Origins of Kalarippayattu

Phillip B Zarrilli, a professor at the University of Exeter and one of the few Western authorities on kalaripayattu, estimates that northern kalarippayattu dates back to at least the 12th century CE. The historian Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai attributes the birth of northern kalarippayattu to an extended period of warfare between the Cheras and the Cholas in the 11th century CE.

From the eleventh or twelfth century the right and duty to practice the martial art in the service of a ruler was most associated with specific subgroups of Nairs; however, at least one subcaste of Brahmins, as well as some Christians and Muslims were given this right and duty.

In addition, a special subcaste of Tiyyas called chekors were engaged to fight in ankam, public duels to the death to solve disputes between higher caste opposing parties. Among at least some Nair and Tiyya families, young girls also received preliminary training up until the onset of menses. We also know from the vadakkan pattukal ballads that at least a few women of noted Nair and Tiyya masters continued to practise and achieved a high degree of expertise. Ankam were fought on an ankathattu, a temporary platform, four to six feet high, purpose-built for ankam.

The earliest and most detailed account of this art is that of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa (c. 1518).

The more part of these Nayres when they are seven years of age are sent to schools where they are taught many tricks of nimbleness and dexterity; there they teach them to dance and turn about and to twist on the ground, to take royal leaps, and other leaps, and this they learn twice a day as long as they are children, and they become so loose-jointed and supple that they make them turn their bodies contrary to nature; and when they are fully accomplished in this, they teach them to play with the weapon to which they are most inclined, some with bows and arrows, some with poles to become spearmen, but most with swords and bucklers, which is most used among them, and in this fencing they are ever practising. The masters who teach them are called Panicals.

Kalarippayattu underwent a period of decline after the introduction of firearms and especially after the full establishment of British colonial rule in the 19th century.

The resurgence of public interest in kalarippayattu began in the 1920s in Tellicherry as part of a wave of rediscovery of the traditional arts throughout South India and continued through the 1970s surge of general worldwide interest in martial arts.