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Location : Palakkad District.  This is a village between Palakkad and Kollengode. It had about 200 houses. There are two temples viz. Bhagavathi temple and Krishnan temple both managed by Kerala Iyers. Navarathri is celebrated in the village in a grand scale. The temple festival is on the first Friday of the month of Thai (January- February). Sri N.R.Subbarama Iyer who was the Chief Justice of Cochin high court belonged to this village. There were lots of eminent legal luminaries, which include Sri N.R.Krisha Iyer, Sri Ramaswamy iyer, Sri K.Viswanatha Iyer. The famous Tarakkad blind astrologer Swaminathan also belongs to this village. Sri. N.R.Subbaram an expert scientist who worked at Patent right Commissioner and who is at present a c...

Location : Ernakulam District.  This is a village consisting of about 50 Otta madams. There are settlers from Palakkad side as well as those from Tirunelveli in this village. Most of the Brahmins belong to middle class society. Mr. N Ramaswamy Iyer, who was an advocate by profession, started a business alongwith his brother Neelakanda Iyer in Muvattupuzha, probably one of the first pattar business clan in Kerala.The learned advocate argued a case for the then Shell company and won it for them. In return seeing his sincerity, the Europeans offered him the dealership of Shell, and the business started off with a Kerosene pump. Ramaswamy iyer was also a great philanthropist and helped all people to the maximum. The Maharaja of Rameshwaram, Sethupathy in recognition of Mr. Ramaswamy Iyer's contribution to the pattars, inscribed his name in the Rameshwaram Temple pillar, which can be seen even today. ...

Location : Palakkad District.  Melarkode is located about 30kms from Palakkad town. It consists of three villages viz., the South Village, North Village and Chattuvakode. The north and south villages each have a ganapathy temple and the chattuvakode village has a shiva temple. The prathista in the chattuvakode Siva temple is "swayamboo". There are approximately 70-80 houses in the three villages combined. Melarkode was originally known as Mayilattoor (people of older generation still refer to this place by the latter name), probably because dancing (attam) peacocks (mayil) were a common sight here. One can still spot some peacocks in the hills adjoining our village. In North Village, "Utsavam" is celebrated every year during the month of May. It is a week long event whose major attactions are the Panchavadyam Ezhunnallathu and Aarattu on the final day. Natives of this village, spread all over India make it a point to be home du...

Location : Kuttanad, Alleppy District.  Monkombu, a naturally formed island, is a small village in the Kuttanad taluk in Alleppey district. It could be considered as the headquarters of the granary of Kerala. The village is blessed by the Goddess MONKOMBILAMMA (Mankombill Bhagavathi). The legend goes like this ...... a timber merchant was transporting logs of wood through the river Pamba towards Alleppey. It so happened that a log of mango tree got stuck into the shore and did not move. The merchant consulted the astrologers and found that the wood had the presence of Goddess Bhagvathi and decided to construct a temple, the place was then called as Monkombu ( derived from the Mavin - kombu ). Monkombu Garudan Thooka...

Location : Palakkad District.  Laksminarayana Puram is one among the Eighteen Villages in the Palghat Town. Lakshminarayanapuram Village is one of the well known ancient villages in Palghat situated east of Kalpathy by the side of Palghat Puthur Malampuzha main road. This beautiful village with is two famous temples of Lord Gopalakrishna at the western extremity and Lord Subramanya at the southern extremity has held a unique fascination for those who have been living here for several decades and even for those who visit the village on some occasion or the other. It is difficult even for a casual visitor not to be impressed by the natural cleanliness of the village and the inexplicable tranquillity of the environment. It is a tribute to the village that they have been able to preserve the hoary tradition of the village for than three centuries. The tradition of the village has been the source of perennial comfort and inspiration to all those who hail from the...

Location : Palakkad District.  Kudallur is situated on the northern bank of river Gayathri, a tributary of Thripaallur River, which finally joins River Nila (BHARATHAPUZHA). The village is connected by bus service to Nemmara on the southern side of the river. This agraharam houses about ten brahmin families at present with the Non-Brahmins residing a little away from the agraharam, which has only two streets. Vaikath Matom is a prominent Brahmin family whose ancestors are said to have come here from Ambasamudram around 300 years ago. Of the families, two branches of Vaikath Matom excel the others in the high degree of erudition of their children. This house takes pride in their children-not less than ten contributing to Software technology in the U.S.A. There is a small neat temple with a sevellipura in the front and a temple tank nearby. The presiding deity is Karthiyayani Amman. In the month of November...

Location : Palakkad District.  It is a village situated about 10 km away from Palakkad town. There are four streets that were housing exclusively Brahmins in this village. The streets are New Street, Gokula Street, Corner street (Mukku theruvu) and Double (Retta theruvu) Street. There are three temples managed by Iyers in this village viz. Sree Krishna Temple, Sree Viswanatha Swamy Temple and Sree Ganapathy temple. There is also a temple of Keralathappan, whose idol is supposed to have been damaged by Tipu sultan during his raid. The folk tales say that the prathishta Lingam of Viswanatha and that of Visalakshi were brought to the village from Kasi. The Pooja in this temple is by Kurukkal. The car festival is celebrated during the ...

Location : near Vadakkancherry, Palakkad District.  This is an important village near Vadakkancherry. It had about 150 houses in earlier days. The people of this village believe that they came and settled down here from Tanjore. There is an Uttaravahini river flowing by the side of this village. There was a Maha Ganapathi temple on its shores. This temple was very famous in the entire area. Sankara Jyotsiar who was a minister of Ranjit Singh has built a Kamakshi temple in this village. The story is that he undertook penance in Kanchi Kamakshi Temple and wanted to have a Prathishta of Kamakshi in Kerala. Since available folk tales indicate that he did not belong to this village, the reason for his choice is not clear...

Location : near Alathur, Palakkad District.  Kavasseri is a group of 6 Brahmin villages about 3 miles from Alathur on route to Padur/ Pazhayannur. These villages are Nellithara gramam, Oattupperai gramam, Easwara pattar gramam, Venkachi gramam, Mullakkal gramam and Naanu Pattar gramam. The settlement had over 200 households. Nelllitherai Gramam had more of Otta Madhoms where as rest were typical row houses. The Oattuperai gramam got its name obviously due to houses there getting tiled (Oatu = tile) roof earlier than others. Each gramam had their own gramadevatha or deity with temple for Mahaganapathy, Siva, Krishna, Ayyappa etc. The annual utsavams for Siva & MahaGanapathy temples and Sasthapreethy are jointly conducted by all the ...

Location : Palakkad District.  Elappully is 12 Kms away from Palakkad town. Initially there were one hundred Iyer houses, which has reduced to 30 at present. All the families of this village trace their origin to Ganapathy agraharam near Kumbakonam. The old timers remember of a fire, which ravaged the village. The village has two temples - the main temple is that of Navaneetha Krishnan and the other important temple is that of Bala Parameshwari established by Koti Sastrigal. Among the eminent persons of the village were great Vedic scholar Sri E. P. Subrahmanya Iyer who translated Soundarya Lahari into Malayalam, another great Vedic scholar Sri Ramakrishna Sastrigal, the industrialist Sri E. K. Narayana Iyer, the educational expert N. S...

This is a Palakkad village in the banks of Soka Nasini River(Thekke Puzha). The land of this village belonged to the Pathayikkara Namboodiris in the olden age.It is told that these Nambbodiris donated the entire land to iyers and left the place.There is only one street with houses on both sides of the street.In the olden times there were about 150 brahmin houses in this village.Now there are only about 80 houses.There are three main temples that of Siva, Kroshna and Ganapathi.There is also a temple of Sastha along with his consort, PoornaPushkalamba. The siva Parathishta was done by the Tamil Iyers who settled here but the BhagawatiPrathishta in this temple is of the Namboodiris.  Vinayaka Chaturthi is celebrated in the Ganesha Temple...

Location : Palakkad District.  Chittur is one of the very important villages near Palakkad. It was here that the Kerala Iyers got their training in Vedas. This village has three sub villages viz. Thekke Gramam, Durga Koshtam and Lankeswaram. No information is available about why one of these villages is called Lankeswaram. In Thekke Gramam there is a Samadhi of the great Malayalam poet Thunjattu Ezhuthachan. Altogether there are about 300 houses in these three villages with 200 in Thekke gramam. There is a temple dedicated to Rama and another to Siva in these villages. There is a chariot procession in March -April observed by iyers of this village. The Veda Patasala in this village was started by iyers and supported by the Maharaja ...

Locattion : Talappilly, Trichur District.  Chelakkara is in a valley and is surrounded by the Machat Mountains on all the four sided. In the olden days there used to be about 100 Iyer houses in this village. The village has a Narasimhamurthy temple owned by a Namboothiri illam, but managed by iyers only. There is a small car festival on Thiruvadira day. Navarathri is celebrated in a grand scale in this village. The other festival that is observed in a grand way is Vaikunta Ekadasi. This village in spite of not having a high school in earlier times did take to education very early. Mr. C.V.Subbarama Iyer who was a Professor of Mathematics in University College, Trivandrum and later rose to the position of the Principal...

Location : Chittoor, Ernakulam District.  This village was part of Kochi State. It had in the earlier days 120 Brahmin houses. Most of them belonged to the Vadamas and Brihatcharanam sub sect. Most of them had either Pallaseni Kavu or Chittalancheri Kavu as Adimai Kavus. The village also has considerable population of Tamil speaking Chettiars. The Siva temple was in the middle of the agraharam. About 100 years back one Mr. A.K.Samban built the drinking water system to the Gramam. He did this by providing Public taps. He also is supposed to have built the Cremation ground and Kula Purai for the village. The Krishnan temple, which was built by the Iyers about 100 years back, was built in the same compound as the Siva Temple. There is an i...

Great Scientists A community which took up to modern English education only about 40-50 years back has contributed very significantly to the scientific development in India. Dr. Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is the name that comes uppermost to the mind. He has been recognized as the Father of Green Revolution in India. Dr.M.S.Swaminathan took his Ph.D from the School of Agriculture in Cambridge in 1952. He spent the next two decades in research on various crops and in basic and applied genetics at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. He developed high yielding strains of wheat and rice. Dr.Swaminathan is recepient of over forty awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the World Food Prize in 1987, the S S Bhatnagar Award, the Birbal Sahni Medal and the Mendel Memorial Award. In 1...