Keralathile Desanamangal

Desanamangal is a historical resarch monograph by Chattampi Swami. It reveals very interesting and informative aspects related to the origin of names of various cities and villages of Kerala. Swami’s research on this area has led to many new and original conclusions, which will be of interest even now to historians, sociologists and linguists. Actually it is one of the earliest such attempts in Kerala which infused interest for further scientific study history, culture and language of various regions of Kerala. Current research on place names has reached the same conclusion to which Swami arrived at a century back. Even now place name studies are in its initial stage in India. The first discussion on this topic occurs in India in 1834. In Malayalam the first attempt was by Hermann Gundert in 1872. It was the coverage he gave to place names in his famous Malayalam English dictionary that still remains an authentic source on origin of the names of many places for which no other sources of information are available. After Gundert there was no serious attempt except that of Swami till recently. Swami points out that the place names can originate based on three characteristics - of the land, its physical features, quality and temples or Gods. We can find in him a serious researcher and historian in this work. He has covered the historical origin of many popular places of Kerala in this work. Some of the place names that we can site from his discussion in the monograph are Punaloor, Haripad, Mavelikkara, Alapuzha, Ernakulam etc.

Extract from: Chattampi Swami: An Intellectual Biography. By R. Raman Nair and L. Sulochana Devi. Trivandrum, Centre for South Indian Studies, 2010

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