Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan (, ) (Malayalam: തുഞ്ചത്ത് രാമാനുജൻ
എഴുത്തച്ഛൻ) (fl. 16th century) was a Malayalam devotional poet, translator and linguist. He was one of the prāchīna kavitrayam (old triad) of Malayalam literature, the other two being Kunchan Nambiar and Cherusseri. He has been called the "Father of Modern Malayalam", the "Father of Modern Malayalam Literature", and the "Primal Poet in Malayalam". He was one of the pioneers of a major shift in Kerala's literary culture (the domesticated religious textuality associated with the Bhakti movement). His work is published and read far more than that of any of his contemporaries or predecessors in Kerala.
He was born in a house called Thunchaththu in present-day Tirur in the Malappuram district of northern Kerala, in a traditional Hindu family. Little is known with certainty about his life. His success even in his own lifetime seems to have been great. Later he and his followers shifted to a village near Palakkad, further east into the Kerala, and established a hermitage (the "Ramananda ashrama") and a Brahmin village there. This institution probably housed both Brahmin and Sudra literary students. The school eventually pioneered the "Ezhuthachan movement", associated with the concept of popular Bhakti, in Kerala. Ezhuthachan's ideas have been variously linked by scholars either with philosopher Ramananda, who found the Ramanandi sect, or Ramanuja, the single most influential thinker of devotional Hinduism.
For centuries before Ezhuthachan, Kerala people had been producing literary texts in Malayalam and in the Grantha script. However, he is celebrated as the "Primal Poet" or the "Father of Malayalam Proper" for his Malayalam recomposition of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana. This work rapidly circulated around Kerala middle-caste homes as a popular devotional text. It can be said that Ezhuthachan brought the then unknown Sanskrit-Puranic literature to the level of common understanding (domesticated religious textuality). His other major contribution has been in mainstreaming the current Malayalam alphabet.
Sources
The first Western scholar to take an interest in Ezhuthachan was Arthur C. Burnell (1871).
The following two texts are the standard sources on Ezhuthachan.
"Eluttaccan and His Age" (1940) by C. Achyuta Menon (Madras: University of Madras). "Adhyatma Ramayanam" (1969) edited by A. D. Harisharma (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative).
Historical Ezhuthachan
There is no completely firm historical evidence for Ezhuthachan the author.
Main historical sources of Ezhuthachan and his life are
Quasi-historical verses referring to Ezhuthachan (from Chittur Madhom). An institutional line of masters or gurus, beginning with one Thunchaththu Sri Guru, is mentioned in one oral verse from Chittur Madhom. This lineage can be historically verified. An inscription giving the details of the founding of the residence (agraharam), hermitage (mathom), and temples in Chittur. This was under the direction of Suryanarayanan Ezhuthachan (with support of the local chieftain). This locale can be historically verified.
Period
Ezhuthachan is generally believed to have lived around the sixteenth or seventeenth century.