The Sensuous Brahmins of Kerala

Image by Gemini AI

After I left high school in 1975, Manipravalam stopped bothering me. Manipravalam was a medieval literary style in Kerala which blended Sanskrit vocabulary with Malayalam grammar and syntax. We were taught at school that Manipravalam enriched the literature of Kerala and elevated poetry to new heights. As a school student, I never cared to learn more about it. Now, when I happened to read a Facebook post by Devdutt Pattanaik, I was driven to curiosity to learn more about my state’s medieval literary wealth. And it’s been a rewarding experience.

Pattanaik’s view is that some of the famous Manipravalam poems reveal the lecherous nature of the Brahmin Namboothiris of Kerala as well as their ‘literary’ ways of marketing lust.  

That the Namboothiris were a lecherous lot was not new information for me. What was new was the realization that the 'elevated poetry' I was taught in school was actually stuff like: “Her twin breasts, rising close together without even a leaf’s breadth between them, resemble golden pitchers filled with the nectar of love. Adorned with necklaces of shimmering pearls, they shine like twin suns resting upon a mountain slope.” (Unnuneeli Sandesam, 14^th century)

All the organs of the female body are described in great detail in that poem as well as many others. Using Sanskrit words, of course. So, that becomes elevated poetry.

But it wasn’t actually any marketing of lust, as Pattanaik suggests, it seems. My study of this subject with the help of material available online and rummaged through by AI tells me that lust was as natural to the Namboothiris as water is to fish. Moreover, women stepped into this profession of courtesan (Devadasi) gladly and proudly.

In 13^th and 14^th century Kerala, becoming a Devadasi was a prestigious path that many women aspired to. Temple estates (Devaswoms) held massive land wealth in those days. Devadasis associated with major temples were affluent, highly educated, influential, and possessed real estate and patronage. These women inherited property directly and were not subordinate to husbands. The men who visited them, mostly the Namboothiris, gave them generous and precious gifts.

The Namboothiris controlled the temple wealth. They also held absolute spiritual and social power. Since only the eldest son married within the caste, younger sons sought romantic unions known as Sambandham with noblewomen (Nair caste) and Devadasis. And the Devadasis provided more than sex; many of them were good singers and dancers too.

In other words, the Devadasi system was already the dominant economic and artistic hub of Kerala. So there was no need to market lust there. The Manipravalam poetry was just mirroring the system that was upheld by a group of men who knew how to convert everything from lust to divinity to their advantage.

What is more interesting, at least to me, is the completely different sense of aesthetics reflected in those poems. We equate feminine charm with size zero today. But such lanky women would have been dismissed by the Namboothiris as ‘unappetising’. They wanted women whose thighs were “smooth and tapering like the trunks of young plantain trees or the trunks of royal elephants and mock the hardness of marble.” [Unnuneeli Sandesam]

No wonder they didn’t teach us those poems at school.

Pattanaik has a point, however. These poems reflected, celebrated, and reinforced a feudal order where Brahmin-royal elites enjoyed supreme economic leisure, literary dominance, and access to the most prominent women of the era. What should not be overlooked is the shocking fact that the Namboothiris who enjoyed all that were a tiny super-minority in Kerala, making up less than 0.5% of the total population.

They knew how to create a system that kept them at the top and made everybody else their slaves. As spiritual heads of major temple trusts, they owned vast tracts of agricultural land across Kerala, making them the supreme feudal landlords. Moreover, they held complete monopoly over Vedic learning, temple rituals, and literary production.

It was a shamelessly exploitative system that made use of the gods too in the whole inhuman process. Do you see something similar happening in the whole country now?

Nair Woman by Ravi Varma