A few kilometres from Thiruvananthapuram, a cluster of stone forms offers a striking expression of an ancient idea, that sound is the fundamental architect of the reality we see.
At Pournamikavu Devi Temple, primordial sound is worshipped in 51 forms—the letters of the Malayalam alphabet. The Akshara Devatas (Alphabet Goddess) add to the unique identity of the temple whose ancestry can be traced back to the Aay Dynasty, which ruled the region and whose tutelary goddess Bala Tripurasundari is the presiding deity of the temple.
Carved in stone, each Akshara Devata is a deity of a particular variation of the sound that fills every movement in the universe. Seers call it Aum. Artists call it rhythm, or tala. Scientists describe it as a vibration. At its core is the idea that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.
“In nature, sound energy manifests as language that powers thoughts to express them as images. Hence, there is a clear link between language and energy,” says MS Bhuvanachandran, a researcher whose work on Akshara Devatas led to their consecration at Pournamikavu on Vijayadashami in 2022. “Every alphabet we use are packets of energy that describe our thoughts.” The idea, he explains, rests on the belief that energy can manifest through forms. “Take the images that we worship as divinity. Every image aligns to a certain energy, which means, an energy module will have its related imagery as well,” he says. “So, if sound energy is packaged as letters, then each letter must have a corresponding image. Our culture has always worshipped energy through forms. This guides the worship of the forms that letters take.”
References to Akshara Devatas, Bhuvanachandran says, can be found in spiritual literature, including the works of Thunchath Ezhuthachan, the 16th-century poet regarded as the father of modern Malayalam. “It is there in Thunchath Ezhuthachan’s work Harinamakeerthanam. He was inspired by texts of yore like Vedas, Mahabharata, Devi Bhagavatham, Siva Samhita, and the works of Adi Shankara, in which the description of the divine forms that sound variations can take could be found,” Bhuvanachandran notes. “Based on this, he conceived the ‘Akshara Namavali’, which was also our reference for sculpting the forms.”
Bringing these ideas to stone required an in-depth study of ancient literature, philosophy and the evolution of Malayalam. Malayalam is a relatively young language, with origins linked to Tamil and Prakrit and strong Sanskrit influences. Its script evolved from Vattezhuthu into a Grantha-derived script used in south India for writing Sanskrit.
Ezhuthachan introduced a new sense of linguistic and regional identity. His Harinamakeerthanam and the 51-letter alphabet reflected in his invocation, ‘Hari Sree Ganapathaye Namah’, embody this vision of a language structure.
Ezhuthachan gave the alphabet a literary structure too. Each verse of Harinamakeerthanam begins with one of the 51 letters. In the 14th stanza, he combines each letter with the name of Lord Hari Narayana, creating a work rich in devotion. It is this tradition of giving sound a form that Pournamikavu seeks to embody. “Modern Malayalam has 15 vowels and 36 consonants. At Pournamikavu, each of them has an associated deity. For example, the letter ‘A’ is associated with Amritha Devi or Aja Mukhi. ‘Aa’ is for Aakarshini or Atharwini, Chanda Devi or Sushama Devi for ‘Cha’, and so on,” says Bhuvanachandran.
The practice of giving language a divine form is not unique to India. Bhuvanachandran points to Lipi Saraswati in Hinduism. “Yet, a shrine specially dedicated to a language system is rare in India,” he adds. Several scholars and spiritual figures guided the project. “We were guided by the Pushpanjali Swamiyar of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Achyutha Bharati of Naduvil Madom, Tantra expert Poonjar Mithran Namboodiripad, Bhagavatham exponent Malliyoor Sankaran Namboodiri, and poet Kaithapram Damodaran Namboodiri,” says Bhuvanachandran.
Turning the abstract into stone was an equally intricate exercise. Skilled artisans from Myladi near Kanyakumari carved the figures in Krishnashila, a rare bluish-grey or black-hued metamorphic rock whose smooth texture and ability to harden over time make it particularly durable. Madan Kumar, who led the sculptors, describes the experience as fulfilling. “It was a deeply spiritual experience, which also tested our artistic understanding of the science behind divine forms,” he says.
Since their consecration, the Akshara Devatas have attracted interest beyond the temple. “We have even been approached by several people with the idea of setting up Akshara Devata shrines in Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra,” says Bhuvanachandran.
For the faithful, Pournamikavu’s alphabet goddesses are doorways to knowledge. For those proud of Kerala’s literacy traditions, they embody the state’s association with the worship of learning. And for those seeking to make sense of existence, they offer a more elemental proposition—that sound forms the word, the form and, ultimately, the universe as we see it.