Ancient Kerala had three types of schools: pallikkoodam പള്ളിക്കൂടം for secular education, temple sala സാല for religious education, and kalari കളരി for martial education.
Secular education for boys and girls of any community was once provided through public schools called pallikkoodam പള്ളിക്കൂടം or ezhuthupalli എഴുത്തുപള്ളി. From very ancient times, children, both boys and girls, were initiated to literacy at the very tender age of three, and on no account later than their seventh year. This cultural importance of literacy — reading and writing — was different from elsewhere in India, where the mode of education, particularly Vedic teaching, was oral. Students in Kerala learnt to write first on sand, and then on dried palmyra leaves with an iron stylus. Malayalam was taught through stories, myths, and folktales. Advanced students learnt astronomy, logic, grammar, medicine, law, and Sanskrit. Until the British took over Malabar, primary education was run by village communities without any intervention from the king or state government.¹ The profession of “teacher” was widely respected and the teacher himself was an important pillar of the community.²
But after the early 1800’s, when the British took over state administration, or came to influence it considerably, the village schools disappeared, with the result that people came to be illiterate. State-run public schools were later reintroduced by the kings of Cochin and Travancore, but through British systems of education.³ This had the unfortunate side effect of rendering the common people ignorant of their own history and culture — an ignorance and a collective shame that sadly continues to this day. Yet, commendably, the cultural importance of education never entirely disappeared in Kerala. Thus, when the Indian government pushed for nationwide literacy after independence from colonial British rule, Kerala was the first and perhaps the only state even now, to boast a near-100% literate population.⁴ While many credit modern Communist ideologies or Western educated Christian missionaries with achieving this milestone, it cannot be disputed that the native people’s long love affair with literacy was what actually made this possible.
Kerala’s love story with literacy goes back to ancient Egypt, where the profession of “scribe” was the most coveted. In 1800 BCE, a teacher memorialized his advice to his student in a papyrus thus: “If you have any sense, be a scribe…that your body may be bright and your hands remain soft…A thousand wait to answer your call; you will be a free man, a leader of men.”⁵ Indeed, writing was also art, and art was language, and this interconnectedness carried over into a word that meant “paint” and “write” in both Egyptian and Malayalam: esechel in Egyptian,⁶ corresponding to ezhuthal എഴുതൽ in Malayalam. Schools were important in pharaonic Egypt. The secular schools where scribes were taught writing was called sbele-ket, similar to Malayalam pallikkoodam പള്ളിക്കൂടം.⁷ sbele meant “learn,”⁸ “pupil,”⁹ “teacher,”¹⁰ and “teaching,”¹¹ meanings that are no longer extant in Malayalam for palli. The initial [s] sound of Egyptian was also lost in Malayalam so that Egyptian sbele became Malayalam palli (that is, sbele became belle, which became palli). ket apparently derived from “dwelling” similar to Malayalam kudi കുടി “dwelling.” Thus sbele-ket literally meant “dwelling of learning” in Egyptian, which is likely the root meaning of the Malayalam word pallikkoodam പള്ളിക്കൂടം “school.”
Religious education was provided in ancient Kerala in an entirely different type of school located within temple precincts, called sala സാല. sala സാല is thought to derive from Sanskrit shala ശാല “hall,” “house.” Yet, it could also have an alternative derivation from Egyptian sbele “learning,” by losing the [b] sound. In other words, sbele became sele, which became sala.¹² The most prominent among the ancient sala were: Kandallur sala, Parthivapuram sala, and Srivalabhaperum sala of Thiruvalla and Muzhikkulam. Students of the sala were called chattar ചാത്തർ. Admission to the sala was not easy; one had to be proficient in grammar, logic, and temple duties to gain entry. The sala were entirely funded by public donations from wealthy individuals; students got free education in addition to room and board.¹³ These schools disappeared from temples around sixteenth century CE, by which time, brahmins had entrenched their positions as the sole priests in Kerala’s temples. These temple schools likely derived from their counterparts in ancient Egypt. Egyptologists call the Egyptian temple schools as per-ankh “house of life.”¹⁴ The temple school, housing religious texts, was headed by a scholarly lector priest called hbat-cheri, corresponding to Malayalam bhattathiri ഭട്ടതിരി.¹⁵ In general, students were called schete,¹⁶ corresponding to Malayalam chattar ചാത്തർ, although it is not clear whether schete were students at the temple schools, or referred to students in general.
Martial arts were taught to boys and girls in ancient Kerala in schools called kalari കളരി. The name of the school apparently derived from the name of the shrine — kalari കളരി — dedicated to the goddess that was part of every martial school. The students hailed from Nayar families whose hereditary calling was war. In the kalari, students learnt, in addition to martial arts, wrestling, fencing, use of weapons, and military tactics. Children as young as seven were initiated into the school and continued their lessons into adulthood. As adults, they were called upon to fight for their local ruler according to a type of feudal militia system that was extremely similar to the system that existed in pharaonic Egypt before 1800 BCE.¹⁷ There is no reference to martial schools in Egypt in ancient texts or records, and it is not known whether they even existed as such or were part of other schools. But Greek traveler Herodotus, ca. 400 BCE, notes that the soldiers learnt martial arts as a hereditary occupation, again another similarity with Kerala.¹⁸ Interestingly, keler was a type of shrine in ancient Egypt,¹⁹ likely corresponding to kalari കളരി “shrine” in Kerala.
Kerala’s unique position in India as a leader in all-round education and literacy may thus trace its roots, at least partly, to the ancient influence of a once-powerful culture across the Indian Ocean. That ancient culture has long disappeared in its homeland, any relics being relevant today only as tourist attractions. Kerala’s original ties to it have long gone too, swept away by the winds of time, space, and shifting values. But surprisingly, despite the passage of thousands of years, its influence persists in Kerala in ways that still matter to the modern world.
Notes
[1] These village run schools were different from Vedic gurukula elsewhere in India, where students lived with their teachers during the course of their education. In contrast, the pallikkoodam of Kerala were operated only for teaching, while students and teachers lived in their respective homes.
[2] Menon, Padmanabha. 1924–37. A History of Kerala written in the form of Notes on Visscher’s Letters from Malabar, 4 vols. Rev. ed. 2013. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.
[3] Menon, Padmanabha. 1924–37. A History of Kerala.
[4] According to the World Bank, India’s overall literacy rate is 76%, whereas Kerala has a literacy rate of 96.2%, well above the national average.
[5] Blackman, Aylward M. and T. Eric Peet. 1925. “Papyrus Lansing: A Translation with Notes.” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. 11(3/4): 284–298.
[6] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/600375.
[7] The word was actually ket-sbele, but prefix and suffix exchange between Egyptian and Malayalam. https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/34730.
[8] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/131220.
[9] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/131230.
[10] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/131320.
[11] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/131330.
[12] Thus, while the secular schools lost the initial [s] sound and retained the [b] sound probably by influence of Tamil, the religious schools lost the [b] sound and retained the [s] sound probably by influence of Sanskrit. This common origin for palli and sala suggests that the dropping of [s] in sbele for secular schools likely happened after Sanskrit influence and the semantic differentiation of secular schools from religious schools in Kerala.
[13] Rajakrishnan, S.R. and Ajit Kumar. 2016. “Organisation and Conduct of Parthivapuram Sala as Gleaned from the Huzur Office Copper Plates.” In Heritage: Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, vol. 4: 454–58.
[14] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/550421. This word and the institution associated with it likely became Malayalam kalippura കളിപ്പുര, or koothambalam കൂത്തമ്പലം referring to performance halls inside Kerala temples where religious plays were enacted during temple festivals.
[15] cheri-hbat https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/855795. Prefix and suffix were interchanged between Egyptian and Malayalam.
[16] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/150150. By demotic times (ca. 100–200CE), the spelling had changed to sete, dropping the middle [ch]. https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/d9271.
[17] One peculiarity of Kerala’s feudal militia was that in times of peace, the soldiers were agriculturists and landlords, just as in ancient Egypt before 1800 BCE; they marched to war only when called upon. Egypt changed its militia system after 1800 BCE, recruiting a standing army of professional soldiers stationed at permanent garrisons throughout the kingdom.
[18] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2131/2131-h/2131-h.htm. Critics may note that the Kshatriya varna had a hereditary calling of war among Hindus in North India; however, these communities belonged to standing armies of the king, not to feudal militias, which were a feature of Kerala.
[19] https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/163620. keleri meant “be enshrined.” https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/856212.
