Kerala has a rich tradition of mural art, the most prominent examples of which can be seen on the outer walls of the sreekovil, the temple sanctum, and nalambalam, the inner temple courtyard; they are also found to a lesser extent in palaces and rich households. The traditional colors used in the art are just six: red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white. They are usually made of mineral and vegetable pigments using organic binders and thinners. Neem resin, red and yellow stones, indigo, and lamp black are the traditional sources of the colors, while arrowgrass and the hair from goats and calves form the brushes.
The style of Kerala’s mural art in its forms and composition as seen today evolved from previous styles of the art in other parts of south India going back to the mural art of Ajanta caves in central India featuring Buddhist themes of the second century BCE. Currently surviving specimens of Kerala mural art, which consistently depict Hindu Puranic deities, have been archeologically dated as originating at most from seventh or eighth century CE. Considering that temples have been around in Kerala for many centuries previously, and mural art was not new in south India in the eighth century CE either, it is clear that the Puranic theme in Kerala’s mural art after seventh century CE was merely an indicator of rising Brahmanical influence and not any conclusive proof of the art’s historical origins in the land. Indeed, it is anyone’s guess what were depicted on the temple walls before they were replastered and repainted with Puranic deities, as has happened many times in numerous temples, such as at the Brihadiswara Temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, where decorations dating to the Nayaka dynasty are painted over Chola dynasty layers.
Although Kerala’s mural art borrows heavily in style and theme from the general Dravidian temple art of south India, it is different in its unique choice of colors: while other Indian mural art forms appear to render characters in colors chosen based on aesthetics alone, the characters in the Kerala mural paintings are colored according to their ‘virtue’ in the depicted tales: divine beings are rendered in shades of green and blue; mortals and kingly figures are painted in hues ranging from red to golden yellow; and evil villains are in black.
This symbolic color motif is carried over into other art forms of Kerala as well, such as kathakali and koodiyattam, where the heroes are colored in green face paint whereas evil villains are black, and characters in between range from yellow to deep red. Although it may be hard to discern which art form copied from the other, whether the murals copied from koodiyattam or vice versa, it is undisputed that this peculiar color palette tying skin color to disposition exists, and only so in Kerala.
An echo of this symbolic color palette is seen in ancient Egyptian murals, which consisted of these same six primary colors: black, white, red, green, yellow and blue; and more interestingly, these colors matched the character’s disposition, just like in Kerala mural art. Indeed, the Egyptian word for color, iwn, was also used to designate ‘character’ in the sense of virtue, as well as ‘skin’ in the sense of superficial appearance. An example is shown below in a detail of a wall frieze depicting Pharaoh Horemheb with the gods. On the left, green-colored Osiris is seated next to the jackal-headed god Anubis and falcon-headed Horus, both in red skin but blue colored attire. Horemheb appears on the right, his body colored red, between green-skinned Osiris and yellow-hued Isis.
Although Egyptian art looks incredibly different from Kerala murals, the similarities are actually skin-deep: deities in Egyptian mural art were painted in green and blue for the most part; natives of Egypt in shades ranging from golden yellow to red; and other races (whom Egyptians considered in a negative, villainous light) in black, just like in the Kerala murals. It is precisely because any arbitrary color convention in a mural is rationally possible that this similarity in non-realistic symbolic color choice between ancient Egypt and Kerala is so striking.
This color scheme was followed in Egypt only during the Old and Middle Kingdoms; by the time of the New Kingdom, ca. 1500 BCE, many more color choices had entered the palette: in addition to the basic six, there were strong blue, light blue, pink, and brown. There was also a divergence in coloring styles between secular and religious art during the New Kingdom, although the same color palette was used for both. Excepting the New Kingdom style of painting directly on the wall without carved relief as was the custom of the Old Kingdom, these innovations of later times do not appear to be reflected in Kerala’s mural art, suggesting that the cultural diffusion of color palettes from Egypt to Kerala probably occurred before 1500 BCE.
Thus, in Kerala, it appears that the basic colors of virtue on the artist’s palette have continued in uninterrupted tradition for more than three thousand years. Indeed, wherever Brahmanization’s heavy-handed influence has been felt, as in the characters depicted in mural art, an underlying current of native tradition has continued nevertheless, so that native sensibilities have been satisfied that the old and familiar have not been entirely lost in the new and strange. This form of subtle cultural transformation has been the refrain in almost all aspects of Kerala’s native ways; its ancient culture may have adapted to the song of a new world, yet remarkably, it has not changed its essential melody.
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