Ramanattam (

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

: രാമനാട്ടം,

IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...

: Rāmanāṭṭaṃ) is a temple art in

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. The dance drama presents the story of

Rama Rama (; , , ) is a major deity in Hinduism. He is worshipped as the seventh and one of the most popular avatars of Vishnu. In Rama-centric Hindu traditions, he is considered the Supreme Being. Also considered as the ideal man (''maryāda' ...

in a series of eight plays and was created under the patronage of Veera Kerala Varma (AD 1653–1694) ''alias'' Kottarakkara Thampuran. Ramanattom is based on a story from the epic ''

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 ...

'', covering the incarnation of Rama to the Rama-Ravana War, Ravana's defeat and Rama's crowning at Ayodhya. The story was written by Kottarakkara Thampuran and is divided into eight poetic sections so that each section can be enacted in one day. These eight sections are puthrakameshti, seetha swayamvaram, vicchinnabhishekam, kharavadham, balivadham, thoranayudham, sethubandhanam and yudham (war). Ramanattam is widely believed to be the immediate stem of the well known classical art form of Kerala,

Kathakali ''Kathakali'' (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, IAST: Kathakaḷi ) is a traditional form of Indian Classical Dance, and one of the most complex forms of Theatre of India, Indian theatre. It is a play of verses. These vers ...

Origin

After the staging and creation of Krishnattam by the then

Zamorin The Samoothiri (Anglicised as Zamorin; Malayalam: , , Arabic: ''Sāmuri'', Portuguese: ''Samorim'', Dutch: ''Samorijn'', Chinese: ''Shamitihsi''Ma Huan's Ying-yai Sheng-lan: 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores' 433 Translated and Edi ...

Raja of

Calicut Kozhikode (), also known as Calicut, is a city along the Malabar Coast in the state of Kerala in India. Known as the City of Spices, Kozhikode is listed among the City of Literature, UNESCO's Cities of Literature. It is the nineteenth large ...

in 1657 AD, its fame spread all over Kerala. Its success induced the neighbouring chief of the Raja of Kottarakkara (Kottarakkara Thampuran) to request the Zamorin for the loan of a troupe of performers on the eve of a wedding taking place in the Kottarakkara palace. King Manavedan, then Zamorin of Kozhikode has a troupe that performs Krishnanattam. The king of Kottarakkara sent a messenger to Kozhikode with a letter requesting him to send artists. It is said that due to internal feuds and political rivalry between the chieftains of the neighbouring States, the Zamorin, besides refusing to send the performers, insulted and humiliated the Raja of Kottarakkara with the remark, ''" It is useless to depute the troupe, because your (Raja of Kottarakkara's) court would be neither able to appreciate nor understand anything of the highly artistic Krishnattam and the high standard of the performance "'' Here the political rivalry between the two chieftains turned into art rivalry and lead to the Kottarakkara Thampuran, initiating a parallel mode of entertainment, based on

, and named it as Ramanattam (literally meaning life of Rama in dance form). While the Manaveda's Krishnattam was written in

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 ...

, the "language of the gods"; he composed the entire Ramayanam in eight volumes in

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). ...

style.

Origin of Kathakali

It is believed that the art form of Ramanattam was transformed into a new dance form called

by the king of Kottayam (Kottayath thampuran), and it was created at the Mridangashaileshwari temple in Muzhakkunn. It was based on epic Mahabharatha. It is also believed that the two art forms, Ramanattam and Krishnanattam were combined to form Kathakali. Kathakali is very similar to Ramanatta in terms of presentation, costuming, acting and background music.

References

Hindu dance traditions Performing arts in India Dances of Kerala Theatre of India Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity Religious vernacular drama {{India-dance-stub