An Actor in Red and White

The author focuses on the major Maṇipravāḷam campus and prabandhams composed mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Kerala. These very often include detailed parodic descriptions of social reality and thus allow us a glimpse of Kerala society seen from within at this moment of critical cultural formation. Since Mantrāṅkam has remarkably similar segments in which large parts of the proto-urban and village societies are described in mostly parodic terms, we need to read the play in relation to the primary literary texts of this period. This is a pioneering essay with powerful implications for our understanding of the cultural milieu in which Mantrāṅkam was created.