A constant refrain in human history is the turning of tables: the fall of the powerful, the rise of the underdogs, the cycles repeating over and over again for millennia. Those in power rewrite history to their advantage; then time overtakes their ambitions; they fall, losing their grip on the narrative they had so carefully forged; the victors rewrite history all over again; and so, it goes. During the late 1600’s to the early 1900’s when brahmin scholars in Kerala were busy rewriting Kerala’s history in Sanskrit, neither the “lesser” Nayar rulers nor the “greater” Nambuthiri scholars of those times could remember a past when the social hierarchy was anything else. Who can fault them? Who remembers a past in human history, around 1000 BCE, when a black queen of Sabaea reigned over a prosperous African nation, and white blue-eyed Scandinavian “barbarians” were sold as slaves in the open markets of Arabia? Our collective memories are clouded by the fact that less than two millennia later, white blue-eyed men were trafficking the queen’s black descendants for slavery across the Atlantic Ocean.
The tale of the Nambuthiri brahmins in Kerala is yet another of turning tables, a fleeting period of Nambuthiri hegemony in Kerala’s long history, sandwiched between two Sankaras, both brahmins from their own folds: Sankaracharya, the proponent of Advaita Vedanta, under whose leadership during the ninth century CE, the Nambuthiri rose to the summit of Kerala’s society, and Elamkulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad, popularly known as EMS, the Communist activist of Kerala, under whose leadership during the 1960’s they fell from their social summit.
When the Nambuthiri brahmins initially immigrated to Kerala in the fourth century CE, they must have found themselves outcastes in their tightly integrated host community, which was an agrarian economy interlinked with a militia system feeding into a temple-based administration where, centered around ancient Egyptian practices, rulers of the uppermost echelons of nobility presided as high priests, and foreign traders formed self-governed social groups called cheri (communities from across the ocean) and gramam (communities from the hinterland). Without pursuing any trade, or owning any land, being clerics in a non-native religion, and conversant only in a foreign tongue, these early immigrant brahmins must have occupied the lowest strata of the economy, as evidenced by numerous inscriptions revealing temple donations to feed brahmins in acts of charity reminiscent of Old Kingdom Egyptian traditions.
In an inscription at the temple at Peruneyil (ca. 1000 CE), Ediran Kaviran donated land to feed one thousand brahmins; in another inscription (ca. 1004 CE), Kodai Keralan gifted money to feed brahmins; in yet another inscription in Thrikkakara (ca. 1031 CE), Kannan Puraiyan granted land to the local temple for feeding brahmins. Innumerable other such inscriptions give credence that the brahmins were the object of communal charity. Charity was part of Egyptian religion, sought after by wealthy aristocratic nobles as a means to a more rewarding life after death. “I gave bread to the hungry” was a frequent refrain in Egyptian tomb inscriptions dating since very ancient times, ca. 2300 BCE, just as frequently as “feeding brahmins” in the temple inscriptions of Kerala.
It may be argued that feeding Nambuthiri brahmins was a custom even in later times when they were far from poor, the basis of the later charity being the belief, prevalent during the heyday of Nambuthiri hegemony in Kerala in the late 1800’s, that they were bhudeva ‘gods on earth.’ Indeed, in ancient Egypt, nbuXr.t was the name of certain lesser gods of the underworld, who sat with Osiris, the god of death, in judgement of the dead, according to Amduat, an ancient Egyptian funerary text. They “live upon the food of Ra [sun god], and on the cakes offered to Khenti-Amenti [god of death]. Offerings are made on their behalf upon earth, and they receive libations.” nbuXr.t, the [X] being transliteration of the sound [th] in Malayalam (as in Egyptian Xni and Malayalam thoni ‘row boat,’ Xrw and thara ‘base,’ Xt and thadi, ‘body,’ zX and ezhuth ‘write’), may have been pronounced in Malayalam as anbuthri, with a vowel in the beginning and an [i] sound at the end corresponding to the [.t] ending. Given the similarity between nambuthiri and anbuthri, it may be that the name of these Egyptian deities could be the original source of the bhudeva belief of later times; but in the past, in the fourth century CE, the name must have been used loosely to refer to ones who needed charity to survive, who, like the lesser anbuthri gods, lived upon the food of the greater gods in temples.
It is telling that in the numerous temple inscriptions of around 1000 CE, which mention feeding brahmins, they are never referred as “Nambuthiri,” although the term appears as an adjective in later inscriptions (e.g., Palaiyur copper plate of Kollam ca. 1600 CE; Aruvaymoli records, ca. 1784 CE), suggesting that it was an unofficial epithet, a colloquial name by which they were known in the local community. If so, it is more likely to have derived, not from the name of deities but from an entirely different basis: In Egyptian, nmHu-tri, correspondingly pronounced namuthri in Malayalam, meant ‘respected poor ones,’ (പൂജ്യരായ പാവങ്ങൾ) which succinctly and unambiguously describes the Nambuthiri community’s history in Kerala — their once destitute plight and subsequent esteemed standing.
Although another linguistic analysis may suggest that Nambuthiri could derive from nambi+thiri ‘respected lord’ in Malayalam, the rules of grammar and semantics for this combination does not lead to nambuthiri, but rather to nambiathiri which was actually one of the epithets of the samantha community, rulers of Eranad, and other magnates associated with military and bureaucratic roles. Besides, inscriptions before 1300 CE suggest that brahmins who received temple charity were not treated kindly by others, an example being the inscription at the Bhagavathi temple at Kumaranallur near Kottayam, which stated that if a native talked contemptuously of a brahmin, or hit him with an arrow, he should be fined, suggesting that both acts occurred, otherwise why would a rule banning them be necessary? Had the brahmins been powerful like the nambi ‘magnates’ of those times, had they been atop the social order like they were in later centuries, such an explicitly spelled out rule would have been entirely redundant.
Another analysis also leads to the same conclusion: In a power-imbalanced society, relations between dominant and subordinate groups are typically characterized by demands and impositions made ‘‘top-down’’ without consulting those who are fundamentally affected by them. In contrast, discourse between relatively equal groups is characterized by a democratic type of cultural entanglement. An example of the former type of cultural change is the ancient Egyptian colony of Nubia around 1800 BCE. At that time, foreigners within Egypt’s boundaries as well as in Egypt’s foreign colony in Nubia were subordinate to the dominant Egyptians, adopting Egyptian culture to a large extent in an effort to accommodate themselves into mainstream Egyptian society. Nubian mercenaries became Egyptianized, adopting Egyptian names, marrying Egyptian women, equipping themselves with funerary stelae, and using Egyptian motifs in their arts, crafts, and iconography. Nubians could rise in Egyptian society so long as they accommodated to Egyptian cultural norms. With foreigners who integrated into Egypt, intermarriage with natives was freely permitted. A similar pattern can be seen in the Nambuthiri’s early customs post-immigration to Kerala.
At the time of the Nambuthiri immigrants’ arrival in the fourth century CE, other foreign communities in Kerala were gainfully occupied in their respective trades, actively contributing to the native economy through their commercial, artisanal, or other enterprises. Thus, although these foreigners had their own customs to follow within their respective diaspora, they were not subject to any rules with respect to the native Nayar community, in a classic example of colonies without colonialism. The Nambuthiri alone, among all the foreign immigrants, were forced to adjust their communal rules in the ninth century CE, adopting strict, oppressive measures in an effort to integrate into Kerala’s native society, suggesting their early destitute status and lack of social power relative to all others in Kerala at that time.
To the Nambuthiri was ordained an austere religious life, one of continued penance and self-mortification. Only the eldest son in the family could marry, while the other sons could not even entertain thoughts of a carnal nature. Being a patriarchal community at odds with the matrilineal host community of the Nayars, the brahmin womenfolk in particular were subject to stricter rules. Nambuthiri women could not be seen out in public, for they had to cover themselves with a long cloth and shade their face with an umbrella when out and about. They could not be unaccompanied in public; a woman of the Nayar community must chaperone the Nambuthiri woman everywhere. They could not adorn themselves in gold; only copper was their lot. They were barred from marrying a non-Nambuthiri. Any Nambuthiri woman who was accused of adultery or seducing a Nayar man had to submit to a lengthy court proceeding called smartavicharam overseen by the local nadvazhi.
These rules do not appear to be superior Nambuthiri claims over an inferior Nayar population; quite the contrary, actually. These were not general rules that Vedic brahmin followed elsewhere in India either; they were anacharam ‘non-conventions’ peculiar and exclusive to the Kerala Nambuthiri. Moreover, these rules were in addition to other acharam ‘conventions’ followed by Vedic brahmin all over India, such as those relating to marriages, funerals, and Vedic education.
Had the Nambuthiri been on top of the social hierarchy, why would they change the acharam of their community at large in India to inflict these oppressive anacharam on their own sons and daughters in Kerala? Clearly, they were not at the top of the social order initially, but worked their way there over many centuries, leading to this intriguing question: how did they do it? In the fourth century CE, the Nambuthiri brahmins had been at the lowest stratum of society, lower even than pulayan serfs who did not have to rely on charity to survive, for they were clothed and fed by their landlords on account of their work. How, then, did the Nambuthiri brahmins rise to the very apex of the social order by the time European gaze turned towards Kerala more than a millennium later in the mid sixteenth century CE? I will explore this question in my next article.
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