In Kerala the cult of the Mother Goddess, known variously as Bhagavati, Devi, Durga, Shakti and Kali, her fierce form, or even as Koravai, in her earlier form as a huntress, is very strong. There have been continuing attempts at assimilation between Dravidian goddesses and Aryan gods in the form of marriages. These form the central image in most of the wall paintings on the temples and even in palaces such as the exquisite private champer of the 18th century king Marthanda Varma at Padmanabhapuram (near Kanya Kumari). Two gods may even merge, as in the case of Shiva (considered a Dravidian god) and Vishnu (an Aryan one) who takes the form of a beautiful dancer Mohini; she so enhants Shiva that he forgets himself and embraces her. The encounter has given birth to the distinctively Keralite dance form known as Mohiniattam, the Dance of the Enchantress, known for its graceful, sensuous movements. It is performed by women wearing gold-bordered off-white cotton saris and gold jewellery, their hair in a chignon high on one side of the head and encircled with white jasmine flowers.

Kerala has a number of dances in honour of the Mother Goddess that form part of both temple rituals and folk traditions and are performed by men in a hypnotic trance. In these, she appears in her fierce form representing pure energy, to destroy evil.

Theyyam is a popular folk dance in which the whole community participates. It celebrates not only gods, but real-life heroes like Tacholi Othenan, a Robin Hood figure whose many romantic exploits are part of folk history. The making of elaborate costumes is part of the ritual: cutting and painting coconut sheaths in black, white and red patterns, gathering fresh coconut fronds into skirts, fashioning ‘breasts’ out of the dry coconut kernel and tying a red cloth around the waist. The climax involves a bloodthirsty combat between the goddess and the demon Darikan.

In its more complex form, the Dravidian-Aryan encounter led to the elaboration of a complex social pattern, the caste system. Its Kerala variant was the matrilineal system, known as Marumakkathayam, which allowed women to inherit the family property. It has given the women of Kerala a certain independence of spirit.

The Brahmins or priestly caste, who dominated the caste hierarchy with their carefully guarded knowledge of the sacred texts and rituals, were known as Nambudiris. The former chieftains displaced by the Aryan influx were absorbed into Kshatriya or princely caste, while internecine warfare among local chieftains engendered a special community of warriors known as the Nairs.
    The Nairs were bred to be fighters and some of them were trained like the Samurai as suicide squads, named Chavers, who would fight their way through an enemy attack, in an orgy of death that even astonished the Portuguese. They were not allowed to form any family attachments, and Nair women evolved a family organisation known as tharawads. A further twist ws the decree that amongst the Nambudiris, only the eldest son could marry a Nambudiri woman; the younger ones had to form alliances generally with Nair women, in which husbands remained more or less on suferance. Men were visitors in the Nair female household; a husband indicated his presence to possible rivals by leaving his weapons or his slippers outside the door of the bedroom of the house; if a woman got tried of a man she simply threw his slippers out.

The children of such unions were provided for in the mother’s household or tharawad. Though such a system implies the existence of a matriarchal system or a female-dominant society, power was in fact most often vested in the hands of the senior-most male member, known as the Karnavar. The children born of a Nambudiri father and Nair mother could be employed in the temple as Ambalavasi, a respected avocation. If, however, a Nambudiri woman had an alliance with a Nair man, she would risk ostracism and children born of the union would become singers or performers, institutional outsiders.

In spite of the rigidity of the caste system, Kerala seems to have been exceptionally hospitable to people of different beliefs. The Jews were the first to land here after the burning of their temple in Jerusalem. Doubting Thomas, one of the original apostles, came to Kerala in AD 52 (though there is no incontrovertible proof of this), is said to have been welcomed ashore by a flute-playing Jewish girl. The Arabs, who had been coming to Kerala long before they became converts to Islam, also brought in the first wave of Muslim settlers two clerics, Malik-ibn-Dinar and Sharaf-ibn-Malik, who landed at Kodungallur with their followers and families; the first mosque to be built on the sub-continent was here. The new settlers blended in perfectly; the older mosques in Kerala follow the local vernacular with tiled sloping roofs and verandahs along the side. In some of the Moplah families, particularly in North Malabar, the Marumakkathayan system of inheritance is followed. Moplah women are known for their beauty and even on the roadsides their little girls are noticeable with their colourful head scarves floating behind them.

Of all the religious groups, the Syrian Christians are special to Kerala. This is an umbrella term for all shades of Christian conduct their services in Latin, Syriac or Malayalam. The first of the group is said to have been baptised by St Thomas himself, when he landed in AD 52 and converted a group of high-caste Nambudiris. In the centuries that followed, batches of immigrants fleeing persecution from Persia and Babylon landed in Kerala. A group of Nestorian Christans contiues to this day.

When the Portuguese arrived, the Roman Catholic prelates were understandably dismayed to find the Kerala Christians less than willing to accept the hegemony of Rome. An uprising led to the ‘Oath of the Coonen Cross’ being sworn at Mattancherri in Cochin, when thousands of agitated Kerala Christians tied a rope to a stone cross and defied the authority of Rome. This was the breaking point and led to the forming of the Jacobite (Syrian) group and the Mar Thoma Church. St Francis Xavier made his own contribution by converting the lower castes, notably the fishermen, to Roman Catholicism, and later the British established the Anglican Church. The result of this rich mix may be seen in the extraordinary number and variety of churches in Kerala. Some of them are plain, others in every shade of pastel, pink, blue and cream, with fanciful excerscences. But the missionaries also set up schools and colleges which have contributed to the high educational level of the average Keralite. One who is remembered is the 19th century German missionary Dr Joachim Gundert, who built a church in Tellicherry and compiled the monumental Malayalam-English grammer and dictionary; he is better known today ad the grandfather of Herman Hesse.

The Jews have an equally long history in Kerala. Marco Polo noticed their presence in Quilon, or Kollam. They are traditionally classified on the basis of racial origins as White Jews and Black Jews. They still have their synogogue, with its quint white-and-blue ceramic tiles, no two alike, the Jewish candelabra, and enormous silver scrolls topped with golden crowns that are taken out for their festivals, even though there are no longer enough men to carry them.  

It is in the art and architecture of Kerala, in her music and poetry, in her dance and drama, and finally in the deep philosophical bent of her mind, that the turbulent legacy of her past is resolved. Her natural luxuriance has filled her art forms with a lushness visible in the paintings on the walls of the Mattancheri Palace at Cochin; in the ornate wood carvings that embellish her temples and palaces, of which the palace in Padmanabhapuram (now amalgamated into the state of Tamil Nadu) is a superb example; in the gold jewellery that the women wear that picks up its forms from seeds, buds, tiger claws and snakes’hoods; in the brass lamps that use to hang from the verandah of every house in the evenings, or stand higher than a man’s height, bathing the temple courtyard with glimmering light; and finally, in the gorgeous costumes of the Kathakali performers.

Red, green, white and flashes of gold, are the colours of a Kathakali dancer. They reflect the colours of nature; the green of the land flecked with the white of herons, the golden sands of the river beds and shallow bays, the black of the tropical night, the oozing red of the earth. The background on wall paintings, is always white - pearls, jasmines, the whites of the eyes, all scraped out from the painted surface, while the figures are outlined in black and filled in with colours that create a superbundant sense of life. This is true of the everyday art of Kerala, painted on the lorries and trucks of Cochin which are smothered with floral decoration, and the academic art of Kerala’s princely painter, Raja Ravi Varma, whose evocation of mythological themes and languid portraits of the beautiful women of the Travancore family have won him a permanent place in the Kerala pantheon of art.

The temple architecture of Kerala is both restrained in its use of space - buildings rarely exceed the height of a palm tree - and are elegant in composition. It presents a contrast of simplicity and richness, with its modular structures and multiple tiled roofs, walls and covered passages alternating with open courtyards at the centre. There are several types to be found in the Kerala temple, but in its simple form it unites the dark, central womb chamber representing the Dravidian experience and the tall flagpost or pillar representing the Aryan stave or spear. At a symbolic level, the architecture seeks to integrate the physical experience with abstract ideas of light and darkness, movement and stasis, emptiness and fulfillment, as the devotee approaches the inner sanctum along a circuitous path.

The innate perception of space and movement also forms part of dancer’s training. The Kathakali dancers with their magnificent headresses and huge billowing skirts stand in a knees-half-bent, feet-flexed-outwards stance, that enables them to give the impression of leaping through the air, while in fact taking very small steps. It is as though the three steps that the dwarf Vamana took have made the Keralite only too aware of the tricky nature of space. By the sheer force of his artistic training, the Kathakali dancer enables the audience to leap into another dimension. Gods and goddesses, mortals and demons, plants and animals meet in a shining matrix, filled with the philosophic truth enuciated by the great teacher Adi Shankara when he spoke of the unity of all creation. At such moments Kerala’s past, present and future contraditions are resolved and only the experience remains, as transparent in its beauty as a drop of water on the edge of a lotus leaf.

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