à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti (LaghudharmaprakrÃÂà ÂikÃÂ) is treatise in Sanskrit dealing with the customs and traditions of the people of medieval Kerala. The work calls itself LaghudharmaprakrÃÂà Âikàand the term à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti is not mentioned anywhere in the work. However at the end of every chapter there is a colophon which begins with the words sÃÂá¹ kare dharmaà ÂÃÂstre which probably gave rise to the tradition of referring to the work as à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti. The work is originally supposed to contain thirty-six chapters, but only the first twelve chapters have been unearthed. Thus in that sense, the currently available manuscripts of the work are incomplete. The work is about the traditions and customs of Kerala at the time the work was composed. Many of these customs called KeraḷÃÂcÃÂra-s are peculiar to Kerala and are not seen among people in other parts of India. At several places in the text, the author of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti invokes a certain work titled BhÃÂrgavasmá¹Âiti as the authority for his pronouncements. But unfortunately the work BhÃÂrgavasmá¹Âiti has not so far seen the light of the day, and moreover, in the whole corpus Sanskrit literature, except in à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti, there is no mention of a work titled BhÃÂrgavasmá¹Âiti. It is believed that BhÃÂrgavasmá¹Âiti must have been a fictitious invention of the author of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti.
Traditional scholarship assigns the authorship of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti to Adi Shankaracharya, the great philosopher and the most renowned exponent of Advaita Vedanta, who hailed from Kerala. The source of this attribution is a statement in the opening stanza of the text which reads à ÂÃÂá¹ kareá¹Âa yatÃÂtmanà(meaning "à Âaá¹ kara of ascetic disposition"). T. C. Parameswaran Mussatu (who published à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti with a Malayalam commentary in 1926), Kodungallur Kuññikuá¹Âá¹Âan TampurÃÂn and Kanippayyur Shankaran Namboodiripad are a few of the prominent traditionalists. The modern view which rejected the traditional view was strongly articulated by Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer, the author of a multi-volume work on the history of Kerala literature. Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer gave a host of reasons why Adi Shankaracharya could not be the author of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti. These include the fact that Adi Shankaracharya's disciples has not mentioned this work in any of their writings, an ascetic of the stature of Adi Shankaracharya is unlikely to dwell upon such mundane matters and the use of the anachronistic term janmi to denote a landlord. Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer suggests that the author of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti should be one Payyà «r à ÂÃÂnkaran Nampà «tiri who flourished during the 14th century CE. Vaá¹Âakkuá¹Âkà «r RÃÂjarÃÂjavarma RÃÂja, K. Kujunni Raja, P. Govinda Pillai, R. Narayana Panikker and S. Venkita Subramnia Iyer are some other scholars who have rejected the traditional view. The modern consensus view can be summarized thus: The author of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti is one à ÂÃÂnkaran Nampà «tiri hailing from north Kerala who flourished during the 14th-15th century CE.
The text of à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti is divided into twelve chapters and each chapter is divided into four parts, called pÃÂda-s. Thus there are a total of 48 pÃÂda-s in the book. The chapters are of varying sizes the shortest one having 87 verses and the longest 158ý verses. There are a total of 1376ý verses. The text does not provide any titles for the chapters, but every pÃÂda is given a title. The work begins by describing the origin of the four vará¹Âa-s and a brief exposition of the duties of the members of the various vará¹Âa-s. These include duties such as "Ká¹£atriya-s and Vaià Âya-s should get up and show obeisance by standing and saluting when a Brahmin approaches, even if the latter is a young boy" and "à Âà «dra-s generally do not prostrate before of others, but they only stand aside in obeisance with folded hands, as ordained by the rules of BhÃÂrgava".. The book concludes with a list of sixty-four injunctions (called anÃÂcÃÂra-s, meaning "deviations from accepted customs and practices") that should be followed by the people of Kerala. This list of anÃÂcÃÂra-s begins with the instruction "One should not cleanse the teeth with sticks" and ends with "She should not die along with her husband (as in sati)".
The following list of some of the important topics discussed in à ÂÃÂnkarasmá¹Âti is indicative of the nature of contents in the work.