Dear Ashwin_ash,
To put first things first, since you are a quintessential Palghat Pattar, I concede that you have every right to comment on Kerala Iyers. I also agree with you that most Kerala Iyers were (conditions might have changed vastly now and I have not been moving around very much within Kerala for the last nearly twenty years) only superficially religious (more involved with their agrarian absentee-landlord ways) and very much unlike the TN tabras some 20 or 30 years ago. It is also true that many Kerala Iyers used to tie up keys in their "poonal" and for a scratching back, what better contraption than the poonal?Nowadays, of course, I find it insufficient and have purchased a 'back scratcher' made of plastic with a sufficiently long aluminium handle, made in...where else? China!
There is no God or deva named "Siva" in Rigveda; only Rudra is there and this rigvedic rudra is someone who is — a howling, crying, nomadic, fierce, dweller of the middle region (BhuvaH - this meant the mountain slopes of the Hindu Kush originally, in the early rigvedic period, and the Himalayas, later on (after the time the rik "imam me gange yamune sarasvati shutudristomagm sacataa parushniyaa...etc. was composed.) This rudra appears to have been "morphed" into the later Siva as and when the Aryans (i.e., the people who followed the rigveda as their holy compilation) came to know about the Saivism and the Tantric Saivism which was quite popular in the Kashmir region as also in Deccan. Hence we find the Satarudreeya or the more commonly called "sri rudram" in the Yajurveda.
This Siva was originally the supreme godhead of saivism and is still so; but the hindu purana-writers made siva as one of their Trinities, and as the Destroyer. The mischief lies in the various puranas and not in Saivism. Whether the puranas themselves were a handiwork of the newly emerging Vaishnava theology, I can't say, but may be it was.
Siva cult is different and a Tantric one which is very different from ordinary Saivism which most Kerala Iyers used to follow mainly, some 50 or 60 years ago. But of late there is a distinct leaning towards the vaishnavite deities and that is the main reason for the great popularity which we now witness for Guruvayur, Udupi, Bhagavatham, Narayaneeyam, etc. This current fashion trend seems to have marginalized Rama, Ramayana etc., among tabras at least. Saivism was not and is still not atheistic but it broadly eschews the emotional and erotic titillation quotients which Krishnabhakti, Rasaleela etc., attempt to import into religion.
Dear Sir,
The prevailing Vaishnavite cult is the Gaudiya Vaishnavite cult propagated by the Iskcon-ites. Acc. tradition, anyone who visits Guruvayoor has to pay a visit to the Mammiyoor Siva temple soon afterward. Whether the Iskcon-ites who now seem to be the chief claimants to the title of 'Vaishnavites' will allow that tradition to continue is a matter of debate and concern.
Most Kerala temples follow Tantra Vidhi and eschew traditional Vedic forms of worship. For many Palakkad Pattars, Manapulli Kavu Bhagavati is the family deity and it can be construed that the community follows the Sakta tradition, which is Tantric in nature.
