History and historiography in constituting a region: The case of Kerala

I

I presume to take up both these aspects in this paper. ¹ I do it with the clear understanding that it is hard to differentiate between the two: it is increasingly recognised that to distinguish history and historiography is well-nigh impossible. To be sure, early sources do not use the term ‘Kçraḻa’ 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/Kçraḻaputra, figures in the edicts of Aśōka. The Graeco-Roman accounts of the early centuries of the Christian era use a Greek variant, Kerobotros/Kaelobotros. ³ Many places in the Malayåḻam-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 Kçraḻa as a geographical unit. Tamilakam—the land south of Vçnkaṭam, 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 Malayåḻam 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 Malainåṭu (malainåṭṭu valakkam, ‘the usage of the Hill Country’), a purely geographical name by which the land west of the Western 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 Kçraḻa as a separate geographical entity, by that name, is arguably in the Avantisundarðkathā of Daṇḍin. ⁴ The author, the eighth-century Sanskrit poet from the Pallava capital in Kåñci, speaks of his friends including Måtṛdatta, ‘the best of Bråhmaṇas from Kçraḻa’. In the fashion characteristic of Sanskrit, Daṇḍin uses Kçraḻa in the plural (Kçraḻes[u), showing 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 Kçraḻa, composed Åścaryacøḍåmaṇi, a Sanskrit play. Here the author speaks of his work as an impossibility, 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 Kçraḻa by name. A junior contemporary of Śaktibhadra does it, almost with vengeance. He was Kulaśçkharavarman, a ninth-century king of Kçraḻa, and the author of Subhadrådhanañjaya and Tapatðsaṃvaraṇa, two Sanskrit plays and perhaps one more, Vicchinnåbhis[çka, as well as a work in prose, Åścaryamañjarð. He has been identified with Sthåṇu Ravi Kulaśçkhara (ad 844–883) of the inscriptions, and with the Vaiṣṇava Bhakti saint known as Kulaśçkhara Ālvår, author of Perumå ḻ Tirumoli in Tamil and Mukundamålå in Sanskrit. ⁶ Kulaśçkharavarman describes himself as Kçraḻakulacøḍåmaṇi and Kçraḻådhinåtha 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 Kçraḻa country of which he was the ruler. In fact, he calls himself Mahōdayapuraparamçśvara, ‘Supreme Lord of the city of Mahōdayapura’, as well as Kçraḻådhinåtha, the ‘Overlord of Kēraḷa’, both descriptions having far-reaching political implications. In any case, a slightly later text clarifies that the king of Mahōdayapurm protected the Kēraḻavis[aya, ‘the land of Kçraḻa’. ⁸ So also, a contemporary of Kulaśçkhara describes his patron as ‘ruling the earth’, vasudhām+ avataḥ, punning on which he also says that he possessed resources as well as his own city [of Mahōdayapuram] (vasu+dhåmavataḥ). ⁹ The Vyaṅgyavyåkhyå, commentaries of the plays composed during the playwright’s lifetime, describe the author as Kçraḻavis[ayådhipa or the lord of the land of Kçraḻa. ¹⁰ In short, Kçraḻa 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 Kçraḻa as a separate political unit in the records of the Cāḷukyas, Pallavas and Pāṇḍyas a little earlier and of the Cōlas by the time of these plays. ¹¹ Whether the early references are to the lineage of the Cēras or the country of Kçraḻa, the later ones, found in Cōla records, are certainly to the Kçraḻa country. It is significant that these references are coeval with, and take cognizance of, the emergence of the state in what is now Kçraḻa. The Cçra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram or Makōtai 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, Aśōkan edicts and the Tamiḻ Bråhmi cave labels inscriptions. ¹³ The rise of the later Cçra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram 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 Kçraḻa. A kind of uniformity, however loosely defined, is seen in this area. ¹⁴ Inscriptions from this period, discovered from the entire length of Kçraḻa, bear the stamp of a single socio-political unit, which was presided over by the Cçra Perumåḻ. The same language and script are used in these records, ¹⁵ which are dated in the regnal years of the Cçra Perumåḻ 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 Bråhmaṇical 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 Kçraḻa, as indeed does the emergence of states under the Pallavas or Påṇḍyas 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 characterised by a subsistence economy maintained by family labour, reciprocity and patronage. 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 replace the older one by the time the new state, as, for example, the Cçra kingdom of Mahōdayapuram 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, Påṇḍyas, Cçras and Cōlas, is the highly Ks[atriya–ised monarchy which presided over them, answering in every detail to the model available in the kåvya–śåstra–nåṭaka literature in Sanskrit. In the case of Kçraḻa, 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 Kçraḻa. Although some Bråhmaṇical 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 Bråhmaṇas of Kçraḻa cherished the Paraśuråma tradition, 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 Bråhmaṇas of Kçraḻa from those in the rest of India. ²³ There was also some difference in the pattern of settlements, which was a function of the physiography and ecology of the region. ²⁴ This Bråhmaṇical character with the Paraśuråma stamp can be seen from the statement in an eleventh-century Cōla record, the Tiruvålaṅgåḍu Copper Plates, describing Kçraḻa as ‘the land created by Råma who takes pleasure 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 Bråhmaṇical element with the Paraśuråma tradition seems to be the starting point of the distinctiveness of Kçraḻa and its departure from the rest of Tamilakam. The Bråhmaṇical 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 Gōkarṇa 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 Malanåṭu 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 Malayåḻam narrative called Kçraḻōlpatti, concerned with the history of Kçraḻa, 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 tiṇais, gave way to the worship of Ågamaic deities consecrated in temples. The Bråhmaṇical element had a not insignificant role to play in this, for all the Bråhmaṇical 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 hegemonic 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 Perumåḻs 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 Puråṇas in Sanskrit became part of the heritage of anybody who identified himself with this ‘new’ religion. Sanskrit was getting precedence over Tamil, notwithstanding the fact that literary productions of the early leaders of the ‘Bhakti Movement’ from Kçraḻa were in Tamil. To be considered along with religion, if not as part of it, is caste. It is here that Kçraḻa presents its distinctiveness in the clearest manner. Interestingly, the Kçraḻōlpatti 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 Śaṅkaråcårya.

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 Kurakkçṇi Kollam, it is the model of the Arthaśāstra that is followed. In cultural matters, the repertoire of the Sanskrit epics, Råmayaṇa and Mahåbhårata, is used heavily as the earliest dramas such as Åścaryacødāmaṇi, Subhadrådhananñjaya and Tapatðsaṃvaraṇa 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 Bhaṭṭas 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 Kçraḻa 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 Kçraḻa for their compositions in Sanskrit. The very first literary works in Malayåḻam 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 Kçraḻa that was crafted in the age of the Cēramān Perumāḷs (ad 800–1124) was clearly of an upper caste, Bråhmaṇical, 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 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 inscriptions 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 composition. 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 experienced. 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 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 poetics of Maṇipravāḷam, a ‘union of bhāṣā and Sanskrit’, where bhāṣā stands for 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, bordering 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 Kēraḷa’. The date of its composition itself is problematic. ³⁹ This text is crucial as arguably 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, distinguish 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 seeking validation of the Brāhmaṇical groups in Kēraḷa society. Paraśurāma established a brahmakṣatra in Kēraḷa, where Brāhmaṇas did the work of the Kṣatriyas, with every arrangement for the welfare of the people, including religion, administration 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 ‘historical’ 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 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 polluting. 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, notwithstanding 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 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, 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 Perumāḷ ⁵² 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 commitment: 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. 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 inseparable 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 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 contradistinction 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 different 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 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 historicisation, 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.