The fighting men of Kerala are not an army in the northern sense but a militia called out of the villages in a day: Nair boys train from about twelve in earth-floored kalari pits attached to the chiefs' houses, with swords, shields, spears and bows.
Almost no horses (the coast cannot keep them). Each chief has his own; temples and Brahmin villages arm tenants in their own quarrels. They are a real power: a chief who loses them loses everything.
Who he is
- Title
- Nair lineages (nayar), under each chief
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Family
- Nair households, with the Six Hundred of Valluvanad, the arisippadijanam of Venad and similar bodies
- Confidence
- low
Wikipedia (Valluvanad): the Six Hundred of Valluvanad protect a market at Bhaskarapuram in a tenth-century Irinjalakkuda inscription; Wikipedia (Venad): arisippadijanam named in inscriptions. The campaign board describes kalari training and call-out; its numbers are design values, which we do not repeat.
Overlord
each chief
What it holds
- service of the chiefs' households
- the Six Hundred of Valluvanad
- the arisippadijanam of Venad
How it was acquired
Hereditary.
Allies and rivals
Every chief and every temple.
How things stand that morning
Ready.
Wealth
Service lands.
Military
Swords, shields, spears and bows; no horses; no numbers in a source.
Where the sources disagree
- The campaign board's numbers for a single chief's call-out are design values and are not repeated.
Evidence: Two Wikipedia mentions and the campaign board.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
Primary sources for Kerala chiefdoms
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- South Indian Inscriptions (Archaeological Survey of India), Various (Chola, Pandya and other chanceries and temple scribes), edited by E. Hultzsch, V. Venkayya, H. Krishna Sastri and successors (inscriptions of the 7th to 17th centuries; the series ran from 1890). The temple inscriptions printed here are the primary record of the Tamil country in 1200. Read online
- Travancore Archaeological Series, Various (Kerala chiefs, temples and merchant guilds), edited by T. A. Gopinatha Rao, K. V. Subrahmanya Aiyer and A. S. Ramanatha Ayyar (inscriptions of the 9th to 18th centuries; the series ran from 1910 to 1938). The main corpus for the Kerala coast. Read online
- The Book of Roger (the Pleasure of Him who Longs to Cross the Horizons), Muhammad al-Idrisi (completed 1154 at Palermo). The nearest Arabic geography in time to 1200 for the Indian Ocean. Read online
- A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
- Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online
Sources and studies
- Valluvanad, Wikipedia (read for this sheet)
- Venad, Wikipedia (read for this sheet)
- OMNIA board notes for the place (a lead, checked against the other sources)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.