Saints Brigid and Genevieve in the theatrical folklore of Malabar: what they tell us

By staging ‘Charlemagne in Malabar’, as it was introduced by the Dutch ethnomusicologist Arnold Adriaan Bakke (who attended it in 1932), or, more recently, by the French social anthropologist Gilles Tarabout (2017), the caviṭṭunātakam dance drama represents a remarkable survivance of a hybrid form of performing art, blending South-Indian indigenous theatrical characteristics with Western Christian themes. This peculiar folk-art was created and developed, from the early 17th century onwards, by low- and out-castes coastal communities located around Cochin/Kochi (from Quilon/Kollam to Chavakkad, including Cranganore/Kodungallur and Trichur/Thrissur), converted by the Jesuit missionaries under the Portuguese Padroado. Beside the most famous Kāṟal(s)mān-caritraṃ (‘the story of Charlemagne’) cycle of dramas, another older play, also ascribed to the founder of the genre (and still in Tamil language as the former), is Bṛśīna/Brijīna-caritraṃ (‘the story of St. Brigid of Ireland’), whereas Janōva-nātakaṃ (‘the drama of St. Genevieve of Brabant’) appeared somewhat later (before numerous other dramas composed in Malayalam). These last two stories of saints were not told in Henrique Henriques’ monumental Tamil Flos Sanctorum (‘Anthology of Lives of Saints’ and description of the principal feasts of the liturgical year) printed in Cochin in 1586. This paper aims to explain how these two female figures and their legends came to Kerala, why they became so popular that they were the subject of caviṭṭunātakam plays, and how these two plays can be considered living archives of the two ‘Latin’ (Roman Catholic of Latin rite) communities of their performers, viz. the Aññūṯṯukkār (‘the 500’) and the Eḻunūṯṯukkār (‘the 700’), which constitute two distinct, endogamous, castes, one composed mainly of fishermen, the other of former agricultural slaves.