Kerala's Pulluvas and Pampum Tullal

Keralas Puuvas and Pmpum Tual is a story about the lives of Keralas Puuva ritual specialists and their days-long ritual performance, pmpum tual, or the jumping dance of the serpent deities (ngam or pmpu). The ritual is commissioned by members of Keralas landed communities to bring health and prosperity to their extended families. Belonging to an ancient South Indian tradition, the ritual is orchestrated by Puuva ritual specialists, who hold the sole hereditary right to perform it. This book is the first in Kerala to approach this ritual tradition from the viewpoints and agency of its Dalit (formerly known as untouchable) ritual specialistsmen and women, and to examine Puuva ritual practice in the context of rapid and extensive social change. The study sheds important light upon Puuva rituals, lives, and livelihoods, within the broader contexts of changing class, caste, and kinship relations; land tenure and ritual patronage; labour migration; and the decline of Nyar matrilineality and old landed families. These wide-ranging social trends, indexed and acted out in ritual, are the backdrop for understanding Puuva ritual practice from the 1980s, and in terms of history, point to multiple structures and hierarchies of practice and meaning.