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Early marriage customs in Kerala

Pandava vichaaram

Pandava Vicharam was a type of Fraternal polyandry tradition practised among the Ezhavas,Kammalas and Channars of Kerala. This was the custom of an Ezhava or Channar or Kammala woman who adopted her brothers-in-law as her husbands simultaneously.This practice was called fraternal polyandry or Pandava vicharam.

Barbosa in 1503 and C Keshavan, the Ezhava leader in 1950, testified that there was nothing unusual in the practice of multiple brothers marrying and cohabiting with one wife. In the words of C. Keshavan: My father had five brothers. The second of them was married to my mother. His name was Karnan and he had two children. The custom was not an obstacle to it. It was a time when more than one brother in the community had a common wife.

Koodan Namboothiri

In ancient Kerala, only the eldest member of the Namboothiri family had the right to marry out of caste. Others have to marry from the Nair ,Kshatriya sects under the condition of Sambandham.

However, Nair Kshatriya families would not allow ill-tempered ,capricious and alcoholic Namboothiris. Such Nampoothiris had the authority to secretly have one time intercourse with Paradesi Hindu women of the upper castes and non-hindu women of the upper castes like Muslims and Christians. This custom had no social recognition. There was a stipulation that Nampoothiri, who was engaged in this illegal busines should immediately take a bath three times in a row. The resulting offspring were called Koodal offspring. Kooda: in Malayalam, it means idiot.

Ammanozhichil

This was a strange system of marriage in which a pulaya man married the junior most wife of his maternal uncle or father in law. The word ammanozhichil is ammavan ozhichil that means the uncle relieves his husbandship and gives his wife to his nephew or son in law.