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INTRODUCTION
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was their hereditary profession to help the Cäkkiärs or the traditional actors of Kerala in the staging of Sanskrit plays. There are two types of performances staged by the Cākkiārs (Sūtas) Kūrtu and Kūțiyāṭṭam. In the former the Paniväda or Nambiar was to play on the drum called 'Mizhāvu or Muruja-vadya; and in the latter, which consisted in enacting scenes from classical Sanskrit dramas, he played on the drum. It is from this drum (pāņi-vādya) that the castename Pāņiväda appears to be derived. The women of the Nambiar caste generally took the female parts in these plays. As a result of this, the members of this caste, as a whole, were well versed in Sanskrit; and the tradition of Sanskrit scholarship was deep-rooted in their community. These Nambiars enacted the dramatic narrations of Puranic stories as well.
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Rāma Pāņivāda, as his name indicates, belonged to the Pāņivāda or the Nambiar community, a section of the Ambalavāsi community of Kerala. He was born about the year A. D. 1707 at Kalakkathu house, Killikurisi Mangalam, a village near the present railway station Lekkidi in South Malabar. Before it was ceded to the British, the village was inIcluded in the Cochin State. His father is believed to have been a Nampüdiri Brahmin of Kumāranallur in central Travancore who was a priest in the temple of Killikuriśi Mangalam, the famous Saiva temple of the locality.
Rāma Pāṇivāda began his studies first under his father and then under an eminent teacher Nārāyaṇa Bhattatiri, a learned Nampudiri Brahmin of Thrikkarimon Illam. In his different works Rama refers in glowing and respectful terms
Jain Education International
4 M. KRISHNAMACHARIAR: Classical Sanskrit Literature § 177; the name of our author is given as Ramapaninada! There are some references to Rama Pāņivāda in T. K. K. MENON'S Landmarks in Malayalam Literature, Ernakulam, 1937.
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