Tradition · shadow puppet theatre

Tōlpāvakkūttu, Palakkad

Also known as Tholpavakoothu, Tolpava Koothu, shadow puppetry Kerala, Tōlpāvakkūttu — Palakkad shadow puppets

Function

Arts & performance

Confidence

Not assessed

Location

10.770, 76.650

Worth knowing

The performance is offered to the goddess rather than to the audience, and is held whether or not anyone is watching — the tradition is that Kali missed the killing of Ravana because she was fighting Darika, so it is staged annually for her benefit. Puppeteers are Pulavar families who must know Tamil verse and Sanskrit commentary.

Connections (2)

• Devotional corpus onRamayana

  Tōlpāvakkūttu performs the Kamba Rāmāyaṇam — the twelfth-century Tamil Ramayana — in Malayalam-speaking Kerala, over as many as twenty-one nights, with the Pulavar puppeteers reciting the Tamil verse and then glossing it in Malayalam prose. The puppeteers must know Tamil poetry and Sanskrit commentary to do it. A Tamil epic kept alive by Malayali shadow-puppeteers in Bhadrakali temples is an unusually specific piece of literary transmission.

• Patronage networkThrissur / Vadakkunnathan

  The koothumadam, the permanent shed for the shadow screen, stands beside Bhadrakali temples through Palakkad and Thrissur districts, and the performance is an offering to the goddess rather than to an audience — held whether or not anybody comes, because tradition holds that Kali missed the killing of Ravana while she was fighting Darika and is owed the account annually. The temple committee pays; attendance is beside the point.

On these journeys

• Possession, mask and shadow — the ritual theatres

Sources

Wikipedia, “Tholpavakoothu”. Sangeet Natak Akademi documentation; UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage nomination files where the practice is listed.

• Wikipedia — Tholpavakoothu