Intimations of the Loka in Adhyatmaramayanam Kilipattu

This article is a creative-reflective account of the centrality of the loka, or location, in the recitational tradition of the Ramayanam in Kerala. Through Tunchath Ezhutachan's Adhyatmaramayanam Kilipattu, a sixteenth-century rendering of the Ramayana in Malayalam, the author attempts to bring to fore the varying nuances of the loka presented in the text and the manner in which it informs the context of its performance. The article claims that neither the composition nor its performance seeks a religious ideal of the transcendental, instead by placing its emphasis on location, the Kilipattu demands to be understood as a poetical-philosophical account of being in the world.