In my previous articles, I touched on similarities in the larger structures of government and institutions between ancient Kerala and pharaonic Egypt. In this article, I discuss a relatively small detail, which shows how deep the similarities run even into seemingly insignificant minutiae. Not only is the resemblance striking for the enormous difference in time periods being compared, but it is also remarkable for the material evidence that supports it with undeniable clarity.
The Wariyar (Malayalam വാരിയർ, also spelled in English variously as Variyar, Variar, Varier, Warriar, Warrier, and Warier) are members of the ambalavasi community in Kerala. As I wrote in The Ambalavasi, they belong to a subordinate tier of temple priests who have hereditarily worked in Kerala’s temples since very ancient times. Their presence is attested by temple inscriptions at least since around 1000 CE, when Kerala’s wooden temples began to be rebuilt in stone. Their traditional occupation was to make flower garlands and other floral decorations for numerous temple rituals and to polish the temple’s holy vessels. Flowers were picked at sundown, then made into floral decorations during the night or in the early hours of dawn the next day to keep them fresh. These floral decorations, typically garlands, but also in other forms, such as on kolam and thidamb (different idols of the deity), were intricate arrangements, beautiful pieces of art that took hours to make, adhering to strict rules of purity, with skills passed down from one generation to the next over many centuries.
In the past, flower gardens were donated to temples and maintained by temple personnel for use in the temple’s various rituals. That this practice was followed since very ancient times is attested by many inscriptions: for example, one, on a rock in the Suchindram temple, ca. 950 CE, registers a gift of land by Tennan Anukkapallavaraiyan for a flower-garden; another in the Ganapati temple at Thiruvalla, dating to ca. 1224 CE, states that a certain Naranatadar shall lay out a sacred flower garden and shall supply two sacred garlands to each of three shrines. That temple personnel were in charge of these gardens can be found from similar inscriptions, such as those naming thotta-wariya-perumakkal, ‘temple gardener.’ Some inscriptions clarify that temple workers who supervised the flower-gardens were also in charge of the flower garlands.
According to Anantha Iyer, writing in 1912, there are at least five different accounts of the wariyar’s origins. The first is that they are descendants of a brahmin man married to a sudra woman, the term wariyar believed to be a corruption of parasava, which means ‘legitimate offspring of a brahmin and sudra.’ According to another account, the term wariyar is derived from warijam or ‘one who has sprung from water.’ This legend claims that when brahmins complained to Parasurama about unfitness of sudras for temple service, Parasurama cleansed the sudras with an elaborate purificatory ceremony involving a plunge bath in the temple pond. A third account is that wariyar derives from waruka, ‘to sweep,’ because they are allegedly descendants of temple sweepers. The fourth account is similar, but more colorful, claiming that wariyar derived from a brahmin woman who was excommunicated by other brahmins for sweeping away a bone dropped by a bird inside a temple. The fifth account takes a page out of the Christian Bible, claiming that wariyar are offspring of a young brahmin woman who conceived miraculously by the grace of a deity for whom she had made flower garlands. But she was excommunicated by her old, impotent husband for obvious infidelity, and delegated to a new caste called wariyar.
Presented here is a sixth account of the wariyar’s origins, this one derived not from any brahmanical legends, but from archeological records in ancient Egypt: a papyrus roll, a copy of a text originally created around 1850 BCE, discovered in a Theban tomb, rolled up inside a ceramic vessel. The text lists different vocations that a young man could follow in those days. It was written by a scribe, and reads like a recruiting advertisement, for it exalts the scribal vocation, while disparaging other trades. Called by Egyptologists as Papyrus Lansing, it is currently preserved in the British Museum. In its long list of vocations is this one: war-Hr, who “makes flower arrangements and polishes the pitcher stand. He spends all night at work as if it is day.”
The [H] in war-Hr is the ‘twisted rope’ hieroglyph 𓎛, which corresponds to a consonantal voiceless pharyngeal fricative sound that has no corresponding sound in modern Malayalam or English, its closest approximation being a sound between [h] and [sh]. It is transliterated for convenience here as [H] (e.g., as also in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae). This Egyptian sound [H] changed in modern Malayalam into Dravidian [zh] or Sanskrit [y] or was dropped altogether in various words. For example, Egyptian mH ‘cubit’ became Malayalam muzham; wHa ‘break, uproot,’ became waya-kk; nHH ‘oil’ became neyy; Hpll.t ‘lizard’ became palli; and so on. Thus, war-Hr likely became wariyar.
The Egyptian war-Hr was in charge of creating floral garlands, collars, and bouquets for temples and funerals, working during the cooler nights in order to keep the flowers fresh for the next day. Like in the ancient temples of Kerala, Egyptian temples maintained gardens where flowering plants were cultivated for use in the temple’s rituals. The gardens were supervised by gardeners such as a man named Nakht who lived around 1400 BCE and carried the title “Gardener of divine offerings of Amun.” Nakht was buried in a tomb in Thebes; the murals on his tomb walls show him holding incredibly intricate and beautiful flower bouquets. It is clear, not merely from the pictures in Nakht’s tomb, but also from other epigraphic evidence, such as Papyrus Harris (a corpus of writings, ca. 1150 BCE which describes many types of floral bouquets offered in the Temple of Amun), that the florist’s trade was highly developed, specialized, and important in the temples of pharaonic Egypt since very ancient times.
Considering that the job title and functions of the Egyptian war-Hr and the Malayali wariyar are practically identical even in the unrelated tasks of making flower arrangements and polishing vessels, it is undeniable that the latter derived from the former. In his memoir Kharaksharangal published in 2014, N.V. Rama Wariyar describes personal anecdotes of making garlands for temples and polishing temple vessels a mere half century ago. As incredible as it may sound, he was among a long, continuous line of florists, the war-Hr, who made their livelihood crafting flower arrangements and polishing ritual vessels in temples since at least 1850 BCE, almost four thousand years prior.
It is simply staggering that such minor traditions lasted so long without alterations, without interruptions, over such vast distances, in such disparate places between people so seemingly different in culture and pedigree. Why would a community hold on to a culture and cherish traditions for thousands of years in the face of extraordinary economic, social, and political changes all around it, unless the culture and the traditions worth preserving so were none other than its own?
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