The educational activities of the missionaries belonging to the Basel Mission (conversion efforts notwithstanding) deserve special mention. Except for the first, the other three have been omitted from the current script used in Kerala as there are no words in current Malayalam that use them. I was running through the talking points for the workshop I was to facilitate when I received a call from my wife, Deepa. The Season of Denha –Manifestation – also begins on the Sunday following Denha. However, the purpose of Attakkatha is not to present a theme with a well-knit emotional plot as its central point, but to present all approved types of characters already set to suit the technique of the art of Kathakali. He brought about a revolution in the cultural and religious outlook of the people by bringing art and literature from its high and pedantic realm down to the popular standard. The fact is that dialectical and local peculiarities had already developed and stamped themselves in local songs and ballads. By the end of 18th century some of the Christian missionaries from Kerala started writing in Malayalam but mostly travelogues, dictionaries and religious books. They are following: Sub-dialect regions, which could be marked off, were found to be thirty. Wish you all a Blessed Christmas and a Grace filled New Year! Delineation of a particular rasa is an inevitable feature with Sanskrit drama, whereas in an Attakkatha all the predominant rasas are given full treatment, and consequently the theme of an Attakkatha often loses its integrity and artistic unity when viewed as a literary work. ; poojayum sadya yum kaliyum ni'cchu piriyenam ku . The script contains 52 letters including 16 vowels and 36 consonants, which forms 576 syllabic characters, and contains two additional diacritic characters named anusvāra and visarga. Also Kerala Varma’s Mayura-sandesam is a Sandesakavya (messenger poem) written after the manner of Kalidasa’s Meghadutam. In all, Malayalis made up 3.22% of the total Indian population in 2011. Although a large number of social novels were produced during this period, only a few are remembered, such as Snehalatha by Kannan Menon, Hemalatha by T. K. Velu Pillai and Kambola-balika by N. K. Krishna Pillai. The major literary output of the century was in the form of local plays composed for the art of kathakali, the dance dramas of Kerala also known as Attakkatha. Many prose works in the form of commentaries upon Puranic episodes form the bulk of the classical works in Malayalam. Malayalam has also borrowed the Sanskrit diphthongs of /äu/ (represented in Malayalam as ഔ, au) and /ai/ (represented in Malayalam as ഐ, ai), although these mostly occur only in Sanskrit loanwords. and Syro-Malankara Dioceses. After them there were others like K. K. Nair and K. M. Panikkar who contributed to the growth of poetry. The writings of Ezhuthachan became a confluence of the two channels of linguistic currents. Also there was C V Raman Pillai, who wrote the historical novel Marttandavarma in 1890 as well as works like Dharmaraja, and Ramaraja Bahadur. He narrated the stories in the social background of his time, converting all Puranic characters into ordinary human beings.  |  It is said that Malayalam as a spoken language was not referred to in Tamil literature before the 15th century. ), prop. Malayalam numbers and fractions are written as follows. [28] 134 Malayalam speaking households were reported in 1956 in Fiji. Get XML access to reach the best products. Short stories came into being. ○   Boggle. Some believe Proto-Tamil, the common stock of ancient Tamil and Malayalam, diverged over a period of four or five centuries from the 9th century on, resulting in the emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Proto-Tamil. Asher, R. E. and Kumari, T. C. (1997). The regional dialects of Malayalam can be divided into thirteen dialect areas. Travancore and Cochin had come under British rule due to treaty obligations while Malabar was part of the Madras Presidency.