The Jester in the Temple

A Koothu performance lasting forty-one days is being held at the Vadakkunnathan Temple in Thrissur. On stage is Ammannur Chachu Chakyar, the lead performer of the Ammannur Chakyar family, one of Kerala's most distinguished lineages of Koothu artists. In the audience is Rama Varma XV, the recently abdicated Maharaja of Cochin. Chachu Chakyar, dressed as the vidhushaka, turns to the maharaj and poses a bold question. ‘Did you abdicate the throne of your own will? Or where you made to?'

Every day during the forty-one-day performance, the Maharaja arrived a few minutes before the Koothu began and sent word to Chachu Chakyar prescribing exactly which episode of the play he should narrate. Having to wait for the king's instructions prevented the Chakyar from preparing his material in advance. He found it inconvenient but had no choice.

After some days he called on the Maharaja, and in the course of their conversation, the king told him his performance had been below his usual standard. The Chakyar took this opportunity to inform the king that his interference in the selection of themes affected the quality of his performance. Give me one day to choose my own topic, he said, and you will see the change. The Maharaja agreed: "Right, you can choose your own topic today and make me the target of your ridicule and attack."

Having been granted permission to pick his own theme, Chachu Chakyar made a judicious choice. As scholar and koothu artist G. Venu records in his account of the Ammannur family, the Chakyar selected a shloka from the Ramayana Prabandham depicting the fight between Rama and Ravana, specifically the passage in which Ravana taunts Rama with a catalogue of his failures. The shloka runs thus:

"Oh Raghava, you have defeated in battle a woman (Tataka), a Brahmin (Parashurama), a deer (Maricha disguised as a deer), and an animal (the monkey, Bali). All this I know. And what is more, you have been exiled from your kingdom, which was your rightful inheritance, and sent to the forest, and are now living on the roots and fruits available in the forest."

Chachu Chakyar's decision in picking this particular shloka was calculated such that every line Ravana taunted Rama with was a thrust at the Maharaja. Rama's unholy victory over a woman paralleled the king's role in the Smarthavicharam trial of Kuriyedathu Thatri, a Nambudiri woman ostracized under his authority. The quarrel with a Brahmin mirrored a sensational legal case the king had been involved in. The reference to living on roots and fruits was a mockery of his dietary habits. And then the question about exile came when the Chakyar turned directly to the Maharaja and delivered Ravana's words as his own: "Did you abdicate the throne of your own will? Or were you dethroned? To save your face, you will, of course, say that you gave up your throne voluntarily. But that is not the truth. You were really ousted from the throne."

This incident, wherein an artist openly mocks the maharaja that has graced his audience, might be unusual, but this was the role of the chakyar as the vidhushaka in the koothu performances that were popular in the koothambalams, or temple theater halls.

This performance called the chakyar koothu is a part of Kutiyattam, the oldest known surviving Sanskrit theater performed along the principles laid down by the Natyashastra. The earliest textual evidence of kutiyattam  comes from the Chilappatikaram, the Tamil epic attributed to the poet Ilango Adigal. It contains a reference to a performance by Parayur Kuttachakaiya, identified as a member of the Chakyar community who enacted the story of the burning of Tripura before a king. This single reference has become evidence for the claim that the tradition is roughly two thousand years old.  Kutiyattam and its solo format, koothu, are performed based on Sanskrit plays written by authors like Harsha, Kalidasa, Neelakantha, and Bodhayana. 

King Kulashekhara Varma of Mahodayapuram, who authored Subhadradhananjay and Tapatisamvarana, is credited with transforming the tradition alongside his friend Tolan, a vernacular poet, humorist, and connoisseur of drama and shaping the art form substantially. Tolan’s major contribution was the introduction of Malayalam into the vidushaka's speech so that the jester-narrator could explain the Sanskrit and Prakrit passages of the play and make satirical commentaries, which often became the highlight of the performance. Another one of his innovations that added a humorous element that the vidhushaka would capitalize on was a parody on the purusharthas. The four purusharthas that are sanctified by tradition, dharma, artha, kama, and moksha, are replaced by the four aims of existence of a corrupt society. These are described as asana (food), vinoda (enjoyment of sexual pleasure), vanchana (deception), and rajaseva (serving a king). The vidhushaka used these four to make comedic commentary and satire in ways that invoked laughter and, at the same time, introspection among his audience. While in Kutiyattam, the vidhushaka came during several parts of the act; in Chakyar Koothu, he was simply called the Chakayar and took center stage. In the koothu performances, Vidushaka could not only enact and explain the verses but also comment on them, digress from them, and turn them back on the audience. It was this role of the solo Malayalam commentary of the Vidushaka that became the distinctive form of Chakyar Koothu, or Prabandha Koothu, and a source of much entertainment even within the sanctity of koothambalams.

Sanathan and Balakrishna, in their article drawing parallels between the vidhushaka and  political cartoonists, mention that the subversive potential the chakyar enjoys derives from the fact that he has direct access to and is appreciated by the general public. But the Chakyar's immunity to ostracization is because his ability to mock the powerful ruling elite is not mere political subversion; it is ritually sanctioned by the temple. 

The Chakyar and Nambiar communities belonged to  Ambalavasi, the temple-dwelling castes of Kerala, whose hereditary function was service to the temple. There were eighteen Chakyar families in Kerala; each of them was allotted specific temples and received Koothu Viruthi, agricultural land granted by the temples as remuneration for their performances. The performances themselves were not understood as entertainment. They were natyayajna, or visual sacrifices, ritual offerings to the presiding deity of the temple. The Koothambalam was a sacred space, built within the pancaprakaras of the temple complex, governed by brahminical rituals and restrictions

The performance roles  too were assigned along strict lines of both caste and gender. Male members of the Chakyar community performed Chakyar Koothu, the solo verbal Prabandha Koothu, in the role of the Vidushaka. Their vachikabhinaya, or verbal performance, was the heart of the tradition. Nambiar men played the mizhavu, the large copper pot-drum, while women played the cymbals. Nangiar women, the female members of the Nambiar community, performed Nangiar Koothu, the female solo form, specializing in angikabhinaya, or body kinetics. Chakyar women, known as Illotammas, were not permitted to perform in the Koothambalam at all. Kutiyattam, the full ensemble form, brought Chakyars and Nangiars together on stage for the enactment of Sanskrit drama, with netra abhinaya, the expressive use of the eyes and angikabhinaya  central to the performance

It is in this context that the satirical license of the Chakyar must be understood. When Chachu Chakyar turned to the Maharaja and asked, "Ozhinjatho, ozhippichatho?" (Did you abdicate the throne? Or  were you made to?) He was not exercising democratic freedom but ritual license granted by a sacred hierarchy, confined to the Koothambalam. The Chakyar could mock the king because the temple sanctioned it. Outside the Koothambalam, no such immunity existed.

Rigid structures of the Koothambalam with regard to its art forms had not gone unchallenged from within its spaces. Ottam Thullal, often called "poor man's Kathakali,"  a satirical and comedic performance form still widely popular in Kerala today, is said to have originated as a direct response to the exclusivity of Chakyar Koothu. Kunchan Nambiar, a well-known Malayalam poet who worked as a Mizhavu drummer during Koothu performances, fell asleep on stage during a performance and was publicly mocked by the performing Chakyar. Enraged by this humiliation, he invented an alternative art form called Ottam Thullal. Ottam Thullal drew from Chakyar Koothu, Kutiyattam, and Kathakali but broke from all three in one respect: it was performed in Malayalam, not Sanskrit, making it much more accessible. It was performed in open grounds and temple courtyards, not in the sealed space of the Koothambalam. Caste did not determine who could watch.

The satire of Ottam Thullal was no less sharp than that of Chakyar Koothu. Kunchan Nambiar used acts from the Mahabharata and Ramayana to mock landlords, corrupt officials, and the hypocrisy of the pious. Where the Chakyar's license to mock was confined to the Koothambalam and sanctioned by the temple hierarchy, Nambiar's was public. His form became the most popular satirical performance tradition in Kerala, performed across the state. 

In the postcolonial context, Koothu and Kutiyattam gradually loosened much of their rigid structures and ritual purity. This first occurred in September 1949, when Painkulam Rama Chakyar performed Kutiyattam for the first time outside a temple, in the house of a Brahmin, Ceruppoyya Tekkekara Bhattathiri, near Kottarakkara, without musicians and with reduced costume and makeup. The gradual yet  cautious step in moving the art form from the koothambalam into the house of a Brahmin cannot go unnoticed. The boundary of caste was respected even as the boundary of the temple was crossed. 

It was only in 1956 that a fully staged Kutiyattam performance was given outside temple precincts, in the palace of the Zamorin of Calicut, under the auspices of All India Radio. Scholar Heike Moser has observed that this movement of Kutiyattam out of the temple was motivated at least partly by the land reforms in Kerala. When the Kerala government's land legislation of 1970 redistributed the agricultural land held by temple families, the Chakyar families lost their Koothu Viruthi, the land grants that had sustained their hereditary practice for centuries. 

Mani Madhava Chakyar, widely regarded as the greatest Chakyar Koothu and Kutiyattam artist of the modern era, also played a major role in this transition. He performed Kutiyattam outside the temple for the first time in 1955 and faced severe backlash from within his own community for doing so. But he gradually brought the art form outside Kerala and performed in Delhi, Madras, and Benares. His son P.K.G. Nambiar even performed Chakyar Koothu in Hindi at venues in North India. Kerala Kalamandalam established a Kutiyattam department in 1965 under Painkulam Rama Chakyar, which for the first time trained artists from non-Chakyar communities. G Venu, a well-known koothu artist and scholar who has been quoted in this article, was one among them.  These steps to bring inclusivity into the tradition of kutiyattam faced a lot of backlash from the more traditionalist artists. In 2001, UNESCO proclaimed Kutiyattam, a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, the first performing art from India to receive that recognition. 

As Kutiyattam moves away from these rigid structures, it has gained broader inclusivity for performers and audiences. However, as the art form transitions into a recognized piece of national and global heritage, there is a risk that its complex history of caste and power is overlooked. When art forms are reduced to a purely cultural or aesthetic element, the institutionalized politics that defined them are ignored for more sanitized historical narratives.

REFERENCES

Lowthorp, Leah. 2013. “The Translation of Kutiyattam into National and World Heritage on the Festival Stage: Some Identity Implications.” In South Asian Festivals on the Move, edited by Ute Hüsken and Axel Michaels. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

Lowthorp, Leah. 2015. “Voices on the Ground: Kutiyattam, UNESCO, and the Heritage of Humanity.” Journal of Folklore Research 52 (2–3): 157–180. Indiana University Press.

Lowthorp, Leah. 2016. “Freedom in Performance: Actresses and Creative Agency in the Kutiyattam Theatre Complex.” Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture 1 (2).

Moser, Heike. 2013. “Kūṭiyāṭṭam on the Move: From Temple Theatres to Festival Stages.” In South Asian Festivals on the Move, edited by Ute Hüsken and Axel Michaels. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.

Mucciarelli, Elena, and Adheesh Sathaye. 2024. “Transcreating Sanskrit Humor through Kūṭiyāṭṭam: The Translation and Performance of the Rasasadana Bhāṇa.” Asian Literature and Translation 11 (1).

Nair, D. Appukuttan. 1993. The Art of Kutiyattam. New Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi.

Raja, K. Kunjunni. n.d. “Kootiyattam: A General Survey.” Sahapedia. Accessed March 20, 2026. https://www.sahapedia.org/kootiyattam-general-survey.

Richmond, Farley P., Darius L. Swann, and Phillip B. Zarrilli, eds. 1990. Indian Theatre: Traditions of Performance. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Sanathan, Snehal P., and Vinod Balakrishnan. 2021. “Before the Political Cartoonist, There Was the Vidusaka: A Case for an Indigenous Comic Tradition.” European Journal of Humour Research 9 (4).

Venu, G. n.d. “The Kootiyattam Artists of the Ammannur Family.” Sahapedia. Accessed March 20, 2026. https://www.sahapedia.org/kootiyattam-artists-of-the-ammannur-family.