Sandesa Kavyas

It is natural that Manipravalam looked to Sanskrit for models of literary works. The Sandesa Kavyas are an important poetic genre in Sanskrit, and on the model of Kalidasa's Meghadoot and Lakhsmidasa's Sukasandesa, a number of message poems came to be written first in Manipravalam and later in pure Malayalam.

The best of these sandesas is perhaps Unnuneelisandesam written in the 14th century. Unnuneeli is the heroine, and she and her lover live in Kaduthuruthi. One night as they as asleep, a fairy (Yakshi) carries him away and goes south. He wakes up by the time they reach Thiruvananthapuram and frees himself from the hold of the fairy. He visits Sri Padmanabha Temple and meeting Aditya Varma, a junior prince of Kollam there, engages him as a messenger to carry his news to his beloved in Kaduthuruthi. In part one, as usual, the poet describes the route to Kaduthuruthi, for the benefit of the messenger as well as the readers. In part two the actual message is described and entrusted to the messenger. The poem is a treasure house of information relating to the conditions of life in Kerala in the fourteenth century. In addition, it contains several quatrains of unexceptionable beauty, both in its thought and in its verbal felicity. In two hundred and forty stanzas, with breath-taking eroticism and exquisite imagery, this message poem reaches the high watermark of early Manipravalam poetry. It combines extreme sophistication and complexity in its poetic craft with remarkable naturalness and authenticity in its theme and thought.