Culture
Malayali cultural genesis can be traced to their membership (around the 3rd century CE) in a well defined historical region known as Tamilakam, encompassing the Chera, Chola, and Pandya kingdoms and southern coastal Karnataka. Later upon the arrival of other ethnic groups such as Namboothiris, the distinct culture took shape. This was later elaborated upon by centuries of contact with foreign cultures such as Syrian, Judeo, Arabian, Portuguese, English communities which have left their mark. These foreign communities often settled in Kerala and assimilated with the local population resulting in different ethnic groups such as the Cochin Jews, Mappilas, Syrian Malabar Nasranis, and Anglo Indian.
Read more about this topic: Malayali People
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Why is it so difficult to see the lesbian—even when she is there, quite plainly, in front of us? In part because she has been “ghosted”Mor made to seem invisible—by culture itself.... Once the lesbian has been defined as ghostly—the better to drain her of any sensual or moral authority—she can then be exorcised.”
—Terry Castle, U.S. lesbian author. The Apparitional Lesbian, ch. 1 (1993)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)