Role of medieval literature in the growth of Malayalam language:
Malayalam belongs to the family of Dravidian languages. Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are the other cultivated languages belonging to this family. Of the four, Tamil is considered to be the oldest, the most cultivated and welldeveloped.
Malayalam is believed to be an offshoot of medieval Tamil of the 8th century AD, and this fact is proven by many inscriptions and other materials, now unearthed, belonging to the centuries successively following the ** of medieval Tamil. However, it may be clearly stated that of all the four cultivated South Indian languages, modern Tamil is the closest to Malayalam.
Malayalam as a language got separated from its parental ** – the medieval Tamil – due to many reasons; sociological, political, geographical, and to some extent, geological too. Among them, the most important is sociological.
It is often said that the Namputiri Brahmins and caste Hindus of Kerala got themselves allied; physically, spiritually and economically. In Kerala, they formed themselves into a separate community or nationality, who were socially and culturally cut *** from the rest.
Sanskrit which was the spiritual and cultural language of the Brahmins made its way into the local language and a new hybrid language called “Manipravalam” (the coral-pearl combination of the local language and Sanskrit) was formed. Till the formation of Manipravalam, the then spoken and literary language of Kerala had been using loan words from Sanskrit in a Tamillised form; as an evident from the words written during those periods both in Kerala and in Tamilnad.
When Manipravalam began to make its influence felt on local language, the system of adoption of Sanskrit loan words underwent a change. Sanskrit words were used as they are, and there was a tendency on the part of a few writers to Sankritise even the local words. Such artificial forms are abundant in Manipravala works written during that **. By the 14th century, the entire nature of Kerala language was changed and a language worthy of being termed as “Malayalam”, with all its modern characteristics, had been formed by the time. The literary works belonging to the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries bear ample testimony to this fact. There were many literary works written during this formative **. They may be classified under two major groups according to the nature of languages and mode of literary styles used in them. They are known as “Manipravala” works and “Pattu” works. “Pattu” means “song”, and the compositions which strictly followed the rules of the then Tamil poems were termed as “Pattu” works.
One speciality with Malayalam literature is that the Manipravala works written during the earliest literary periods – 12th, 13th, 14th & 15th centuries – are of purely non-religious nature. Poems of courtesants, their life and their activities were composed by many poets. Today, they are considered as the best sources for researchers to study the then existing social conditions of Kerala. Almost all Manipravalam works are replete with this sort of sensuous themes. Meanwhile, Pattu works are mostly on religious, mythological and ritual themes. Ramayana and Mahabharata were composed in Pattu styles during this **.
Tuncattu Eluttaccan, ascribed to 16th century is often called the Father of Modern Malayalam. It is in his Ramayana and Mahabharata we find the language of Kerala establishing itself in its modern form. There were many works written in imitation of Sanskrit literature. They come under the titles “Sandesa Kavya” (Messenger Poem) and “Champus”. An indigenous literary branch known as “Attakkatha” written for the Kerala classical dance-drama Kathakali form the bulk of medieval literature of Malayalam.
Devotional poems and philosophical works were also written by many during this **. There were good prose works in Malayalam from kautilya’* “Arthashastra”, Called “Bhasa Kautaliyam”, it is perhaps the earliest of Malayalam works now available. Thereafter appeared many prose works mainly describing the mode of acting classical Sanskrit plays in temples; known as Kutiyattam. Malayalam prose got a fresh energy when the foreign missionaries began learning Malayalam and writing prose works on theological themes.
