Literature in Kerala

Literature in Kerala

Malayalam, the youngest of Dravidian languages, developed a literary idiom of its own only by the sixteenth century. But the contribution of the Malayalam speaking land to literature has a long history which can be traced back to the Sangam Age.Malayalam is the native language of the South Indian state of Kerala and the Lakshadweep Islands in the west coast of India. Malayalam is spoken by 4% of India’s population. Eastern Kerala region consists of high mountains, gorges and deep valleys mostly in the west of the Western Ghats.

Robert Caldwell(1814-1891) came to India as one of the Protestant Christian Missionary on 8th January 1938 at the age of 24 years and worked on Christian missionary in Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India for more than 50 years.Robert Caldwell earnestly learnt the language of Tamil and he became so proficient in the language and he learnt almost all the Dravidian languages of Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam apart from Tamil.

Robert Caldwell used the word “Dravidian Languages” for the first time in the year 1856 to denote the inter-related South Indian languages.

Earlier, it was considered that the South Indian languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam were from the language of ‘Sanskrit’.

Malayalam is the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala and also of the Lakshadweep Islands off the west coast of India. In terms of the number of speakers, Malayalam ranks eighth among the fifteen major languages of India. The word “malayalam” originally means mountainous country (“mala”- mountain,”alam”-valley),signifying its origin from the western ghats.

ANDORA on 09th MAY-2008 issued – europa stamp – can see The first letter of MALAYALAM alphabet. also shows Indian language hindi letterr.

Malayalam is a poetic language. Each successive generation has added its own contribution to Malayalam literature. There are somany writers who made the Language rich with their sincere works in various fields. Poetry, Drama, Short story, Novel, Kathakali, Thullal, Travelogue, Translation, Screen Play etc are some of its branches. This is a list of writers in Malayalam who did their donations for the growth of Language and Literature of Kerala.