Two glimpses of an older Malayalam script

A few months ago, I visited the Hill Palace Museum in Kochi. Amid the various artefacts from pre-modern Kerala, I saw an inscription in Vattezhuttu, a curvy script used to write Malayalam in ancient times. I was really intrigued by this glimpse into the past of the Malayalam script. The writing looked really different from the modern Malayalam script, yet at first glance, I could also see certain similarities.

Another time, I got the opportunity to take a look at the Hortus Malabaricus, a 17th-century treatise about the plants of the Malabar region. Most of the book is in Latin, but there is Malayalam writing in it too — and, curiously, in two different scripts. I’ll come back to why.

Language, both spoken and written, often provides an interesting look at the complexities of history, culture, and society. Seeing these older versions of Malayalam in the inscription and in the book made me want to delve deeper into the history of the Malayalam script, and the various written forms in which the language used to exist. There turn out to be two broad families. First come the scripts descended from Brahmi — Vattezhuttu, Kolezhuttu, Malayanma, Grantha and Arya Ezhuttu. Then come the scripts that reached Kerala through trade and religion — Arabi Malayalam and Suriyani Malayalam. At the end, there is the modern Malayalam script, which is what all of this eventually became.

Malayalam scripts of Indian origin

Vattezhuttu, the oldest known Malayalam script

Some of the oldest examples of written Malayalam that we know of are in the Vattezhuttu (also spelt Vatteluttu) script. This script, like most Indian scripts, is believed to have been derived from the Brahmi script, its Tamil-Brahmi variant in particular. It developed from Tamil-Brahmi around the 3rd and 4th centuries, and was prevalent in Tamil Nadu until it was supplanted by the Pallava-Grantha script. In Kerala, however, it remained in use for a much longer period — there have been attestations of the script from as late as the 14th century.

Some notable examples of writing in Vattezhuttu include the famous Quilon copper plates, and the Jewish copper plates of Cochin. The Quilon copper plates, dated to 849 CE, are a copper plate grant issued by the chieftain of Kollam, conferring privileges on a Syrian Christian merchant named Maruvan Sapir Iso. The Jewish plates, dated to around 1000 CE, had been issued by a Chera king, and conferred similar privileges on a Jewish merchant named Joseph Rabban. The writing on both these plates is in Vattezhuttu, with some characters in Grantha.

The Quilon plates are worth pausing on. Along with the Vattezhuttu, they carry writing in Arabic using the Kufic script, in Middle Persian using the Pahlavi script, and in Judeo-Persian using the Hebrew script. A single 9th-century document, in other words, holds four scripts and four languages. That is a useful thing to keep in mind for the second half of this piece: the plurality of the Malayalam script is not an accident, it comes out of a place that was already this crowded.

The origin of the word Vattezhuttu itself has been a subject of speculation. It has been suggested it came from the words vatte (round) and ezhuttu (writing), or vata (northern) and ezhuttu, or vette (chiselled) and ezhuttu.

Kolezhuttu and Malayanma

Other scripts were derived from Vattezhuttu. Kolezhuttu was used in Cochin and the Malabar region, and it is said that the writing was done with a ‘kol’ (stick) on palm leaves, hence the name. Malayanma was used in Thiruvananthapuram and the southern part of Kerala.

Both are largely similar to Vattezhuttu, though there are some differences between them. Kolezhuttu in particular is worth remembering, because it turns up again in the Hortus Malabaricus below.

Grantha, Manipravalam and Arya Ezhuttu

The Grantha script is another script derived from Brahmi. It first emerged during the 5th century, and in Kerala it was initially used to write Sanskrit. A combination of Vattezhuttu and Grantha letters was used to write Manipravalam, a literary language used in Kerala which was a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit. Manipravalam matters here because it is the point at which the two systems stopped sitting side by side and started to merge: a Sanskritised literary register needed letters that Vattezhuttu did not have, and Grantha supplied them.

Eventually, the Arya Ezhuttu script was developed from Grantha, with the influence of Vattezhuttu. The renowned poet Ezhuthachan is often credited with creating Arya Ezhuttu out of Grantha and Vattezhuttu, though this claim has been disputed. Arya Ezhuttu was the more Sanskritised of the options available, and it was the one that carried Sanskrit loanwords comfortably — which, as the next section shows, was not a neutral advantage. It is also the script that eventually developed into the modern Malayalam script.

Note: This section is still the thinnest of the three, because the source material you cited gives it the least. If you can add one or two dated examples of Arya Ezhuttu — a manuscript, a palm-leaf text — it would match the weight of the sections around it.

Two scripts in one book: the Hortus Malabaricus

This brings me back to the Hortus Malabaricus, the book I mentioned at the start. It was compiled in the 17th century by the Dutch governor Hendrik van Rheede, and among its opening pages are certificates from the people who helped make it. Two of those certificates are in Malayalam, and they are not in the same script. Itty Achudan’s certificate is written in Kolezhuttu, while Emmanuel Carneiro’s is in Arya Ezhuttu.

It has been theorised that this is because of differences in caste and social status, with the use of the Sanskritised Arya Ezhuttu being more common among the elite of the time. Itty Achudan was a traditional physician from the Ezhava caste, which was relatively low in the social hierarchy. Carneiro was an interpreter working with the Dutch establishment.

The presence of multiple scripts of the same language in the same work shows how a single language can exist in many forms, and how social factors like caste and class can influence written language. Two men contributed to one book, in one language, in the same decade, and the page still records the distance between them.

Note: “It has been theorised” still needs a name attached. If this reading comes from one of your sources, cite it here; if it is your own inference from the material, say so — either is fine, but the sentence currently belongs to nobody.

Malayalam scripts that came through contact

The scripts above are all of Indian origin, but they weren’t the only ones used to write Malayalam. Kerala has a long history of contact with other parts of the world, and that gave rise to two more writing systems. What separates them from the first group is that they are not descended from Brahmi at all. They mark community and religion rather than lineage: the language stays the same, and the alphabet around it changes.

Arabi Malayalam

The Malabar region has had longstanding trade relations with the Arab world. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a Greek text dated to the first century BCE, mentions the presence of Arab traders in Kerala even back then. Arabi Malayalam refers to a dialect of Malayalam as well as a script used to write Malayalam that came out of this contact.

The script was used by the Mappila Muslim community, which, as Kottaparamban (2019) describes, came to be through interactions and intermarriage with Arab traders. Arabi Malayalam makes use of Arabic letters to write Malayalam, with the necessary accommodations to account for linguistic differences — Malayalam has sounds that Arabic has no letters for, and additional characters were devised for them.

The most famous works written in Arabi Malayalam are the Mappila Pattu (Mappila songs), folkloric songs that deal with a number of subjects, from religion, to battle, to marriage. The oldest of such works date back to the 17th century. Other works written in this script include translations from other languages — notably a translation of the Persian novel Chahar Dervesh, which in 1883 became the first novel rendered in the Arabi Malayalam script.

Suriyani Malayalam

The other script that came about through contact is Suriyani, or Syriac, Malayalam. It is also called Garshuni or Karshoni Malayalam, ‘Garshuni’ being a generic term for non-Syriac writing in the Syriac alphabet.

Suriyani Malayalam was primarily in use among the St Thomas Christian community. St Thomas Christians, also called the Syrian Christians of India, are a Christian community in Kerala that traces its origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle. In addition to the Syriac alphabet, the script also makes use of a few Malayalam letters.

Most remaining texts written in Suriyani Malayalam are from the 17th to the 19th centuries, though scholars believe it was in use even earlier. Perczel (2014) treats the surviving material as evidence of a much older Indian Christian literature. Works in this script are largely religious in nature: they include Catholic and Orthodox liturgical texts and discourses on religion, one notable example being Vedatharkan (Dialectics on Theology) by Kariyattil Yawsep, also referred to as Mar Joseph Kariyattil. Historical documents, mostly dealing with church history, have also been written in the script.

Note: Both of these sections still end on their surviving texts and stop. A sentence each on what happened to the script afterwards — whether it fell out of everyday use, and roughly when — would close the arc, but I’ve left it out rather than assert dates your sources don’t give.

From Arya Ezhuttu to the modern Malayalam script

Arya Ezhuttu is the script that printing found when it arrived. From the early 19th century, missionary presses in Kerala began producing Malayalam in type — the best known being the press at Kottayam associated with Benjamin Bailey, where some of the first Malayalam types were cut. Print does something that palm leaf never had to: it fixes letterforms. Once a letter exists as a piece of metal, the variation that a scribal hand allows quietly disappears.

The other significant change came much later. In 1971, the Kerala government adopted a reformed script, often called the putiya lipi or new script, which replaced many conjunct consonants and vowel signs with simpler separated forms. The reform was largely practical, meant to suit typewriters and printing, and it is the reason the script on a phone keyboard today looks a little plainer than the script in a 19th-century printed book.

So the Malayalam script most of us learned in school is the end of a fairly long line: Brahmi, Tamil-Brahmi, Vattezhuttu, Grantha, Arya Ezhuttu, print, and then a committee. Which is roughly why the Hill Palace inscription looked the way it did to me — not unreadable, not readable either.

Note: This whole section is new — the essay promised a comparison with the modern script in its first paragraph and never delivered one. The dates here (the Kottayam press, the 1971 reform) are widely reported but were not in your reference list, so please verify and cite them before publishing.

Why the Malayalam script has so many forms

Looking back over all of it, the many written forms of Malayalam came about in two quite different ways. Some of them are a matter of descent: Vattezhuttu had children, and Kolezhuttu and Malayanma are them. Others are a matter of contact: Arabic and Syriac letters were borrowed and bent to fit a language they were never designed for. Running across both is caste and community, which decided not only what people wrote but which alphabet they were expected to write it in.

Which is what makes the two things I started with worth looking at twice. The inscription at the Hill Palace is one point on a line that runs all the way to the keyboard I am typing this on. The Hortus Malabaricus is something else — two men, one language, one book, two scripts, and a social order visible in the shapes of the letters. A language, it turns out, is never only one thing, and the Malayalam script has been carrying that fact around for well over a thousand years.

References

Ravivarma, L. A. Pracheena Kerala Lipikal.

Kottaparamban, M. (2019). Sea, community and language: a study on the origin and development of Arabi-Malayalam language of Mappila Muslims of Malabar. Muallim Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 3(4), 406–416. https://doi.org/10.33306/mjssh/31

Perczel, István. (2014). Garshuni Malayalam: A Witness to an Early Stage of Indian Christian Literature. Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies, 17(2), 263–323.

Omniglot. Vatteluttu alphabet. https://www.omniglot.com/writing/vatteluttu.htm

Radhakrishnan, C. The Malayalam alphabet. https://c-radhakrishnan.info/alphabet.html

SEO notes (not part of the article)

Primary keyword: Malayalam script

Secondary keywords: Vattezhuttu, Kolezhuttu, Arya Ezhuttu, Arabi Malayalam, Suriyani Malayalam, history of Malayalam script, Malayalam writing system, Grantha script

Title tag (58 chars): The Many Forms of the Malayalam Script | A Short History

Meta description (152 chars): From Vattezhuttu to Arabi Malayalam, the Malayalam script has taken many forms. A short history of how Malayalam was written — and why the script changed.

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Image alt text: If you can photograph or source images: “Vattezhuttu inscription at the Hill Palace Museum, Kochi”; “Itty Achudan’s certificate in Kolezhuttu script, Hortus Malabaricus”; “Quilon copper plates showing Vattezhuttu, Kufic, Pahlavi and Hebrew scripts”. Check licensing before use.

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Nileena Sunil is a writer, journalist, and book reviewer. She has had her work published in Strange Horizons, Usawa Literary Review, On Eating, Flash Fiction Magazine, and other places.