What the Wall Borrowed
No tradition exists in isolation.
Kerala mural painting absorbed from the arts that surrounded it — from theatre, from sculpture, from textile, from manuscript illustration. These influences moved in multiple directions and across centuries. Tracing them changes what you see when you stand before the walls.
The Theatre Connection
The relationship between Kerala murals and Kathakali — Kerala’s classical dance-drama — is visible to anyone who looks carefully. The costumes, the headgear, the stylised standing positions, the taut erect torsos of figures in the murals: these are the postures and ornamentations of Kathakali performers.
Kapila Vatsyayan, in her study of the arts of Kerala, observes that the paintings are the pictorial counterparts of Kerala’s highly developed dramatic art, inseparable from the theatrical experience. Looking at the Ramayana murals at Mattancherry and Thiruvanchikkulam, she notes that Bharata, Lakshmana, and Shatrughna in the panel of Rama’s coronation appear to have been lifted directly out of Kathakali — complete with taut, erect torsos and stylised standing positions. The costumes and headgear of figures in the Mattancherry Ramayana correspond closely to Kathakali versions of the same mythological figures.
M.G. Sasibhooshan similarly identifies the common dance mudras that appear throughout the murals: abhaya, varada, mudrakhya, and anjali. The common postures — samabhanga, tribhanga, athibhanga — with a distinct preference for tribhanga, the triple-bend stance that is also dominant in classical Indian sculpture. The Narasimha panel at Krishnapuram Palace resembles the makeup of Narasimha as he appears in a Kathakali performance so closely that the theatrical influence appears direct.
The theatre did not enter the temple. But the aura of the theatrical experience was created on the walls of temples. The murals were the space where performance and devotion met in permanent form.
The Body System
The influence of sculpture on Kerala mural painting operates through the thala system — the proportional measurement framework governing how figures are drawn. A thala is roughly the length of a palm, divided into twelve angulas. Different thalapramanas apply to different deities, sometimes depending on context.
Though mural artists employed thala pramanas, they were less strict about them than sculptors. The murals gave the painters more interpretive freedom than sculpture allowed — and that freedom is visible in the variation between depictions of the same deity across different sites. Different artists visualised the same god differently, even while working from the same dhyana sloka — the Sanskrit verse describing the deity that served as the compositional source. Dhyana slokas from texts like Prapanchasaram, Sharadathilakam, and Manthramahadathi were the painter’s primary reference — not direct observation of the world.
The Manuscript Tradition
Kerala’s manuscript illustration tradition — palm leaf manuscripts with illustrated margins and covers — shares visual vocabulary with the mural tradition. The same iconographic types, the same colour conventions, the same approach to depicting multiple narrative moments within a single frame. The manuscript tradition made the visual grammar mobile — transmissible, reproducible, portable — in ways that wall painting could not be. It is likely that painters consulted illustrated manuscripts as compositional references, bringing the portable grammar of the page to the permanent grammar of the wall.
Local Life on the Wall
Beyond the formal artistic influences, Kerala’s regional life appears throughout the murals in ways that are sometimes surprising. Local musical instruments — nanthuni, pulluvaveena, mizhaav — appear in the hands of figures who in textual sources carry different objects. Namboothiri men and women are depicted alongside mythological figures. Historical figures including Shankaracharya, Swathi Thirunal, and kings of Thiruvithamkoor make appearances.
Two distinct types of female figure can be identified across the murals: Shankhinis, with long face structures and firmer bodies — visible at Padmanabhapuram Palace — and Padminis, with more modest features and plumper figures, visible at Mattancherry. These distinctions follow textual prescriptions, but they also reflect regional aesthetic preferences that the painters embedded in the tradition.
Some painters even depicted poverty, disease, and the wayward behaviour of the ruling class — subtly, within the margins of mythological scenes. The wall was not only theological. It was also observational.
The Modern Disruption
The twentieth century introduced a different set of influences. With the onset of British rule, European painting styles began entering Indian artistic consciousness. The popularity of Raja Ravi Varma led many artists to abandon the Kerala mural tradition in favour of his naturalistic style. The tradition contracted.
Revival came after the fire at Guruvayur temple in the 1970s destroyed the murals there. Recognising what had been lost, a centre for studying and promoting murals was established in Guruvayur under the Devaswom administration in 1989. Mural camps were organised by the Thanjavore-based Southzone Cultural Centre in 1990. Four main centres now exist for the instruction of mural arts: Guruvayur Devaswom Mural Institute, Ernakulam Ravipuram Indian School of Arts, Kalady Sree Sankaracharya University, and Aranmula Vasthuvidya Kendra.
The second-generation mural artists work in a different world from their predecessors — increasingly using online spaces, social media, e-commerce sites, and YouTube to disseminate their work. The murals appear in new forms: as decorative pieces, as part of textiles, on the interiors of hotels and commercial spaces. The tradition has broken out of its constrained reverence.
Whether this expansion represents vitality or dilution — or both simultaneously — is one of the questions this archive sits inside.
