Eleventh International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

I explore in ethnographic detail the ‘healing narratives’ in Mappila Malabar culture, Kerala, India. Though there is no substantive consideration of the “Mappila literary culture” in any detailed treatise on the history of the Malayalam literature, Mappila societies’ literary narratives concerning healing have been in use since 10th century from Mappila community formation. By these narratives I mean textual practices in the culture, notwithstanding some certain default assumptions regarding the relationship and the barriers between written, performance, and oral literature. As one entity of a cultural reflection, the texts in any form, they don’t just represent extratextual activities of their surrounding culture, but themselves are immanent activities and practices of a culture, and they altogether constitute the culture. Thus such practices can be considered more in terms of cultural formation and social change in articulation. I consider the term “literary culture” as people’s ways of “doing things with texts such as writing, reciting, reading, printing and copying” (Pollock 593), hence to call forth a discussion on the purposes of production of literary works among Mappilas Inside their literary culture, I argue, ‘texts’ were practice for purpose for healing purposes, not just “histological terms that objectifies literary texts as stylistic wonders with no bearing on people’s ways of being and acting in the world. I will discuss how literary culture of a time has shaped the dimension of healing culture among Mappila, through daily consumption of the literary texts “that makes Mappila who they are while also being made by them.