KERALA Journal [home][books&ideas][women [movies][sitemap][e-mail

Quiet

One Hundred Years of Malayalam Literature: A Brief Survey
by Thomas Palakeel
 
 

God has shown us no real trick at all for baring one's soul to another being; language, for one thing, is so imperfect, out of anxiety one errs, and meaning blurs. from Nalini by Kumaran Asan trans. by tp

Introduction:
Malayalam Literature: A Brief Survey
by Thomas Palakeel
 

Malayalam Literature and the Kerala Tradition   Malayalam. malayalaM.A palindrome. Celebrating the fecundity of the Indian experience in his Midnight's Children, the novelist Salman Rushdie couldn't pass up a chance to joke about the palidromic name of our language. Often misguessed as the language of Malayasia, this language of the southwestern state of Kerala is a member of the Indo-Dravidian family. Population of the region--and hence the number of speakers of Malayalam--is approaching 35 million, women slighly exceeding men with a ratio of 1036/1000, and it is important to keep in mind that Kerala's population density is a whopping 749/sq km.  Although Kerala itself is a new political entitity as it was formed only in 1956, incorporating the Malayalam speaking kingdoms of Travancore, Cochin, and Malabar which was ruled directly by the British, the region has had old, complex, often unbelievable historical connections with the larger world outside, without quite being a player, Kerala was at least a scene of innumerable ancient dramas. Indeed, Sangam literature refers to Kerala (the Cheras) as kudapulavendar, the Western power! King Solomon is believed to have imported spices and timber from the area! To top it off, the Christians believe that Apostle Thomas himself arrived in Kerala in the year 52 AD.  Without too much difficulty, one can see in Kerala traces of much ancient traffic, and it is not hard to agree on the key phases of this region's historical development, which eventually becomes synonymous with the growth of its lanaguage and culture. Throughout the three key hegemonic phases--Dravidian, Aryan and European--Malayalam language assimilated new genres and styles, and gradually built up a rich regional literary tradition, an integral part of Indian Literature, not to mention World Literature. If I were to write about eighteenth century or nineteeth century Malayalam literature, I would not have been bold enough to make such a claim--it would have been nice--for Malayalam literature was mostly parochial and derivative, but the rise of modern consciousness changed all that, and by early Twentieth Century, the transformation was complete.  Writers like Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Arundhati Roy have created an impression in the West that any good writer in India who is staring at the blank paper preparing to produce his or her masterpiece will have to choose English as the creative medium on acccount of some inexplicable inadequacy of the so-called "vernacular", the mother-tongue. In a recent essay introducing an anthology of contemporary Indian writing from India, Salman Rushdie wrote: "The prose writing--both fiction and non-fiction-- created in this period (1947-57) by Indian writers working in English is proving to be a stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the eighteen `recognised' languages of India, the so-called `vernacular languages', during the same time; and, indeed, this new, and still burgeoning, `Indo-Anglian' literature represents perhaps the most valuable contribution India has yet made to the world of books. The true Indian literature of the first post-colonial half-century has been made in the language the British left behind.'' Without disputing Rushdie's judgement of the quality of the work done in English, one can easily see the folly of judging the writings in the "eighteen recognized" languages. Until now most regional language writers have had no need to justify the mother-tongue, for they are all writing in languages nearly as old and rich as the English language, which itself was a negligible little language that suddenly blossomed in the post Norman conquest (1066 AD) years, in the light and darkness of French hegemony.  It is no coincidence, and it is no news, that the blossoming of the English language and the rise of political and economic power in early modern England happened simultaneously, and without taking into account the enormous political issues surrounding language and power, it is pointless to try to respond to Rushdie, or even try to correct the great many highly literate people in the West who think that only English is "language" and everything else in India is "dialect."  A non-Malayalam reader's dismisal of regional language literatures like Malayalam need not be taken too seriously. Rushdie did mention O.V. Vijayan in the same dismissive tone, perhaps having read the recent Penguin translations, but anyone who has read Kasakkinte Ithihasam or the stories of Basheer, Zacharia, N. S. Madhavan, Gracy, Madhavi Kutty, Sara Joseph, or even the poetry printed in any single issue of Bhasha Poshini will know that Rushdie's statement is wrong and better forgiven. In a review of Rushdie's anthology published in Indian Express, the reviewer S. Prasannarajan--this review also circulated on an email discussion group popular among postcolonial scholars and students in the US and elsewhere--the writer said that if only Malayalam and the Indian regional literatures had a Gregory Rabassa (the great translator of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude), Rushdie and "international aficionado of oriental imagination" would not dismiss regional literatures.  In this brief discussion, I wish to put aside quibbles about professional translation and international marketing and offer an outline of Malayalam literature in the last one hundred years. Again, I know this period has its harsh critics, too: V.C. Sreejan, for instance, has chastized an entire century for imitating the West and its literary forms! Whether we ought to see the trajectory behind Twentieth Century Malayalam Literature as mere imitation or not, it is a fact that only in the twentieth century, with the advent of social modernity, that Malayalam literature has completely transformed itself into a truly independent literature that can encompass all classes and communities.  Now, as Malayalam literature responds to the cultural trends of other prominent literatures in the East and the West, it is also able to contribute exemplary works of poetry and fiction in return to the larger world beyond the geographical boundaries of Kerala.   ORIGINS OF THE LANGUAGE Endless debates about the origins of Malayalam language mark one aspect of the Kerala public culture. Of the many theories of origin, the most popular ones claim that Malayalam was born out of the confluence of Tamil and Sanskrit, that it originated out of Sanskrit alone, and that both Malayalam and Tamil came out of a single proto-language. In his Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages (1875), Bishop Robert Caldwell argued that Malayalam evolved out of Tamil and that the process took place during the Sangam period (first five centuries of the Common Era) when Kerala belonged to the larger political unit called Tamilakam, the apogee of Dravidian civilization. After the waning of the Sangam Age, the Kerala region went through a prolonged "Dark Ages" (500-900 C.E.) when Sanksritization (influx of Aryan culture from the North) of the dialect was completed, which helped the emergence of Manipravalam (a mixture of the local dialect and Sanskrit), which in turn helped the formation of Malayalam as an independent language. Several poetic works written in this mixed-style have survived; highly erotic and decadent in nature, they express the world view of the feudal class that monopolized the Kerala culture until the first decade of the twentieth century. The first Malayalam prose work, Bhashakautiliyam, a commentary on Kautilya's Arthasastra was written in the twelfth century. The first Malayalam grammar/literary treatise, Lilathilakam, compiled in the fourteenth century, is considered the culmination of Manipravalam style. While the region continued to produce important works of literature in Sanskrit and Tamil, only by the fifteenth century Malayalam had would produce its first truly classic work--this was Cherusseri's Krishna Gatha--and the sixteenth century became the age of Thunchath Ezhuthachan,  the father of modern Malayalam literature, whose renderings of Adhyatma Ramayana and Mahabharata employed the narrative device of kilipattu, Bird Song. Until the end of the eighteenth century, Malayalam Literature was closely allied with Kathakali, a complex operatic dance form dependent on the literary quality of the text. The nexus between Kathakali and poetry helped the growth of literary Malayalam. Almost exclusively poetic in form, the post-Sangam literature was in the mythical mode whereas the Sangam literature (35,000 lines of poetry by 400 authors have survived) tended to be realistic portrayals of common people and their domestic and personal experience that we have come to expect from our modern literatures. Only in the eighteenth century, with the work of poets like Kunchan Nambiar, we begin to see the return of such literary expressions of domesticity. A gradual departure from the mythical to a satirical mode, as Northrop Frye would have put it, becomes evident at this juncture. By nineteenth century, prose forms enter the tradition with the translations of the Bible and many works of European prose literature become widely available. Literary journals like Vidya Vinodini, and Bhasha Poshini (still published by Malayala Manorama group, without question one of the best literary journals in any language in the world) opened up the language for the larger public while several prolific writers and scholars belonging to the different royal families patronized literature. Translations from Sanskrit and English helped the foundation of a broader base for Malayalam writers. This period is marked by the trail- blazing work by the Text Book Committee of Travancore (1866) which functioned like a literary movement. Valiya Koyil Thampuran and A. R. Rajaraja Varma were champions of this movement even though these two royals were basically part of the orthodox literary establishment. European education and Christian Missions had already created a suitable environment for journalism, historical writing, and prose in general. The first travelogue (a native Catholic priest named Paremmakal Thoma Kathanar's Journey to Rome) was written as early as 1786. The first history of Kerala was published in 1860, and its author, Pachu Moothathu, also wrote the first autobiography in Malayalam in 1871. The first Malayalam novel was published in 1887, and two years later, one of the greatest contributions to the genre was made by Chandu Menon whose novel Indulekha ushered in the Modern Period of Malayalam Literature.  Rise of Social Modernity: Next Page>