Tripunithura Grandhavari- A Study

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Born in 1954 P. Narayanan had his Master's Degree in History from Maharaja's College, Ernakulam and Doctoral Degree from the University of Kerala. He was a faculty of Sanatana Dhrama College, Alappuzha from 1979 to 2009. He has written two other monographs: (1) Making of Sanatana Dharma Vidyasala (2010), Published by SDV Management, Alappuzha. (2) Moothathu: Sthanavum Samudayavum (2016), Published by Vallathol Vidyapeetham, Sukapuram.

A cruise through the 334 page Tripunithura Grandhavari reveals that the medieval Tripunithura temple was a gigantic institution embracing a wide range of spiritual and mundane matters and thus was sine quo non to all, whether theists or atheists. It had a patriarchal role as a rich land lord, employer, consumer, organizer of entertainments, patron of ancient scriptures, and also as custodian of the traditional system of law and economy, besides providing spiritual solace to the people. In order to integrate its multifarious activities it coordinated the service of various caste groups thereby creating a sense of mutual dependency and hierarchy among them.

An attempt is made in the ensuing pages to describe the socio-economic and cultural milieu of the Tripunithura temple during the 17th and 18th centuries on the basis of an unpublished Malayalam manuscript titled 'Tripunithura Grandhavari', accessed from the Regional Archives at Kochi.

This study has been made possible with the help of a two-year fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla. The scintillating atmosphere at the institute, with its weekly seminars and abundant opportunities to interact with scholars from various disciplines, was indeed a source of inspiration for me. My special thanks are due to Prof. Peter Ronald deSouza, former Director of IIAS, for his valuable suggestions and ideas. I am greatly obliged Prof. M.G.S. Narayanan for his valuable suggestions. I have benefited from discussions and consultations with Prof. Madhavan Palat, Prof. Ghanshyam Shah, Prof. T. R. S. Sharma, Prof. Sanjay Palshekar, Prof. Tridip Suhrud, Dr B. D. Sharma and Dr Veena Sharma. I recall with gratitude the prompt services of Shri Premchand (Librarian, IIAS) and his team in providing me with all the facilities and most of the source materials required for this study. The administrative staff of the institute has been extremely kind to me, and I thank them for their support. I recall with immense gratitude the services of Dr Meenu Aggarwal, RMO of the Institute.

Infinite indeed is my indebtedness to Aruna Ramachandran, who has painstakingly edited this manuscript.

I would like to acknowledge the support of my wife Mrs Vijayam Narayanan for the successful completion of this monograph.

his study seeks to unravel the socio-economic and cultural transactions of of the Tripunithura temple (located in the former princely state of Cochin), and also its relations with the ruling chief, in the light of an unpublished Malayalam manuscript titled "Tripunithura Temple Grandhavari' (henceforth TGMS), procured from the Regional Archives at Cochin (now Kochi). A manuscript can be defined as any document or book transcribed by hand. These original sources are quite reliable, and have meaning and importance beyond a coterie of specialists. Grundbavari, the regional term for manuscripts, is a combination of Sanskrit and Malayalam words: grandha is a Sanskrit word which means tying, binding, stringing together, etc., and vari in Malayalam denotes something written or marked. Before print culture became widespread, records were preserved in Kerala by using a small iron rod less than 6 inches long to mark/write on palm leaves that measured 3 inches by 4 on an average. These leaves were tied together with a thread looped through a hole in the centre. Therefore, the term 'grandhavari' means written materials that have been fastened together.

In pre-modern Kerala, individuals and institutions preserved their documents and records of daily transactions in this form. Often, the private documents of families and institutions are preserved in manuscript form as grandhavaris. These chronicles provide vital information about land grants and the extent of property holdings. tributes, social customs or taboos, rites and rituals, households, daily expenses, wages and price indices, weights and measures, intra-regional and inter-regional trade relations, and transport and communication. Not all grandhavaris possess all these attributes. Ar the same time, this cluster of characteristics serves as a general guide for identifying the features of the grandhavaris that appeared in medieval Kerala.

The grandhavari is distinct from the koyil olugu found in Tamil Nadu, which can be described as the practices, traditions, methods of worship, festivals and administration related to a temple. Besides providing details of the temple property and its history, the grandhavaris also offer an insight into rural life-its material culture, agricultural practices, and the relations between spiritual and temporal powers along with an elaborate account of the ritual hierarchy in the temple. They offer insight into a host of values, beliefs and attitudes, particularly those concerning religion, debt, crime and social taboos in the pre-modern period. The first attempt to elevate grandhavaris to the status of a historical corpus was made by M. G. S. Narayanan in his Vanjeri Grandhavari. Subsequently, a few other publications appeared in this genre. But for such stray publications and occasional references, however, the grandhavaris as such have not merited the attention of researchers.

The grandhavari that forms the focus of this study, the TGMS, is quite unique in several aspects. It seems that the grandhavari was originally written on a day-to-day basis in the form of chronicles on palm leaves, and at a particular point of time it was copied onto paper. The title page of the 334-page Malayalam manuscript has the following lines: "Trippunithura Temple Grandhavari copied from the original [palm leaf] by H. H. Rama Varma, G.C.I.E., L.L.D, the Maharaja of Cochin'. The year in which these chronicles were transcribed onto paper is not mentioned here. At the same time, a perusal of the documents in the TGMS reveals that they were copied in the course of the late 19th century, as the most recent document in the text dates to AD 1896. It may be reasonably assumed that this exercise was undertaken by King Rama Varma, who ruled Cochin from 1895 to 1914. Popularly known as Rajarshi, Rama Varma was an erudite scholar and a great patron

of learning and literature. Besides setting up a Sanskrit college, he made Tripunithura a centre of learning. He also had an excellent collection of palm leaf records. Unlike his predecessors, Rama Varma was quite progressive in his outlook and had no hesitation in disposing of a part of the jewellery of the temple for building railways in Cochin. Naturally, his independent outlook and bold state-building policies produced tensions in his relations with the colonial masters, resulting in his abdication in 1914.

It should be noted here that the records in the grandhavari do not bear a chronological sequence, and some are not even dated. It seems that while attempting to copy, the palm leaves might have been shuffled due to their caducity, as they become quite brittle with the passage of time. In fact, this is the only chronicle to have been transcribed onto paper by a ruling chief. What prompted the ruler to copy these chronicles from the palm leaves is not clear.

Apart from highlighting the rituals of the temple, the manuscript also points to the collaboration and conflict between sacred and secular powers. This is the most attractive aspect of this grandhavari. The style and script of the language belong to the medieval period; there is no long vowel or elongation. Nor do we come across punctuation marks like the comma in these documents. Equally interesting is the fact that the manuscript does not use the decimal system, and instead has fractions for everything indeed, it was a 'world of fractions and symbols. The fractions vary from 1/320 to 1/8; more interestingly, symbols are used to denote these fractions. For example, we never come across 1/320 or 1/8 in numerals but only certain symbols for these fractions. It is at times extremely difficult to decipher the symbol because of the style of writing, posing a challenge to a study like the present one. Certainly this document has to be supplemented with other temple records to get a comprehensive picture of the temple. For instance, in 1943, the Devaswom Department of Cochin State published a volume in Malayalam titled Tripunithura Kshetram (henceforth TGP).

The significance of describing the past in its totality by drawing upon a wide variety of sources, including the details of life among ordinary people, was first suggested by Jules Michelet. The idea of 'total history' gained a new momentum in the writings of the French Annales School, especially Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, whose works have been widely read since the second half of the 20th century. These scholars highlighted how day-to-day events in the lives of individuals and institutions can be integrated with mainstream historiography.