the three different statements which went into the making of the
discursive formation more or less agreed with one another, despite the totally dif-
ferent moorings of each, shows the strength of the discourse that had been created.
The reason is simple: it had the backing of historical factors. An identity that was

61
Tuḥfatal-Mujāhidīn, p. 55.
62
Ibid., pp. 52–55.
63
Ibid., pp. 6–7.

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 History and historiography in constituting a region/ 31

crafted under the Cēra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram was represented in the first
of these statements. Even while that identity continued, new elements that were
introduced both carried forward and varied the identity and affiliation.
The process of the formation and articulation of identities, and its later histori-
cisation, thus offers an interesting case study in the larger process of formation of
identities and affiliations. Objective conditions including geography and ecology
have no insignificant role in this process. Economic, social and political factors
are of an equal significance as well. Historical and cultural factors, too, contribute
their share. Once the identity of a unit is thus congealed and articulated, there are
attempts to affiliate that unit to larger units. These affiliations depended on the
interests of the groups which sought such affiliations. It is hoped that establishing
such patterns for one region will be possibly helpful in delineating the processes
obtaining elsewhere.

Studies in People’s History, 5, 1 (2018): 13–31