Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 2.djvu/17

Rh pressed into the Chākkiyar's service. Numerous upakathās or episodes are brought in by way of illustration, and the marvellous flow of words, and the telling humour of the utterances, keep the audience spell-bound. On the utsavam programme of every important temple, especially in North Travancore, the Chāākkiyarkūttu (Chākkiyar's performance) is an essential item. A special building, known as kūttampalam, is intended for this purpose. Here the Chākkiyar instructs and regales his hearers, antiquely dressed, and seated on a three-legged stool. He wears a peculiar turban with golden rim and silk embossments. A long piece of cloth with coloured edges, wrapped round the loins in innumerable vertical folds with an elaborateness of detail difficult to describe, is the Chākkiyar's distinctive apparel. Behind him stands the Nambiyar, whose traditional kinship with the Chākkiyar has been referred to, with a big jar-shaped metal drum in front of him called milāvu, whose bass sound resembles the echo of distant thunder. The Nambiyar is indispensable for the Chākkiyarkūttu, and sounds his mighty instrument at the beginning, at the end, and also during the course of his recitation, when the Chākkiyar arrives at the middle and end of a Sanskrit verse. The Nangayar, a female of the Nambiyar caste, is another indispensable element, and sits in front of the Chākkiyar with a cymbal in hand, which she sounds occasionally. It is interesting to note that, amidst all the boisterous merriment into which the audience may be thrown, there is one person who has to sit motionless like a statue. If the Nangayar is moved to a smile, the kuttu must stop, and there are cases where, in certain temples, the kuttu has thus become a thing of the past. The Chākkiyar often makes a feint of representing some of his audience as his characters