Ramanattam (

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...

: രാമനാട്ടം,

IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...

: Rāmanāṭṭaṃ) is a temple art in

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

, India. The dance drama presents the story of

Rama Rama (; ), Ram, Raman or Ramar, also known as Ramachandra (; , ), is a major deity in Hinduism. He is the seventh and one of the most popular '' avatars'' of Vishnu. In Rama-centric traditions of Hinduism, he is considered the Supreme Bein ...

in a series of eight plays and was created under the patronage of Veera Kerala Varma (AD 1653–1694) ''alias'' Kottarakkara Thampuran. Ramanattom is based on a story from the epic ''

Ramayana The ''Rāmāyana'' (; sa, रामायणम्, ) is a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic composed over a period of nearly a millennium, with scholars' estimates for the earliest stage of the text ranging from the 8th ...

'', covering the incarnation of Rama to the Rama-Ravana War, Ravana's defeat and Rama's crowning at Ayodhya. The story was written by Kottarakkara Thampuran and is divided into eight poetic sections so that each section can be enacted in one day. These eight sections are puthrakameshti, seetha swayamvaram, vicchinnabhishekam, kharavadham, balivadham, thoranayudham, sethubandhanam and yudham (war). Ramanattam is widely believed to be the immediate stem of the well known classical art form of Kerala,

Kathakali Kathakali ( ml, കഥകളി) is a major form of classical Indian dance. It is a "story play" genre of art, but one distinguished by the elaborately colourful make-up and costumes of the traditional male actor-dancers. It is native to the M ...

.www.keralahistory.ac.in

Origin

After the staging and creation of Krishnattam by the then

Zamorin The Samoothiri (Anglicised as Zamorin; Malayalam: , Arabic: ''Sāmuri'', Portuguese: ''Samorim'', Dutch: ''Samorijn'', Chinese: ''Shamitihsi''Ma Huan's Ying-yai Sheng-lan: 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores' 433 Translated and Edited by ...

Raja of

Calicut Kozhikode (), also known in English as Calicut, is a city along the Malabar Coast in the state of Kerala in India. It has a corporation limit population of 609,224 and a metropolitan population of more than 2 million, making it the second la ...

in 1657 AD, its fame spread all over Kerala. Its success induced the neighbouring chief of the Raja of

Kottarakkara Kottarakkara (IAST: Koṭṭārakkara), also transliterated as ''Kottarakara'', is a town and municipality in the Kollam district of the Kerala, India. The town is close to Kollam Port, which has a rich history linked to the early medieval per ...

(Kottarakkara Thampuran) to request the Zamorin for the loan of a troupe of performers on the eve of some festive occasion. It is said that due to internal feuds and political rivalry between the chieftains of the neighbouring States, the Zamorin, besides refusing to send the performers, insulted and humiliated the Raja of Kottarakkara with the remark, ''" It is useless to depute the troupe, because your (Raja of Kottarakkara's) court would be neither able to appreciate nor understand anything of the highly artistic Krishnattam and the high standard of the performance "'' Here the political rivalry between the two chieftains turned into art rivalry and lead to the Kottarakkara Thampuran, initiating a parallel mode of entertainment, which he called Ramanattam. While the Zamorin of Calicut, Manaveda's Krishnattam was written in

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

, the "language of the gods"; Ramanattam was in

, the language of the people.

References

Culture of Kerala Hindu dance traditions Performing arts in India Dances of Kerala Theatre in India Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity Arts of Kerala Religious vernacular drama {{India-dance-stub