On the trail of a poet and scholar

R.P. Raja sifts through oral and written history to unveil the range of works by Irayimman Thampi in his book Irayimman Thampi Kaviyum Kaalavum. The author tells about his seven-year research for the book.

October 16, 2014 04:02 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:33 pm IST - Thiruvananthapuram

R.P. Raja

R.P. Raja

Ask any Malayali mother to sing her favourite lullaby, and ten to one, you will hear ‘Omanathinkalkkidaavo…’ Ask her who wrote those fine lines and more often than not, you are likely to draw a blank. You provide the answer: it was Irayimman Thampi who wrote those lines etched deep in our collective memories to lull the little Prince Swati Tirunal to sleep. Supplementing the answer, you add that it was the same person who wrote ‘Prananaathan enikku nalkiya paramananda rasatthe …’ the verse where a woman recollects the moments with her beloved, and she might pooh-pooh your statement. ‘Lullaby to sringara’ does not describe the range of the body of his work. In sheer diversity of range – kritis, varnams, manipravala kirtanam, kilipaattu, and Kathakali attakathas – his creativity touched all these. Researching on a man of such calibre, drawing on archival information, personal collections (both oral and written history), R.P. Raja spreads out a large canvas before us through his book Irayimman Thampi Kaviyum Kaalavum. The author speaks on his seven long years of research on the poet.

Is Iriyamman Thampi Kaviyum Kaalavum a natural corollary to your book, New Light on Swati Thirunal (2006)?

In a way it could be defined so. When I commenced work on Swati Tirunal, such a focus was never in my mind. It was my association with the late Kizhakemadom Govindan Nair and the vital information he gave me, which raised questions about the authenticity of the authorship of certain writings. There seemed to be an overlapping in certain pieces, where some mismatch in the author and his writings were evident. Naturally, I thought it fit to extend my research to Iriyamman Thampi also.

The book has dwelt extensively on the sociological angle of an era. The marumakkathayam in practice, the roots and emergence of the Ammaveedu, customs and rituals practised by the ruling family, and those that had matrimonial relations with them, all of this have been incorporated in the book.

I have to go back to how I started my work on Swati Thirunal to give you an idea of the manner in which such inputs had to be included. When Dr. S. Balachandar questioned the very existence of a person named Swati Tirunal, I thought it necessary to delve into the family archives and establish the truth. For this I had access to material. In the case of Iriyamman Thampi, the information had to be culled from various sources, particularly the Puthumana Ammaveedu in Thiruvananthapuram and Kallada. The responses and the willingness to share relevant information by the people I met proved rewarding.

How did you work towards attaining the definite authorship of works by Iriyamman Thampi, particularly the ones that had got mixed up with those by Swati Tirunal ?

The work by Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer was the primary source of information. He attributes 29 Sanskrit kritis, five varnams and 27 manipravalam kirtanams to Iriyamman Thampi. Publications have carried this as the final and correct break up of works; no one probed the correctness of these findings. I was keen to clarify the authorship. A clear example is the Swati Tirunal kriti, ‘Bhogindra shayinam’, which Ulloor has credited Iriyamman Thampi with authorship. The use of ‘Padmanabha’ and its synonyms in lines are not enough to declare that it was written by the poet prince or otherwise. Relying on Swati’s ‘Muhana Prasanthya Prasa Vyavastha’, wherein he speaks of the use of alliterations, one can figure out the ones he wrote. Similarly, the Oriental Manuscript Library and Research Institute at Kariavattom has a manuscript, 138-G, (handed over to the then Travancore Oriental Library by Thanavan Thampi, son of Kuttykunju Thankachi) which was a definitive source for me. In the case of the varnams and manipravala kirtanams, I have been able to fix authorship because of the use of the word ‘paradevate’, which is a direct reference to the Bhagawati of Attingal, the family deity of the Travancore royal family. This could only have been used by the one and only female composer in the family, Ayilyam Thirunal Rugmini Bayi, Swati Tirunal’s sister.

With material coming from so many varied sources, how did you sift the genuine from the imprecise?

When I started my earlier work on Swati Tirunal, the late Professor S. Guptan Nair had advised me to keep my research purely academic and not let the subject stray into uncertain terrain. In the case of Iriyamman Thampi Kaviyum Kaalavum too, I have adhered to his words.

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