The Cult of Teyyam and Hero Worship in Kerala

K. K. N. Kurup's The Cult of Teyyam and Hero Worship in Kerala, published by Indian Publications in 1973, is a scholarly study of the teyyam ritual dance tradition of northern Kerala, in which performers, often from historically lower caste communities, undergo possession and are ritually treated as living deities during elaborate seasonal performances. Kurup is a historian whose research grounds the study in the actual social and caste structure teyyam operates within, treating the possessed performer's temporary elevated status as a genuine, if temporary, social inversion worth analyzing on its own terms. Its strength is that grounding in Kerala's specific social history rather than a generic account of possession ritual. Its limit is its age, over five decades old, and teyyam's own practice, its regional variation and its relationship to caste politics have continued to develop and be studied since, so a claim about teyyam's present day form or its contemporary social meaning needs more recent scholarship alongside this foundational study.