Kottarathil Sankunni

Kottarathil Sankunni is a well known author of Malayalam literature, born in 1855 in Kottayam, Kerala, south India. He made huge contributions in both poetry and prose. He died in 1937. He started compiling the legends of Kerala in 1909 and completed the work in eight volumes over a quarter of a century. The “Garland of Legends”, "Aithihya Mala", is a collection of stories of legends prepared by Kottarathil Sankunni. The works on the legends were collected and published by Sankunni in the famous Malayalam literary magazine of the nineteenth century, the Bhashaposhini. Later, they were collected in eight parts and published by the Reddiar Press in Quilon, sometime in the early twentieth century. India’s first writers’ cooperative, the National Bookstall started publishing these articles as collections on behalf of the 'Kottarathil Sankunni Memorial Committee' in 1974 and later this was taken up by another publisher, DC Books, in 1991. Such is their popularity that, from 1991 till 2004 almost 150,000 copies of these stories were distributed.

His contributions in both prose and poetry, including Kathakali literature and Thullal, earned him a place in Malayalam literature.

Famous works include:

* "Ithihya Mala", a collection of legendary stories including those about "Kadamuttathu Kathanar", "Kayamkulam Kochunni", etc
* "Aassannamarana chintasathakam"
*"Sreerama pattabhishekam" (Kathakali)
*"Adhdhyathmaramayanam" (Translation)

References

* [http://cs.nyu.edu/kandathi/kottarathil.html Kottarathil Sankunni]