mahabali

PRESTOR JOHN, THE KALABHRAS AND MAHABALI ; WHAT IS ONAM ALL ABOUT? M. M. NINAN
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Chera kingdom of Mahodayapuram. There is a solitary reference to the
northernmost, and thus possibly the oldest, of these settlements, namely
Chellur or Perumchellur or Taliparamba, in the Tamil "Sangam" literature with a
Vedic sacrificial background and the Parasurama tradition; but the rest of them
are clearly products of a later period. It is also clear that all these had been not
only established but also sufficiently prosperous by the beginning of the ninth
century, when the Chera kingdom was ruling over Kerala from Mahodayapuram.
What is important is that when we begin to get historical evidence, they were
well established around temples, controlling the temple and the vast estates of
land that it possessed. The Gramam was synonymous with the temple and viceversa.
It will not be far too wrong to look at these settlements as so many
agrarian corporations centered around the temples. In fact, much of the agrarian
land in Kerala was under the control of these thirty-two Gramams or the several
Upagramams they had - at least that is the impression that we gather from the
inscriptions of the period. With such Brahmanical control of land and the
population dependent on that land, it is not surprising that Kerala came to be
known as brahmakshatram or where Brahmanans wielded the power of
Kshatriyas. In fact, the statements in Keralolpathi as well as other historical
sources, that it was the Brahmanans who put the Chera king on the throne,
mean the same thing.”
In other words, these Brahmins used the temples as schools to train suicide
squads and brahminic armies which took over the local cheifdoms and
kingdoms. Now we can see what the throwing of the axe to bring Kerala back
really means.
As suggested earlier, the villages were organised around temples, which owned
landed properties in large measure. Committees known as ur (oor), urar, or
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