Isolated by mountains, the densely forested state of Kerala, on the southern tip of India, has preserved its cultural traditions in all their authenticity and immense richness. In addition to well-known kathakali dance-drama, the Kerala Folk arts directory lists one hundred performance genres, of which Northern Kerala’s teyyam dance, with its amazing costumes and ordeals by fire, is particularly impressive.

The large devotional images of gods made on the floor with colour powders are also spectacular. The tradition connected to these pictures is addressed by my students Jussi Nyblom and Salla Kokkonen in their Master’s theses. The photographer Jyrki Lyytikkä was with me recording such kaḷam paintings and other things when, in 1997, I was tracing the gods of black magic. My student Henri Schildt wrote his doctoral dissertation in 2004 on Kerala architecture: The traditional Keralan manor (2012).

Kerala is one of those rare areas where the great 3000-year-old Vedic rituals have survived as a living tradition. In 1975 I participated in a project led by Frits Staal to document a two-week long soma sacrifice with its 1000-brick altar of fire. The result, in addition to a documentary film, was a 10-kilogram colossus of a book: Agni (1983). Domestic Vedic rituals have been preserved throughout India, but the traditions of the Jaiminīya school of the Sāmaveda only in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In 1983 and 1985, I documented these through photographs, video and through interviews (the majority of which are still unpublished). My wife, Marjatta Parpola, collected artefacts for the National Museum of Finland and researched cultural change from the perspective of our host family, which resulted in the book Kerala Brahmins in transition (2000). Klaus Karttunen was with us in 1985, and he completed his Licentiate degree on a manual for domestic rituals