Fun Saturday Morning at Tarakkad 2007 : The Trikkavu Family Ancestral Home

Fun Saturday Morning at Tarakkad

The post below is a reproduction of the Notes I wrote up in late June 2007 after a visit to our ancestral family home in Trakkad, a large TamBrahm village in the heart of Palghat town.

Sometime in mid to late 2004 we attended the wedding of my cousin Rajan's son, held in Palghat - a lovely occasion when many cousins from my maternal family were present as also my sister Shobha or Shobhi with her husband & son. She had also brought along my father who was staying with them in Coimbatore.

On the morning of the wedding father took Vasumathi & I round Palghat - a city he had been to college in - & also showed us our ancestral home in Palghat.I had, until then, been unaware that such a house still stands in place. We had little time & did not go in - I took some snaps & it was then back to the wedding.

I knew - from what father had told me previously & also form an excellent family history written by my cousin Raja 1993 - that our paternal great-great-great grandfather, Narayana Iyer or Peria Narayana Pattar (PNP) had been a very prosperous timber merchant in Palghat but that he had stood guarantee for someone's loan & had to forfeit the house & his thriving business when this guarantee was invoked. This was approximately 1825 & he - a widower with 2 young boys - immediately moved to our later ancestral base of Trikkavu in Ponnani, 55 miles away in Malabar.

On a subsequent 2007 visit to Palghat I had the time to revisit the house & talk to the residents. The Notes I made then (from immediately below & up to the sub-heading Epilogue/Sequel) are reproduced below.

The thought in publishing these Notes has been that - with the passing of generations - authentic sources of any family's history are increasingly fading from memory though they are not only so valuable but such fun too! This post should help in ensuring that @ least some aspects of the family annals are preserved from falling into oblivion.

Let us recall the lines from Troilus & Cressida & then I will take up the story :

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 

As done: perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright: .... .... ....

The Visit or Visitation

My friend & class-mate Rohinton Cursetji & I visited Ottapalam near Palghat in June 2007, to attend the wedding of another friend/classmate's daughter. This was on the 22nd of June 2007.

The next day saw quite a bit of action as we first went to see Kalpathy in Palghat, a large Pattar village (Pattar being the colloquial Kerala term for Tamil Brahmins settled in the state for centuries), clean & immaculate as the other Pattar villages, only much the biggest. 

The Old Family Home - Tarakkad

Then Rohinton & I drove round to the nearby & equally big Pattar village of Tarakkad where, in 2004, father had shown me & Vasumathi the ancestral house of our Trikkavu, Ponnani family. It is on Shivan Kovil Street, at the top of & slightly to the left of a T junction on the street i.e. on the top bar of the T where the street running up from the Simhanadha Bhagavathi temple meets it. 

This is the house my paternal great- great-great grandfather Peria Narayana Pattar (PNP) had, perforce, to sell in about 1825 upon his move to Ponnani some 55 miles to the northwest. According to father, the move had become necessary as PNP had guaranteed someone's loan &, when the guarantee was enforced, the house went. And his timber business too had to be liquidated.

The house is a middle-of-terrace house (as they all are in the Palghat Brahmin gramams or settlements) since sub-divided or partitioned into 3 houses, each of which, by itself, is a modest structure perhaps some 1200- 1300 sq feet in area. But, all 3 taken together, the undivided house is an impressive structure of about 4- 5000 sq feet + though the architecture is similar to the other gramam houses i.e a carry-over from Tanjore villages. 

Well, I thought it wise to ask for permission before shooting pictures lest there be any objections. And there was a schoolboy inside the verandah and, along with him, a young girl of about 19 or 20 who was his sister. She insisted we step in,  which we did. Little did I realize then that it was a defining moment of the trip for me, for I crossed the threshold in more senses than the literal. It was fast- forward to the past from thereon.

7/163 Shivan Kovil Street, Tarakkad - my 1st photo of the ancestral home. Note how it has been partitioned into 3 portions & also the Tulsi Maadom or masonry housing for a Tulsi plant @ right.

Meeting the Family of the House

Her name was Gayatri & she was quite good-looking & fair, a college student. When I explained that I had reason to believe that my family owned the property a long time ago, she told me what she knew of its provenance in her family - this being that her grandfather's grandfather had acquired the property a long time back and that the conversion or division into 3 separate dwellings was undertaken only late in the life of this  2 x great-grandfather. 

This was most interesting, for it seemed to corroborate my hunch that perhaps the house was a single, undivided property in PNP's time. She went on to say that she will get her (paternal) grandfather to join the proceedings as he could surely tell me a lot more about it all. At precisely which moment, & as if on cue, that worthy stepped out on to the verandah dressed in a very wet towel! He had obviously just come out of the bath &had   wanted to find out what was going on out in the front of the house. 

But, when the purpose of my visit was explained, he quickly went in and reappeared a moment later dressed in a mundu. He asked about my background, wanted to know my father's name & proudly confessed that he shares the name with father, it, however, being T.S.Venkatachala Iyer in his case. He spoke good English, though most of our conversation was naturally in Tamil, & revealed he was 89 years old. He is quite a sprightly and healthy 89, very fair & I could see how young Gayatri came to be so fair herself.

T.S.Venkatachala Iyer - a handsome fellow @ 89 (in 2007)

The History of the House : the Changes in Ownership

Let us get back to the story. Venkatachala Iyer said his paternal grandfather was one T.S.Mahadeva Iyer &, given that VI is 89, I guess TSM was born sometime around 1850. T.S.Mahadeva Iyer bought this house over 100 years back from a man who was in debt & who, therefore, had to sell the property. Venkatachala Iyer said the debt was about Rs 6000 which must have been a not insubstantial sum for those days i.e. before or around the turn of the century. The property was divided into 3 dwellings somewhat late in Mahadeva Iyer's life as he had three sons and a daughter. So a division became necessary, for in those days people did not migrate beyond Palghat as has been the case since the late 1930's & 40's.

When I recounted my exploits in Palghat to Vasumathi she, who misses no historical detail howsoever slight, reminded me that father had indeed said, while showing us the property in 2004, that the house had changed hands again after PNP's (great-great-great grandfather's) time, that the name of the buyer was said to be Mahadeva Iyer & that the seller was reportedly in debt & the sale thus induced. 

Very interesting that the successive owners of the house had fallen into debt. And it is gratifying to know that father's account of the house's provenance is now confirmed. Father had said his grandfather (my great grandfather & PNP's grandson) had related this background to him & that father had been shown the house by him when they visited Palghat once. So, there we have it, the validation of our family's account of the property and its fortunes. But there is more to come.

Shivan Kovil Street, Tarakkad - note the T-junction @ right & the Tulsi Maadom. The ancestral house itself is just to the left but out of the frame.

An Interesting & Piquant Conversational Joust

Now, Venkatachala Iyer said I must meet his elder sister, Rashamma, who could tell me a lot more about the property & I was naturally keen to see her. Because women usually have more interest than men in such matters & I expected she could give me a few rare nuggets. Also, ever the keen student of anthropology, I was by now looking for a little more insight concerning this family i.e. Venkatachala Iyer's (VI) family.

Which left me unprepared for the unexpected turn the conversation with her took & the old lady's acute & astute recall of my own mother's family.

I was led inside the house & we passed through a fair-sized hall or koodam into the central courtyard, thazhvaram or mittham, which is enclosed by roofed passages on all 4 sides with the courtyard itself open to the sky. There, sitting under the eaves surrounding the open central space, was an old lady dressed in a nightie or full-length frock. She was sitting on a bench & was introduced as VI's elder sister, all of 95 years old, a remarkably perky & cheerful looking 95.

She announced that she was 95 & that she spends most of her time sitting in this roofed passage skirting the courtyard. She had just had her 2nd coffee of the morning – " Ippa thaan rendam kafi kudicchane". And then she went on to say that she has a daughter, a medico, living in the UK with her husband Gopalan, a retired engineer. 

Rashamma

The old lady, Rashamma, had been to Singapore, Canada, Scotland & London – wherever the daughter has lived but she has decided to travel no more as it is too cold in Dundee, Scotland where the daughter now lives.

And then she got down to business, asking me where my family comes from. The mention of Trikkavu in Ponnani - my paternal family base - brought forth questions about whether I knew Eashwaran & the P G Parameshwara Iyer family. I was not sure about the 1st named but I said my cousin Usha - from my maternal family of Thoppil Matom in Parur - is married to the eponymous grandson of PGP, now the head of the family & living in Palghat. I added that my aunt Chellamani, Usha's mother, also lives in Palghat now, not with Usha but in her own house. At this the old lady really got going.

Rashamma seemed to know all about Chellamani & her late husband Ambi, a former Police Officer. She wanted to know my exact relationship to Chellamani. I said my mother & Chellamani were paternal cousins i.e daughters of brothers. The conversation - the focus of which had shifted now from my father's to my mother's side - then went as follows :

Rashamma : Oh, I know there were 4 brothers in Parur (my mom's hometown), let me see, there was the retired Super of Police, Vaidyanatha Iyer, & what was the name of the gentleman who practiced law in Ernakulam?

Self : That was T.R.Padmanabha Iyer, Chellamani's father, the 3rd of the quartet.

Rashamma : Right, & remind me of the name of the eldest.

Self : Rangantha Iyer, & my mother's father, brother No : 4, was ….

Rashamma  (interrupting me) : Yes, Ramakrishna Iyer, I know.

VI (shoving his oar in) : And did you know Sundaram Iyer, the retired Post Master?

Self : Of course, he was my great aunt Chelli's husband & they settled down in Parur after his retirement.

VI : He was our maternal uncle.

Rashamma (impatiently ) : "Iruda, naan kelkkattum" (this to VI, meaning "pipe down, will you, let me talk to him" - she was really beginning to warm up by now & clearly enjoying our tete a tete even more than I was). And your mum had 4 atthais (paternal aunts) did she not? Besides Chelli there were Thangam, Ponnamma & I forget the name of the 4th. 

N.B : 1. I couldn't help her there but I was later taken to task by my sister Shobhi & cousin Vasanti as to how I could have been so slow on the uptake - the lady in question, Meenakshi, was my own paternal g'mother Meena's mother, strangely enough, the mother & daughter shared names. 

2. This Meenakshi provides the link or descent connection between my mother's Thoppil Matom (TM) Parur family & my father's Ponnani Trikkavu family. Besides that patrilineal relationship, she is also - through the TM line - my maternal great aunt!

VI (shoving his oar in again) : And how about the son of one of those Atthais, Narayana Iyer, did you know him?

Self (by now reeling under the swift lefts & rights) : Oh, you mean the 1 who was in KL?

VI : Besides KL, he also lived in Singapore & built a grand house in Parur where he lived on retirement.

Self : Yes, I know the house you mean (it hadn't looked so grand to me but I withheld comment) but we are closer to the family of his younger brother, Ramanathan, because he married another cousin of my mom,  Ammini.

VI : Yes, I know & Ramanathan was somebody senior in Peirce Leslie.

Self : In fact, cousin Rajan,  Ammini & R's son, celebrated his son's wedding here in Palghat in 2004 & I attended it. The lad & the bride are both medicos. It was @ this wedding that I again met Janaki, the daughter of Narayana Iyer.

Rashamma : Even Rajan & his wife, what's her name, are medicos. (True, & I supplied the name Bhavani).

VI (proudly) : You know, I am well-known for bringing about marriages, its my hobby so to say, & I was the one who suggested & wrapped up Rajan's son's marriage too. It was held in Pallipuram village here (True again). Give me your daughter's horoscope (a rapid change of course, this).

Self (gallantly rising to the thrust & parry) : Could I ask a couple of questions about the house? Was it already subdivided when your grandfather bought it?

At this Rashamma took over & said, no, it was not. She went on to say that, when the late Mahadeva Iyer bought it over 100 years ago, the house was in a dilapidated condition ("paazh adanju irundhudham") but an integral, single-family dwelling ("orumichu irundhudhu"). It was the late Mahadeva Iyer who restored or renovated it, again as a single house on the original plinth, &, much later, divided it into 3 units. This because he married his daughter to a domestic priest or purohit ("oru sadharana vadhyarukku kudutthaar")  & the couple was given the right-hand side unit. Their descendants live in it presently. The middle unit is owned by a cousin, Krishnaswami from Delhi, who wishes to keep it in the family & has the unit under lock & key. So, for over 100 years this house has been with the same family!

What is more remarkable still is that the house was a single, integral unit when our great-great-great-grandfather, PNP, owned it some 200 years back & it remained so till, possibly, the 1 ^st war. 

The Biggest House in Any Palghat Gramam

Since we were given a tour of the house & the back garden, I can say that my estimate of 4-5000 sq feet built-up was quite on the dot & the back garden ran about 200 feet out from the plinth. Mr Venkatachala Iyer & Gayatri said their unit stood on land 10800 sq feet in extent. This gives a total plot size of 32400 sq feet for the whole property or 0.56 acre, a very large plot indeed by Palghat gramam standards. In fact, father did bear me out when I said that I had not come across such a large plot in Palghat villages. PNP must have been very well to do to have owned such a big property. I suppose the timber trade was a good business in those days what with all that Teak & Rosewood from the Nilambur & Nelliampathy forests.

And when the house was a single unit, the verandah must have been full 80 feet long and 20 feet wide & must have made for an imposing entrance hall from which PNP probably conducted a good deal of his business. I wonder if he also had a separate office though he surely must have used a godown for the timber. Now, Venkatachala Iyer proudly said to me that their house is also the oldest in Tarakkad & his sister confirmed it.   So, the oldest as well as the largest structure in Tarakkad!

The oldest house and yet only 100 + years since the re-building? That didn't figure but, later, I realized that :

§         The plinth & foundation are the original ones, dating at least 300 years if not more.

§         The re-build or restoration was only for the superstructure or elevation.

§         Such re-builds can not deviate from the original elevation as the terrace or row plan and original plinth do not permit the taking of any liberties.

§         So re-builds are mere restorations of sections of the elevation in the front of the house & of the interior.

§         Restoration is imperative every 50 or 100 years to accommodate changing family needs as well as to retrofit with electricity & plumbing. Besides, the unforgiving Kerala monsoon has to be reckoned with.

The interior layout of the house, I carefully noted, was unchanged with Nadumittham, Koodam, Ugranam and so on.

So, there we have it, the biggest & the oldest structure, over a 100 years with the Venkatachala Iyer family & the previous seller had also gotten into debt. And it is clearly the ancestral house for us because father had been told Mahadeva Iyer was the buyer @ the last (re)sale. And, of course, the house had been pointed out to him.

An Intermission

Cursetji had been sitting with us throughout the proceedings wearing a beatific smile even though he had understood not a word of what was being talked! Equally, the old man & his sister were not clear what or who a Parsi might be but they let it pass - being intent on the Thoppil Matom agenda & most excited with the recall & discussion of TM folk with someone from that family. It was getting on for a quarter past 11 now (we had entered a little before 10), what with all the jabbering, the tour of the house & the inspection of the portraits of T.S. Mahadeva Iyer and his son Subramania Iyer (V's father).  Cursetji reminded me of our lunch meeting with his friend Unni at Kollengode, about 40 KM away.

So, we said our goodbyes with many expressions of mutual goodwill & with my hosts repeatedly muttering that we have come close together, a remark the utterly astounding import of which I had completely missed whilst with them. But I felt there were a few loose ends to be tied up & decided that in the evening I will pay them a further visit. Meanwhile, there was lunch awaiting us at Kollengode.

Another (partial) view of the house

The Further Visit in the Evening

We got back by from Kollengode by about 4 & in the evening, after a failed attempt to see the L.K.Ananthakrishna Iyer Museum, we were back @ the Tarakkad house by about 6. Our hosts of the morning were pleasantly surprised to see us. In fact the old lady, on my stating apologetically the reason I was back (a few more questions about the house), said : "Onnodu Poorvika mann allava? Adhu kondu pinnaiyum izhukkarathu!"( It is your ancestral soil after all, so its pulling you back!). Unlike in the morning, VI looked natty in a kurta or jibba with a sweater over it and a scarf round his neck – keeping the chill out, you see! His wife & daughter-in-law were, as in the morning, pottering about in the kitchen but the old lady, Rashamma, came out to greet us & sat on the thinnai. The son, T.V.Subrahmanian, was out again, he being a civil contractor & builder.

Rashamma's Family

The name Rashamma, I knew, is an informal 1, so I asked the old lady's name. It turned out to be Parvathi which is also my mother's name, & coincidence, but she is known as Rashamma to all family and friends. She then told me the story of her life. Her husband was one Mr Subramanian who worked for the ACC in Coimbatore . At the mention of ACC, Rohinton Cursetji perked up only to learn that the man had died in 1943, aged 41, leaving Rashamma a widow of 31 with a 12 year old boy & two younger children, both girls. The boy too died in his early teens, of jaundice, & the elder girl, of some cause I was not told, a few years later. That leaves Rashamma the doctor daughter living in Dundee & now aged 67. Since 1943 she has lived in her natal home, the sturdy &d admirable VI taking care of her.

Rashamma's daughter is married to Gopalan, the son of Narayana Iyer, the formerly Kuala Lumpur based cousin of my mother. And I had met this Gopalan a few times during my Parur visits. He is about 20 years older than me & we have had little or no interaction but I recall seeing him a few times. 

So, the penny dropped, rather late in the day. I should have twigged in the morning that there was some connection by marriage & asked instead of gawking speechlessly when all those TM Parur names were being tossed around! And it was Sundaram Iyer, Chelli atthai's husband (& VI's uncle) who had initiated the marriage. Nnow I also understood where VI got his match-making propensities from! It was all as simple as that & the phrase "we have come very close" was now comprehensible – they had assumed I knew.

VI repeated his request for Sundari's horoscope & I parried again. Rashamma asked about Sundari's looks & when I told her she is very goodlooking, Rashamma responded "Nee paakka nannaa irukkaye, pinna aval ane irukka mattaa?" (Since you have good looks, why would your daughter not be good looking?"). She certainly knew a thing or 2 about winning friends & influencing people.

But she was more interested now in talking about the daughter & son-in-law. The latter, she said, had retired but was into something akin to Yoga though she could not recall the precise name for it. Turning to Gayatri her grand-niece, she asked :" Endimme, Gopalan ippa ennavo pannaraane, adhu ennavaakkum?" (Tell me, darling, what is it that Gopalan is busy with now). It turned out to be the Art of Living!

Well, that was it, we said our goodbyes again &, as we left the house, Venkatachala Iyer exhorted me to let him have the horoscope.

Final Appreciation

As I lay on my berth in the Trivandrum – Madras Express, I recalled what I had learnt :

· I have made certain for myself that this Tarakkad house did, indeed, once belong to our family – father's identification of the house led to this visit, or, in fact, visitation, by me.

· Also, father's information that the next seller was also in debt was independently confirmed by both of my hosts.

· The house was an integral, unitary structure in Peria Narayana Pattar's time, that much being evident from what Rashamma told me.

· The house is certainly 1 of the largest, if not the largest, in Palghat & possibly, if Rashamma & her brother are right, the oldest in Tarakkad.

· The house has remained in the same family for over a hundred years now & is likely to remain so at least a little longer.

But the most important takeaway was the profound impression 95-year-old Rashamma made on me - a lady widowed @ a young age, losing 2 of her children soon thereafter, a long life centred around her remaining daughter but such a zest for life & radiating good cheer & spirits.

And what a fund of family lore - even my family's. A typical senior lady, if not matriarch, of those days with a lively interest in people & relationships - & a great memory to boot. 

And her brother Venkatachala Iyer - steadfast in his care & support of the sister! I could see that their relationship was 1 of the intimacy & easy familiarity of nearly 90 years.

Some Idle Speculation 

But I couldn't help wondering about an essential similarity of family features & complexion as between my hosts & our family on both sides. While we may not all look alike there are some common features – the way one looks or gazes, certain facial features, gestures & movements & so on.  

I formed a notion that maybe many Pattars of the Mangudi Brahacharanam subsect share these traits & that Tarakkad might, possibly, be an exclusively MB village. This is certainly more than likely as people from the various regions of Tanjore did belong to specific sub-sect groups each of which must have lived together as endogamous communities in their exclusive villages. And on moving to Palghat the practice should have been simply continued – that was the social/communal model in the old days, wasn't it?

When I showed the pics to Vasumathi she independently noticed the similarity of features & we discussed the idea. She feels that our hosts, & possibly a good number in Tarakkad, could also be Kaushika gotra. Interesting but I don't know if I'd take it that far. It seems more than likely, though, that my hosts & our family (but father's or mother's side?) may have had some common ancestors as recently as 4 -5 or 6 generations back. Interesting, to speculate upon.

Enough of idle speculation, what is the moral of the story. I think it is that if you go looking for trouble you will find it. I may have got rare nuggets of family info but VI is after me for Sundari's horoscope.

Epilogue or Sequel : Further Connections with the Family of VI & Rashamma

As I mentioned right @ the beginning of this post, the narrative reproduced above was penned by me in July 2007 - whilst the details were fresh in my mind - & relayed to many cousins & my 2 siblings. That email caused a little flutter of excitement among some in my family - because, like me, until father happened to show it to me when in Palghat, most of them were unaware that the Tarakkad house still stands.

The upshot of this was that there followed @ least 3 visits in the next few months - my sister Shobhi, my cousin Vasanti (together with my aunt Lalitamma) & my cousin Meena. Meena, in her school days, had actually lived a few years in Palghat, just a few houses down the street from VI & Rashamma. She knew them well but I am not sure that she knew the house once used to be our family's.

A garage or lean-to or potting shed (call it what you will) to 1 side of the house - the 1ly house in any Palghat gramam with such a facility. The broad back of Rohinton Cursetji adds tone to the view or No?! Venkatachala Iyer - a former schoolmaster - used to give tuition classes here for neighbourhood students.

Further Inputs & Gleanings

Please note that the following - other than my Father's inputs concerning the house in Tarakkad - could be thought (& in fact, might be) tedious detail. But, in a family history post, it is important to make sure that all relevant information is made available - if only for later reference @ some point in time.

For example, there is a 3rd cousin - who has just come into contact with me - of the Calicut (Chuppamani) family who'd find a rich load of biographic info concerning her own family in my uncle Kunjappa's inputs below. That should help with the family tree she is building.

Those who consider the info below too tedious or trivia can always skip it.

The most important supplementary gleanings were supplied by my father Doraiappan, my uncle Kunjappa (father's younger brother Neelakantan) & my cousin Vasanti.

Father

Following my visit of June 2007, my father gave me inputs that are interesting in their own right for what they reveal about the strong ties that bound our family to the Mahadeva Iyer family. Also, what father said to me about his knowledge of the provenance of the house helps round off the story :

1. He always knew that the house was an integral, single-unit dwelling in the old man's time.  He also knew that the property was split into 3 only later in T S Mahadeva Iyer's life. 

2. He had always known that it is the largest house in Palghat. 

3. As a student @ Victoria College, Palghat he had been to the house several times to pay calls on the occupants as our Trikkavu family knew the VI Tarakkad family well. 

4. Naturally so, for the T.S.Mahadeva Iyer family are connected to us several times over by marriage alliances over the years.

5. The most notable instance being that TSM's wife was a cousin of Ponani Manni i.e my grand uncles wife & herself a cousin to him & my grandfather.

6. There are other connections by marriage which he did not elaborate on over phone (but, Vasanti supplied me with that info - see below).

7. Another interesting connection with that family is that T S Mahadeva Iyer's cousin (I think father said cousin) was married to the eldest of my mother's 3 maternal uncles from Calicut (Ambi Mama, who I have never seen as he died somewhat early).

It is now clear from the above that the facts relating to the house were common knowledge in the Ponani family, at least up to the 1940's, as there was regular contact with the Tarakkad family. It would seem the fortunes of the property were keenly followed @ Ponani, certainly up to the life-time of Narayana Pattar our great-grandfather.

Uncle Kunjappa

My uncle had the following info to supplement with:

T S Mahadev Iyer was a Vakil, a lawyer, by profession. He had 3 sons :

- Chuppamani

- Ambi

- Doraiswami

no info about daughters.

1. Chuppamani had a daughter called Kamalam. She was married to Narayanaswami. He was a port conservator & was the son of (our) paternal great-grandfather, Narayana Iyer's younger brother named Subramaniam (also known as Kozhikode Chuppan)

2. Narayanaswami & Kamalam had 2 daughters. 1 died very young before marriage, her name was Gauri

3. The other daughter was Rajam, last known living with her son in Coonoor, Nilgiris. Since I am now based partly in Coonoor too, wonder if I could trace this branch - doubtful.

 4. Ambi's daughter was married to Sivaramakrishnan who is related to my dad & uncles in 2 ways :

5. he is the brother of dad's aunt Kunjammai ( Sharada). This Sharada is the great-granddaughter of our paternal great grandfather, Narayana Iyer's sister Ammini.

   -

6. Doraiswami is not connected to us .

       

7. VI who I spoke with in Tarakkad is the son of  Chuppamani.

  

Thus, we are, in these several ways related, affinally or by ties of marriage, to Mahadeva Iyer's family.

Vasanti

My cousin Vasanti - as we have seen - paid a visit soon after seeing the report of my visit to the Trakkad house.

Her feedback to me is as follows (with my annotations in italics) :

1. T S Mahadeva Iyers' wife was our grand aunt's 1st - 2nd or 3rd cousin - (this, we have already seen, refer to No.5 under "Father" above). The latter used to refer to her as Paruakka.  I wonder if that could partially explain the familiarity of features that you noted during your visit.

2. T S Mahadeva Iyer had 4 sons (so there is 1 more to be added to the list as given in No. 1 under "Uncle Kunappa" above) - Subramanya Iyer aka Chuppamani, Krishna Iyer aka Erumai (Buffalo) Ambi for reasons unknown, Doraiswamy & Sivaraman - & 1 daughter, Thailamba.

3. Thailamaba's daughter Sitalakshmi was married to Annai athai's (our paternal aunt) son  Mani & 1 of her sons (Thailamba's, I presume) was married to Annai athai's daughter Chellamma.

4. Ambi was married to Meenu, my (Vasanti's) maternal grandmother's mama's (maternal uncle's) daughter.

5. The Sharada who was married to Kunjammai's brother Sivaramakrishnan was Doraiswamy's daughter -  not Ambi's (please refer No. 5  under "Uncle Kunjappa" above).

6. BTW,  Kunjammai's mother Chuppu was the daughter of our great-grandfather's sister Ammini. 

7. TSV, son of Chuppamani has 3 brothers and 3 sisters. 1 of them, the late Kamalam was married to Narayanaswami, son of our great grandfather's brother Subba pattar also known as Kozhikode Chuppan.

As you can see, Vasanti's is a very wide-ranging list of connections between our family & T S Mahadeva Iyer's - liable to make your head swim. But then, she, who I consider the brainiest in the Trikkavu family, can visualise & assimilate connections ranging to the nth degree. 

It is not possible to insert a family tree encompassing all of Vasanti's list in a blog post - the tree will be too unwieldy to scroll around or fool around with in a blog post format. But most of you are aware she has built virtually the complete Geni tree (in conjunction with the my Thoppil Matom cousin, Shanthi). That tree on Geni should help place these individuals & families above.

Wearing his 89 years very well - Venkatachala Iyer

Finally

And how come the mention of Ponnani did not trigger any recollection of our Trikkavu family by Rashamma & her brother? The answer has to do with the fact that, I muffed it because :

A. Both of them dived headlong into a discussion of my maternal Thoppil Matom family - on account of my inadvertant mention of that family right @ the beginning of our chat. 

B. Rashamma & VI both relished that conversation - related above - as it had to do with Rashamma's daughter's marital connections. And, when that breathless but absorbiing dialgoue was over, it was time to leave (with the evening visit being devoted to a discussion of their home & family life).

But, as you can also see above, Vasanti - the indefatigable builder of family trees nonpareil, that she is - really got them going when she quizzed them about Trikkavu.

And, it must be recorded that I certainly embarrassed myself when I failed to answer Rashamma's query about the name of my own great-grandmother i.e Meena Pattiammai's mother. What is even more embarrassing is that, until Shobhi & Vasanti pointed out the connection to me, I did not even know Rashamma was asking about my great-grandmother!! 

The Trainer & the Tamer : Self with Venkatachala Iyer

The End of An Era

I took Vasumathi to the Tarakkad house in mid 2010 - Rashamma was 98 by this time & with failing memory. She did not recall our earlier meeting @ 1st & there was only a dim flicker of recollection when VI & I prompted her. Even VI had to be reminded of our 2007 meeting but he - 92 then - caught on @ once. VI's son Subramanian was engaged in the morning Shiva Panchayatana pooja which Vasumathi immensely enjoyed watching & noting the details of.

I subsequently heard, a couple of years later, that both had passed on. Truly the end of an era & of close family ties & memories.

To Chandrasekharapuram (CSP) : In Search of of Ranganatha Jatavallabhar - My 2 x Great Grandfather RJV

Chandrasekharapuram in Kerala : Time Like An Ever Rolling Stream

" 'How Do You Like London ? .... London, Londres, London ?' Mr Podsnap asked the Frenchman, putting - we notice - capital letters into his accent. 'And Do You Find, Sir,' he went on, 'Many Evidences that Strike You?'.

Nothing else but Evidence strikes us. The place is all Evidence, like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic where you are surrounded by Everything and see nothing. But Evidence of what? There is no possible answer".

Thus begins V.S.Pritchett's "London Perceived" but the words are even more appropriate as a description of my gleanings from Chandrasekharapuram in South Malabar, Kerala. I visited the village several times 2014-19 in a quest to discover something of my 2 x great grandfather on the maternal side. 

And this post is about that quest & the results of it - beginning with a description of the village of Chandrasekharapuram, its foundation in the 18th Century & the constitution of its diaspora. Taking the village in, in this way, helps see in the round something more of the man himself.

I then move on, further below, to profile & locate my maternal 2 x great within the context of the village & his times - a process of discovery aided by interviews of many people, the associated oral history & some written sources.

Chandrasekaharapuram - 12 KM ex Palghat Fort

The most beautiful agraharam village of Chandrasekharapuram is in an idyllic, rural setting some 11 to 12 KM from Palghat town. It has been, for many generations, the home of Vedic & Sanskrit scholars as well as of Bhagavathars, that is, Carnatic musicians - for example, the famous singer K V Narayanaswami was born in CSP as his father Viswanatha Bhagavathar lived in that village.

CSP by the river - where every prospect pleases.

Vasumathi & I 1st went there in August 2014. Since then, she has accompanied me once more, my daughter Sundari once & I made a further 2 visits on my own - thus 5 visits in all, the last 1 being August 2018. More visits will be made in due course - it is such an enchanting village & besides, there is an important link of family history buried there, both literally & in terms of information & evidence.

The Location

The village is right on the southern bank of the Shokanashini (also known as the Nila or Kannadi Puzha and better known as the Bharata Puzha, Kerala's river of plenty). The backyards of the houses on the northern side of the east-west street abut the river (with some having their own small, private ghats for bathing).

CSP - the approach (the village a half kilometre further on)

CSP is all of a single street about 1 KM long with some 90 homes, entirely Tamil Brahmin in its make-up, most houses are inhabited & a few visited annually or oftener by their owners from Bombay, Madras or even the US. A typical brahmin agraharam (the primary garland or ring - a term for a brahmin enclave or ghetto, derived from the traditional siting of brahmin homes around the immediate outer periphery of many village temples in Tamil Nadu, like a ring or garland) - known in former days for its vedic scholars, among them my 2 x great.

The village nestles in its picturesque setting - in splendid isolation, affording vistas of paddy, mango, jack & coconut for a mile or more on 3 sides & on the 4th side is the river & beyond it still more greenery. In Mark Antony's words :

"Moreover, he hath left you all his walks,
His private arbors, and new-planted orchards,
On this side Tiber. He hath left them you,
And to your heirs forever—common pleasure
To walk abroad and recreate yourselves."

The Krishna Temple of Venugopala - CSP

At the top or west or entrance end of the single street is the Krishna temple & about 3 quarters of the way to the east end is the small shrine to Ganapathi with the temple of Shiva or  Chandrasekharaswami being located at the bottom or east end.

This is the customary disposition of temples in many small agraharams of the Tanjore delta - with the Krishna or Vishnu shrine always being @ the west end & the 1 for Shiva @ the opposite, east end - & has been carried over thence to Kerala TamBrahm gramams or village settlements.

CSP - the Shiva temple of Chandrasekhara Swami (@ the eastern end of the village) - 

CSP : the Sanctum of Chandrasekhara.

Most inhabitants of this village - & even many of those from the village now resident elsewhere - seem to know & recite the famous Chandrasekhara Ashtakam, a hymn to Shiva composed by Adi Shankara.

The Shiva temple's Kumbabhishekam or renovation & refurbishment was performed 2015 (along with that of the Krishna temple & of the little shrine of Ganapathi, almost@ the end of the village & quite close to the Shiva temple).

CSP : the small shrine to Ganapathi

The Original Tanjore Village : Chandrasekharapuram near Valangaiman

The Shiva temple of Chandrasekhara & the eponymous Kerala agraharam, I surmised, are a carryover from somewhere in the Tanjore Delta whence the original emigrants came - & indeed, this turned out to be the case. A senior resident who showed us around, C H Subramanyan, told me that the original settlers had come from CSP in the Tanjore Delta & thus named the new settlement & the temple after their original village. I found that this is Chandrasekharapuram near Valangaiman in the old Tanjore district (now Tiruvarur district) & of course, the local Shiva temple there is of Chandrasekhara, with the Goddess bearing a unique & beautiful, meaningful name - Manonmani or, literally, the jewel of the mind or, rather, consciousness or chit & thus meant to denote : the transcending of the mind.

A note on  CSP in TN is attached as an appendix below.

A Google map screenshot showing the distance from CSP TN to Agaramangudi (whither my paternal or Trikkavu group is believed to have been based in former times) : only 24 KM or a day's march in the old days (& rather less than that by bullock cart).  

​

Anikode : The 1st Settlement of the CSP TN Folk in Kerala

The initial move from CSP in TN was not to our CSP but to Anikode, a small village just across the Shokanashini & on its south bank, directly across & about 3 KMs over the road bridge. C H Subramanyan's information about this is confirmed by many others in the village.

It is not known when the move to Anikode took place; the locals of CSP are not into that sort of meticulous chronology, a 100 years being, in their view of temporal time, eons if not light years indeed. But we know that my paternal, Trikkavu, family's ancestral village in Kerala, Tarakkad, is very much a Brahacharanam (a Brahmin sub-sect, to which my parents' families belong) village, to this day. Our tradition or hand me down lore, which I think is very much true, is that we are from Agaramangudi village near Tiruvaiyar & some other villages in the region. Hence we are known as Mangudi Brahacharanam (including my mother's family).

                                                                                      Street in Anikode (below).

I found corroboration in an online book, Vamsha Deepika, the link to which is attached, written in 1958. This states, right in the beginning, that the Mangudi Brahacharanam are but a segment of the wider Mazhanattu Brahacharanam (that is, Malai Nattu or Kerala Brahacharanam) who went to Kerala with the early mainstream in the 11th or 12th Century - this I, @ 1st thought, was somewhat early but found that Krishna Iyer's Zamorins book also quotes references to Tamil Pattars in Thali, Calicut around that date. A small group then returned around 1600 AD to Trichy district, some of whom spread on to Agaramangudi side (near Tiruvaiyar & Tanjore) as well as to other villages in the belt, including CSP TN. 

Vamsha Deepika goes on to say that some families from this group returned to Kerala around 1700 - 1750 or so & settled in Tarakkad and Manjeri. This, VD says, is our Mangudi Brahacharnam - that is to say, the sub-sect to which my mother's Thoppil Matom family, as well as my paternal Trikkavu family, belong. 

It is also known to most but perhaps not all of my cousins that Trikkavu has a descent line through TM - 1 that has been reinforced, over a few generations, by a series of Bride Exchanges. These binding, consanguineal ties between the 2 clans will be dealt with in another, separate write-up.

The Sub-sect Composition of Anikode (& CSP) : Different from Other Palghat Settlements

And, when I "censused" the village of CSP Kerala - by quizzing the locals - it was confirmed that a good many of the residents are Mangudi Brahacharanam albeit there has been a sizeable influx of Vadamas too, both as part of the initial move & also due to properties changing hands & so on. When we consider that CSP Kerala (or its predecessor village of Anikode - see below) was founded by Vedic scholars & pundits, it is easy to see that the foundation of the village had to be comprised of Vedic scholars of both these leading sects (& possibly of the other 2 minor ones too). However, a great many of the CSP residents are Brahacharanam.

The reason why CSP differs in this respect from other gramam foundations of Palghat - which comprised exclusively of a single Brahmin sub-sect - should, therefore, be obvious. Until the mid 20th Century, sectarian differences were mindfully observed & though the various sub-sects got along well with each other, the principles of exogamy (marriage out from the family group of siblings & other restricted kin) together with endogamy (marriage within a circumscribed group or sub-sect) were rigorously observed. This led to wide webs of kinship - both consanguineal & affinal - being formed within a sub-sect & to the resultant preference for living as a grouping. But in a village constituted on the basis of a profession, such as Sanskrit punditry or Carnatic musicianship, this segmentation on sub-sect lines would not have worked - it was important to draw the best available talent from among all the sub-sects & that consideration should explain the sub-sect make-up of both Anikode & CSP. They had to confederate.

The Vamsha Deepika, @ least for those with an interest in such things & a genuine curiosity about people & beginnings, is gold dust - the more you pan it the more nuggets you will find, about people or families you might know & who knows, perhaps some "connect" relating to your family too.

https://individual.utoronto.ca/rishiyur/VD/

Exit : Anikode

Anyhow, the CSP TN group, going by Vamsha Deepika, must have moved to Anikode ex CSP TN in about 1700-1750. But they were not to be there for longer than, say, 50 years or so. Because, in 1766 came the incursion of Hyder Ali's Mysorean forces into Malabar, including Palghat, an occupation that was to wax & wane with the fortunes of war in phases over the next 25 years, until 1792 when Hyder's son, Tipu, was defeated in the 3rd Mysore War of 1792 & sued for terms, including the ceding of Malabar to the East India Company. So, the Mysorean forces were @ large in Malabar then & came the day when a detachment of that army showed up in Anikode, pitching its tents & camping by the river.

No real harm befell the residents of Anikode - per C H Subramanyan aka Kunjappa who related this account to me & for which there was corroboration from others including Capt Ramadevan who we shall meet shortly. But there was an undertone of menace, real or perceived I cannot say, about the whole proceedings : hefty, beefy Muslim soldiery & their Malabar Moplah muslim nfederates swaggering & strutting about the place, smoking chillums & tying up their horses in the Agraharam @ times. This sufficiently or more than ordinarily unnerved the ladies of the Agraharam who, as a body, began, constantly, to badger their menfolk to get the hell out of the place & away from the motley & piratical crew of leering Motta Moplahs (tonsured Mussalmans) stamping & swanning about the Agraharam street.

The Imperative for the Exit from Anikkode 

There are a few different reasons or theories being aired in regard to why exactly people of Chandrasekharapuram moved from Anikode agraharam. It is variously said that they left the village some 200 years back either due to :

A) the Mysore invasion of Palghat & Malabar or the Kunjappa account, as above - as the Mysore soldiers are said to have made a nuisance of themselves in the village. 

B) a major fire that gutted Anikode agraharam some 200 plus years back - & while some people moved to the new Anikode agraharam a KM away - which still stands -  yet others moved to Chandrasekharapuram. 

C) an internecine quarrel & dispute which arose among the residents - leading to the exit from Anikode of a large number of them. If this were true, we can only speculate about the nature of this quarrel - did it have something to do with the correct way to perform certain Vedic rites, the profession of the village?

Some people - in both C S Puram & in Anikode - incline to the Hyder story and others to the fire. Both incidents are ascribed to more or less the same period, i.e 200 years or 200 plus. 

It is difficult to consider, seriously, the notion that the invasion by the Mysore soldiery prompted the exit from Anikode. Whilst an extended invasion did take place during the period in question, it was not confined to Anikode as the whole of the Palghat district & almost all other parts of Malabar too were overrun. And it is very much the case that there does not seem to be any other instance of resettlements in the whole of Palghat district (albeit there was considerable disruption in the rest of Malabar).

And, in any case, it would have made little sense to move just across the river from Anikode to C S Puram as the Mysore army was in more or less continuous occupation of the whole Malabar region during 1766 - 1792 CE / AD, practically all over the place.

Having spoken to some residents of Anikode & having seen the remains of the charred, destitute, crumbling old Agaraharam, I think it could be very likely that a fire could have been responsible for the move to C S Puram (& there possibly were some factional issues too, although this could only be in the realm of guesswork). 

Dating the Year of the Move to CSP

The Chandrasekharapuram temple has - on a wooden beam above the Sanctum - an inscription in copper-plate with the year 1702 inscribed on it. This certainly is not the Christian or Gregorian year - as the widespread use of it in India began only gradually from the mid 19th Century - but the Shalivahana (or Vikramaditya) Shaka varsha calendar, which is 78 years behind the Gregorian.  

Whilst the Malayalis of Kerala followed the Kollam calendar (825 years behind the Gregorian), the Tamil Brahmins invariably adhered to the Shaka era calendar which is the 1 used in the Hindu panchangs or almanacs - in addition to the naming of each year in a cycle which repeats itself every 60 years. No Tamil Hindu or Brahmin - even today - would consider using the Gregorian year in an inscription in a temple as the invariable practice has been to follow the Shaka year. And so, there is no doubt that the calendar year in the inscription refers to Shaka 1702 (corresponding to 1780 AD or CE). 

So, was that when the village of C S Puram was founded &, in particular, was that when the temple was built? The answer is somewhat more complex.

Firstly, it is well known - & acknowledged by the villagers - that the lands in the village were owned by the Pathaikara Nambudiris, immensely wealthy landlords from the village of Pathaikara - which is now absorbed within the twin towns of Perinthalmanna & Angadipuram, some 35 or 40 KMs away (in deep interior South Malabar, on the way to the Nilambur forests, where the timber comes from). This family possibly owned the lands in C S Puram for a few centuries @ least.

While the Pathaikara Nambutiris owned all the land around C S Puram the place itself was probably known as Edathara, a large village that is barely a kilometer away.

There always was a temple in the place since the Pathaikara days but it was a Bhagavathi prathishta (a temple in which the Goddess Bhagavathi is installed) or what is known as a Kavu, a small shrine in the woods with a snake pit nearby, as typical all over Kerala.

Since the Nambudiris of Pathaikara were in fealty to the Bhagavathi or goddess of the famous Tirumandamkunnu temple (barely a mile from Pathaikara), it is said that this goddess was invoked into the idol & installed by them at C S Puram. This is a widely known fact within the village to this day - & was also divined by the Panikkars (astrologers) conducting a recent Prashnam or an astrological inquiry at the village, even though they could not have had prior knowledge of this fact. This Bhagavathi is identified as Shantadurga - the goddess Durga of peaceful countenance -& pre-dates the movement of the Tamil Brahmins of Anikode into C S Puram.

The impressive Bhagavathi temple - Tirumandhamkunnu (a leading centre for Bhagavathi worship in Kerala)

So, what took place in 1702 Shaka or 1780 CE / AD was the Shiva prathishta, a fact known to some of the villagers - with 1702 however, mistaken by them for the Gregorian year. And the move to CSP ex Anikode should very possibly have been in that year or the previous year or 2 - since almost the very 1st endeavour a community would undertake in a new settlement will be the Prathishta of their deity.

The Shiva in the temple is Chandrasekhara with the Lingam or symbolic idol - with the 5 headed Serpent overhead - is very much the likeness of the 1 @ Chandrasekharapuram in Tamil Nadu. This is only natural since many if not most of the villagers of (Anikode &) C S Puram came originally from the eponymous Tanjore village.

The Move to Chandrasekharapuram

Thus came about the move to Chandraskharapuram - the residents of CSP Kerala make light of it, saying merely that this village, just across the river, was chosen as a suitable new stakeout for the community, being in the same area & close enough to their krishi or farms in Anikode & that the Pathaikkara Nambudiris offered them the land for free. Sounds simple enough & I am sure it was nearly so, albeit nothing is ever as simple as that - even in the more expansive days of the 1780s & 90s.

The Pathaikkara Mana as we have seen, is a famous Nambudiri Illam (both Mana & Illam being the terms for Nambudiri manor houses in Kerala) near Perinthalmanna, about 40 KMs to the west of CSP Kerala, or some 2 day's march & also only some 12 KMs south of Manjeri. And, we have already seen from the Vamsha Deepika that the Mangudi Brahacharnam diaspora from the Tamil Delta country settled in 2 places when they moved to Kerala - Tarakkad & Manjeri. Our CSP Kerala group, as we have seen, seems to be made up, partly, of an offshoot of the Tarakkad group but, being Vedic scholars as mentioned previously, elected to move to Anikkode on the river, just 15 KM ex Tarakkad. 

The question of how the land grant was obtained from the Pathaikkaras is not of great import to our story but it is an interesting question to consider : & it seems more than likely that the CSP Kerala group had kinsmen & country cousins in Manjeri who had also moved to Kerala from CSP TN & other Tanjore villages (after all, it was only 1 or 2 generations after the move from CSP TN). Word must have been sent to them & a small embassy or delegation of the Manjeri group must have represented the matter to the Pathaikkaras who they surely were on good terms with. It has been very much the case that all TamBrahms in Kerala enjoyed cordial relations with all sections of society, especially with the Nambudiris. But I have no doubt that the land in question was granted free of cost - it was about 4 - 5 acres in extent, the size of the village of CSP Kerala even as of date - & the Nambudiris are a very generous & charitable folk, besides being, in the old days, landholders on a scale unimaginable in today's India.

The Settlement of CSP  

I have already given a description of the single street layout of the village, with the river on 1 side of it. The architecture is typically Tanjore Delta agraharam & any 1 of those houses - I have been inside 3 or 4 - could be straight out of a Tanjore village. You will find in this post some photos I took of both the streetscape & of some interiors.

The houses are tile-roofed (but for latterday retrofits of concrete roofing in a few cases) with an entrance verandah with raised seating (the thinnai), a small hall or passage beyond it (the rezhi) & then the open central courtyard with wide masonry passages on all 4 sides with sloping tile roofing & pillars (the naalukettu or mittham). Then follow the kitchen & a separate service area or passage @ the rear, leading out into the back garden. In 1 corner of the central hall with the open courtyard will be a small stairway of wood leading to a couple of small rooms on the upper level.

CSP : Streetscape

If the move to CSP ex Anikkode was around 1780, these homes must have come up around 1800 to a decade later - judging by the wood & the original flooring & mortar work in some houses. It must have been quite some undertaking on the part of this small community of about 80 - 100 families or so to have built the village over a 10 year period - but it is evident that they continued to prosper after the move to CSP to have been able to do so.

The Temples

This was not all, because the large Shiva temple dedicated to Chandraskhara - the deity @ the temple in the ancestral village of CSP TN - was purpose-built, probably around 1825. This temple complex incorporates within it the original, small Bhagavathi prathishta  (or installation) which stood on the spot. As we have seen above, this idol was fashioned after the Bhagavathi @ Thirumandhamkunnu & consecrated @ CSP long before the TamBrahms moved in. It is known not only that the Pathaikkara family were devoted to this goddess @ Thirumandhamkunnu but bound in service to her over several generations. Resultantly, the goddess of CSP TN, Manonmani, does not feature in this Shiva temple.

Thirumandhamkunnu, by the way, is one of the most important & venerated Bhagavathi kshetrams (pilgrimage centres) of Malabar.

The Krishna temple in CSP, though of later origin - possibly 1850-1900 - is also sumptuous for a village temple & has a very interesting but not untypical architecture. Interesting in that it looks like a 4kettu veedu (or home with a central courtyard) adopted for use as a temple - with broad thinnais built on both sides side after the entrance into the open central courtyard, in the centre of which is the sanctum of Krishna. The thinnais can seat about 40 + & are used for communal prayer, recitation, chanting, singing, meditation & other forms of worship - with the sanctum in full view.  All this, however, will not be apparent from the facade of the temple which - with its characteristic temple style tile roofing &  the Dwajasthambam or flagstaff outside, with a deceptive hint of the typical  Nalambalam or concentric courtyards within - only suggests a typical Kerala ambalam or temple on the inside too. The sanctum has a door sheeted with gold but a natural catastrophe wiped out the entire temple in August 2018 - more on this later. It is a disaster the village is still trying to put behind it, as the locals are very devoted to this Krishna & the temple was a centre of both religious & social activity.

The Krishna Temple : a view of the 2 thinnais in the Nalambalam(or inner precinct)

The Simhanadha Bhagavathi temple in the Trikkavu ancestral village of Tarakkad has a similar interior, also very like a former home converted to temple use. This temple has a special place among Palghat gramams as it is believed to be the senior foundation among them -   as such, the residents of Noorani gramam, for instance, always seek the goddess's consent each year before commencing the Shasta preethi (i.e. propitiation) festival in their own village.

The CSP Web of Relationships : Clans & Kavus

In my informal "census" of CSP, I could discern a clear web of sub-sect clan networks & kavu affiliations which helped me deduce certain antecedents & origins among the residents. These could be seen in terms of :

1. The Sub-sects : we have already seen that, unlike other Palghat gramams, CSP is comprised of 2 major sub-sects, the Brahacharanam & the Vadama, the former apparently a slight majority. This mixed composition of sects, as I have explained above, is a function of CSP being a village of Vedic scholars & musicians. A community of such professions is necessarily to be drawn from all the sub-sects if the intent is that it should comprise of the best available practitioners. This, I am sure, was the case with the original make-up of CSP / Anikode.

2. The Kavu affiliations : Most TamBrahm families in Kerala were &, in many cases still are, affiliated to a Kavu or sacred grove of the goddess Bhagavathi with a temple thereon. Kerala, from time immemorial, has practiced mother goddess worship, with significant elements of nature worship & the fertility cult both of which are integral to the practice. The Kavu tradition of the mother goddess embodies within it a reassertion of the resurgence of nature & of fertility - there are serpent pits as well as the reptiles themselves present in many old Kavu groves, the snakes being symbols of fertility. Kavus thus signify perpetual renewal as well as prosperity - and, most Nambudiri & Nair homes, as well as the homesteads of other communities lower on the social scale, have had Kavus in the garden for a thousand years & more. In the fullness of time, some of these grove shrines gained in prominence with small temples to Bhagavathi being built on them - both Madapallikavu & Thirumandhamkunnu being examples of old Kavus morphing into temples. 

It is well known that the TamBrahms, when they moved into Kerala, slipped, ipso facto, into the Kerala way of life by adopting, as their kuladeivam or family deity, the Bhagavathi of the Kavu in their places of settlement - in the process giving up the previous Kuladeivam of TN & declaring themselves the adimas (slaves or, rather, in perpetuity bonded in service) to the Kavu in question. This was a remarkable act of voluntary & conscious assimilation into their new homeland & of whole-hearted & wholesome empathy with its traditions, if not one of veritable transubstantiation.

The residents of CSP variously profess affiliation to @ least 3 different Kavus - Madapallikavu in Palghat, Thirumandhamkunnu in Angadippuram/Perinthalmanna & the Kaavil Bhagavathi (Bhagavathi in the Kavu or grove) in nearby Anikode. This is interesting in that the respective, individual Kavus can give us some idea of whence & how the community was formed as well as, to an extent, their respective sub-sects.

Thus a Madapaliikavu affiliation should mostly denote a Tarakkad origin & the Mangudi Brahacharanam sub-sect. Likewise, the Thirumandhamkunnu affiliation is again mostly Mangudi Brahacharanam but with a likely Manjeri origin (going by Vamsha Deepika). An informal, sample "quiz" of some residents affirmed to me that this profiling is indeed correct. But the Kaavil Bhagavathi affiliation is of a different kind altogether - as it comprises both sub-sects, suggesting that these could perhaps be the original settlers in Anikode before the advent of the CSP TN group. There are a few other minor sub-sects in the village with affiliations to other Kavus but I have not been able to determine their background & antecedents, albeit they are a small minority.

The small shrine of Kaavil Bhagavathi- Anikode

If the naming of the deity in the Shiva temple bespeaks a CSP TN origin for the greater number of constituents of the village, the Kavu affiliations reveal something of their movements within Kerala & the different 1st settlements within Malabar. All of this, whilst discursive to an extent, is useful as being indicative of the melding & medley within even such a small community as CSP.

A Gearshift

Having surveyed, to the extent we could, the foundation & the setting of CSP in all its sins & graces & looked @ the kin group affiliations of its denizens, let us now shift gear to review what we know about Ranganatha Jatavallabhar or Ranga Jatavallabhar (RJV), the 2 x great-grandfather of my generation of Thoppil Matom (TM) cousins. This will be an attmept on my part to "pin" him in the milieu & context of the CSP of the time. Pin him in the sense of my favourite lines from T S Eliot's Prufrock which is to pin him like a butterfly out of a Lepidopterist's net, to "formulate" him :

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?  

Indeed! Such that he reveals something of himself. This is the task I have set myself since about 2009 & the results are discussed below.

RJV : What was Known Until About 2014

The current senior generation in TM - my cousins & myself - had little information on RJV back in 2003 or 2004 - & I am referring only to those few who had ever thought or asked about their 2 x great. I am, myself, a case in point because I did not even know his name, much less his antecedents & nor had it occurred to me, ever, to consider that question. Some cousins indeed, like Gopu, Shivan, Rajan & perhaps 1 or 2 more knew his name.

The impetus came in 2003 when we all met in Palghat 2004 to attend the wedding of Rajan's son to a girl from Pallipuram village - both of them medicos - a most enjoyable occasion which many cousins attended. And father took Vasumathi & self to show us the Trikkavu ancestral home in Tarakkad (about which there will be a separate write-up or appendix in this blog).  At this time, the talk swung round to family antecedents & in response to my query, father said his information was that Chandrasekhara Shastrigal, our TM great grandfather, had originally come from either Tiruvaiyar or CSP in TN & that he had been trained in the Sanskrit school or Patashala inTiruvaiyar.

This seemed inconceivable to me for a number of reasons & I put it to father that :

• It would have been extremely unusual for someone - such as my great grandmother's family - in a remote Palghat village in the 1880s to seek to contract an alliance with a family in the equally remote & far away Tanjore Delta.
• It was, in fact, the done thing for Kerala TamBrahms to enter into marriage alliances with known families within Malabar & Travancore - as the PPP Triangle of marriage alliances (my term for the Parur-Perumbavur-Ponnani Bride Exchanges of nearly a century, dealt with elsewhere in this volume) would demonstrate.
• Understandably so, as real contact & acquaintance with the Tanjore community had been lost more than a few hundred years ago & given the distance - the railways having just begun to connect the interiors in the various Presidencies - the "comfort factor" was certainly absent. There were strong reservations about giving away lovingly raised daughters to distant places & people.
• As far as I have been able to observe, alliances between Palghat & the Delta country began to be initiated around World War 1, say 1915 onwards - these too were few & far between & such marriages increased in number only from the time of World War 2 or just before that, say, the 1930s.
• 
  
• If Chandrasekhara Shastrigal - my maternal great grandfather - had actually been from CSP TN, there should have been some traffic of or contacts with country cousins, brothers, sisters & so on from the Delta - but there were none such. Neither my mother nor my maternal grandfather nor any uncles or aunts had ever mentioned such connections.
• My maternal grandfather - who was given to mentioning his parents often in conversation - had never, ever stated or suggested that his father was anything other than a Pattar or TamBrahm of Kerala. My TM cousins, I am sure, can attest to this from the conversations of their own grandparents which they were party to. 

Father agreed with these objections & said he had only mentioned a vague notion or recollection on his part from what my TM uncle, Rajendran, had told him once.

It occurred to me then that I should look for a CSP in Kerala, in Malabar in particular. And when I found it - 12 KM to the west of Palghat - I noticed that :

1. It was a village of Sanskrit scholars (& Chandrasekhara Shastrigal - CS - was a Sanskrit scholar who had served in the Travancore Court & the State's Sanskrit Patashala or college)

2.CS married Parvathi (or Ammapatti, my great grandmother) whose father & brother were Sanskrit scholars from Alampallam near Kollengode in Malabar.

3. Alampallam & CSP were only 25 KM or 15 miles apart.

4. It was quite the natural thing for families of Sanskrit pundits to contract marriage alliances - there are any number of such instances, especially from Tamil Nadu.

I also learned that, in days past, 3 men from CSP had taken Sanyas or renunciation & rested in the village in their Samadhis or Brindavanams - both words being terms used for the resting place of Hindu renunciates. But this did not mean much to me back in late 2004 when I 1st looked up CSP Kerala.

But the rest of the information about CSP Kerala seemed, strongly, to suggest that CS's origins might have been thence rather than direct from the eponymous TN village.

RJV : the 1st Gleanings 2014

But, was CS's father actually a man of CSP? And what was his name?? I did not have a clue @ this time - 2005 or so. And imagined that no one really knew. 

Inputs from Radhu : "the Andhath Anna Family"

There the matter rested - because I did not have much to go by, other than the inductive inferences above, arising from known facts of profession & geography -  until, quite by accident, my brother Kannan was contacted by Radhu (Subramanian Radhakrishnan) from Austin, Texas. Radhu had seen Kannan's blog post on Parur & it turned out that he was my 3rd cousin & the great grandson of Rama Iyer, elder brother of our great Grandfather, Chandrasekhara Shastrigal.

Of course, we knew this family well in the old days, our schooldays - the Andhath Anna family. Andhath Anna (K R Ranganatha Iyer) was Radhu's g'father - thus the son of the above mentioned Rama Iyer, who was the elder brother of  our great g'father Chandrasekhara Shastrigal - & therefore 1st cousin to my g'father & g'uncles, sons of Chandrasekhara Shastrigal. Andhath Anna also lived in Parur (as had his father, Rama Iyer). Since my g'father's eldest brother, also named Ranganatha Iyer of Parur, was termed Anna - elder brother -, the prefix Andhath was added when referring to his 1st cousin, thus  Andhath Anna. Andath actually is a short form of Andha Aatthu or the other family home!

Andhath Anna - in his last days (c. 1970). Very kindly eyes - giving us some idea of what RJV could have looked like.

I am sure all of the above helps loop the loop as between the TM & Andhath families. 

But, to help place the individuals in this part of the narrative, I have added a simplified family tree - consisting only of the named individuals (& not of all the members of the 2 lineages - Andhath & TM). This, I am sure, will help in following the story 

: https://www.myheritage.com/site-family-tree-256003761/vnarayan-swami?familyTreeID=1#  

In fact, the Andhath & TM families enjoyed a close relationship, as natural between collateral branches of a lineage - the Andhaths lived in Kannankulangara in Parur, a very short distance from the TM home. In fact, I have been to the Andhath home in Parur @ least twice & have memories of meeting Andhath Anna. 

Moreover, Andhath Chandran, the 3rd son of Andhath Anna, kept in regular touch with my own parents, visiting us often when my father was posted in Madras, Madurai & back again in Madras. And, my sister Shobhi had been @ school with his niece. But contact had been lost since then, what with the passing of the older generations & our own movements wherever our jobs took us.

Anyhow, I spoke with Radhu & what he could tell me was little but all of it significant :

1. His grandfather's grandfather was one Ranganatha Jatavallabhar (RJV)

2. His own grandfather, Andhath Anna, had been a Sanskrit teacher in the Sanskrit school in Parur.

3. Andhath Anna & his grandmother had mentioned to him how in RJV's time the family used not only to
speak in Sanskrit but also tell the time by the stars (a traditional Indian way of keeping time). 

Not much, on  the face of it - but of staggering significance actually, because 

- 1stly, it was now clear that Chandrasekhara Shastrigal  was certainly not from TN - after all, his brother, Rama Iyer had also lived in Parur

- Andhath Anna had also been a Sanskrit teacher (like his uncle Chandrasekhara Shastrigal) - a fact which affirms that Sanskrit punditry, as a profession, runs in the family.

-And, if the Andhath forbears spoke Sanskrit @ home, the Andhath & TM lineage, i,e. the RJV lineage was clearly one of Sanskrit scholars.

I asked a friend, Thennilapuram Mahadevan, a US Professor cum Indologist, about the use of Sanskrit among TamBrahms, as a mother tongue or in daily speech - he said it was common until about 1200 AD since when women increasingly used Prakrit, a dialect of Sanskrit, Pali & the local language, as it was easier on the tongue. This gradually led, eventually, to the replacement of Sanskrit & of  Prakrit itself by Tamil by about 1700 AD. He added that there always remained, until about 1900, a few families, usually of Sanskrit & Vedic scholars, who continued to use Sanskrit in daily conversation (albeit alongside the local tongue). RJV's was obviously 1 such family. 

Note : It is as well @ this point to clarify that Chandrasekhara Shastrigal was employed in the Sanskrit Patashala & the princely court of the Travancore Maharajah @ Trivandrumas a Sanskrit pundit all his working life. My parents have told me that @ some point in time in his service, the Maharajah Sri Moolam Tirunal - regnal years 1885-1924 - gifted him a house site in Parur. This is the site on which Thoppil Matom (TM) came up shortly after & it seems that he had no connection with Parur @ the time other than the presence there of his elder brother Rama Iyer. That might have been the reason he elected to have a home in Parur & - from the fact that almost all his children were raised in Parur - it would seem that the house plot was given to him sometime around 1890.

My father has told me how CS was on very good terms with the Maharajah who, whenever he visited Parur - which was often, as he liked the place & had modernised the Kottaram or palace there - post CS's retirement would send for him.

And Radhu, on my recent inquiry, said that Andhath Anna had only a small house in Kannankulangar, Parur which had been sold after his death. He did not think it was an ancestral inheritance. That this seems not to have been the lineage's ancestral home is clear for more reasons than 1 - 1stly, the house belonged to Andhath Anna & TM descendants had no share in it & moreover, Kannankulangara was originally a neighbourhood for TamBrahms from the Nagercoil side & not for those from Palghat (such as the Mangudi Brahacharanams).

So, if the TM-Andhath lineage was not originally from Parur where did they come from? And why? And - more to the point - where does RJV fit in all this?

As luck would have it, my cousin Gopu & my sister Shobhi were soon to shed light on this.

Gopu's Vital Input

My TM cousin Gopu from Bangalore came to see me - this was also in about 2014. The 1st & most important breakthrough in my quest came from him. He not only gave me the name of CS's father but related an interesting incident which had taken place a few days following the death of the old man. And, furthermore, he imparted the most vital piece of information about RJV's latterday calling which was to prove crucial in "pinning" the person.

Firstly, Gopu said the old man's name was Ranga Jatavallabhar - short for Ranganatha Jatavallabhar - or RJV as referred to in this narrative.  But that was not all, there were further gleanings from Gopu :

1. He went on to say that my grand uncle Chittappa (Vaidyanatha Iyer, the 2nd son of Chandrasekhara Shastrigal) was about 15 when RJV died - & that, about 2 weeks after his death, Chittappa - seated one morning on the verandah of the Parur home - saw an apparition. This was a sighting of the late RJV, his grandfather, stepping on to the verandah & helping himself to some vibhuti (sacred ash) hung from the rafters in a brass sampadam or box & proceeding to smear it on his forehead. It may have been a hallucination or daydream or a momentary flash of hidden memory but Chitappa thought he had been graced with a benediction from the old man, to have been able to witness this.

This must have been sometime around 1910 as the known years for Chittappa are c.1896-1976.

Mind you, this is a discrete, stand-alone story in that it hangs by itself; there is nothing about RJV's background or if he had died in Parur or elsewhere. But here, in the family annals or oral history, is RJV looming large for the 1st time, if only as an astral body, a manifestation, as it were.

2. Then Gopu casually added something of great import to this inquiry - saying that RJV had taken Sanyas or renunciation @ some point in his life. This he had been told by his grandfather, Parur Anna & other elders in the family.

3. Then he went on to say that he had heard that RJV's son, CS, was originally from CSP TN & that he had studied Sanskrit @ the Patashala in nearby Tiruvaiyar. This input, was, of course of a piece with what my father had heard from uncle Rajendran. Later, when I revisited this question with Gopu he did indeed say that it was either Rajendran or his son & our cousin, Arun, who had imparted this information to him. 

N.B : Now the penny dropped : It was quite possible that the original CSP TN ancestry had been mentioned by Rajendran but my that father, Gopu & Arun had concluded that CS had come to Parur DIRECT EX CSP TN, thus conflating the original TN village with the 1 in Kerala. However it is clear,  for all the reasons mentioned above - the move ex TN to Anikode & then to CSP as well as the fact that CS's elder brother, Rama Iyer, too lived in Parur, inducing CS to build a home there - that  Rajendran was merely referring to CSP TN as the place of origin of the family (& NOt suggesting that CS came DIRECT to Parur from there).. 

Of course, it is also quite likely that CS was sent to Tiruvaiyar to study @ the famous Patashala there - given that RJV was a Sanskrit scholar & further given that Sanskrit scholars in CSP Kerala - being from CSP TN - would have known of the Tiruvaiyar Patashala as a centre of excellence.

3. Gopu also added that his brother, Shivan, had had a series of conversations about the annals of the family with his grandfather (my grand uncle, Parur Anna) & recorded them in a notebook. Further enquiry by Gopu, however, revealed that Shivan had lent the notebook to Parur Chittappa (grand uncle to both of us) & that it could not be traced after the latter's death. This was very disappointing but, per Gopu, Shivan had nothing to add about RJV other than confirming his name - in particular he had not gone into the question of where he lived or what his profession had been.

Following the above, my sister Shobhi, in 2011, confirmed to me that our mother had mentioned on & off the name of RJV as her great grandfather. This was interesting, being closer home as it were, although I myself had not had any conversation on the subject with my mother.

RajuVish

In rummaging the Net for anything on CSP, RJV & Parur, I came across a post by RajuVish - Raju Viswanathan - of Cochin - this post referred to his schooldays in Parur & in particular, mentioned my great grandfather, CS's, family & several of my uncles besides. When spoken to, RajuVish, it turned out, knew some of my cousins well too. And he confirmed that he too had known that RJV had taken sanyas. This was independent corroboration - had I found the needle in the haystack then?!

So, here was RJV, finally beginning to emerge, dimly though. And all the roads pointed to CSP Kerala.

Course Set for CSP

All of the above suggested CSP as RJV's place of origin because :

• We know that TM & Andhath are Sanskrit families
• There is NO ancestral home in Parur for the TM & Andhath families - the respective homes had been acquired by the 2 sons of RJV out of their own resources. 
• One needs to look elsewhere for such an ancestral home - as it was clear that the 2 sons of RJV moved to Parur from elsewhere. 
• 
  
• In the case of CS,  it is known that he spent his working life in Trivandrum & built the Parur house on a plot gifted to him by the Maharajah.

• And Jatavallabhar - a very rare surname or title even in TN, rarer still in Kerala - denotes a Vedic scholar of a very high order ( one who twines or plaits Vedic verses forward & backward during a recital, like a Jata or a knitted plait of rope or hair - see the appendix below).
• Whilst most Hindus, including Brahmins, are cremated upon death, a renunciate or Sanyasi is always buried in a Samadhi or resting place.
• But RJV is NOT buried in Parur - there is no Samadhi or place of interment for him there (& if there was, the family would surely have made it known to us).
• Whereas in CSP there are 3 Samadhis placed side by side in a Brindavanam (or place of repose for Samadhis) by the river.

As such, my 1st premise that CSP - being a long-established place of residence of Sanskrit pundits & moreover, with many in the family bearing the name Chandrasekhara, after the deity of CSP -  was where the TM-Andhath families came from was being reinforced. There was also the known fact of CSP having been founded by those originally from CSP TN - thus being consistent with Uncle Rajendran's statement to that effect. The evidence so far pointed strongly towards CSP but I had to go there & find out more before anything definitive could be said. 

CSP : the 1st Visit - Aug 2014

For all these reasons, I was firm in my thinking that my maternal great-great-grandfather - Ranga Jatavallabhar - was of this village. He, I thought, could well be 1 of the 3 belonging to the village who took Sanyas & are interred in the 3 samadhis on the banks of the river at the far end of the village, on the way to the Shiva temple of Chandrasekhara.

I, with Vasumathi, went on a journey to Chandrasekharapuram in August 2014 .... to look for Ranga Jatavallabhar's resting place, spurred on by the poem Time Like an Ever Rolling Stream.

A stanza of this famous hymn (O God Our Help in Ages Past) by Isaac Watts goes :

"The busy tribes of flesh & blood,

With all their lives and cares,

Are carried downwards by the flood,

And lost in foll’wing years."

"Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly, forgotten, as a dream

Dies at the op’ning day."

So I wanted to retrieve something of the past before any remnants of collective memory in CSP were carried further downstream by the flood of time.

Finding that there was a branch of the CSP Welfare Association in Madras, I attended 1 of their meetings & was given some names to contact.

It was only a 20-minute drive from our Palghat hotel but most of it was on the highway & the last 2 KMs were down an exit or feeder road which passes the bigger village of Edathara & bends left to get to CSP, about a KM further away. The feeder road ends @ CSP. I couldn't help feeling a frisson of excitement as we neared CSP - this was the moment I had been preparing for in the last few years. What intelligence of RJV,  what gleanings awaited me there, I could not tell. But the very approach to the village was captivating.

CSP - the Home Stretch

Getting Acquainted with Some Locals

We had been told to ask for one C H Subramania Iyer but were guided to the wrong house .... plain C R Subramanian's.

But before we could mention the name or state our purpose, let alone introduce ourselves, we were welcomed by the senior lady of the house, young Subramanian's mother - come right in (ulla vaarungo), she insisted in the traditional welcome of Brahmin households, no questions asked.

Vasumathi with our hostess - young Subramanian's mother, Mrs Rajam Ramaswamy

No question of taking our leave from her even after the respective IDs were cleared up - the right Subramania Iyer having been sent for, cups of coffee were pressed into our hands, courtesies & preliminaries exchanged &, when we bid goodbye, she presented V the traditional gift of a piece of cloth. We thus got a taste of village life & its graceful, gracious ways. 

The village is only 8 miles from Palghat, its men (& some women) work in Palghat or have their own businesses besides farmlands around the village; it is a relatively well off, middle-class village. And the residents enjoy all the rural amenities plus the internet & TV & also worship daily at the Krishna & Shiva temples. There are many festivals celebrated with elephants & Chenda vadhyam (a musical ensemble of Kerala) in attendance - an extraordinary place, Chandrasekharapuram.

Below - Athos, Porthos & D'Artagnan (respectively - C R Subramanian alias Santosh, N Natarajan of the CSP Association & Kunjappa C H Subramania Iyer). The musketeers who showed us round - photo taken in the home of the 1st named.

A Ramble Round the Village

Kunjappa took us around the village, showing us the temples & giving me a potted history of CSP's foundation. He had been born & raised in CSP & moreover had served the revenue department as the Village Administrative Officer of CSP, a position which helped him add substantially to his already vast corpus of knowledge about the village.

The Ganapathi shrine by the river & the Shiva temple @b'ground left - just round the bend & between the 2 temples are the 3 Samadhis.

We stopped @ the 3 Samadhis in their Brindavanam located right on the banks of the river in a quiet spot between the Shiva & the Ganapathi temples. According to Kunjappa the 3 men interred there - who were known to have been contemporaries - had expressed a wish to be laid to rest @ a quiet spot by the river, close to the temple. Seeing the calm, delightful, riverine idyll which the 3 had chosen for their repose it was clear that these men, though otherworldly renunciates, had the right idea, excellent taste & sense of place. 

Above : the approach to the Samadhis by the river - the parapet of the Ganapathi shrine @ right f'ground.

Below : A close-up.

We were told that the leftmost Samadhi in the photo above is my ancestors - the other 2 @ right were known to be that of Ramaswamy Shastrigal & Mahadeva Iyer. Of course, Kunjappa had forgotten, if he ever knew it, the name of the incumbent in the leftmost Samadhi & was relying on my word that I had an ancestor in that Brindavanam. The purported RJV Samadhi, he said, had been unclaimed until now & I was the 1st "claimant" - he added that even the rest of the village did not have any idea whose Samadhi it was. But the other 2 Samadhis were being visited monthly by the descendants in Coimbatore as well as Bombay & sometimes even the US.

The Chandrasekhara Shiva temple ex the Brindavan - the Samadhi visible in the photo below is that of my ancestor RJV.

Kunjappa did not have much to add about RJV or his Samadhi but did give me 2 contacts to speak to - 1 in the village itself & the 2nd, the brother of the 1st, in Palghat. He said they might know something about RJV's samadhi as he had vague recall from previous conversations with them. As luck would have it, they were both offsite @ the time & I decided to speak to them later - but it was an intriguing thought that these 2 could be collaterals of the TM family!

Instituting Further Inquiries

Kunjappa also mentioned that a former resident, the late Mr C R Sahasranaman (aka Mani Ammaan) had filled an entire notebook with details of the history of the village & thought I should surely find references to the Samadhis in that manuscript, written in Malayalam. The notebook, he said, was with the gentleman's son, C S Ramakrishnan who lived part of the time in Bombay & part in Calicut.

This Malayalam manuscript document, I am disappointed to say, has proved elusive to get hold of. Mr Ramakrishnan did confirm there is such a document but went on to say that he had lent it to Mr Veeramani of Bombay, who is also from C S Puram. Mr Veeramani did agree that he had gotten the document from Mr Ramakrishnan but could not say what happened to it - not being sure if he had returned it to Mr R or onlent it to someone else. His very earnest efforts to find the document were not productive - although Mr Ramakrishnan did say that, in case Mr Veeramani had returned the manuscript, it could perhaps be in his Calicut home.

Meanwhile, Mr Ramakrishnan interviewed his elder sister in Bombay - who, I was told, also happened to be his wife's mother - & sent me an audio clip of her recollections. But the person she recalls is not RJV who, we know from my Granduncle Chittappa's account above, died c.1910. As the lady was born around 1925, her recall is clearly of another person.

However, I include the audio clip here - do listen to it, if only for the pleasure of hearing some Palghat Tamil being spoken (this is more or less like what we speak among ourselves but much more heavily accented still - a dialect more steeped in singsong Malayalamised accent than the way even my parents, uncles & aunts used to speak)!

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dzqs21tmcrqtlpm/Audio_ex_C_S_Ramakrishnan_of_Bombay_%2526_C_S_Puram.aac/file

Sad to say, both the voices in the audio clip - Mr Ramakrishnan & his sister - were stilled about a year or 2 back. But I am not giving up on that Notebook yet, there is another sister of Mr Ramakrishnan in Bombay & I intend contacting her through the village or Mr Veeramani. 

Following Up on Other Leads

Mr Mahadevan

Mr Mahadevan is the Coimbatore based descendant of a CSP family & was said to have an altogether different Notebook in his possession - 1 compiled in Tamil, by his great great grandfather. During a visit to Coimbatore, I sought Mr Mahadevan out & he very kindly invited me home & produced the notebook for my inspection. Whilst full of engrossing details about his family in well over 100 pages, there was only a passing reference in it to the Samadhis.

Mr Doraimani

Spoke Doraimani, of Anikode.

He was an assistant priest at C S Puram 1969-74 & is now a priest @ the Ganapathi temple, Anikode. Priests perform Archanas to the deity @ the request of worshippers - & as any such Archana - a chant or recital of propitiatory & invocatory verses - would include a reference to the worshipper's gotram, an interview with Doraimani , I knew, would be useful to determine if RJV's gotram, Kapi, was represented in the village @ the time.

2 things emerged : 

1. In his time at C S Puram, there were one or two JVs in the village (whether they were descendants of RJV thro a 2nd wife or unconnected is a different matter altogether - we already know from  C S Ramakrishnan's audio clip that 1 of them merely had the nickname of JV).

2. There were many Kapi gotram families in C S Puram 1969-74 when he was assistant to his uncle who did the pooja service (a few Kapis still left, I understand). Kapi is a vrare gotram & its presence in C S Puram, per Dorai Mani, is a strong pointer to RJV's origins being CSP.

Whither RJV? : A Mid-term Appraisal

I had been active on RJV's trail since about early 2014 when cousin Gopu, my sister Shobhi & RajuVish of Parur had confirmed either his name or the fact of his taking Sanyas or both.  It was now December 2016 - some 3 years from the beginning of my active quest & time to see where I had got to with that quest.

To begin with, is the fact that there was no collective memory in the TM family about RJV's antecedents. We did not even know if he had lived in Parur or elsewhere. And those who knew a little about the matter had mistaken CSP TN (where the family ORIGINALLY came from)  for CSP Kerala which was clearly the more recent family base.

There should have been an ancestral home in Parur if RJV had been based there  - but we know there was none such (with Andhath Anna & Chandrasekhara Shastrigal buying or building their own, separate homes).

Also, there was no Samadhi whatever in Parur of any renunciate. Clearly RJV lay elsewhere.

And we had established that TM/RJV was a "Sanskrit" family with CSP Kerala, therefore, suggesting itself as RJV's village. Moreover, there was the liberal strewing around of the Chandrasekhara name within TM.

And, furthermore, there were also the 3 Samadhis in CSP - with 1 of them "unclaimed", until my visit to CSP Aug 2014. 

RJV was thus beginning, gradually, to emerge in the total scheme of things & to reveal a little more of himself (thanks to inputs from cousin Gopu, my sister Shobhi & RajuVish of Cochin) - but only hazily, like the apparition that my granduncle Chitappa thought he had seen.

So far so good but I still needed to "pin" RJV - to find the vital link between him & the Samadhi. In other words, whilst strong & convincing evidence, both indirect & circumstantial. established that the Samadhi was RJV's, I needed independent corroboration, some information linking him & the Samadhi.

Would I find it?

And collective memory in CSP too had faded, almost completely - & I am sorry to have to report that Kunjappa, the archivist of the village, the repository of its origins & folk history, passed on in 2015. This represented a loss to my own investigations about RJV & I am sure, an irreplaceable loss to the village itself - a simple, down to earth & pleasant man, he was the very voice of the village, articulating its story & its extinct past. Remaining single through his life, he was the typical pro bono publico of the agraharam.

Summoning Capt Ramadevan & Rajan - My Further Witnesses

Capt Ramadevan is a resident of CSP - who, Kunjappa told me, ought to be able to fill me in with more details of RJV & his Samadhi, as he was connected to 1 of the other 2 Samadhis adjoining RJV's -but I had been unable to meet him during my previous visits.

Catching up with Ramadevan during my December 2016 visit, I was able to get an hour or more with him, late @ night. We sat on the thinnai of his present home in CSP with the cool breeze from the river giving me enthusiasm for the late-night dialogue. It turned out to be 1 of great interest, this, in summary, being what he told me :

His father - whose mom died at childbirth - was adopted @ once by the maternal grandfather (the father of the latter being in 1 of the samadhis, with all 3 samadhi occupants being cousins). But the family was advised by the priests that the gotram (of Ramadevan's father) should not be changed in spite of the adoption. This is quite understandable since a gotra lineage denotes the actual patriclan bloodline & should not be changed as that could lead, down the line, to breaches of the rules of family exogamy & incest avoidance. So, Ramadevan's gotram remains Shadamarshana (the gotram of his paternal grandfather & shared with his paternal uncle & cousins).

Capt Ramadevan does not know the gotram of his maternal grandfather. That is not necessarily an essential piece of info for our purposes although the occupant of 1 samadhi - Ramadevan's maternal 2 x great grandfather - was a cousin of the occupants of the other 2 samadhis.

Nor did Capt Ramadevan know the name of the occupant of the 3rd, i.e, RJV Samadhi. But he explained that he had left home for Delhi when about 18 & returned only some 30 years later, except for brief holidays - whereas his younger brother Rajan, now in Palghat, had lived right through in the village & might be in a position to know. Capt Ramadevan thought Rajan may have had more opportunities of gleaning such details from his parents & others.

Rajan

I spoke to Mr Rajan alias Gangadharan in Noorani Palghat - a reference provided by Kunjappa & Capt Ramadevan.  He confirmed that he is Brahacharanam & 1 of his ancestors lies in one of the 3 Samadhis at Chandrasekharapuram, adding that the person in question was his grand mom's grandfather - this, of course, is Ramaswamy Shastrigal, as Rajan's brother Ramadevan had already informed me.  Rajan also said he was aware that the incumbent of the "unclaimed" Samadhi was a Jatavallabhar (the 1st name not known). He knew this from conversations within the family (which, we have noted, Capt Ramadevan was not privy to as he had left home @ an early age for employment). This became the most critical input for me in linking RJV to the Samadhi in question.

So, there we have it - RJV "pinned & indeed, framed".

I had, @ last, broken through - being able to link the man to his Samadhi, the "unclaimed" 1!

The CSP Home of RJV

An unexpected & wholly agreeable bonus to be realised from my conversations with the brothers, Capt Ramadevan & Mr Rajan, the icing on the cake as it were, was the identification of the home of RJV - still standing & on the southern or riverside row of the village street.

RJV House - with gent @ the doorway

Ramadevan pointed out the RJV home to me, stating it was the home of the resident of the until then "unclaimed" Samadhi - it was almost directly across from where we sat on his thinnai. As modest a dwelling house as any but in good upkeep still. He added that the 2 houses immediately to the left of this house - looking from his thinnai with 1 of them partly visible in the photo - belonged to the other 2 incumbents of the Samadhis. These homes had been pointed out to him by his family folk.

This was later corroborated by Rajan in my conversation with him. This was serendipity & I was filled with pleasure, having seen the ancestral home - given the collective fading of memory in the village, I had scarcely expected that anyone there would know about the house but CSP had delivered me a surprise package yet again. 

Summing Up

So - I took stock of where I had got to by December 2016 (over 3 years & some 3 visits until then to CSP) & could see that :

• while 2 of the Samadhis were attributed definitively & identified by the respective descendants for @ least 2 generations, the 3rd - RJV's - had remained unknown & unclaimed until my visit in Aug 2014.
• collective memory  in the village about all 3 Samadhis had faded almost totally. Whilst almost all residents knew that 2 of the Samadhis were being visited by their descendants, very few - such as Kunjappa & Ramadevan - knew the names of the occupants of those monuments.
• & that when we consider that most cousins in the TM family - as well as myself - had little or no idea about our 2 x great grandfather it should be no surprise that the CSP people had no knowledge of the details & of course, little need to find out about the same. 
• & moreover that, after all, no descendants of the Samadhis live in the village or in Palghat (except Ramadevan & Rajan). The rest of the residents of CSP not only had no connection with the 3some but the interments had taken place between 100-125 years ago (& thus, 3 to 4 successive generations had passed on since then). It would, therefore, be unreasonable to expect people in CSP to know much about the Brindavanam.
• it was exceedingly fortunate that Ramadevan continues to be in the village & still more so that his ancestor & the other 2 in the Brindavanam were all cousins. Thanks to him & Rajan I could link the "unclaimed" Samadhi to RJV, as well as get to see the latter's house.
• the Gotram Kapi is exceedingly scarce on the ground even in TN & a Jatavallabhar a very rare bird indeed in Kerala. But CSP had our RJV -as affirmed by Rajan - & many Kapis per Doraimani above.
• as CSP was a Vedic village, the RJV family a Sanskritic/Vedic family - & further given that it has not been possible to find for RJV any established connections with Parur - the discovery of the RJV link to the village & to his Samadhi with the help of Ramadevan & Rajan had made all the difference to the outcome of my quest. I had found the needle in the haystack.

Satisfaction @ the thought that my original premise - about TM/RJV's CSP origins - had been verified & found correct was not unmixed with the stark awareness that further questions remained open.

Some Further Questions 

I think I will be most extraordinarily lucky to be able to find any facts or evidence of any kind relating to the following, niggling questions :

Who Conferred Sanyas on RJV?  

1. When & from whom did RJV take renunciation,i.e, Sanyas? The family is 1 of several in Kerala that follows the Shringeri Sharada Mutt in Karnataka & the Pontiff of the Mutt is their preceptor. It was very much the practice for renunciates to take Deeksha or initiation/ordination from him - but not mandatory, merely the preferred way. Deeksha could be given a by any Sanyasi of standing to initiate another into Sanyas.

2. In fact, 2 Pontiffs of Shringeri undertook a sojourn in Kerala & TN in RJV's time - Ugra Narasimha Bharati the 32nd Mahasannidanam (or Great Presence) & Satchitananda Shivabhinava Narasimha Bharati, the 33rd (henceforth the 32nd & the 33rd respectively). 

3. The 32nd undertook his 2nd sojourn of TN in 1872-73 but spent most of his time in Rameshwaram & Madurai - without visiting Kerala. It should have been possible for RJV to undertake a visit to Madurai in 1872 & obtain Deeksha from him - but I discount this because it was somewhat too early in life for RJV to have done so (he should have been in his early 40s then, in my reckoning). Moreover, Deeksha is not conferred for the asking - a Pontiff would take time over such a decision to make sure the recipient was in every way qualified as well as mentally prepared for it.

4. The 33rd did visit Kerala in 1910-11 & indeed did spend 5 days in Puducode - just 10-12 miles ex CSP - in March 1911. It should have been possible for RJV to obtain his Deeksha then except that he was nearing the end of his life then or had already passed on - since, going by Chittappa's sighting of the apparition of RJV when the former was about 14-15, the latter should have died by 1910-11.

5. It seems very likely that RJV, therefore, either made a trip to Shringeri @ some point in his 50s to obtain Deeksha or was initiated by some other respected renunciate. A journey to Shringeri in Karnataka, some 300 miles from Palghat, was by no means an easy journey in the 3rd quarter of the 19th Century but not impossible - especially for someone like RJV who, as a Vedic Scholar, was given to travelling in the region in order to participate in Vedic recitations & Yagnas or rites. In this way, he could even have been a person whose name was known, if not personally familiar, to the Pontiff. But it is as likely that RJV was initiated into Sanyas by some person other than the Shringeri head.

Although I knew nothing definitive could be said on the subject, I thought it nevertheless useful to enter into this discursive little disquisition, if not inquisition, on it - just to paint the different likely scenarios & to give a sense of exactly what was involved in even something as seemingly simple as an act of renunciation. Moreover, these scenarios & the customs/practices underlying them could help someone who also wishes to carry this investigation forward.

When did Andath/TM shift to Parur? And why?

We know that Chandrasekhara Shastrigal (my maternal great grandfather) had acquired a plot in Parur by about 1890 -92 when he must have been about 32, because most, if not all, of his children were born there. That he was induced to build a house in Parur & raise a family there - in spite of himself being employed in distant Trivandrum - was due, I am certain, to the fact that his elder brother Rama Iyer, was already in Parur.

And CS & Rama Iyer must have had strong bonds as illustrated by an incident that is well known in TM circles. That is to say, once, in his late teens or when about 20, CS appeared in a Sanskrit exam in Trivandrum on behalf of his brother who was indisposed, entering his name as Rama Shastrigal. He did qualify in the exam but was severely admonished when RJV came to know of the impersonation & false pretenses. CS was then instructed by RJV that, as CS had given & passed the exam himself, the resulting qualification was rightly his & that he should henceforth assume the name of RamaShastrigal - in order to conform to the name in the certificate.

So, CS, for the rest of his life, took the name of RamaShastrigal (as different from his brother, Rama Iyer) and, based on that new dispensation, all the 4 sons of CS took the initials T R (for Thoppil Matom Rama Shastrigal) - but 4 out of 5 of their own male offspring were named Chandrasekhara in line with CS's given name & family tradition.

This incident not only underscores the high dharmic or principled ground which the soon to be renunciate RJV  stood but the closeness between CS & Rama Iyer as well. And it should be no surprise that CS elected to base his family in Parur, in proximity to his brother's household; especially so when we consider that RJV had most likely taken Sanyas in his 50s, say, 1885-90. There was nothing in CSP then for the brothers to go back to - they had their own careers in Trivandrum & Parur & no more binding connections with CSP. 

That @ least is my surmise & the answer to this question must remain a surmise, a supposition.  But there is another question which bothered me but I think I have an answer for it.

Why was there no traffic between Parur & CSP? And why so few references in the family to RJV? 

The answers to these questions should be self-evident when we consider that :

1. RJV had died by 1910 or so - when CS & Rama Iyer's boys were between, say 10 & 18 years old. 

2. Any contact between the renunciate RJV & his 2 sons - Rama Iyer & CS - should have been previous to that & understandably infrequent. 

3. And, since renunciates can scarcely be expected to bounce their grandkids on their knees - no strong bonds of affinity or affection could have been forged with the children of CS/Rama Iyer under the circumstances. I should think the children of CS had few opportunities to get to know RJV.

4. By the time the next generation, my mother & her siblings/cousins were born, beginning about 1925, RJV had become a distant memory.

5. And CS/Rama Iyer had passed on in the 1930s, when most in my mother's generation were 10 years old or less - CS/Rama Iyer would have been the ones, rather than their sons, to bring up the name of RJV in conversation. And the sons of CS/Rama Iyer, as we have seen, must have had few memories of RJV to pass to their own children.

Inputs from Venkiteshwaran aka Ravi : Resolving A Seeming Contra Indication 

As @ this writing, the 10th February, I was informed by Capt Ramadevan that there is a Mr Ravi of CSP, based in Palghat, who had mentioned that he had some information relating to the Samadhis.

Ravi was born in CSP & since 1978 has lived in Palghat - visiting his village each week to see his mother. He is also active in all the village festivals & social functions, often the leading light. His interest in CSP extends beyond these obligations to take in something of history & personalities of the place. The gist of what Ravi told me is as follows :

- his paternal grandmother - married into the village in 1905-06 - used to recall the 3some

- she had said 1 of them was named Jatavallabhar

- and had also said that a Japa Mantapam - a small pavilion for prayer - had been erected by the riverside, as a place of prayer & meditation for them, close to where the Samadhis were since built. This pavilion, I already knew, had collapsed during a flood in 1993-95.

All this was very well & good, indeed supporting or affirming what I had gathered from other sources - but Ravi went on to state that he had been told by his uncle that the latter had read in the Aithihyamaala (the Malayalam title of a book that translates to Garland of Fable & Folklore) that the 3 renunciates, including 1 named Jatavallabhar, had arrived in CSP in 1885 from Chittoor, about 15 miles away.

Well, well, well!! If so, this piece of intelligence is a big "disconnect" with whatever I had learned & with all the oral history/evidence I had gathered until then. More than somewhat concerned, I @ once dived into the 2 volumes of the Aithihyamaala (of which I have an English translation) - NO, no mention @ all of the renunciates in the book's 100 + stories, though I peeled my eyes & looked through all of them. Mr Ravi had also mentioned that it might have been William Logan's Malabar Manual that his uncle was referring to. NO, nothing in the Malabar Manual either nor in its successor, the Malabar Gazetteer by Sir Charles Alexander Innes.

I have decided to "park" this snippet of info from Ravi sine die, to leave it exactly where it is, because : 

- the information was conveyed to him by his uncle quite some time back

- the recollection might, as a result, be somewhat blurred

-the input flies in the face of Ramadevan's information - from an authentic source, i.e, his own father - about the 3some being cousins belonging to CSP itself 

- it does not explain how RJV & the other 2 renunciates came to own homes in CSP (a fact confirmed to Capt Ramadevan by his father & clearly recalled)

- Mr Narayanan of Coimbatore - whose family is connected to the other 2 Samadhis - also avers that his ancestors were residents of CSP (as related to him by his grandfather)

- moreover, there are a few Samadhis in Chittoor's Thekkegramam (or southern village) too & it is quite possible that the episode related by Ravi's uncle related to them rather than the 1s in CSP.

Seemingly, a blip in the radar of memory in the case of an anecdote recalled by Mr Ravi after many years.

Ravi also postulated that the 3some must surely have been conferred their Deeksha or ordination by the Shringeri Pontiff - this was a surmise on his part but not 1 that I will dismiss.

Assessing the Evidence & Connecting the Dots

That is the end of my own deposition or case relating to RJV - it is more than likely that some of you, if you have stayed with me this far & long, could object to the proof adduced, saying : 

• but how do we know that this Jatavallabhar of CSP is our RJV
• the 1st name is not recalled by any witness (overlooking the fact that we ourselves had little or no recall of his b'ground)
• there is nothing to connect him with Parur (though there is everything!)

Such objections, I think, would be nothing but the timid quibbles of the timorous - those timorous or nervous of making the minimal mental effort or application of mind required to grasp the case. That is to say, of those who merely focus on what is not there instead of seeing how what is actually in place makes it easy to connect the dots.

There is enough evidence & more - outlined by me in detail above.  What is missing not only does not invalidate the case but the missing bits  fall into place when we connect the dots of what is known,

I don't expect anyone to take anything on faith in this account of discovering RJV but to study the evidence & the findings -  I have taken great care not to gild the Lily in making the case. That is why I have recapped the salient proofs/arguments over & over again @ several places in maroon font italics. A review of these will help connect the dots of what is not there.

Remember what Laotze, the Chinese philosopher, said in the Tao Te Ching : 

Now, let's take leave of RJV & turn to CSP as it is today 

Back to CSP

The village still nestles in its splendid isolation by the river - with greenery all around for a mile or more, a truly idyllic setting. A little over half the 85-90 homes are occupied round the year & the rest are visited annually or oftener by their owners from Bombay, Madras, the US, wherever. Festivals such as Shasta preethi, Navratri & Thai Poosham are celebrated with much fanfare & gusto - these being the occasions when the non-resident CSP folk too make it a point to foregather @ the village. The atmosphere is very festive on such occasions what with elephants, traditional music ensembles, silks in evidence & sumptuous & sustaining communal feasts.

CSP : Festive occasion in the village 

The resident population is a mix of people in retirement as well as those employed in Palghat or having their own businesses there. The 19th Century aspect & vista of the single street conceals its secrets well - all homes have electricity & most, if not all, have internet, washing machines, satellite/cable TV, plumbing  & other mod cons, surely making CSP a much more comfortable & extremely agreeable place to live in than in RJV's time! The settlement's uniqueness is that no breath or whiff of the outside world enters it - but for the regular tradesmen supplying milk or providing some services - there are no curious tourists nor any traffic & in this sense, it is not different from what it always has been, that is, a true haven of quiet & peace.

The Samadhis

For about a decade or more, the families of the other 2 incumbents of the Brindavanam, have been visiting monthly from nearby Coimbatore (& elsewhere too) - on such occasions, they light lamps @ the Samadhis, make votive offerings  & so on & also visit the 3 temples in the village. As customary & exactly as convention lays down, these families also pay their respects to RJV's Samadhi even if they did not know its ID until my 1st visit to the village in 2014 - since all incumbents of a Brindavanam have to be treated with equal respect.

These families also undertook extensive Maramut or retrofit of the 3 Samadhis in 2016 - as there had been soil subsidence & some cracks had developed in the masonry work. This was a major undertaking, the completion of which was celebrated with much ceremony - being the occasion I took Sundari for a visit.

These folk also conduct annual Homams or sacred fire poojas @ the Brindavanam followed by a Samaradhanai or communal feast for all from the village who could attend the same. This is towards the end of December each year & @ their kind invitation, I participated in 1 such with my daughter Sundari, staying in the village overnight in the very comfortable home of Mr Veeramani, thrown open for us by the village association's Mr Natarajan. There were many priests in attendance, a Nadaswaram or pipe band & much feasting. My daughter enjoyed the visit immensely as she was keen to observe & experience Kerala village life.

I embed below some videos from the proceedings on 30th Dec 2019.

The line-up for the Samaradhanai @ the Brindavanam - 28 Dec 2019 

Samaradhanai @ the Brindavanam - 28 Dec 2019 (Video)

The Families of the Other 2 Samadhis

In the course of my several visits to CSP, I got acquainted with many of the descendants of the  2 Samadhis in the Brindavanam. The 2 among this group that I am often in touch with are Mr Narayanan of Coimbatore & Mr C V Ramanathan of Bombay (now resident in Puttaparthi).

These families do take their Samadhi obligations most earnestly indeed - besides the monthly visits by many of them as already mentioned, they have arranged for a local to keep the Brindavanam tidy & to light lamps every evening, including  upon RJV's Samadhi.

I have learnt that the names of the other 2 Samadhi incumbents are Mahadeva Iyer & Ramaswamy Shastrigal - the latter being the 2x great by adoption of Capt Ramadevan. In this sense these families have a cousinly connection with the Ramadevan family - through the latter's grandmother & I have been supplied some provisional family trees.

But it is not known exactly how the 2 were cousins of each other & of RJV.

The TM View of CSP & RJV!

My regular feeds & updates in the last 3 years to my TM cousins - about the CSP - RJV angle - have been met with stony silence & all suggestions to go see this enchanting village fended off with "no, not this week" responses. Any & all efforts to ginger up interest in CSP have turned into damp squibs. It would seem my TM cousins, with the exception of a few who have shown some interest, are a stolidly phlegmatic lot - no doubt influenced by the Sam Goldwyn Mayer dictum that "any good movie should begin with an earthquake & work gradually up to a climax". That is how my repeated entreaties to go see CSP were brushed off, indeed shaken off, like so much water off a duck's back. 

However, Rema from Coimbatore - daughter of my uncle Mani - is a shining exception to the general run of TM Refuseniks & Doubting Toms - she made a visit to CSP immediately on receiving my suggestion & found the village a most appealing place. She has not only been visiting almost every month, often offering Payasam, that is milk pudding @ the Krishna temple, but is helping a boy - who lost his father in an accident - through his school education. Three cheers to Rema.

RJV's Samadhi in f'ground

Rema (L) & Shobhi (R) @ CSP - 26 Aug 2018

When flash floods in the river carried away the Krishna Temple in CSP, Rema visited the place, taking my sister Shobhi along with her @ my suggestion - this was on the 26th Aug 2018, a couple of days before I managed to visit the place. It was disappointing but typical of the TM attitude to CSP/RJV that the experience, as far as Shobhi was concerned, was that of a casual stroll in the park - any impressions gathered & the impact of the visit, if any, seemingly short-lived.

The Andhaths - A Positive Attitude to the Samadhi of RJV

I am pleased, however, that our Andhath cousins - Radhu, Kala & Krishnan - showed keen interest in CSP & RJV & indeed - following my reports - made a visit to the place to see things for themselves. There were photos supplied to me of the occasion which I seem to have lost - but I will get some from Radhu & Kala & hoist them here soon.

CSP Residents & the Samadhis : A Divination & Some Revelations

As I have mentioned before, I found that collective memory about the Samadhis as well as interest in them had by & large faded away in CSP - this was a function of the sheer efflux of time & the passing of several generations. Only a very few, like the late Kunjappa, knew anything about them - & of course, Capt Ramadevan & his brother Rajan were possessed of some essential facts. As to the rest, it was scarcely a glance @ the Brindavanam as they passed to & fro on their way to the Shiva temple & back, quite understandable given the passage of time since the interments.

In late 2015 or somewhat later, a Prashnam - an astrological inquiry cum divination (if not a seance) -  was commissioned by the families of the other 2 Samadhi incumbents - the idea being to ascertain by this divination whether or no it was in order to proceed with the abovementioned Maramut of the Brindavanam. Prashnams are conducted by the traditional astrologers of Kerala, usually known as Panikkars, who are acknowledged to be pre-eminent in such inquiries.

Exacly how a Prashnam is conducted is something I will not describe - as a Google search will be sufficient for the purpose - & I will only touch upon the conclusion of the same, which was, of course, positive & affirmative for the undertaking of the Maramut.

But, in the course of the proceedings, there were 2 revelations - in the form of interrogations to the assembly, this apparently being the style of any Prashnam -  which astonished me in no small degree. Although the Panikkar astrologers were from elsewhere & new to CSP, they put 2 probing questions to the assembly :

1. Is it or is it not a fact that some 40-45 years previously, a Nandishwaran (a somewhat hyperbolic term for a sacred bull) died of snake-bite @ the CSP Brindavanam?

2. Is it a fact or no that there was a consensual, extramarital liaison between a man & a  woman of the village, many years back?

I don't know if the assembly gasped in surprise or no but the answers to both questions were in the affirmative (with some brief details supplied in regard to the 2nd). The astrologers said that the 3some were not pleased with the laxity of the village in the 2nd matter as well as in other respects & that the resultant death of the bull should have been taken as a sign of such displeasure & of the neglect of the Brindavanam. Astounding readings of the past & extraordinarily astute of the Panikkars.

Be that as it may & stunning as the revelations were, the village resumed its business as usual course of life post the Prashnam, settling back into its comfortable, agreeable routine.

Aug 2018 : The Deluge - & After

In December 2016, I noticed that a check dam had been erected on the downstream or western, Krishna temple end of the river - an unsightly carbuncle, a blot on the landscape that detracted from the pristine view. Moreover, the upriver side had all the water & there was only a trickle in the river downstream. This was most disappointing & I learned that the local authority & the public works crew had inflicted this lump of a crudely built dam on the village. Valid objections voiced by the locals - that the choice of location for the dam was unsafe as the river is given to flooding @ this point & the banks subject to serious erosion - fell on deaf ears.

Anyhow, 2 years down the road, mid-August 2018, there were unprecedented rains in Kerala with, if I remember right, some places logging as much as 80 inches of rain in a day. Sure enough, on the night of the 16th August 2018 the Shokanashini - bearing flash floods from the ghats upstream - surplused & cascaded like never before, bypassing the dam on the village/Krishna temple side, eroding & carrying off tons of soil on the bank & finally breaching the dam itself.

CSP : The dam finally broken by the river (with the army @ work - removing the debris & continuing the demolition where the river left off).

CSP : Where the Krishna Temple stood once - all that remains is the Flagstaff in the front courtyard

The riverbank around the Krishna temple was fully eroded, the entire temple breaking up &  collapsing into the river, leaving in place only the flagstaff outside the temple. Even as a party from the village was trying to retrieve the idol grouted in mortar with the aid of handheld lamps (the power grid outage requiring such a measure), a roaring torrent of water came down the river forcing the police in attendance to call off the attempt @ retrieval of the idol.

What Went Wrong?

The army had been called in to help with the clearing of the debris & the blasting up of the remnants of the dam when I visited the village on the 28th of August. The idol was still to be recovered from the river but the locals were confident it would be found - this was accomplished a few days later. The door of the Sanctum was also recovered but not its gold plate covering. There is a glaring vacant space where the temple once stood, the forlorn flagstaff reminding us of the deluge.

CSP : The Army called in for flood control - the pea-shooter equipment with the inept public works department being inadequate for the job.

What went wrong?? Everything. A check dam across a mountain stream like the Shokanashini  - which often turns into a raging torrent in the rains -  is not a simple matter of ensuring that a lump of concrete is well set. But that is all that the (low pass) civil engineers of the public works departments are capable of.

The choice of site was inappropriate for several reasons, notably because :

- there was a steep perpendicular bank, all of it sand, where the dam was sited - a location guaranteed to result in disaster since the river in spate would simply bypass the dam by eroding the bank.

- there was no natural shallow ditch in the course of the river @ the site - this is a must to restrict the "head" of water that is dammed.

- check dams should be no more than about 2 feet above the high watermark (so that any sudden increase in the flow of the river may sluice & surplus over the weir) 

- this 1 was about 10 feet high & built over a shallow river bed (therefore, with no ditch @ the spot to retain the dammed water, the head of water above the dam built up enough kinetic force to carry off the embankment

I do know what I am saying because I ran a coffee estate for 10 years - & we had check dams there, built across mountain streams.

As you can see from the snippets below, the truculence of the civil works staff was exceeded only by their ignorance of run of river hydraulics.

From Flood & Fury by K Viju

From A Tale Told by An Idiot by R P Noronha ICS

The Rebuilding of the Temple : When & How?

The quaintly beautiful & appealing Krishna temple was not only a centre of worship for the village but one for social exchange & fellowship - the locals of CSP feel its loss acutely. Where the temple stood is not only a void in space but in their worship & in community life. The retrieved idol of Krishna has been housed in the Shiva temple & efforts are on to rebuild the temple.

CSP : The Krishna idol installed - for the time being - in the Shiva temple

That is easier said than done - the perpetrator of the disaster, the state government, will admit no responsibility nor make a contribution.  As the entire 3000 sq foot site on which the temple stood has been washed away, about 50 feet + of sand fill with concrete & steel pylons down to the bedrock below makes the undertaking a very expensive one - some Rs 4 - 5.5 crores. This is beyond the means of the village community & initiatives are underway to raise the resources by subscriptions from friends & well-wishers. Can this be accomplished? The community is determined but it may take a long while.

A further Prashnam was held & this time the Astrologers came out guns blazing about the village's indifference to the Samadhis, going on to say that such calamities as the deluge & the loss of the temple were inevitable consequences of that neglect. 

However, I, for one, am not sure that if there be an afterlife & if indeed the 3some (the Yogishwaras or the exalted Yogis as the astrologers refer to them) are watching over the goings-on in CSP, their vigil would be anything other than 1 of total, kindly benevolence & benign goodwill for the residents - in such a view of the matter, i.e of an afterlife, they would certainly not inflict any hazards on the village.

Returning to the proposed rebuild of the temple, one thing is clear though : the homely & tasteful 19th Century ambiance of the interior of the Naalambalam with its thinnais finished in smooth, glowing black oxide cement will be virtually impossible to recreate.

Meanwhile, life goes on in CSP & celebration of the festivals lack nothing in pomp & ceremony - but the residents are ever conscious of the need to somehow get a new temple built for Krishna.

Why CSP? Why RJV? Why this Longwinded Post?

Why bang on @ such length about an obscure little village, a mere point on the map & whyever undertake such a quest for RJV, a long-forgotten ancestor?

Anyone with a modicum of interest in Pattar or TamBrahm migration to Kerala - a topic of absorbing interest to me - will understand why CSP is such an interesting study, a case in point, as it were. The place is a microcosm of Pattardom & Pattar life - even today, much as it has been lived in times past. By observing CSP closely, 1 gets a sense of what Pattar life in times past - with its Japas or chants, festivals & sadhyas or feasts - must have been like, a sort of peephole view into the past, as it were.

And the locals are friendly & the setting unquestionably, exquisitely beautiful & serene. Captivating, in fact. Why would you not want to go & see such a place!

To be in CSP is to gain a sense of immediacy, if that is the right word, to be able to visualise how our folk must have lived then

And RJV? You would have noted I have not entered into the question of why he took Sanyas - because, I simply can't imagine why. It is a question of mindset, I suppose - & futile to try to discover the reasons, somewhat like trying to find out the reasons for a divorce.

But, even absent such an inquiry, it is instructive to learn as much as 1 can about an ancestor - it helps us locate ourselves in time & space as well as giving us a sense of place. Moreover, it helps refine or modify 1's own views about 1self, the weltanschauung or world view, as it were. Furthermore, it has been an absorbing, fascinating quest for me. It is important to put together the few remaining strands of the story before these strands atrophy further.

I think Shelley put it very well in ''The Recollection' :

"Now the last day of many days,

All beautiful and bright as thou,

The loveliest and the last, is dead,

Rise, Memory, and write its praise!

Up,–to thy wonted work! come, trace

The epitaph of glory fled,–

For now the Earth has changed its face,

A frown is on the Heaven’s brow".

Moreover, we would not wish to be subject to the confusion this fellow in Trinidad went through :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtAuDCLVlXg

Is that all, is my quest over? By no means - I need to get from the Registry @ nearby Parli a transcript of the ownership chain of RJV's home & have it translated from the Malayalam (though, hopefully, it will be in English). This documentary proof will be secured in the next year or so & will be 1 more "pin" in his profile. 

I now leave you with some more enticing visuals of Chandrasekharapuram but 1st have a look @ this most appealing & panoramic video of the place, a must watch vid : 

In the outer precinct of the temple of Chandrasekhara

The Shokanashini or Kannadipuzha @ CSP

CSP : Elephant furniture @ the Shiva temple

CSP : the forecourt of the old Krishna temple

CSP : the Shokanashini - it was in an equally shallow bed, rocky below, that the check dam was built.

CSP : another view of the streetscape

CSP : Beyond the village - looking from the Shiva temple

Appendix

The write-up on the original CSP in Tamil Nadu (taken from an online site)

Sri Chandrasekhara Swami Chandrasekharapuram

They say that Lord Siva is also called Someswar and Somanathar because of the reason that a rare herb called Somam that grows on the Himalayas is being offered at the yahas. Similarly, Chandra is called by the name Soman. Lord Siva honored Chandra by adorning his head with Chandra and got the names Piraichudi and Chandrasekhar.

The Third crescent moon is one of the sixteen faculties of Chandra. Lord Siva has worn this crescent moon on His head. Usually, in Siva temples, there’ll be separate sannidhi for Sun God and the morning worship services are started with the first service to Sun God. But in the Chandrasekhar Swami temple, the puja is started from Chandra. Siva temples are more in Chola region. There are 276 temples that have been sung in various pathigams. And, there are also many Siva temples that have not been sung but worshipped at by siddhas. Sri Chandrasekhar Swami temple is one among such Siva temples, located at 3 km distance from Valangaiman near Kumbakonam, near Kudamurutti River in Chola region. Let us visit the temple where we can get relief from fear.

Temple history

Lord Siva is known by different names in different places according to His thiruvilaiyadal. Chandra bhagwan, who is at the second place in Navagrahas in this temple got redemption from his curses by worshipping Lord Siva. He knows all the 64 aayakalais. He has 27 wives – 27 stars. Chandra bhagwan went to see the Lord on hearing the news about the birth of a son (Vinayaka) to Him. Chandra ignored Vinayaka who was standing at the door. When Vinayaka enquired, Chandra bhagwan replied in an indifferent tone. When Vinayaka told him that he was the son of the Lord, Chandra laughed at his words. The enraged Vinayaka cursed Chandra bhagwan that he would lose his beauty of phases. Chandra bhagwan showed love only to two of his 27 wives; and because of this reason, the other 25 wives who were angry with Chandra bhagwan also cursed him. Chandra bhagwan lost all his 64 phases due to these curses. When he went to Lord Siva and sought His help, Siva told him to visit 64 Siva temples and worship Him to regain all the 64 phases. Chandra bhagwan visited all the places along with his two wives. After regaining 63 faculties, he came to Chandrasekharapuram to regain the 64th faculty. The Lord, pleased with Chandra bhagwan’s worship, adorned His head with Chandra. The sthalapurana says that the place got the name Chandrasekharapuram because of this reason.

Architecture

The temple has been built by a Chola king. Siddhas and Saptarishis had worshipped the deity here. The figures of the Saptarishis had been sculpted on the wall. The idol of Sulini Durga, the last of Navadurgas has also been installed here.

Sri Sulini Durga

Sulini Durga relieves her devotees from miseries arising from evil habits and practices, jealousy, poverty, helplessness due to a reckless husband etc. Worshipping the Goddess during Rahukaala ensures incredible benefits including absolute peace of mind. Devotees offer red color kesari or wheat halwa as nivedhana on Tuesdays during Rahukaala.

Manonmani Devi

There are many avtars of the Goddess like Yogamoola, Thavamoola, Mantramoola and Pujamoola. Manonmanidevi is the avtar connected with mind power. This manifestation is rarely seen in Siva temples. Sri Manonmanidevi worshipped the Lord with the help of manimantra sakti. Yogapoorva days are there for days, stars, thithi, yoga and karana. Those with weak mind can offer butter kaappu with rose petals or sandal kaappu with pomegranate pearls or wheat halwa kaappu with cashew nuts, grapes and almond or turmeric kaappu with navadhanya to get redemption. It is said that people with Kataka raasi will get enormous benefits if they worship at this sthala because of its glory of having been the place where Chandra bhagwan worshipped Lord Siva. Worship of Sulini Durga will drive away all our miseries. If we worship Sri Sulini Durga and Manonmanidevi during Rahukaala daily, we can get deliverance from all types of miseries and problems, it is believed. Those who suffer from bad Chandra dasa and those whose marriages are delayed will be relieved of their problems if they visit this sthala and worship the deity. But due to lack of publicity, most of the people remain ignorant about the very existence as well as the power of this temple, says Veeramani Sivachariar, the executive officer of the temple.

Route

The temple can be reached by bus that ply to Valangiman from Kumbakonam or can be reached from Swamimalai also.

Appendix 2

The Jata Recital & A Jatavallabhar

Jatapaatam Method of Vedic Chanting:


In the jaTa pATHam method, the pada's (words) are recited as

1-2-2-1-1-2;
2-3-3-2-2-3;
3-4-4-3-3-4 and so on.

In other words, a Jata recital of the Vedas is a way of knotting or knitting together the words in a line of verse – very much akin to the knitting of a plait of hair, forward & backward. Hence the term Jata (which also means anything plaited or matted & combined, such as a rope, a thread or even hair).

Scholarly priests capable of reciting in the jaTA method are given the
title “Jata Vallabha” (1 proficient in the cadence & recitation of the Jata).


Any person familiar with computer networks and internet communication today knows that when data is sent from one computer to the other through a wired/wireless medium, the data is usually repeated many times (sometimes in particular combinations) to make sure that any loss/error that may occur during transmission can be detected and corrected in the transmission end.

Thousands of years ago, - before the advent of writing & paper -our ancestors had similarly devised many brilliant ways of preserving our Vedas and making sure that no error is possible in the oral transmission of Vedas. The "data" was stored then in the human brain (weighing merely 200 grams). The human mouths were used for transmission with ears for reception and sound was the medium. And this was done from generation to generation.

Some excerpts from the article of Dharmatma Dr. Yegnasubramanian (President of Sringeri Vidya Bharati Foundation, USA) article, Rescuing Our Vedic Priesthood,

"Vedic Chanting – a perfectly formulated oral tradition

The Vedas are called ‘Sruti”- which means, what is heard.

It is never read from a text, since the recitation of any Veda mantra should conform to the following six parameters, namely,

varNa (letters);
svara (intonation);
mAtrA (duration of articulation);
balam (force of articulation);
sAma (uniformity), and
santAna (continuity).

If any of these parameters is not maintained, it would change the meaning of the mantra itself, leading to even diametrically opposite effects!

In the absence of a written text, our rishis had devised many ways to prevent even a small error to creep in to the recitation of the veda-mantras. These fool-proof methods used to chant each veda-mantra in various patterns and combinations are known as : vaakya,pada, krama, jaTA, mAlA, SikhA, rekhA, dvaja, danDa, ratha, and Ghana.

Among these, vAkya, pada, krama, jaTa and Ghana methods of chanting are more popular and let us analyze them only here.

Vaakya or samhitA pATha is to recite a mantra in a sentence straight with appropriate intonations. In sentences, some of the words have to be conjoined in chanting.

In padapAtha, a sentence is broken down to ‘words’ or pada’s, which gives the student the knowledge of each word.

In the krama method, the first word of a sentence is added to
the second, the second to the third, the third to the fourth and so on, until the whole
sentence is completed. This method enables the student to understand not only individual
words but also how the words combine in recitation with the attendant modification of
the svaras. Scholarly priests capable of reciting the entire veda-SakhA in the krama
format is given the title “kramavit”.

In the Jata method, the first word and the second
word are recited together and then the words are recited in the reverse order and then
again in the original order. For example, in the krama method, if they are recited as 1-2; 2-3; 3-4; 4-5 etc.,

in the Jata method, they are recited as 1-2-2-1-1-2; 2-3-3-2-2-3; 3-4-
4-3-3-4 and so on. Scholarly priests capable of reciting in the Jata method are given the
title “Jata Vallabha”.

Watch this example of Jata recital @ the Sringeri Mutt : https://www.latest.facebook.com/ShuklaYajurvediBrahminVasai/videos/779562325507228/

The Ghana method is more difficult than the above where the
combinations of words will be
1-2-
2-1-
1-2-3-
3-2-1-
1-2-3;

2-3-
3-2-
2-3-4-
4-3-2-
2-3-4 and so on.

A priest who can recite in the Ghana method is given the title ghanapAThi.

These methods of complicated recitations in an exclusively oral tradition – when no means of writing such as script or paper were available -were devised in order to
preserve the purity of the word, the sound, intonation, pronunciation, accent and sound
combinations of the vedamantras. By repeating the words in manifold ways, the correct
tally of words was also kept which has naturally ensured its purity. To enable the scholars
to take up the difficult methods recitiation, it was believed that, more difficult methods of
chanting earned more puNya or merit!

Just to illustrate what it takes for a priest to earn the title of a Ghanapati, let us briefly analyze what is involved in the training. For illustration, let us consider only one portion of the krishNa yajur veda, called the taittiriya samhitA. In this portion there over 2,000 pancASat’s (1 pancASat = 50 pada’s), amounting to 109,308 pada’s. We can roughly assume each pada to have 3 syllables, thus totaling ~330,000 syllables. In the Ghana method of chanting, each syllable gets repeated 13 times, thus amounting to 4,290,000 utterances. And each of these utterances have to conform to all the six parameters discussed earlier.

Only when a person becomes capable of reciting this in any order asked, gets the title of a Ganapati. This is for only one samhitA portion in krishna yajur veda alone. Then there is Sukla yajur veda, rig veda, sAma veda, and atharva veda. There were scholars proficient in more than one veda as evident from the names dvivedi, trivedi and caturvedi. In addition, there are other samhitA portions, brAhmaNa portions, AraNyaka poritons, and the Upanishads, in the vedic scriptures alone.

After proficiency in ghanapATha, some learn lakshaNa-ghanapATha, which deals with the characteristics of each letter, its origin, how it has to be emphasized in a mantra, its varNa, the presiding deity, etc etc. Then there are purANa’s, dharma-Sastras etc. All these were learnt without any book, tape or any such instruments in the oral tradition, and were stored just in ~200 grams of the human brain! And the most interesting thing is, it was not that one or two individuals who were proficient in this dharma, but an entire society was well versed in this! Such a scholarship takes well over 25 years of intense education in a gurukulam, in addition to observing all the religious disciplines!"

Sources: http://www.brahmanworld.org/…/subramanian_rescuing_priestho