The three Pracheena Manipravala Champu poems are Unniyachi Charitham, Unniyadi Charitham and Unni Chiruthevi Charitham.Champu (or Champukkal) poems, written in the model of Sanskrit Champu poetry, defined the development of medieval Malayalam poetry. The padya or "verse" portion of a Champu poem was written in Sanskrit meters while the gadya or "prose" portion was almost in medieval Malayalam meters.Champu poems can be classified into two types, being Pracheena Manipravala Champukkal and Madhyakala Champukkal.Ramayanam Champu, Bharatham Champu, Naishadham Champu, Rajaratnavaleeyam Champu, Kodiyam Viraham Champu, Kamadahanam Champu, Chellur Nadhodayam Champu, Narayaneeyam Champu and Thenkaila Nadhodayam Champu are the main Madhyakala Champu poems.
Saturday, 13 June 2015
Manipravalam, a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India
Manipravalam was a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in South India, which used an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam is termed a mixture of Sanskrit and Tamil. Tamil language was the language of the region, part of Tamilakam, at the time of Manipravalam's genesis and use and its introduction caused a significant transition of Malayalam from Tamil in Kerala. Mani-pravalam literally means ruby-coral, where Mani means ruby in Tamil while Pravalam means Coral in Sanskrit.Malayalam is referred to as ruby and Sanskrit as coral. This was prevalent in Vaishnavite religious literature in Tamil Nadu and literary works in Kerala.
Since Tamil Vatteluttu did not have characters to represent some Sanskrit sounds, letters from the Grantha script were used to represent them. Native words and grammatical endings were written using Vatteluttu, and Sanskrit words were written using Grantha. Essentially, it was a hybrid script composed of Vatteluttu and the Grantha script.
A parallel literary tradition existed during the period that derived inspiration from the Tamil poetic tradition, known by the name pattu.Leelathilakam, a work on grammar and rhetoric, written in the last quarter of the 14th century in Kerala, discusses the relationship between Manipravalam and Pattu as poetic forms. It lays special emphasis on the types of words that blend harmoniously. It points out that the rules of Sanskrit prosody should be followed in Manipravalam poetry. This particular school of poetry was patronized by the upper classes, especially the Nambudiris. The composition of this dialect also reflects the way Aryan and Dravidian cultures were moving towards a synthesis.
Dramatic performances given in Koothambalams, known by the names of Koothu and Koodiyattam, often used Sanskrit and Malayalam. In Koodiyattom, the clown (vidooshaka) is allowed to use Malayalam while the hero recites slokas in Sanskrit. Tholan, a legendary court poet in the period of the Kulasekhara kings, is believed to have started this practice. The language of Kramadeepikas and Attaprakarams, which lay down the rules and regulations for these dramatic performances, is considerably influenced by the composite literary dialect of Manipravalam. Various hagiographies on the life of the Vaishnava saint Ramanuja were in manipravalam.
2015 UGC NET, Changampuzha Krishna Pillai
Changampuzha Krishna Pillai (11 October 1911 – 17 June 1948) was a celebrated Malayalam poet from Kerala, India, known for his romantic elegy Ramanan which was written in 1936 and sold over 100,000 copies. It is a long pastoral elegy, a play written in the form of verse, allegedly based on the life of Changampuzha's friend Edappally Raghavan Pillai. This has also been converted into a movie in 1967. He is credited with bringing poetry to the masses with his simple romantic style. He died of Tuberculosis at a young age of 36. His style influenced the next few generations of Malayalam poetry, notable among them was Vayalar Ramavarma, famous Malayalam lyricist.
A movie based on the life history of Changampuzha is in the planning stage.Born on 11 October 1911 at Edappally, presently part of Kochi City, coming under the Ernakulam District of Kerala State, Changampuzha Krishna Pillai had his elementary education there itself. He completed his school education at Aluva and Ernakulam. College education was from Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram. Later, after working as a clerk in Military Accountant's Office at Pune and at Kochi, he went to Chennai for studying Law, which he could not complete due to financial problems. He later worked in a press at Thrissur. It was during this time he wrote many of his works, though he had started writing even when he was a student. He had to study his own poem at the B.A. Honors class, a rare experience, indeed.
Even though he had only about 25 years of creative period in his life, he became an epic poet, without writing any epic poem following the conventional norms. His legendary pastoral elegy, Ramanan was sold more than 100,000 copies, a record that still stands firm in Malayalam. Famous Malayalam critique Prof. Joseph Mundassery who was the first Education Minister of Kerala State and also the first Vice-Chancellor of Cochin University, was highly impressed reading 'Ramanan', and wrote his own introductory remarks for its 15th reprint praising the elegy.
Changampuzha's other famous works include Vazhakkula, Divyageetham, Yavanika, Bashpanjali, Manaswini, Sankalpakanthi, Devageetha, Spandikkunna Asthimatam, Udyana lakshmi, Patunna Pisachu, novel Kalithozhi and others. He was a close friend of Edappally Raghavan Pillai, another great poet of his time. 'Samastha Kerala Sahitya Parishath', an organisation of Malayalam literary workers had its first convention at Edappally. Changampuzha worked hard for its success.
Changampuzha started a career as a clerk in Port trust. He could not continue there due to health and personal reasons. He took up another assignment at a Printing Press (Mangalodayam) at Thrissur. He got married and became a father of three children. Later, he started suffering from tuberculosis and became bed ridden. Finally in 1948 he died at the age of thirty six and nine months. His body was cremated in the compound of his house at Edappally. An appropriate monument has been erected there, which is visited by the lovers of Malayalam language.
UGC NET 2015 EXPECTED QUESTION:Lalithambika Antharjanam
Lalithambika Antharjanam (1909–1987) was an Indian author and social reformer best known for her literary works in Malayalam language. Her published oeuvre consists of nine volumes of short stories, six collections of poems, two books for children, and a novel, Agnisakshi (1976) which won the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award and Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977. Her autobiography Aathmakadhakkoru Aamukham (An Introduction to Autobiography) is a very significant work.
She was greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and social reform movements among the Nambudiri caste led by V. T. Bhattathiripad. Later she contributed to the social reform in her own way. Her writing reflects a sensitivity to the women's role in society, and the tension between the woman as a centre for bonding and the woman as an individual. She was concerned particularly the nature of the sexual contract.
Lalithambika was born in 1909 at Kottavattom near Punalur, Kollam district, Kerala, in a conservative household. She had little formal education, however, she managed to learn to read and write, an unusual achievement at the time. 'Antharjanam' means 'she who spends her life inside'. Her first name is a compound of 'Lalitha' (the Red One,) and 'Ambika' (literally 'little mother', the name of a goddess).
Although she was part of the most powerful landholding Brahmin caste of Kerala, Lalithambika's life-work was the exposure and destruction of the hypocrisy, violence and injustice with which women were treated in Nambudiri society. She was not allowed to study in school, and could only glean scraps of information about the outside world through male relatives who were kind enough to tell her about current affairs. She knew a little about the ongoing Indian freedom movement, and longed to take part. In 1926, she was married in the prescribed way to the farmer Narayanan Nambudiri. As a wife, she now lost all contact with the outside world and her day consisted of a claustrophobic routine of hard physical labour in smoky kitchens and damp closed courtyards, petty domestic politics and the fears and jealousies of other similarly imprisoned women. But she also saw their courage and their determination to be human in spite of the unnatural conditions of their lives. In this world her only outlet was her writing, which she did in secret. At the end of a working day that began before dawn, she would put her children to sleep, bar the door and write in the light of a tiny lamp. Constant exposure to smoke and inadequate lighting began to destroy her eyes. When the pain got very bad, she would write with her eyes closed. The frustration and degradation of her caste sisters moved Lalithambika to expose their plight in her celebrated Malayalam novel Agnisakshi (Fire being the Witness). The novel was later made into a film with the same title in 1997.
Nambudiri custom allowed only the eldest son to marry within the caste; all the others contracted sambandhams with women from other castes, usually the matrilineal Nairs. This ensured that inheritance through the male line was always undisputed, since the children of sambandhams did not have the right to inherit. As a result many Nambudiri women remained unmarried all their lives, in restrictions that amounted to rigorous imprisonment. They were not supposed to let the sun's rays touch their bodies. Any slip or shadow of suspicion would condemn them to being tried by the smarthavicharam courts of male elders. These courts were empowered to strip a woman of her social position and throw her out to starve. For these women, who were not even allowed to look out of windows, such a fate was psychologically as well as economically devastating.
On the rare occasions when antharjanams left the house, they had to envelope their whole bodies in a thick cloak, and carry a leaf umbrella whose canopy reached to their waists, so that they could only see their own feet when walking. By contrast, lower caste women were required by law to bare their breasts when in the presence of higher caste men, and could be punished for not doing so. They thus habitually went with their upper bodied uncovered, and many reformist and missionary movements in early twentieth century Kerala clothed lower caste women by force to uplift them. By the 1930s, most royal households (who were below Brahmins, caste-wise) were allowing their women to wear blouses, but the practice took longer to percolate downwards to poorer families, especially as blouses were quite costly.
In her story Revenge Herself (English translation anthologised in The Inner Courtyard, she highlights the moral and sexual choices faced by upper caste Nambudiri women, who were secluded in the inner house, through the story of the "fallen woman" Tatri. This is especially sensitive in Kerala, where Nair women are relatively free sexual lives in their matriarchal culture. In her story Mulappalinte Manam she highlights the woman's role as the central cohesive force in society, and she supports artificial birth control, so long as it does not contradict this basic womanly qualities of healing the schisms opened up by individualism.
Her son N. Mohanan was also a noted author and a winner of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award.
HER WORKS
- Adyathe Kathakal (First Stories), 1937
- Takarna Talamura (Ruined Generation), 1949
- Kilivaathililoode (Through the Pigeon Hole), 1950
- Kodumkatil Ninnu (From a Whirlwind), 1951
- Moodupadathil (Behind the Veil), 1955
- Agni Pushpangal (Flowers of Fire), 1960
- Seetha Muthal Satyavathi Vare (From Sita to Satyavati), 1972
- Agnisakshi (Fire being the Witness), 1976
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