KeralaIyers.com

Location : near Alathur, Palakkad District.  Kavasseri is a group of 6 Brahmin villages about 3 miles from Alathur on route to Padur/ Pazhayannur. These villages are Nellithara gramam, Oattupperai gramam, Easwara pattar gramam, Venkachi gramam, Mullakkal gramam and Naanu Pattar gramam. The settlement had over 200 households. Nelllitherai Gramam had more of Otta Madhoms where as rest were typical row houses. The Oattuperai gramam got its name obviously due to houses there getting tiled (Oatu = tile) roof earlier than others. Each gramam had their own gramadevatha or deity with temple for Mahaganapathy, Siva, Krishna, Ayyappa etc. The annual utsavams for Siva & MahaGanapathy temples and Sasthapreethy are jointly conducted by all the ...

Location : Palakkad District.  Elappully is 12 Kms away from Palakkad town. Initially there were one hundred Iyer houses, which has reduced to 30 at present. All the families of this village trace their origin to Ganapathy agraharam near Kumbakonam. The old timers remember of a fire, which ravaged the village. The village has two temples - the main temple is that of Navaneetha Krishnan and the other important temple is that of Bala Parameshwari established by Koti Sastrigal. Among the eminent persons of the village were great Vedic scholar Sri E. P. Subrahmanya Iyer who translated Soundarya Lahari into Malayalam, another great Vedic scholar Sri Ramakrishna Sastrigal, the industrialist Sri E. K. Narayana Iyer, the educational expert N. S...

This is a Palakkad village in the banks of Soka Nasini River(Thekke Puzha). The land of this village belonged to the Pathayikkara Namboodiris in the olden age.It is told that these Nambbodiris donated the entire land to iyers and left the place.There is only one street with houses on both sides of the street.In the olden times there were about 150 brahmin houses in this village.Now there are only about 80 houses.There are three main temples that of Siva, Kroshna and Ganapathi.There is also a temple of Sastha along with his consort, PoornaPushkalamba. The siva Parathishta was done by the Tamil Iyers who settled here but the BhagawatiPrathishta in this temple is of the Namboodiris.  Vinayaka Chaturthi is celebrated in the Ganesha Temple...

Location : Palakkad District.  Chittur is one of the very important villages near Palakkad. It was here that the Kerala Iyers got their training in Vedas. This village has three sub villages viz. Thekke Gramam, Durga Koshtam and Lankeswaram. No information is available about why one of these villages is called Lankeswaram. In Thekke Gramam there is a Samadhi of the great Malayalam poet Thunjattu Ezhuthachan. Altogether there are about 300 houses in these three villages with 200 in Thekke gramam. There is a temple dedicated to Rama and another to Siva in these villages. There is a chariot procession in March -April observed by iyers of this village. The Veda Patasala in this village was started by iyers and supported by the Maharaja ...

Locattion : Talappilly, Trichur District.  Chelakkara is in a valley and is surrounded by the Machat Mountains on all the four sided. In the olden days there used to be about 100 Iyer houses in this village. The village has a Narasimhamurthy temple owned by a Namboothiri illam, but managed by iyers only. There is a small car festival on Thiruvadira day. Navarathri is celebrated in a grand scale in this village. The other festival that is observed in a grand way is Vaikunta Ekadasi. This village in spite of not having a high school in earlier times did take to education very early. Mr. C.V.Subbarama Iyer who was a Professor of Mathematics in University College, Trivandrum and later rose to the position of the Principal...

Location : Chittoor, Ernakulam District.  This village was part of Kochi State. It had in the earlier days 120 Brahmin houses. Most of them belonged to the Vadamas and Brihatcharanam sub sect. Most of them had either Pallaseni Kavu or Chittalancheri Kavu as Adimai Kavus. The village also has considerable population of Tamil speaking Chettiars. The Siva temple was in the middle of the agraharam. About 100 years back one Mr. A.K.Samban built the drinking water system to the Gramam. He did this by providing Public taps. He also is supposed to have built the Cremation ground and Kula Purai for the village. The Krishnan temple, which was built by the Iyers about 100 years back, was built in the same compound as the Siva Temple. There is an i...

Great Scientists A community which took up to modern English education only about 40-50 years back has contributed very significantly to the scientific development in India. Dr. Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is the name that comes uppermost to the mind. He has been recognized as the Father of Green Revolution in India. Dr.M.S.Swaminathan took his Ph.D from the School of Agriculture in Cambridge in 1952. He spent the next two decades in research on various crops and in basic and applied genetics at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. He developed high yielding strains of wheat and rice. Dr.Swaminathan is recepient of over forty awards, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the World Food Prize in 1987, the S S Bhatnagar Award, the Birbal Sahni Medal and the Mendel Memorial Award. In 1...