Ramakathappattu (song on Rama's story) written by Ayyippiļļa Asan is a classical narrative epic in Malayalam. This work appeared in Malayalam in the first half of 1400-1450 С.Е. The language of this text is an admixture of three languages -Literary Malayalam, Sanskrit and Malayalam dialect of Thiruvananthapuram and Kannyakumari districts. This voluminous work contains 3169 songs running in to about 25,000 lines. It has been sung down to us through the ages. To sing this epic during the festival days of Sri Padmanabhaswami Temple, Thiruvananthapuram was a customary practice. The most important characteristic to note in this work is that different varieties of Dravidian folk metres are used. It was sung in festive occasions in temples by using the musical instrument 'candravalayam'.
The Index published here is the second part of the Ph.D. dissertation titled 'A Linguistic Study on Ramakathappattu submitted to the University of Kerala by Smt. G. Sulekha, Professor (Rtd.), T.K.M. Art's College, Karikodu, Kollam in 1977. Linguistically the language used in Ramakathappattu exhibits the dialectal features of a southern bilingual area in the erstwhile princely state of Travancore. The present work due to its bilingual features and having a history of about six centuries is quite significant from the linguistic point of view which prompted the ISDL to publish this grammatical index of Ramakathappattu. The source of this index is Ramakathappattu published by Dr. P.K. Narayana Pillai in two volumes in 1970. In the composition of this song the poet Ayyippiļļa asan followed Valmiki Ramayana by and large.
International School of Dravidian Linguistics had already published the grammatical indices of ancient Malayalam classical works such as Ramacaritam, Bhasakautaliyam and Kannassa Ramayanam. By publishing all the indices of ancient Malayalam works, ISDL aims to prepare a historical grammar and lexicon for Malayalam language. Indeed, Index of Ramakathappattu is a valuable source material for the attainment of the above goal. I thank Smt. G. Sulekha on behalf of ISDL for giving permission to publish the grammatical index of Ramakathappattu.
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