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. This is marked by richness and fecundity as well as by its trilingual character. Our poets and scholars augmented significantly the wealth of Sanskrit and Tamil literatures, besides creating a splendid literature in their own tongue. Measured by any standard - of magnitude, variety, originality or depth-the literary tradition of Kerala is magnificent.

A fundamental feature of Malayalam literature is the liveliness with which it interacted, first, sub-continental and, later, with transnational trends and movements. Kerala responded readily and imbibed thoroughly the quintessential ethos and energies of the bhakti renaissance, Liberal Democratic Renaissance and Revolutionary-Socialist Renaissance, all of which rolled on in quick succession. Our literature has kept pace with the accelerating tempo of history, with its temporary lulls and accumulating upheavals. But for this dynamism it would not have attained magnificence.

Another noteworthy feature is its flowing in two distinct streams, one popular and the other elitist, one representing the culture of the masses and the other the counter-culture of the classes. The former has ever strived to gain upper hand, and done so, in varying ways and degrees, at crucial phases of history. To translate this fact in terms of the varna system predominant during the early centuries, the popular stream manifested attitudes and aspirations of the deprived and downtrodden, avarnas, while the elitist one articulated those of the upper and orthodox echelons, traivarnikas. The former was energized by expanding self-awareness and increasing self-assertion and desire for change, while the latter was motivated mostly by the instinct of self-preservation and impatience with change. As the varna system weakened, this divergence came to be determined more and more by rivalries and conflicts among economic classes. Or, to put in more precise terms, varna - determined interests got entangled with economy based interests. The impact of this change on literature is discernibly though not infrequently obscured by mystifying glosses and academic (i.e., ambivalent or value-free) interpretations. The historic changes of recent times may have made the divergence subdue or take subtle forms, but it is still there at the core of our literature. ( Contd..)