25 Facts About Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was one of the prachina kavithrayam of Malayalam literature, the other two being Kunchan Nambiar and Cherusseri.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan has been called the "Father of Modern Malayalam Literature", and the "Primal Poet in Malayalam".

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was one of the pioneers of a major shift in Kerala's literary culture.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan's work is published and read far more than that of any of his contemporaries or predecessors in Kerala.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was born in a place called Thunchaththu in present-day Tirur in the Malappuram district of northern Kerala, in a traditional Hindu family.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was not from a brahmin community and for long, brahmins of kerala were reluctant to accept him.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan's ideas have been variously linked by scholars either with philosopher Ramananda, who found the Ramanandi sect, or Ramanuja, the single most influential thinker of devotional Hinduism.

The first Western scholar to take an interest in Ezhuthachan was Arthur C Burnell.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan is generally believed to have lived around the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was born at Trikkandiyoor, near the modern-day town of Tirur, in northern Kerala.

The name Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan, meaning Father of Letters, was a generic title for any village schoolteacher in premodern Kerala.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was probably educated by his elder brother.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was eventually associated with an institutional line of masters.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan is believed to have attained samadhi at the Gurumadhom at Chittur.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan introduced a movement of domesticated religious textuality in Kerala.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was a significant voice of the Bhakti movement in south India.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan's works were a general opposition against the moral decadence of the 16th century Kerala society.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan further eliminated excess and unnecessary letters from the modified script.

Hence, Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan is known as The Father of modern Malayalam.

Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan caste is a socio-economic caste of village school teachers.

The Malayalam poet and historian Ulloor S Parameswara Iyer agree that Ezhuthachan belonged to this caste and conclude that he could be Vattekattu Nair because he visited brahmanical temples and engaged in worship, which is not allowed for the Ezuthacan caste.

William Logan, officer of the Madras Civil Service under the English India Company Government, expresses a similar opinion in his Malabar Manual and states that Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan Ezuthachan was "a man of Sudra caste".

Kottarathil Shankunni wrote in his Aithihyamala that the term Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan is nothing but a title taken up by school teachers belonging to several castes mainly by Nairs in Northern kerala indicating that Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan was a Nair.

The parrot-song genre, pioneered by Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan, inaugurated the production of many similar works in Malayalam.

The sand from the compound where the house of Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan stood once is considered as sacred.