1. Tantra and Kerala Brahmins

The belief and practice of expiation have been closely associated with the socio-cultural milieu of Keralite religious society. The cultural history of a region will be incomplete without an assessment of the religious rituals and the scriptures which illustrate the rules and regulations for the ritualistic performances. Hence an evaluation of the economic, cultural and social backgrounds of Kerala during the period of the composition of Tantra treatises is attempted here for the completion of this study. Tantric expiation and its socio-economic contexts are deeply related to the Brahmin oligarchy of medieval Kerala.

Tantra literature of Kerala is intimately interconnected to Brahmin Settlements. This Namputiri Brahmin settlement in Kerala began in the third century BCE and they established their roots firmly here by the seventh century CE. According to K.P.Padmanabha Menon, early Brahmin settlements in Kerala came into force by the third century BCE.^[1] On the other hand, Kesavan Veluthat opines that the orthodox Brahmanical culture had taken deep roots in Kerala by the seventh century A.D.^[2] In those years, there were temple-centered Brahmin settlements and their literary powers were multi-faceted. An assortment of texts originated in this period; literatures like Āyurveda, astronomy, astrology, Vāstuśāstra, Sanskrit Kāvyas and the Tantric literature were some among them. In Kerala, most of the Tantric manuals written by the Brahmins were principally for the use of temple-centered rituals. These Tantric scriptures also contributed to the literary power to Brahmins. Dāna, Dakṣiṇā and Prāyaścitta were the economic and social ploy of the Brahmins for gaining money and higher position in the society. Temple and village formation were mostly related to each other. In this age, the economical and social systems were under the control of temples. According to Kesavan Veluthat, a very important fact about the Brahmin settlements in Kerala is that they were very essentially temple-centered and that the temple was synonymous with the Brahmin settlement and vice versa.^[3] The temple committee was the village assembly and it looked after the affairs of the property belonging to the temple and the Brahmin settlers. Kesavan Veluthat remarks that the village council was mainly concerned with the administration of properties owned collectively by the temple-centered Brahmin settlement, known as the Devasvam property of the deity.^[4] It points out that the religious class supremely and virtually uses the temple as a determinable institution of Brahmin oligarchy.