Years back in the thickly wooded areas off Kannur near the flowing vallapatanam river there lived a brahmin couple from the famous Ayyankaar illam .
Ayyankara Devan and Padikutty Antharjanam
They were childless and sad .
The antharjanam finds a child abandoned near the river when she goes to bath and the couple bring up the child .
Hes Muthappan .
Those were feudal times of Aryan dominance over Dravidians like the Parasuram created temples were managed by brahmin families and entry to lower castes were banned .
Muthappan they say is an incarnation of Shiva and Vishnu in kali yuga .
His birth is in tune with sambhavami yuge yuge ie the Lord gets born in time to time as per need .
In those times the Lord needed to be a champion for the downtrodden lower castes .
So Muthappan used to spend most of his teen years in company of tribals and lower castes hunting animals for meat taking fermented rice with meat fish and taking liqour .
This was shocking to his parents .
His father asked him to go out of the house .
Muthappan got furious but showed his true self to his parents who fell on his feet asking him to forgive them .
His eyes were so powerful that it burned anything in its path .
His mother asked him to wear an eye shield to avoid this .
The theyyam is a north kerala art form and like idols ,floor decorations called Kalam varakkal ,were considered as Gods .
Muthappan is represented by Vellaatam or the fiery Shiva form with metal eye pieces .
He wears a crescent shaped head gear ,eye shield etc .
Thiruvappana who pairs with Vellatam is the milder Vishnu wearing a fish shaped headgear .
In the theyyam its Thiruvapana who guides vellaattam as his eyes are closed .
These theyyam.forms are forms of worship and the devotee in full faith accepts the advice on his pleas with implicit obedience .
So both forms are a combination of confession and counselling for the multitudes .
The Thiruvappana vellatam theyam takes place every single morning in Muthappan temple in Parsinikadavu .
The area of the temple is called Madapara and the chief person accepted in administering the temple is Madayan or eldest son in law of the extended family by marumakathaayam or maternal lineage followed in kerala .
The Maadayan is the intermediary to the theyyam forms in conveying thier advices to the devotee.
The muthappan form of God is offered different type of offerings unlike in satvic form of worship .
Its thamasic .
Liqour is a favourite as it was for the real muthappan who was said to have stolen toddy from a palm of a chundan who gets angry and shouts at him .
Muthappan turns him into stone and later on impassioned pleas from his wife turns him back to living form .
They then pray to him with liqour as offering
Muthappan is also always accompanied by stray dogs who protect him in his wanderings .
Hence near the temple too one does find a few dogs but they are harmless and docile
The temple offerings are given to the dogs too and two bronze dogs gaurd the entrance .
All this may surprise regular temple goers in kerala as they are not used to meat or fish anywhere in vicinity of a temple and liqour too is abhorred .
This is a bit similar to aghora form seen in the north
The aghoras have no rules of civilisation they mostly wear no clothes and are covered with ash have dirty unkempt hair and eat anything even dead bodies .
Some of them are highly educated scholars .
It might shock most to think these people live like this and are even considered divine but thats the wide spectrum of hinduism which includes the most base of idol worshipping rituals aghora sadhu practices meat and fish offerings on one hand or highly selective satwic practices in temples with great purity and prohibiton of anything which is not falling in its gamut on the other .
The madapura of Muthappan is hardly built like a temple in its aghamic form .
Its more like a multistoreyed hall with in built altars for the idols because here more than the idols its the theyyam forms which are representative of divinity a form of live real time personification of divinity to whom the devotee can directly interact .
Its from the vannaan community or washermen families the theyyam dancers come from taking turns maintaining thier purity and strictures asked for during this period and going into intervals of trances where they behave as muthappan himself .
We had reached kannur in the morning and took an auto rickshaw from railway station to Dharmasala about 16 km .
We checked into KTDC Tamarind already booked online .
This was opposite cannore technical university and it had a indian coffee house with great ambience serving excellent food at bargain prices .
It was around 12 km to Parsinikadavu which we reached by an autorickshaw .
The temple as i mentioned looked more like a hall was pretty crowded .
We entered from back side the front had a multistoreyed facade with elephant edges .
It faced the broad flowing Valapattanam river .
One could see the highway bridge from the temple
With the sun rising up it was meant for taking photographs but more was happening inside temple
The vellatam and Thiruvappana had already began thier ritial dance graceful to the tunes of clashing cymbals and echoing drum beats .
Men were neatly sitting or standing on one side while women were on the opposite side .
Many mingled too with children on thier hips.
Most kerala temples and kerala society women are not repressed in fact they are more adorned and given greater importance which is difficult for the rest of india to understand ..look at the confusion a distant supreme court created in sabarimala temple which had nothing to do with women repression but a traditional habit accepted by kerala temple going women (not the card carrying commies ).
After a long time the dance and movements stopped when i itched to take a video or snaps unfortunately prohibited inside temple .
People thronged around the artistes for thier blessings and pronouncements.
I heard thiruvattam saying to a school going boy to concentrate on his studies and blessing him to the delight of the parents and the shy boy himself .
We too took his blessings giving him.a small dakshina or offering .
All the small cash collections would go to the theyyam artistes but the bigger amounts or gold should be shared with all temple people .
We then moved into a hall for the prasadam which thankfully was not liqour or fish it was fresh boiled peas with coconut pieces steamed and glasses of tea which was served in moving trolleys like in a flight as we sat in benches .
After some more pictures we left the famous parsinikadavu muthappan temple .
Ayyankara Devan and Padikutty Antharjanam
They were childless and sad .
The antharjanam finds a child abandoned near the river when she goes to bath and the couple bring up the child .
Hes Muthappan .
Those were feudal times of Aryan dominance over Dravidians like the Parasuram created temples were managed by brahmin families and entry to lower castes were banned .
Muthappan they say is an incarnation of Shiva and Vishnu in kali yuga .
His birth is in tune with sambhavami yuge yuge ie the Lord gets born in time to time as per need .
In those times the Lord needed to be a champion for the downtrodden lower castes .
So Muthappan used to spend most of his teen years in company of tribals and lower castes hunting animals for meat taking fermented rice with meat fish and taking liqour .
This was shocking to his parents .
His father asked him to go out of the house .
Muthappan got furious but showed his true self to his parents who fell on his feet asking him to forgive them .
His eyes were so powerful that it burned anything in its path .
His mother asked him to wear an eye shield to avoid this .
The theyyam is a north kerala art form and like idols ,floor decorations called Kalam varakkal ,were considered as Gods .
Muthappan is represented by Vellaatam or the fiery Shiva form with metal eye pieces .
He wears a crescent shaped head gear ,eye shield etc .
Thiruvappana who pairs with Vellatam is the milder Vishnu wearing a fish shaped headgear .
In the theyyam its Thiruvapana who guides vellaattam as his eyes are closed .
These theyyam.forms are forms of worship and the devotee in full faith accepts the advice on his pleas with implicit obedience .
So both forms are a combination of confession and counselling for the multitudes .
The Thiruvappana vellatam theyam takes place every single morning in Muthappan temple in Parsinikadavu .
The area of the temple is called Madapara and the chief person accepted in administering the temple is Madayan or eldest son in law of the extended family by marumakathaayam or maternal lineage followed in kerala .
The Maadayan is the intermediary to the theyyam forms in conveying thier advices to the devotee.
The muthappan form of God is offered different type of offerings unlike in satvic form of worship .
Its thamasic .
Liqour is a favourite as it was for the real muthappan who was said to have stolen toddy from a palm of a chundan who gets angry and shouts at him .
Muthappan turns him into stone and later on impassioned pleas from his wife turns him back to living form .
They then pray to him with liqour as offering
Muthappan is also always accompanied by stray dogs who protect him in his wanderings .
Hence near the temple too one does find a few dogs but they are harmless and docile
The temple offerings are given to the dogs too and two bronze dogs gaurd the entrance .
All this may surprise regular temple goers in kerala as they are not used to meat or fish anywhere in vicinity of a temple and liqour too is abhorred .
This is a bit similar to aghora form seen in the north
The aghoras have no rules of civilisation they mostly wear no clothes and are covered with ash have dirty unkempt hair and eat anything even dead bodies .
Some of them are highly educated scholars .
It might shock most to think these people live like this and are even considered divine but thats the wide spectrum of hinduism which includes the most base of idol worshipping rituals aghora sadhu practices meat and fish offerings on one hand or highly selective satwic practices in temples with great purity and prohibiton of anything which is not falling in its gamut on the other .
The madapura of Muthappan is hardly built like a temple in its aghamic form .
Its more like a multistoreyed hall with in built altars for the idols because here more than the idols its the theyyam forms which are representative of divinity a form of live real time personification of divinity to whom the devotee can directly interact .
Its from the vannaan community or washermen families the theyyam dancers come from taking turns maintaining thier purity and strictures asked for during this period and going into intervals of trances where they behave as muthappan himself .
We had reached kannur in the morning and took an auto rickshaw from railway station to Dharmasala about 16 km .
We checked into KTDC Tamarind already booked online .
This was opposite cannore technical university and it had a indian coffee house with great ambience serving excellent food at bargain prices .
It was around 12 km to Parsinikadavu which we reached by an autorickshaw .
The temple as i mentioned looked more like a hall was pretty crowded .
We entered from back side the front had a multistoreyed facade with elephant edges .
It faced the broad flowing Valapattanam river .
One could see the highway bridge from the temple
With the sun rising up it was meant for taking photographs but more was happening inside temple
The vellatam and Thiruvappana had already began thier ritial dance graceful to the tunes of clashing cymbals and echoing drum beats .
Men were neatly sitting or standing on one side while women were on the opposite side .
Many mingled too with children on thier hips.
Most kerala temples and kerala society women are not repressed in fact they are more adorned and given greater importance which is difficult for the rest of india to understand ..look at the confusion a distant supreme court created in sabarimala temple which had nothing to do with women repression but a traditional habit accepted by kerala temple going women (not the card carrying commies ).
After a long time the dance and movements stopped when i itched to take a video or snaps unfortunately prohibited inside temple .
People thronged around the artistes for thier blessings and pronouncements.
I heard thiruvattam saying to a school going boy to concentrate on his studies and blessing him to the delight of the parents and the shy boy himself .
We too took his blessings giving him.a small dakshina or offering .
All the small cash collections would go to the theyyam artistes but the bigger amounts or gold should be shared with all temple people .
We then moved into a hall for the prasadam which thankfully was not liqour or fish it was fresh boiled peas with coconut pieces steamed and glasses of tea which was served in moving trolleys like in a flight as we sat in benches .
After some more pictures we left the famous parsinikadavu muthappan temple .
