In my previous article, I wrote about the timeline of the perumal in Kerala. I showed that the first perumal was sent during the reign of pharaoh Sahure sometime between 2465 BCE and 2325 BCE. That means the earliest settlers arrived even earlier, perhaps during the reign of pharaoh Khafre (ca. 2550 BCE) or Khufu (ca. 2580 BCE). They settled themselves in sixty-four villages. But unable to govern themselves, and fed up with the state of affairs in the land, they banded together and sent a few representatives to the motherland in search of a governor.
They petitioned Pharaoh Sahura, who was reigning on the throne of Egypt at that time. It was not an easy request; who among the aristocratic nobles would voluntarily leave their high political position in Memphis, their luxurious familiar lifestyle in Egypt, and the warm comforts of their family to toil in a distant place amidst leeches and marshes and untamed forests? The pharaoh’s nominee, Keya, needed much convincing to agree. Finally, after a lengthy negotiation, the delegation managed to turn him; they eventually returned to Kerala with the personal officer of the pharaoh — perumal — the first of twenty-two to rule the land during the Old Kingdom.
Among the local chieftains of Kerala, the perumal’s position was less a provincial governor than a kind of chief spokesman, mediator, and informal agent of the pharaoh in the province. His staff included at least two lesser officers who were deputed from Egypt, and the rest may have been selected from the local population. The title perumal, derived from Egyptian perual, was indicative of his position as a member of the pharaoh’s central bureaucracy. Archeological and epigraphic evidence has shown that there were several dignitaries in Old Kingdom Egypt with the title of perual. They were all members of the pharaoh’s central bureaucracy; whether any of them were the ones sent to Kerala is unknown.
In Kerala, Keya was invested with his position by the local chieftains with libations of grains and water called virutti, a customary ritual called irutt in Egypt for all important undertakings. Keya ended the system of community property of the early settlers. In its place, he instituted the laws of Egypt; the land was divided into two sovereign tenures: one for the temples and the rest for the nobles. The perumal did not reserve any land for himself; he had no intention of settling down. The settlers gifted him a palace named perumkovilakam, which translates to “great palace” in both Malayalam and Egyptian. Although his tenure was for twelve years, he was recalled after only eight years and four months when Pharaoh Sahura died in Egypt around 2420 BCE and Neferarikara ascended the throne.
The settlers of Kerala once again sent representatives to Egypt, requesting another perumal. They returned with a Chozha from one of the Delta nomes. Like his predecessor, his term too was probably cut short by the untimely death of his pharaoh. Chozha could very well be a Sanskritized version of the Egyptian name tchai, who was a high-ranking dignitary of the Old Kingdom. According to archeological records, tchai carried out several functions that were indicative of a vizier, but he did not actually reach the post of vizier during his lifetime. According to his titles, he oversaw royal projects, agriculture, cattle, documents, marshlands, and interestingly, also held the title of perual. tchai was the only person in the Old Kingdom discovered so far to have held so many titles within a short span of thirty years. While it is possible that he could have achieved all this distinction within Egypt itself, his titles indicate such vast power and influence as of a vizier, that his failure to actually become one is significant. It is possible to reconcile all his titles and his preeminence with his lack of a vizierate if he had been the perumal of a far-flung colony such as Kerala. Governing from such a distant location, he would not have been as influential in the pharaoh’s circle as local administrators in Egypt. Yet, his role relative to the throne would have been no less significant. tchai’s tomb at North Saqqara in Egypt reveals a highly diplomatic man who successfully navigated one of the most difficult political times of the Old Kingdom. He worked under three or four consecutive pharaohs starting with Sahura and when he died during the reign of Niuserra, he was interred in a large, magnificent tomb befitting a man of his stature. The dimensions, appearance and decorations of tchai’s magnificent tomb surpassed not only those of his contemporaries, but even those of viziers of his time.
After Neferarikara, Shepeskara ascended the throne of Egypt. There is some evidence that Shepeskara was not in the direct line to the throne, that he usurped the throne from the rightful heir, Neferfera. His followers could very well have been from Upper Egypt rather than Lower Egypt where the royal family of the rightful heir had strong connections. Perhaps that could be the reason he chose his governor of Kerala from a region to the south of Memphis: Keralolpatthi confirms that the third perumal was from southern domains. Shepeskara’s precarious political situation in Egypt was reflected in the acts of his officer even in faraway Kerala, for unlike his two predecessors, one of the first things he did when he reached Kerala was to build himself a military fortress in the colony, evincing a feeling of insecurity in his position.
Considering that the settlement faced no outside threat, that it was surrounded on one side by an expanse of ocean and on the other three sides by dense jungle and enormous mountains, this action seems rather odd. Perhaps he sensed a revolt brewing among the local populace in retaliation for his pharaoh’s acts. He ruled for a troubled nine years after which he abruptly left, saying there was no one to protect his homeland and his king. There are indications that Shepeskara died a sudden inglorious death even before his perumal’s return. His pyramid tomb at Abusir stands unfinished; no pharaoh after him even attempted to complete it.
Neferefra who came after Shepeskara was the rightful heir to the throne, but he could not rule for long. He sent an officer from Upper Egypt as his perumal. Unfortunately for both of them, the court intrigues of Memphis reached Kerala shortly after, for Neferefra died and was replaced by Niuserra. Ignoring his predecessor’s man, the new pharaoh sent his own officer as his official perumal. When Neferefra’s perumal was informed of this development, legend has it that he flew into a rage and attacked the local chieftains with an army he had brought from Egypt. As a consequence, like his king’s, his reign and life were short-lived. He was assassinated in Kerala and his two deputies were sent back ingloriously to Egypt. Niuserra’s perumal managed to rule for an uneventful twelve-year term despite the crisis unfolding in Egypt. The end of his term coincided with the death of his pharaoh Niuserra, and Menkauhor next ascended the throne of Egypt.
The precarious political situation in Egypt with the pharaohs caused great consternation among the local chieftains of Kerala. They brought the next perumal from their homeland of the Nile delta. By the authority vested in him, the new perumal instituted various kinds of taxes in the fashion of Egypt: fines, duties, tolls, harvest tax, animal tax, red horned bull tax, spotted tail tax, pig-in-well tax, reclaimed land tax, harbor tax, sea tax, and tax on artisan work. He ruled the land for twelve years, after which he returned to Egypt.
The two perumal who came subsequently also ruled for twelve years each. The second of them divided the land into seventeen provinces in the fashion of the nomes of Egypt. Then, to facilitate centralized administration, but deciding against involving himself in local affairs, he created a council of four that would work with him and defined their jurisdictions to encompass the entire governed region. This council was similar to the “council of ten” in Egypt who handled provincial affairs and served as the pharaoh’s liaison to the nomarchs. The council and the four jurisdictions in Kerala were called tali. The councilors, called taliyatiri were raised in status through gifts of anubhavam land, while the perumal himself remained a salaried employee, unattached to the land he governed.
Meanwhile in Egypt, provincial nomarchs, akin to the naduvazhi of Kerala, were gradually gaining power at the expense of the pharaoh. After Menkauhor, Djedkare who ascended the throne of Egypt around 2450 BCE, transformed Egyptian state administration and reorganized the funerary cults of his forebears, unwittingly accelerating the decline of the Old Kingdom. Under his rule, each nomarch became responsible exclusively for his own nome, and the office of vizier began to be held by two individuals, one of them only titular, an indication of the rising power of provincial nomarchs. Djedkare also initiated the cult of Osiris in Egypt, breaking with the long tradition of sun worship in solar temples. In fact, during his reign, the construction of sun temples is believed to have ceased entirely.
It was during his rule that Bana was brought as perumal to Kerala according to Keralolpatthi. During his term in Kerala, certain men of a different religious persuasion visited him. Considering that the religious mood in Egypt was on the cusp of change during this time with the cult of Osiris in the ascendancy and the priests of the sun temples in decline, the visitors could very well have been new Egyptian priests. Or perhaps they were members of a peripheral cult, such as of the minor deity Khentytjenenet, for such cults proliferated during this time as Egypt went through a religious flux. Having been convinced by their sermons, Bana tried to force his citizens to adopt the new religion, but they resisted vehemently. Eventually, six scholars, Egyptian bhatt ‘scholars of holy books,’ arrived from the motherland. The scholars challenged Bana’s heretics to a debate and won. Bana, humiliated by the debacle, relinquished his seat and left the land. He had reigned only for four years. His successor Tulubhan did not reign for much longer. Although he gave his name to the northern reaches of the colony, he left after barely six years.
Then came Indra, and after an uneventful twelve years, came Aryan. Aryan divided the region from Gokarna to Kanyakumari into four different provinces: from Gokarna to Perumpuzha (present-day Netravati) was Tulunad; from Perumpuzha to Putupattanam was Musikarajyam, musika being an Egyptian word referring to a watery region filled with lakes and marshes; from Putupattanam to Kanneti was Keralarajyam, keru meaning ‘low-lying land’ in Egyptian; and from Kanneti to Kanyakumari was Kuvarajyam, khuva in Egyptian meaning ‘protected,’ likely a description of the topology of the place, with the mountains so close to the sea.
He further divided each kingdom into seventeen provinces, each of which was further divided into eighteen desams and decreed the rule of law and morals everywhere. What Aryan did by this division was effectively mimic the administrative division of Lower Egypt, which was approximately the size of the habitable region between Gokarna and Kanyakumari and divided into eighteen provinces. By this deft move, Aryan was no doubt able to replicate the ways of the Egyptian administrative machinery in its faraway colony. However, to the dismay of the local chieftains in Kerala, he was recalled to Egypt after only five years, probably reflecting the growing political tension in Egypt between the nomarchs and the pharaoh.
Naturally, the local nobles in Kerala were quite unhappy about the state of affairs. Yet they rallied and brought Kundan from Egypt as their next perumal. But after ruling for four years, he returned to his homeland. After him, Kotti could rule only for one year. Mada after that managed to rule for eleven years, and reflecting his lengthy rein, or perhaps on orders from the pharaoh, decided to build a fortress. Building fortresses was part of Egypt’s colonization endeavor; they were less a defensive wall against outside forces and more a stronghold to protect Egyptian commercial interests from within. They were meant to assist riverain and coastal navigation, store goods, provide housing for temporary workers and the like. They could also serve as centralized locations for logistics necessary to provide for expeditions back to the motherland, similar to their counterparts in Egypt where such fortresses were built at specific locations to support expeditions abroad.
Fortresses built inside Egypt served as processing and administrative centers and warehouses for agricultural produce. During the latter period of the Old Kingdom, these fortresses appear to be a crucial link in the geographical tax system, for they were built in almost every province. They formed centers for fields, cattle, and workers of the surrounding agricultural lands, housing local warehouses where agricultural produce could be stocked and delivered to royal officers, and they formed a network of labor and accounting centers making it possible to collect taxes and mobilize the labor force of the country. It is quite likely that many of the fortresses built by the perumal in Kerala were meant as storage and processing centers for agricultural and forest produce rather than as defensive military installations.
Mada summoned his younger brother Ezhi from Egypt to build the fortress, and entrusting him with governance too, returned to Egypt. There is a hill on the Malabar coast, close to the present-day delta of River Kuppam that is called “Ezhimala.” The hill may, in fact, have been named after perumal Ezhi. After him came Komban and Vijayan both of whom ruled only for a short time, and Vijayan managed to complete a fortress in Kollam. Between Aryan and Vijayan, six perumal circulated within thirty-six years, an average of six years each, half of the prescribed twelve-year term. This reflected the growing crisis of unitary monarchy in Egypt too, where the turnover of dignitaries in key administrative positions proceeded at an astonishing pace under pharaohs Teti, Userkara, and Pepi I, whose reigns were marred by various scandals, including usurpation, trials of queens, destitution of high officials, and even regicide. Pepi I ruled for a relatively long time, ensuring a measure of stability, carefully modulating the balance of power of provincial officials to prevent anyone becoming too powerful. He also built a series of temples at major cult centers, among them the first stone temples of Egypt.
Valabhan who came after Vijayan during Pepi’s reign, built a temple and a fortress, advancing his pharaoh’s temple-building policy. Temples had become an indispensable part of the state’s administrative structure, helping to uphold the pharaoh’s status and preserve his supremacy in provinces far from the administrative center of Memphis. Together with the military fortress, characteristic of Egypt’s colonial might, the temples served to remind the common people of their allegiance to the pharaoh in distant Egypt. Temples served as memorials to the power of the pharaoh. The royal annals of the Old Kingdom record temples as “one of the most celebrated activities of the monarchy, no doubt because of their symbolic importance, as both ritual buildings and commemorative centers of its power and perhaps also as markers of the links, alliances, and collaboration between the monarchy and powerful local families.” Thus, temples were symbolic means to enhance the power and prestige of the crown in far flung provinces. Valabhan’s successors Hariscandran and Mallan continued his policy of building fortresses. Concurrently with Kerala, Egypt too went through a profusion of fortress building during this time. During the Sixth Dynasty, Egypt undertook several trans-oceanic expeditions as well, as evidenced by records from tombs at Aswan.
The last of the perumal during the Old Kingdom was Kulasekhara, appointed during the tail end of the reign of Pepi I. Egypt’s chaotic political situation at that time did not lend itself to the top officers of its administration being distracted by political worries in a faraway land when more pressing matters on the local stage needed their immediate attention. Pepi, probably sensing that his resources were better focused on the home front rather than in a distant province, tasked Kulasekhara with an extraordinary mission: enable self-rule in Kerala. By this time, more than two hundred years had passed since the time of the first perumal. Kulasekhara ruled for eighteen years, six more than the prescribed twelve, training soldiers, administrators, and future rulers of the land. After a successful term, according to the words of Keralolpatthi, he “went to heaven in his corporeal form,” literally returning to the land etched with the names of stars, the abode of the gods, the incomparable “heaven on earth” for its homesick colony on the other shore of the wide, open sea.
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