Puffed Rice, Tender Coconut, and Datura Plant: A Pre-modern Malayali Recipe for a Sacred Shadow

In the pre-modern (possibly 14th century) literary composition Tiruniḻalmāla, a long procession of gods and humans reaches the temple of Āṟanmuḷa, in today's central Kerala, in order to deliver the god Kṛṣṇa from the evil that is affecting him. Both his pollution and his purification seem to rely on and respond to the polymorph concept of niḻal (lit. shadow, representation, brightness). It is indeed a thematic frame central to the structure of Tiruniḻalmāla. The niḻal evokes the divine shelter offered by the god and its splendour while referring to the ritual practices meant to deliver from several forms of evil. At the same time, niḻal as shadow raises intriguing questions as to the material aspects of this literary and ritual text in its performative context. This paper explores the ways in which the materiality of ritual shapes the world of poetics, starting from the medium of niḻal.