privacy policy

Jathikkummi, the Song of Caste: Knowledge, Sanskrit and Folk in Performance

Presenter:

· Athira Sreedevi Prasenan University of Hyderabad (Hyderabad, India)

Timeslot:

07/26 | 17:50-18:10 UTC+2/CEST

Abstract

This paper addresses Pandit K P Karuppan’s Jathikkummi or the Caste-Song written c. 1905 as an attempt to question the logic of caste practices, interweaving the performative worlds and epistemic fields of vernacular folk and Sanskrit traditions. I read Jathikkummi as belonging to a genre of songs which converses with a dynamic corpus of existential and philosophical reflections of the early twentieth century Malayalam-speaking region in the south of India. It looks at the origins of the text and the biography of its writer as deeply connected in self-fashioning in the margins: Karuppan (1885-1938) was born into a caste of fishers in princely Cochin and entered the world of Sanskrit from the margins of caste-order. Jathikkummi, a free-wheeling translation of Manishapanchakam attributed to Adi Sankara, was written during his association with an upper caste centre for Sanskrit learning called Kodungallur gurukulam where he was taught in its ‘outskirts’. By borrowing the story of the Sankara-untouchable debate of Manishapanchakam, the song makes overtures to folk performative traditions like that of the pottan theyyam in British Malabar. Kummi, the preferred format of lower caste women’s songs, also helped the spread of its criticism of caste through women performers. But what makes Jathikkummi truly eclectic and feminine is its epistemic categories – yoga and jnana personified as yogappennu and jnanappennu – inspired from vernacular philosophic conversations on paths to liberation and knowledge. I argue that the reasons for the emergence of the song are embedded within the early modern history of Sanskrit learning accentuated by the changing socio–cultural mileu of Cochin