Interpreting Knowledge of the Present and Past to Last Forever: Archivalization

Introduction

This essay contains a few reflections on the procedures and processes of creating cadjan (palm) leaf documents/records, which were preserved in the archives at the premises of Padmanabha Swamy temple of Trivandrum for centuries and then shifted to the archives of the government of Kerala, India. The efficacy of this medieval archive is that it could legitimately govern the present through the authority of the past. These records or documents were maintained by the Padmanabha Swamy temple of Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) at least since 1336 ce. This set of documents is known as mathilakam grandhavari. ‘The temple abounds in riches of all descriptions, but the richest assets are the countless churunas (bundles) of records heaped up there. In this respect, the Padmanabha Swami temple is quite unrivalled by any other institution of the kind in the whole of India’ (Nair, n.d.). Special efforts were made in 1425 ce to procure more documents and preserve them (Tekkumbhagam, 2011, p. 70). There were documents dating back to 840 ce. The total number of Mathilakam grandhavari is about 3 million, which constitutes the biggest hoard of palm leaf documents in India or in the world. Although not directly connected, it should also be stated that this temple is now well known as one of the wealthiest temples in the world. In the year 2011, different vaults of the temple were opened following the instructions of the Supreme Court of India, and it was conservatively estimated that the value of the treasure (monumental artefacts) is close to 1.2 lakh crore rupees; this amount does not include the antique and cultural values. The treasure includes ancient artefacts, jewels, and coins from Chera, Pandya, Thiruvithamkur, Kolathiris, Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman kingdoms. One of the vaults is yet to be opened. This temple is mentioned in some of the extant texts known as Sangam literature (500 bce to 300 ce). All these indicate that, both in terms of the stock of historical documents and material treasure, this temple has immense importance. This article is about the making of Mathilakam Grandhavary.

The main argument of this paper is that the palm leaf documents preserved in this temple were not passive, but they were recalled quite often to reason and substantiate decisions ‘in the present’ till the first half of the nineteenth century. The Mathilakam Grandhavari functioned as a juridical and administrative archive preserving precedents for ritual practice, land management, and dispute resolution. When some form of indecisiveness occurred, then the old documents regarding the events in question were recalled. For example, when a succession dispute took place in the year 1811 in Thiruvithamkur (Travancore), documents from 1335 to 1811 were recalled and looked into to resolve the dispute (Nair, n.d., p. 22). These cadjan leaf documents were not mere written materials stocked at the remote corners of grandhapura (archive/library); they were not merely inert substances to take note of the events of importance at the time of writing about them. ¹ What could be termed as a process of ‘archivalization’ was indispensable to those who were in the worlds of writing and ruling. The comprehensive (although elusive) term used in this paper to capture the different dimensions of documentation and their circulation with effects of power is archivalization. The concern here is to explore how one can discern the ways in which the palm leaf inscriptions were embedded in the acts of rule or governance of others and oneself. A special mention is required to caution that this paper does not presume that such archivalization with juridico-political authority existed only in Kerala or Travancore. In fact, it was prevalent in other parts of the world during the medieval period (Davis 2010). It is often argued that there was no culture of writing in this part of the globe, but this paper differs from such an argument and also from those that have encountered such an argument.

‘Everyday life of the archivalized documents’ may touch the common man or rulers with their accounts of proclamations, proceedings of sabha (brahminical temple committee) and ettarayogam (the administrative body consisting of eight and a half members), revenue-expenditure, rituals, events of importance. The attempt here is to present my understanding of the record keeping (palm leaf or cadjan leaf records) and their recalls at the time of the need of the temple and Swaroopams (the politico-territorial unit prior to the coming of the kingdom). It is an attempt mainly at delineating the manner in which the documents and archives were maintained and related to the governance of the temple and Swaroopams. It proves that the written documents were not merely monumentalized objects or accounts of the past stored in racks at the remote corners of storehouses, but they were active participants which engaged in relating the past with the present, they were active forces which revealed the present, and they were influential in coursing the future historical streams as well.

We have evidence showing that in the year 1505, the senior Thiruvadi (chief or muppu) of Threppappur ordered the construction of a records office in the temple premises so that the documents were properly preserved. The records office was known in Malayalam as kanakkappura. Kanakke in Malayalam means account, but in this case, it means all sorts of records pertaining to land revenue, proceedings and transactions of ettarayogam and sabha; orders of muppu and other distinguished personnel of Swaroopams; details of the rituals and customs; details regarding birth, death, adoption and succession. There were separate officials (kanakkans) for writing and maintaining documents. Kanakkan was not merely a scribe, but he had a distinguished position in the sabha. There were four main kanakkans who were known as Karanakkanakkan, pandarakkanakkan, Acharakkanakkan and kilkanakkan. Besides, there were karuvelathukanakkan and karuvukarathu kanakkan. Each one of them was assisted by several kanakkans and subordinate scribes. Karanakkanakkan needs special mention in our context. Karanam means document and instrument. Karanakanakkan wrote and maintained the proceedings and transactions of Ettarayogam and the sabha. The semantics of the term karanakanakkan suggest that he was the accountant of the documents and documented the proceedings of the yogam. All these divisions and disaggregate classifications of work of making kanakke show the importance attached to the documentation of the present for the future. In other terms, writing down the present events had been an aachaaram (custom). Special attention was paid in appointing the accountants, as they had crucial roles to play in the administration of the Padmanabhaswamy temple.

Archive

The term karanam denotes the organ, instrument, faculties, deed or documents (Gundert, 1872, p. 209); here the instrument is the ‘written document’ or the inscriptions on palm leaves with the signature of the inscriber (Kanakkan). There was an individual position in the sabha which was known as Shreekaranam. Apart from this position, there was yet another one called karanakkanakkan, designating one who had a permanent place in the assembly of the sabha. Here, karanam also means activity (Gundert, 1872, p. 209). The term kanakkan means the accountant who records the temple activities (both worldly and spiritual) and the person privileged to recall karanams whenever needed during the proceedings of the sabha. When the term karanam signifies a document, the terms like karanakkanakke and karanakkanakkan gain another meaning. This latter term means the accountant, the record keeper, the inscriber of the documents and the one who recalls and reads the documents in the sabha all rolled into one. The former term means ‘the documented accounts’ as well as the ‘account of the accounts and events’. It can be said that the activities in the temple were not only accounted for in documents, but these documents were also classified and accounted for; in other words, not only were there accountants for writing the accounts, there was a separate accountant for classifying and recalling the documented accounts belonging to the past. Some were at the sabha, and some were at the kanakkappura. To be precise, there were separate accountants, those who objectified the activities in the Temple and those who objectified the documents. When Iravi Varma was the muppu (the senior-most member of the Swaroopam family, which ruled the Swaroopam) of Threppappur Swaroopam, on his initiative, a separate kanakkappura was constructed at the northeastern corner of the Mathilakam.

So, autonomous temples and temple-states wrote and preserved all the records in respect of the lands and men under their sway. In addition to this, there were some villages under the administration of local bodies guided by democratic principles and exercising power independent of the king. They too developed their own system of record keeping with a view to improving the efficiency of their work (Nair, n.d., p. 68).

The documents were classified into different series like, pandaarakkanakke, chaithikkanakke, karanakkanakke, naalvariyoola, aachaarakanakke, chattavariyoola. Similarly, apart from the kanakkans mentioned above, there were other specialized ones such as karuvelamkkanakkan, pandaarakkanakkan and karanakkanakkan. This detailed classification alone is capable of suggesting the existence of great erudition, meticulousness and energy that went into the arrangement of the archive. Besides, the disaggregated scheme reveals the purposive classification for easier and timely recall of these documents whenever the need arose. As observed earlier, the karanakkanakkan was not merely a scribe or an accountant of events, material exchanges, over and above that, he was the accountant of the documents. He was also the one who read the documents when and where the aachaaram required a recall, and reiterated before the sabha what was pertinent in the documents. The aachaarakanakke was a basis of the actions and reactions between the various personages in the sabha and those who came under the referential field of the activities of the Temple. It can be proposed at this juncture that the material documentation was a formalized operation with different kanakkans and classified documents on the basis of the content. For instance, there is a six-fold classification of records/documents according to the text Keralakshitiratnamala. On the basis of content or subject matter, the records are classified into 75 types (Nair, n.d., p. 30). Another point is the land revenue records or patta (Pattam) ola classified into 16 sections (Nair, n.d., p. 31).

There are several instances of recalling earlier documents to assert rightness in the present. For instance, I shall give an instance:

A variola dated 16th Ani 926 (1751 ad) in the Agastheeswaram Taluke records pertaining to Ardhavitham and Pattavitham asserted on the basis of the previous olai records shows that the cadjans consulted for the purpose range from 800 (1625 ad) to 926 me (1751 ad) Besides, a record of the Padmanabhaswamy temple, Trivandrum dated 24th Karthikai, 954 me (1779 ad) says that kanakku Marthandan Mathevan, the Valia Meleluthu conducted the revenue settlement of 959 (1784 ad) and brought all the Ayacut records to Trivandrum together with the previous Ayacut record, and preserved them in the Mathilakam … This necessitated the permanent upkeep of revenue records. Thus, in all the village and Taluk offices regular records were prepared and preserved. (Nair, n.d., p. 41)

The ruling elite recognized written palm leaf accounts (documents) as self-evident and generated a mass of additional written accounts based on the existing accounts with which they got inextricably embedded. It is possible to argue that even those who were directly or indirectly referred to in the accounts got placed within the orbit of the worlds of written palm leaves. The extent as well as the complex ways of documentation will also be brought forth here by examining the recall of the past with the aid of such documents; the importance of writing in perpetuating and constituting a prevalent ‘order’ in this world is also touched upon.

The documents, especially aachaarakanakke (the enunciated/written custom), present us with the way people interacted with each other and related with the material, institutional and religious worlds through documents. This also tells us how extensive documentation in turn generated new documents that refer to the manner in which people related to the old and new documents. Each time a document was recalled and read, that act and what was read were also documented. Documentation as a process thus perpetually generates new documents that have referential relations with other pre-existing documents and their representations. Documents, in short, generate documents about themselves also, which I refer to as inter-documentation. Such a practice was integral to archivalization.

The main components of archivalization are: (a) documentation of contemporary events and regularities (however selective and prejudiced they are) with a view to preserve those documented facts. (b) Re-inscription of these documents from time to time to prevent them from decay. (c) Documentation of the recall of the documents from the past, even those, a few centuries old, to judge the present. (d) Documentation of the content of what had been recalled from the old documents by way of inter-documental relation. (e) Documentation of all documents that had been recalled in the past. (f) Documentation about how they were classified and who was responsible for the different types. This implies that each of the documentations of the present anticipates/expects its recall in the future and thus its entry into power relations. We will return to each of these components of archivalization as we analytically progress with the concept of archivalization.

The object of aachaaram (as it is used here) in general had been the ‘ways of being of the highly differentiated groups of people’, limiting and permitting certain acts and coding the ways of relating and positioning with others. Everyone had their own aachaaram on the basis of the subject position in society. Aachaaram of archivalization was the objective of re-inscription and reinventing of the documents belonging to an earlier time. In fact, it is possible to discern close nexuses and niches among writing, remembering and formulating/reformulating the present and future. That is, the power effects of archivalization and the repeated invocation of earlier documented events are not innocent of authority. Such power effects were closely related to the way people related to themselves through writing and recall of the written in the future. The truth that is in the written material conferred the status of a-temporality to the ‘document’.

Inter-documentation

The way aachaaram got reiterated in the assembly of sabha, as presented in a document, may provide a good start. In general, the documents that describe the act of ‘reiteration or reading of the aachaarakanakke’ in the sabha, help us to distinguish two stages involved in the process of archivalization. First, observances of aachaarams and instances of their non-observance were written or documented as they came up repeatedly for discussion. In the second stage of documentation, the events of recalling documents and what were reiterated were once again documented (inter-documentation). That is, the present was judged, and prescriptions were made on the basis of what was recalled from the earlier documents as aachaaram, which establishes the continuity between earlier ‘documented events’ and what was taking place at that present. I shall schematize the specificities of documentation shortly.

Repeatable Materiality of Precedence

The instances of documenting the recall of documents [inscriptions] made in the past can be found in several documents; a well-known one among them is invited [cited] here. In that, reading of the aachaarakanakke (another document that belonged to the past) by Ananthan Ayappan, the karanakkanakkan could be seen. The excerpt presented below is only a portion from a document, which reiterates the past events related to the reconstruction of the temple of the tutelary deity Padmanabha, and it occurs when it refers to the present in 1620.

The younger brother of Unnikkerala Varma, Kerala Varma, is present in the assembly. The karanakkanakkan, Ayappan Ananthan, as he was reading the aachaarakanakke, also read that, only after the temple muppu becomes Threppappur muppu, should the younger one be the muppu. Thereafter, Unnikkerala Varma came to Raamana Madham and succeeded to the Threppappur muppu vaazhcha (Varma, Document XV, 1928).

The critical act that got documented was the ‘recall of the aachaarakanakke’, as there was a deviation in the continued course of affairs. As and when the precondition for Unnikerala Varma and his younger brother to be treated as Threppappur muppu and ilayathu respectively was stated, there appeared a need for realignment in the inter-subjective relations between Unnikerala Varma and the sabha. More than challenging the postponement of padiyettam (succession to the throne) by him, it stated ‘how things used to take place’ and suggested ‘how it should have been’. No overt legitimization was provided to substantiate the truth values of aachaarakanakke as if it were unwarranted; it stated that only after Unnikerala Varma, the Temple muppu, became the Threppappur muppu could his brother be the representative of his elder brother and become the Threppappur ilayathu.

The question of this recall and its rendering would not have arisen if no demand for the physical co-presence of both the muppus in the sabha to issue anugnja (order), as per the aachaaram, had arisen. There was no statement in the recalled document stipulating that Unnikkerala Varma should conduct the rite, and no judgment of his action was made in it. But still, the reading alone could act upon his subjectivity and influence him to comply with the aachaaram. Such was the truth effect of the aachaaram of documentation. The compulsion felt by him was thus closely linked with and followed by this act of recall and reading of the ‘written document’ in the sabha. He had no other way but to comply with what was read in the sabha. On the whole, we are persuaded to examine the documents as effects of truth and something that affects truths. I will be intermittently referring to this point in the subsequent sections.

Such events of reading by recalling the documents themselves were something that demanded documentation, and such documentation itself becomes the subject matter for another document. It becomes a subject matter as other documents are derived from the documented readings; for instance, the document cited above gets abbreviated and re-inscribed in the next year of its inscription, that is, in 1621. This shows the effects of power involved in documentation, its recall and reading in the sabha, or, in general, archivalization.

Such archivalization is one thing that was persistent, such that it had become an aachaaram. Archivalization and the way in which the aachaaram worked on the behaviour of people were closely linked. This link becomes extremely intense when it is related to Temple matters, as the aachaaram of documentation was most severe in this case. That is why even the instances that can appear extremely mundane or parochial got documented when they took place in the Temple sabha. The object of archivalization had been the behaviour of the people and their interactions. The power effects of archivalization on the manner in which people modulate their own behaviour are clear. Now, let us move on to the terminological apparatus of archivalization before entering into the other processes involved in it.

Reading What Was ‘Written’

The material and procedural processes that enable such ‘reading’ or ‘reiteration’ with power-effects and the hierarchy of relations immanent in it can be schematized. At first, some documents had to be made, and as the number and variety went on increasing, they had to be summarized, classified and preserved to enable timely retrieval when needed. This documenting was important because the documents were inextricably linked with the encoding of one’s (ruling people) behaviour as well as with the appraisal of one’s way of being in the world and perhaps to judge the present in its relation to the past. The first stage, therefore, involved the actual process of writing down the daily accounts of what happened (naalvazhioola), special orders made by the sabha or those in the ruling positions (chattavarioola), and proceedings of the sabha. With this stress on the documentation of everyday events and other exchanges and the exalted position of the documents in them, the aachaarams that were otherwise memorized through oral tradition were given another medium to memorize, namely the written document. The written document freezes the past for the future and thereby the language that represented the past warranted fixity. Fixity in inscription and the past that it presents were integral to the authority of the written cadjan leaves with antecedents of inscriptions on copper plates, rocks, granite slabs and clay. The act of writing and its relation to fixity confer and affirm certain truth values to the documents or karanams.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the documents, which were stored till then in the temple, were shifted to an exclusive building (Nair, 1993, p. 107) on the premises of the temple. Perhaps, exclusivity was provided to them with the intention of preserving and recalling them. Probably sporadic conflagrations that took place in the Temple could have prompted the concerned people to anticipate such conflagrations to recur and in turn to take steps to store/guard this highly inflammable substance in its own right elsewhere. The documents that were stored in the vicinity of the temple compound thus came to acquire a singular existence in the kanakkappura (house of accounts/documents) with exclusive functionaries. Some of them had a permanent place in the transactions of the sabha. All these show the energy that was expended on documentation and the relation that they had with the life and memory.

The documents were not only made, but they were also preserved to transcend amnesia and time. The culture of inscribing the present (although in a limited way) and the display of the will to preserve the inscription ‘as long as the sun and the moon exist’ dates back to a period prior to the duration under consideration, that is prior to the fourteenth century. From ancient times inscriptions were made with the intention that what is stated in them would be prevalent till the sun and moon existed in this world, and this intention was also given presence through drawing them at the top of stone slabs where inscriptions were made.

The modus operandi employed for storing the documents had been quite evolved and extensive during the late medieval period. The house of accounts/documents was not merely a space to stack the documents; over and above that, it was also the site of perpetual re-inscription of the documents. Thus, the second process in the practice of archivalization involved the preservation of the documents through ‘re-inscription’. The re-inscription (reproduction), as it took place here, should be highlighted in order to understand how the inscribed statements were central and intrinsic to the contemporary concerns and sense of comprehending reality.

There were two types of re-inscriptions of documents. One kind of re-inscription recurrently regenerated the true copies of the original solely with the motive of preservation. This was only to overcome the natural degradation of cadjan leaves, the material substance on which the statements were written. The second type of re-inscription, different from the verbatim reiteration was selectively abridged and edited several accounts/documented events, which in turn, were inscribed as different documents (Varma, 1928, Document No. XVII). This process of re-inscription generated a different continuum of events within the newly generated documents (Varma, 1928, Document No. XVI). Obviously, the effects of such re-inscription were not simply the preservation of the documents but the revisiting of events. Whatever might have been the intention behind such a selection in re-inscribing, it constituted new historical continuums for the present and past.

Not only did they create temporal continuity between present and past, but these were also thought to constitute a continuum between present and future, as these documents were expected to be recalled for judging the ‘present’ in the future. These inscriptions were at once authentic and authenticating without an original document. With the authenticity (truth/power effects), it reproduced the existent modality and the way of relating the present with the past for the future. In short, a process of innovating a selective tradition and perpetuating the past in the present and future, in and through such re-inscriptions (including the way people relate to the documents), has to be recognized in the history of documentation.

The way the re-inscription of documents gave birth to other documents, or the re-constitutive nature of re-inscription, could be deciphered in this second process, particularly in the second type of re-inscription. Now, whether the first type of re-inscription covered all perishable documents, without omitting any of them, is not known. If some of the documents were not re-inscribed and others were chosen, then one can say that the selective tradition enters in the first stage of re-inscription as well. Any such screening of the documents involves the application of criteria that enabled the inclusion of some documents and the omission of others. If that is so, it can be said that both the processes of re-inscription had effects over and above preservation.

But if I elaborate on the second type of re-inscription, then one observes that there was a clear and overt selection, and it differentiates between what events were relevant for the present and future and what could be overlooked or set aside. Then the chosen or the ‘relevant’ documents or statements were in turn divided and distributed into a series to produce new documents. These re-inscriptions, apart from reproducing certain historical facts and truths, also constituted an inter-document relationship on which the continuity and unity of the new documents depended. Let me proceed to explicate some of the documents of this sort. Once again, I am selectively invoking them not because they are the only ones, but on the basis of the convenience of exposition with brevity.

These re-inscriptions produced several subsequent series and continuums; a few examples: a summary of events that took place in the Temple and the successions to muppu that took place in Chiravay between 1544 and 1677 were re-inscribed in the year 1721 (Varma, 1928, Document No. XVI). Here, it is easy to find the thematic continuity that is achieved by such a serialization. At the first level, continuity gets formed between 1544 and 1677 in terms of succession and the deeds that the ancestors have done. This continuity, as we have seen in the previous section and here, was maintained through the inextricable linkage between the recall and reading, and their power effects in the present.

At the second level, a much longer temporal continuity gets constituted between 1544 and 1721, with a termination at 1677. The first level of continuity invoked into the present was the period between 1544 and 1677, as the events that were recalled were made known as they were found to be relevant even at the time of the selective re-inscription in the year 1721. Another example of re-inscription is the one in which documents that recalled the historical instances of the adoptees becoming Swaroopam muppu got inscribed (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CCII). In fact, there were several such re-inscriptions.

There was an interesting re-inscription of selectively choosing documents from the past, one which provides significant political information to us, which was made in the year 1673 (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CXXII). What otherwise remained disparate was implicated in a continuous narrative and a temporal continuum between past and present—the effects of authority conferred by the ‘written’ status of the ‘document’—was achieved. The primary characteristic of a document, even as we understand it today, is the ‘written’ or ‘printed’ nature of it (Gove Comprehensive Dictionary, 1986, p. 374). The norms employed to determine what was to be re-inscribed and what needed to be excluded are not known, but this process of exclusion and inclusion should have been influenced by the contemporary mentality, requirements and the ideas involved in archivalization.

Such summarization of documents might have had political implications. One thing that is known is that such summarization or selective re-inscription and construction of historical series, which engender continuities directly, enter into historical chronicles as empirical facts. For example, in the first historical accounts of Thiruvithamkur written by Pachumuthathu (1867, p. 14) in the nineteenth century, he ‘claims’ that a great part of his description of the medieval period is nothing but a verbatim reproduction of one of the re-inscriptions (second type) (Pillai, 1940, Vol. 2, C.V. R. Doc. CXVI). This document was re-inscribed in 1625. That is, such summaries had indisputable authenticity and truth effects. It was the authenticity and authority of them that, in turn, lent whatever historicity of his writing had come to possess.

The documents were made and preserved not only to know what happened in the past but to know or to make sense of what was happening in the present as well. This necessitates the timely recall of old documents, that is, archivalization. Such recalls of previously written documents were quite frequent and phenomenal during the late medieval period. The reading of aachaarakanakke in the year 1620, which was discussed at length above, illustrates the manner in which the old documents were recalled for contemporary purposes, another effect that archivalization had. Such occasions of recall necessitated another process in archivalization, which may be classified as the third process.

Documents of four centuries old, that is, those made since the mid-fourteenth century, were recalled in the yogam in the year 1811. In that year, the kanakke and grandhavari that contain aachaaram pertaining to dathetukkal and padiyettam were recalled (Pillai, 1996, M. Doc. CCIII). It should also be remembered that the classification system had evolved so that any document could have been recalled even at the spur of the moment.

When we look at the history of recall of the old documents for re-inscription of them as well as the event of the recall and reading, we find that events that took place since the mid-fourteenth century were repeatedly recalled and reiterated in the assembly of Yogam. Thus, the beginnings of documentation of the present events along with their continuous preservation can be located in this period. In the years 1588 and 1632, there were recalls of events since the mid-fourteenth century to verify whether there existed any dues to be paid to the temple by the previous Swaroopam muppus (Nair, 1993, p. 186). After the perusal of the documents by the Yogam, the respective muppus of the years 1588 and 1632 promptly cleared all the dues. This exemplifies the truth effects that the recall and reading had. The truth value of the documents had a general effect and acceptability, especially to the Yogam and the muppus.

Another process involved in the process of ‘archivalization’ is the documentation of this event of recall of other documents, what was recalled and the effects that it caused. This was another type of inscription and establishment of a series; for example, one of the documents presents the acts of retrieval and review of the ‘documents of past’ in which the documents made since 1346 onwards got recalled. It was made when the recall took place in the year 1736 (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc CXXIX). There is another document of such a recall inscribed in the year 1632, which included the documents from the year 1384 (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CXX). There are yet other documents that reveal instances of such re-inscriptions of the recall of a shorter duration. For example, there were retrievals that covered the period between 1729 and 1755 (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CXXX), 1673–1685 (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CXXII) and 1480 and 1483 (Parameshwara Iyer, 1962, Document No. 22). All of them were documented at the terminal year of the respective temporal coverage.

The fact that a document was recalled and read, itself becomes the subject matter of another document, demonstrates its centrality in the position that was rendered to them, the relation that people maintained with them, its functionality in inter-subjective relations and in judging the present for the future. This stage of archivalization is indicative of the possible power effects that they had on the individual subjects and agency.

Apart from describing what was there in the recalled documents and how present was judged, the prescriptive statements issued were also written down. Here, a temporal translocation of the past takes place, and the past and present become historically indistinguishable in the circulation of aachaaram. In this fourth process, the political implications of archivalization are clearer. For one had only to recall the archivalized document, without mentioning what needs to be done (without a prescriptive statement), to bring conformity with the aachaaram and to achieve the desired response from the agents. Therefore, this kind of inscription of the act of recall/reiteration and what was read should be differentiated from the other kinds of re-inscription and documentation. Thus, this kind of inscription shows us more than anything else the importance that was attached to the event of recall of the ‘past’ in the muppu vaazhcha.

There are documents which provide us with instances of reviews of old kanakke. The documents, or kanakke, whenever retrieved, had a situated and dated uniqueness and they became part of a new series of events in the history of events. As mentioned earlier, those recalled and re-inscribed aachaaram could date back to even more than three hundred years from the year of the retrieval. The series of events that got constituted in the documents that depict the recall did not have any common year of beginning. In general, it can be proposed that a karanam referring to an event of the mid-fourteenth century seems to be the earliest one that was recalled.

A trend that can be observed from some of these documents is that some events that took place since the mid-fourteenth century never fell to disuse as they were made to revisit many times. The documents were bearers of authenticity, had the power to effect and also to get affected (especially when documents became an element in strategic manoeuvres). The sites of re-visitations of aachaarakanakke either affirmed an ongoing continuity or indicated alteration, discontinuity or shift. Therefore, such visitations were in turn inscribed even during the eighteenth century, thus constituting the four-hundred-year history (known) of archivalization.

Archivalization, Schematization and the Present

The inscribed past was never left to the remote interiority of racks of the past, meaning it had gained repeatable materiality in the present. As a part of the present, it was also given life and movement in the life-world by attributing to it a genealogical continuity achieved through the re-inscriptions (Here, re-inscription refers to both third and fourth processes of archivalization). Archivalization was central in perpetuating aachaaram that related the Swaroopams with one another and with the Temple. There was obviously a selection involved in all the inscriptions and re-inscriptions, but hermeneutic issues were not found to have been raised in the process of the ‘reading’; aachaarakanakke was so influential to the extent that it is taken for granted. But this remained so at most till 1811, when a turn in the history of archivalization had taken place, and we find hermeneutic issues surfacing while ‘reading’. I shall come back to these issues soon.

Two different historical trends in archivalization can be discerned. ² When chronologically looked at, from the second half of the fourteenth century onwards, there was a great deal of continuous accumulation of the documents contemporaneously inscribed, and such production gained added impetus by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Thus, in the history of archivalization, the mid-fourteenth century can be said to be marking a turn. That is, the beginnings of the first processes of archivalization go back at least to the mid-fourteenth century. It does not mean that prior to it, inscriptions did not exist.

It can be hypothesized that the second process, namely re-inscription, might have been prevalent during those days. However, it is not clear whether this process also started during the same period or not. The second trend in the history of documentation begins from the mid-fifteenth century onwards, when we begin to see the retrieval and reading of them and their re-documentation or re-inscription. That is, the third and fourth processes of archivalization become evident only by the mid-fifteenth century. Within a hundred years of the history of material documentation, there took place an alteration in the status of the archive. The archive has become indispensable to the present. The documents became the objects of archivalization and aachaaram.

How were the past documents implicated in the ‘present’ as in the archivalization of the past? As old karanams got recurrently employed in the present, they simultaneously constituted a temporal continuum among unities of events, among documents and between the events. The ways in which the documents, thus accumulated, were recognized in the present could be seen in the repeated recall and the inscription of this act of recall. This fourth process of archivalization shows the extent and intensity of the need felt for recording and developing material documents with which they get bound. This process shows how aachaaram, once activated, was intricately linked to itself through archivalization.

In the case of the history of such aachaaram of documentation, by the mid-fourteenth century, its articulation took the format of kanakke and the written form of karanam. But then, the possibility of recall was limited by its beginning; the availability of karanams limited the possibility to extend the historical limit of aachaaram into the remotest past so that its truth-effect would be all the more potent. However, these documents function as if they are a-temporal. Recognition of aachaaram in the documented account, its ‘documentary articulation’ and documentation of articulation, have a close correspondence with the written law. We will return to it later. Here, the point is the close link between writing, aachaaram, archivalization and the present.

The medium, the aachaarakanakke, with its truth-value effect, seems to be independent of the truth of what was orally transmitted. This is so despite the fact that it was also a time when communication by ‘word of mouth’ was also inerasable because ‘words uttered’ had ethical value. In fact, there are several orally transmitted stories in which the answer to the question ‘do not you value your words’ becomes the moral. There are also statements to ridicule others, by telling the targeted person that ‘there is no point in having a moustache unless you value your words’, which itself could put that person to shame. These observations suggest, once again, that archivalization was directed more by the future than the present, or it was carried out with the idea of perpetuation/retention. However, it should be underscored that there seems to be no observable prioritization of the written over the oral, in terms of their procedures of effecting truth, although they circulated within different circles of socialites.

Along with archivalization there was another process in which legal texts began to get formulated and gained proliferation, one of them is Vyavahaaramaala (garland of customs and usages) (Paramesvara Iyar, 1925). It had circulation among, at least, the Malayalam and Sanskrit-speaking communities and the Malayalam texts that were recovered to be reproduced date back to the sixteenth century. It consists of a sequence of selectively chosen statements translated from other legal texts in Sanskrit. This information prompted one to enquire how this archivalization coexisted with or distanced from such legalization.

This system of perpetuation of aachaaram through its archivalization and its effects of power has to be distinguished from the textualization of legal idiom as in the Vyavahaaramaala that had taken place within the meta-unity of the discursive formation of brahmasutra. ³ There is no need to suspect that these legal texts were written and read during the period under examination, although they do not get invoked in any of the documents in the archive we have been familiar with so far (Parameshwara Iyer, 1925, p. ii). With these two types of administration of aachaaram, namely through the reiteration of aachaarakanakke and texts such as Vyavahaaramaala, aachaaram became a locus of judgement about oneself, what one should be, what one had been, what one could be, and more importantly, what one should not become.

These two written forms could be differentiated in terms of their respective modalities of circulation, site of application and the way the aachaaram got stated in them. While the object of the former was the documents themselves, which objectified different activities of sets of people in different contexts, in legal texts, aachaarams were abstracted and made into a generalized code of conduct. While aachaarakanakke articulated how aachaaram has been, the emphasis of the legal texts was only on what ought to be. The new aachaarakanakke was anchored on earlier ones and, in turn, perpetually generated others that led to the creation of inter-document concerns, whereas the legal texts engaged in hermeneutical procedures and tried to give eternal fixity to what they contained. Thus, aachaarakanakke or aachaarakramam supplemented with ‘texts’ together made aachaaram well-founded and gave it general and particular applicability at the same time.

The propositions in this paragraph need to be substantiated further; however, this remains outside the purview of the present efforts. Still, a look at certain peculiarities of the relationship between the way aachaaram circulated and the process of archivalization, and textualization may be appropriate. This will give us an idea about the way in which the aachaaram circulated through the aachaarakanakke along with the legal texts, but with a difference. I am making these distinctions because there is a conviction that there were no legal texts in this part of the world, India in general, and a tendency to distinguish custom and law on the basis of ‘the written status’.

The ‘reading’ involved no statement of opinion nor did it involve any interpretation of what was ‘read’, whether the document read was old or new. A statement such as ‘the fact that this is the aachaaram as in the karanam’ itself was sufficient to establish truth. In short, the aachaaram worked through the concomitant process of its archivalization. The kanakke of any type never appeared as a trace or as a sign that alluded or referred to something that was not intrinsic to itself, but, as something ‘transparent’ and ‘at the surface’. Whenever they got recalled, it was not done in order to interpret it (the status of documents in the eyes of the modern craft of historiography), rather it had been stated as truth in itself. There was no arriving at truth in archivalization, as it is already inscribed forever. These karanams were not treated merely as traces that were left by the past, but as a reality in the present.

The aachaarakanakke was the active memory and aachaaram maintained its coherence by linking itself inextricably with this practice of documentation and by permanently reinstating the truth through circulating them. The content of kanakkappura was not de-linked from the present in terms of its reality or truth, as the documents of the past centuries actively partook in continuing reality, be it in the fifteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth century. Wherever its field of coverage extended, it was constitutive of the present and, in turn, the present perpetuated it with a fixed significance, free of hermeneutic queries. When this aachaarakanakke, devoid of interpretation, was contemporarily recalled, its reality got well-grounded without the aid of any other process of legitimization or any meta-narratives.

Unlike the ‘files’ in the modern archives, the karanams were not re-examined to glean the past, but to make sense of the present and judge it without the aid of any other textualized law, which might have gained circulation. As far as inclusion of the documents was concerned, the documents were not stratified as old and new (contemporary documents) as it would be in a modern archive, for as an aachaaram it had to include documents that refer to contemporary matters also. Antiquity did not render any extra power to the files; nor was there any parallel between oldness and authenticity. The documents contemporaneously generated also became part of the kanakkappura; for convenience, this can be termed as the self-[generating/enhancing] property of the kanakkappura.

Aachaaram always necessitated constant retrieval and functionalization of some preserved past in warding off duraachaarams that are defined in terms of the kanakke. Such visitations of the past in the kanakke formalized the aachaaram and gave repeatable materiality to it in the present. This maintained the continuity in the determination of how an event should take place with respect to the time and space of its occurrence. Aachaarakramam reproduced itself in pravrithikramam that directly appealed to the way one conducted some or other acts and how one is expected to conduct them.

Aachaaram thus archivalized, among many others, ordered the relationship between the Swaroopam, sabha and the temple. Archivalization of their interrelationship was an aachaaram. This archival practice exemplified the procedure-bound activities and the position-bound inter-individual relationships. Knowledge of the way aachaarakanakke can be recalled to achieve definite ends was immanent in the force-relations between the Swaroopams and the sabha, and among them also whenever united by aachaaram/anaacharam.

One of the last instances of this kind of archival practice was the one that took place in 1810–1811 about which I made a passing mention (Pillai, 1940, M. Docs CC, CCI, CCII, CCIII and CCIV). I am elaborating on this particular instance, which may be one among many others, as they reveal different patterns. Such events introduced scientific factuality and juridico-political diction into the reasons of the state. Correspondingly, one can trace relegation of the document as part of Swaroopams and not of the kingdom. Relegation of those statements that do not fit into their truth/political regime can be discerned from them. Power effects of archivalization diminished with the shift from Swaroopam to kingdom by the middle of the eighteenth century, and what became more conspicuous were facts, proofs, justifications; the distinction between Swaroopam and kingdom can be understood from this particular event, which I referred to at the beginning of this section. Let us move on.

There surfaced a predicament/dispute to decide on choosing a successor to the throne of Travancore. Such a predicament itself was new, such predicaments had never surfaced during the time of Swaroopams, but had emerged during the Thiruvithamkur kingdom period. The British Resident in this State was involved in the acts of resolving the dispute by following the terms of aachaaram. The question was: in the absence of a male member to succeed as the Travancore king, could an adopted male member be a legitimate successor? In fact, in many Princely States, succession disputes were productive situations to extend colonial resource exploitation through dominating the rulers of such states. Although a detailed examination of the historical conditions for such a problematization of impending succession is relevant, it is not attempted here.

Instead, we will confine ourselves to showing how the retrieval of past documents became functional in the strategies of those ruling members aligned with the British in Travancore and the Company. The distinguished positions, especially the position of the king of Travancore, had been by then the site of several centrifugal intersecting force-relations, including the faction led by Veluthampi Dalava who was assassinated by the Paramount-palace combine around that time in a military encounter (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CC T. K., 1940, M. Doc. CC). Therefore, the question as to who should become the next king was extremely significant in terms of strategy and future achievements of the stakeholders, especially the British. Since some traces from the past were not avoidable, any legitimate decision on the dispute had to be founded on aachaarakramam; and hence an old aachaarakanakke was recalled and consulted to arrive at a judgement.

A series of past karanams were recalled (Pillai, 1940, M. Docs CC, CCI, CCII, CCIII and CCIV) and the review of these had to examine whether in the past any of the adoptees had become the muppu of Threppappur or the king of Travancore. The karanams that belonged to the year 1336 onwards were invoked and reviewed with the purpose of resolving the succession dispute. But the last of the reviews (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc CCI)—there are several documents of the reviews on the same issue conducted during the short span of a few months—concluded that facts could be found only in those documents drafted before the year 1748 and that those drafted prior to this year were incredulous. As no adoptee since 1748 became the Travancore king a new continuity with a new base year got formulated which gained persistence.

Whether the conclusion contained in the document just referred to is true or not, and whatever had been its historical contexts and consequences, it is to be noted that with this recall of karanams, the continuum in the history of archivalization got discontinued and a new continuum got affirmed. Had the review taken into account the karanams prior to that particular year, then the conclusion would have been different.

That is, by the time this retrieval of aachaarakanakke occurred, the confirmed truth-content of the documents that maintained the temporal continuity (from the early medieval days to the turn of the Swaroopam-epoch) had been broken and a new continuity, beginning with the mid-eighteenth century, had been fabricated to justify the contingent need (that is of 1811) of positing a ‘pre-matured lady’ as the legitimate successor. If an adoptee was not to become the king, then the female infant could be foisted on the throne. The temporally restricted and selective recall of the aachaarakanakke and the functionalization of the archivalized kanakke accomplished a continuity that marked its beginnings in 1748; this in turn rendered female-infant’s succession as legitimate and got the acceptance of British Paramountcy.

The members of the sabha who were to derive conclusions and judgements might have also felt a sense of uncertainty about their own actions, as they were in the process of constructing something new and undermining the existing aachaarakanakke. The hermeneutical issues were raised along with the reading of the documents, which were not required till then. It could be because of this enigmatic dimension of the period that, for the first time, we find in the proceedings of the sabha a reference to the ‘Hindu maryaada’ legitimized by the legal text, Dharmashastra (Pillai, 1940, M. Doc. CCII). For legitimacy and to establish truth claims about the sabha’s conclusion, over and above the aachaarakanakke, the invocation of this legal text had become necessary. That is, under the uncertain and changed conditions, reference to the text had become more forceful an authority for legitimization than the recall. And further, it legitimized its own claims to truth by explicitly stating that they had followed the codes of Manu Vignaana Shaastram. One should note that, within the archivalized observance of aachaarakramam and the aachaaram of archivalization, there had never been any need for any such mode of legitimization. The need to resort to the ‘Book’ had entered into the relation between men and kanakke/karanam.

Another male member would have become the successor, had this new continuity and forms of authorization not been constituted, and that would have been contrary to the wishes of the British who were striving for Paramountcy over Travancore. ⁴ That is, in the pretext of the aachaaram of recalling the aachaarakanakke of the past had become a part of the project of colonizing the Travancore kingdom. With this event of the recall, the aachaaram of recalling the past, as represented in the documents and their unquestioned legitimacy were undermined. The karanakkanakke had metamorphosed itself and became mere documents that wait for interpretation and classification in terms of the ‘norms’ of the present.

The observance of aachaaram and its archivalization ceased to be a ‘truth game’ with norms mutually accepted by both those who ensure its perpetuation and those who were obliged to observe it. Aachaarakramam was no more a taken-for-granted order. Archivalization that was constitutive of and constituted by aachaarakramam, itself had given way to the English laws and regulations on the ‘populace’.

Even though we have inappropriately translated kanakkappura as archives, at present, one can state that with these transformations, it has become appropriate to translate it as archives. It became an archive, a modern one, the moment it began to be consulted to know the past imagined in distinction to the present, but before that, it was consulted to recall what had happened in the past, unseparated from the present and future.

The archivalization, which was immanent in the muppu vaazhcha, could become identifiable as a monument, that is, the kanakkappura. With these transformations of the kanakkappura, instead of being an active site of muppu vaazhcha, it had become just a monument differentiated from the present. In short, the events of 1810–1811 marked the end of such archival practice that had been intricately related to the muppu vaazhcha of the Swaroopams. The kanakkappura became the archive of the kingdom. No more could archives provide a basis for distinguishing what is customary from non-customary; this position was given to the Records, Library/Cellars and verification.

Instead of the complex archivalization, a generalized text began to be the final determining word in judging since the first decade of the nineteenth century. And the archive had become a frozen storehouse of mute palm-leaves bearing relics of effective-documents/writing. Thus, the retrieval and recall of aachaarakanakke that occurred in 1810–1811 could be seen as one of the last seductive breaths of the aachaaram of archivalization and the archivalized aachaaram. The true effects of documents legitimized both aachaaram (Custom as it used to be practised) and the aachaaram of documentation. Both together linked ruling, challenging and affecting power. Swaroopams had churunas and the kingdom had ‘files of reality’; the historical movement from Swaroopam to kingdom can be read in such a grain of sand of changes and shifts in the genealogy of documentation.