Mangos, Coconuts, Scabbards, and Lime: Literary Lists in Premodern Prose from Kerala.

This article deals with literary lists in ornate prose sections (gadya) of Maṇipravāḷam literature from premodern Kerala. Rather than viewing such lists as informative texts, I focus on their aesthetic quality, as literary creations that evoke a sense of the spectacular particularity of the local, the tangible, and the mundane. The main case study is a fourteenth-century market description that enumerates more than 250 objects, including grain, fish, cloth, medicinal items, flowers, and perfumes. The list creates a sense of excess in its use of both an actual image of abundance (Kerala is described as a vibrant commerce center) and a parallel image of linguistic abundance, with Malayalam, the local language, placed center stage.