Literature As Reflection Of The Society;War Songs With Special Reference To Cheroor PadaPattu.

Literature As  Reflection Of The Society;War Songs With Special Reference To  Cheroor PadaPattu.

Literature is an important source material for the process of historical reconstruction.So a researcher may required to take a literary work which predominantly uses history as its subject matter,so that he could examine the  ways  and  the  extent to which  an imaginative  work  appropriates  history.

In any study of literature, a carefull attempt is necessary to distinguish between two different approaches to the text, literary scholarship and literary interpretation.

The central driving purpose of literary scholarship is to establish  facts surrounding the production and reception and influence of the text. This task requires the empirical study of a complex and wide-ranging series of questions involving the author, the historical period in which the work was produced, the variations in the text, the literary tradition which the author inherited, the verifiable responses to the work, and so on.

The literary scholar's major task is to reconstruct the historical milieu out of which the work emerged and to follow the history of the text once it has been produced.

Literary interpretation, by contrast, concerns   itself with meaning and value, rather than with historical origins. Working directly with the text created by the best scholarship, the literary interpreter explores patterns of meaning, interpretative possibilities, so as to offer some insight into what the literary work might communicate to a modern audience. This exploration might very well involve making value judgments about the text, comparing it with and ranking it against other similar works. Comparisons of this sort are among the most important tools of the interpreter of literature.

The aim of literary interpretation is to explore possible ways of reading and evaluating  the text. Since literary fictions are inherently ambiguous, there is no final closure on any particular text, no single determinate meaning towards which literary interpretation is moving.

There are, however, interpretations which are more or less persuasive than others, and an important part of literary interpretation is to weigh one interpretative possibility against another. Sophisticated literary interpretation often requires the ability to entertain simultaneously a range of different interpretative possibilities.

So, a carefull glimps on the  literary scholarship and literary interpretation of the War songs of Malabar would tells us the lagacy of  struggles from the part of a minority group against the  colonial Masters.War songs ,as a part of literary product, appears to be relevant to the present  day, since it contained many  information regarding the life of an era.As far as the history of Malabar is concerned,war songs constitute a major category of Mappila songs.

Second half of the 19^th century witnessed the compossition of around hundred padapattu(war songs) in Malabar  which narrates ,along with the contemporary issues ,the events during the formative phase of Islam ,particularly battles fought by Prophet Muhammed .The War songs like Badar Padapattu,Uhd Padapattu, Makkam Fath,Khandak and Khaibar Padapattu etc are about the histories of Islamic battles in verses¹.The miraculous power of Badar Padapattu could be seen from the fact that ‘blood stained copy of badar padapattu was found on the body of mappilas in Manjeri temple where they found dead in the battle against British troops in 1896.These songs, sung at various social gatherings reminded the Mappilas about the sacrifice made by the martyrs for the cause of Islam.

Within the war songs ,there was a separate category,which extolled the heroic exploits of the martyrs of malabar who died in their battle against the indigenous and european enemies.The most popular war songs of Malabar  were Malappuram Padapttu,Mannarghat padapattu,Manjeri Padapattu,cherur chinth ,Kapratt Krishna Panikkar Pattu ,cherur padapattu etc. No wonder,these war songs were identified by the British authorities as the inspiration behind many of the rural revolts of malabar in the 19^th century.As F.Fawcett rightly remarked that these poems must be read if the Mappilas are to be understood ².

Cherur Padapattu is an important among these types of war songs.It narrates an historical event of a struggle,Cherur revolt, between a group of seven muslims and british at cherur,a village close to Tirurangadi. Cherur Padapattu otherwise called ‘Sarasar Guna Tirutaula Mala’ is a joined composition by Cherur Mammad kutty and Muhiyudhin describes the cherur riot of 1843.

Within a short period after the cherur revolt,cherur Padapattu became very popular in malabar and was instrumental in disseminating the anti british sentiments in Malabar.This work,completed in Hijra 1261 was entrusted to the press namely ‘Malharul Muhimmath’ at tirurangadi owned by Sayed Ali of Tellicheri.But soon British official confiscated the press and copies of the manuscript .Thus British authorities banned the publication of the song.But the poem was transmitted orally and the memory of the heroic fight is still kept alive in malabar ^3.