A few years before World War I, Pandit Ganapati Sastri, near Padmanabha-Pura in Kerala, found a bundle of about two-thousand-year-old palm-leaf manuscripts containing eleven texts composed by the legendary dramatist Bharata.
Since about two thousand years, among the treatises on abhinaya known in India, there has been an uninterrupted flow of compilations containing the teachings and the reflections of several prestigious masters, with commentary by other specialists of successive centuries.
A number of details in the staging of the Kutiyattam affirm first of all specialists' opinion that Nandikeshvara's influence had been deeper and wider on the concerned population than that of Bharata, at least owing to the geographical distance.
[8] Mammata Bhatta (11th century) defined rasa in his kâvya-prakâsha as "the great savour that uplifts our spirit by endowing it with a taste of true grandeur… Something that has to be felt, that throbs around us, that penetrates and altogether fills our heart (…), that completely rids of all other sensation.” Nandikeshvara distinguishes two sources of pleasure in the spectacle: first of all, a visual support; and another, auditory.
Describing the process of rasa, as object of abhinaya, Kutiyattam adepts quote in Malayalam : "It is the mouth that utters the song, the hand outlines the meaning, the look enlivens the sentiment, the feet catch the measure and go on beating it.