Papers by Abhilash Malayil
Cracow Indological Studies, Dec 29, 2023
The essay discusses an oral poem from north Malabar detailing an 18 th -century event of politica... more The essay discusses an oral poem from north Malabar detailing an 18 th -century event of political conflict, manifested between a native king and a local landlord. The story of conflict centres around the idea of bhēdam or difference that the king wanted to project as the secret of his earthly right to rule. The king's opponent, the local landlord, rejects this idea and claims that they are equals, and there exists no hierarchy of relation between them. The essay explores certain features of the late 18 th century political transition along the Coast of Malabar which culminated in the Mysore and British rule, and argues that the landlord's denial of king's authority was firmly rooted in this context, and had futurist intentions. In this way, the essay also tries to present a critique of the neo-Hocartian idea of "little-kingdom" and the Proppian proposal for "pattern morphology". It indicates that the early modern Malabar presents an interesting case of 'hollowing' the crown from inside, and its oral poems-as a genre of history-document this process in modes that are deemed appropriate to their times.
The Indian Economic & Social History Review
This article proposes a systemic connection between cash-crop gardening, commercialisation and in... more This article proposes a systemic connection between cash-crop gardening, commercialisation and individually-owned landed property in late eighteenth-century Malabar on the southwestern coast of India. The discussion starts with a focus on the English East India Company’s (EIC) early nineteenth-century investigations into land tenure and land tax. It identifies an agreement of opinion between two EIC revenue officers, Thomas Munro (d. 1827) and Francis Whyte Ellis (d. 1819), otherwise known to occupy rival intellectual positions. Both of them agreed on the existence of privately-owned landed assets in the region. This article calls this agreement ‘the Malabar consensus’ and argues that it was founded on an objective, if not intimate, examination of a set of specific historical conditions. The first section explores the tenurial category janmam or the aṭṭipēṟu of the eighteenth century and describes certain procedural innovations in the realm of landed and agrarian assets which mark a...
Indian Journal of History of Science, 2016
This paper deals with a Malayalam text named Vetikkampavidhi or 'the manual of fireworks'. It det... more This paper deals with a Malayalam text named Vetikkampavidhi or 'the manual of fireworks'. It details several firework 'recipes' or gunpowder preparations as mentioned in the text. It compares these recipes with certain items and techniques in the near-contemporary and often the present-day pyrotechny. In the final part, it tries to offer an explanation for the "theatrical uses of gunpowder" in the early-modern Malabar Coast. It also carries tables presenting the gunpowder recipes prescribed in Vetikkampavidhi for its two important firework types, i.e., 'the moonlight' and 'the flowers'.
Books by Abhilash Malayil
![Research paper thumbnail of റയ്യത്തുവാരി: കമ്പനിസ്റ്റേറ്റും പൊളിറ്റിക്കൽ എക്കോണമിയും: മലബാർ ജില്ലയെ ആസ്പദമാക്കിയുള്ള നിരീക്ഷണങ്ങൾ [Ryotwari: Company State and the Political Economy: Some Observations on Malabar District]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/101743585/thumbnails/1.jpg)
December , 2022
The monograph deals with the political economy of the Malabar District for a period between circa... more The monograph deals with the political economy of the Malabar District for a period between circa 1792 and 1857. It tries to explain how this coastal and cash-cropping economy of about 8000 square miles and 1.60 million people (in 1856-57) introduced a complex fiscal problem before the Madras Ryotwari establishment. We call this problem, 'Ryotwari Predicament', and argue that it highlights firstly, the presence in the Malabar political economy of an internalist development with regard to economic entitlement, intensification and reproduction which had resilient foundations in this region’s early modern economic history, and secondly, the inability of the English East India Company (EIC) administration, especially its policy of Ryotwari land tax and allied physiocratic politics, to encompass the course of an economic phenomenon, though manifested in a provincialized attire and grammar, was global in content and constitution.
Conference Presentations by Abhilash Malayil
June 2019. with Abhilash Malayil. The Poet in the Marketplace: Mercantile Aesthetics in a Late Ma... more June 2019. with Abhilash Malayil. The Poet in the Marketplace: Mercantile Aesthetics in a Late Malayalam Prabandha. NEEM ERC Conference Sense, Tone, and Topic in Early-Modern South Indian Prabandhas and Padams. Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
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Papers by Abhilash Malayil
Books by Abhilash Malayil
Conference Presentations by Abhilash Malayil