The Niranam poets, also known as the Kannassan poets, were three poets from the same family by the names of Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar, and Rama Panikkar. They hailed from

Niranam Niranam is a village in Thiruvalla, Kerala, India. It was a port in ancient Kerala, on the confluence of the Manimala River, Manimala and Pamba River. It is almost 7 km from Tiruvalla in Pathanamthitta District of Kerala, lies to the wester ...

, a small village in southern

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

, India, near the town of

Thiruvalla Thiruvalla, () also spelled Tiruvalla, is a Municipalities of Kerala, municipality in Pathanamthitta district, Kerala, India. The town is spread over an area of and has a population of 52,883 people, down from 56,837 in 2001. It is also the H ...

. Their works mainly comprised translation and adaptation of Sanskrit epics and Puranic works and were for devotional purposes. They lived between 1350 and 1450 C.E. It is believed that they all belonged to the same Kannassa family and that Madhava Panikkar and Sankara Panikkar were the uncles of Rama Panikkar, the youngest of the three. As Kannassa, they were probably Nair Panikkers or members of the

Kaniyar Kaniyar is a caste from the Indian state of Kerala. There are regional variations in the name used to define them. They are listed under the Other Backward Communities (OBC) by the Kerala Government. Traditions of origin Kathleen Gough has r ...

caste A caste is a Essentialism, fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to marry exclusively within the same caste (en ...

, which makes their claim to mastery of

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...

a significant feature as Kaniyar, being adept in Astrology and Ayurveda, they were accepted by then the Kings Their works have been mostly assigned to the ''Pattu'' ''taxon''. It revived the ''Bhakti'' school of literature and reasserted the seriousness of the poetic vocation in the place of the excessive sensuality and eroticism of the ''

Manipravalam Manipravalam (, ) is a macaronic language found in some manuscripts of South India. It is a hybrid language, typically written in the Grantha script, which combines Sanskrit lexicon and Tamil morpho-syntax.The Illustrated weekly of India, (1965). ...

'' poets. Divergence from the ''Manipravalam'' school, through non-usage of Dravidian

metre The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

and Sanskrit grammatical forms, are noted. Madhava Panikkar's ''Bhasha Bhagavadgita'', a condensed Malayalam translation of ''

Bhagavad Gita The Bhagavad Gita (; ), often referred to as the Gita (), is a Hindu texts, Hindu scripture, dated to the second or first century BCE, which forms part of the Hindu epic, epic poem Mahabharata. The Gita is a synthesis of various strands of Ind ...

'' was its first translation into any modern Indian language. Sankara Panikkar's main work is ''Bharatamala'', a masterly condensation of ''

Mahabharata The ''Mahābhārata'' ( ; , , ) is one of the two major Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epics of ancient India revered as Smriti texts in Hinduism, the other being the ''Ramayana, Rāmāyaṇa''. It narrates the events and aftermath of the Kuru ...

''. Perhaps the most important was Rama Panikkar, who is the author of ''

Ramayana The ''Ramayana'' (; ), also known as ''Valmiki Ramayana'', as traditionally attributed to Valmiki, is a smriti text (also described as a Sanskrit literature, Sanskrit Indian epic poetry, epic) from ancient India, one of the two important epics ...

m'', '' Bharatam'', '' Bhagavatam'', and ''Sivarathri Mahatmyam''. ''Kannassa Ramayanam'' and ''Kannassa Bharatam'' are the most important of these Niranam works. The former is an important link between Cheeraman's ''Ramacharitam'', Ayyappilli Asan's ''Ramakathapattu'' and Ezhuthachan's '' Adhyathmaramayanam''. Ulloor has said that Rama Panikkar holds the same position in Malayalam literature that

Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser (; – 13 January 1599 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.) was an English poet best known for ''The Faerie Queene'', an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the House of Tudor, Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is re ...

has in English literature.

References

* Singh, Kumar Suresh (2003). People of India. 26. Anthropological Survey of India. p. 717. {{poetry-stub Malayalam poets