7. Divinity Applied on Travancore Royal Family

The king and their family was always experienced a supreme position in society. Sometimes, several royal people were praised with some divine or mystic representation also. For example, the Manusmriti stated that if a king himself gave a punishment to somebody for a crime, his sins will be vanish and directly reaches heaven after his death.

[...]^[1]

If the culprits are punished by the king, they become pure and reach the heaven similar to the virtuous people.

In Raghuvamsha, Kalidasa also mentioned this in the time of slaying of Shambuka by Rama.

[...]^[2]

The Shudra, who get punishment directly from the king achieved the heaven. Even though it was so difficult by his own penance, the way to his aim had no any obstacles.

The dynasties ofSouth India were also not different from these types of miraculous stories of divinity and mysteries. For instances the Pandya dynasty claimed their heritage from Pandavas, the Mushika clan have an amazing story of their origin related to a giant mouse, are some famous examples. Thus the Travancore kings were renowned as the servants of Lord Padmanabha (ShriPadmanabhadasa) since the reign of AnizhamTirunal Marttanda Varma after the “Trippatidana”^[3]. Similarly, Bharanitirunal Lakshmibai (1848-1901) adopted Sehu Lakshmi Bai and Sethu ParvatiBai after her pilgrimage to Rameshvaram and Ramasetu.

In Annadatri-carita, the author made one more step of the application of divinity to the royal family. In the third act, the Sutradhara described the Chittirathirunal Balaramavarma was similar to god Padmanabha. Moreover, the author mentioned Chithirathirunal BalaramaVarma as an incarnation of Krishna and her mother as the form of goddess Parvati in the fifth act.

[...]^[4]

This was depicted as a blessing of Krishna to Vancishvara in order to his praying. Moreover, Yudhishtira was also blessed to follow that form of Krishna as his prime minister and it was none other than C.P Ramaswami Iyyer. Another example is the Vancishvara and other kings of his clan are the partial incarnations of Krishna.

[...]^[5]

Thus, the drama Annadatricarita can be identify as a significant work in accordance with its historical and political aspects.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Manusmriti

[2]:

Raghuvamsha with commentary of Mallinatha, part -III, Edited by Shankar. P. Pandit., (Bombay, Government Central Book Depo, 1874), 451.

[3]:

AnizhamTirunal Marttanda Varma donated the entire kingdom that he conquered from different kings and other assets to Lord Padmanabha in 3^rd January 1750 Wednesday on Revati star. From that day he and his successors were known as “Shripadmanabhadasa” (Servants of lord Padmanabha) forever.

[4]:

Prof. K. BalaramaPanicker, Annadatricarita, (Thiruvananthapuram: published by the author, 1946), 49.

[5]:

Ibid.,44.