Kerala Iyers

Kerala Iyers or Bhattars, are Tamil Brahmins of the Indian state of Kerala who migrated from present day Tamil Nadu in different waves starting from the medieval period onwards. The community consists of two groups - the Palakkad Iyers and Iyers of the Cochin and Travancore regions.

The first wave of Iyers settled down in Palakkad district at the beginning of the medieval period. Migrations to the Travancore and Cochin regions took place mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries AD. Many of the Diwans or Prime Ministers of the princely state of Travancore were Tamil Brahmins.

Kerala Iyers, like the Iyers of Tamil Nadu and the Namboothiris of Kerala, belonged to the Pancha Dravida classification of India's Brahmin community. They mostly belonged to the Vadama and Brahacharanam sub-sects. Iyers were usually employed as cooks, musicians and temple assistants, since they were not allowed to conduct pooja as the priest (shanthi) in Kerala temples which followed Tantric rituals. So Kerala Iyers built their own temples in their Agraharams to conduct pooja.There has been a long debate on the linguistic background of the Kerala Iyers,most Kerala Iyers came to kerala as early as the 13th century,Thus there constant interaction with Malayalam and Malayalis eventually highly increased the level of Sanskritisation into their Tamil which in itself was sanskritised thus as time flew most of them started to speak a form of Tamil highly concentrated with Malayalam.