The Lineage
A lineage is the unbroken chain of Gurus through whom embodied knowledge passes as a live current from one body to another.
From Shiva to Parashurama to Sami Gurukkal
In our tradition, the transmission begins with Shiva, the Ādi Guru. Parashurama received Kalari from Shiva himself.
What he received was not a fighting method. It was two knowledges held together:
- Śastra Vidyā — knowledge of the body. How it moves, how it breaks, how it mends.
- Śāstra Vidyā — knowledge of the universe the body belongs to.
What they produce together is svāsthya, complete health. Practice builds energy, and a person who holds more than they need begins to spill it over onto others. That overflow is healing.
This is why the teacher who trained warriors also treated the sick. Knowing exactly where a body breaks is knowing exactly how it mends. Only someone with optimal health in mind and body can become a true healer.
Guru Veera Sri Sami Gurukkal
Warrior. Healer. Spiritual master.
Veera Sri Sami Gurukkal was a Kalaripayattu master and a Kalari Chikitsa physician who also practised and studied Tantra Śāstra, completing the triad that a traditional Guru was meant to hold, at a time when almost no one still did.
In 1952 he founded the Hindustan Kalari Sangam in Kozhikode (Calicut), Kerala, as a temple of Kalaripayattu and Ayurveda. People came from near and far — not only to learn Kalari, but to be healed, and to understand what health actually meant.
Warrior
Kalaripayattu
Practice · Discipline · Embodied knowledge
Healer
Kalari Chikitsa
Health · Healing · Service
Spiritual Master
Tantra Śāstra
Study · Sādhana · Inner knowledge
A complete way of life.
How Each Stream Reached Him
Kalari
Kottackkal Kanaran Gurukkal and Kellappaji
Central to the twentieth-century revival of Kalaripayattu
Govindan Kutty Nambiar
Veera Sri Sami Gurukkal
Ayurveda and Marma Chikitsa
C. V. Damodaran Vaidyar
Master of marma and Ayurveda
Veera Sri Sami Gurukkal
Tantra
The Bhaskaraya Parampara
Yogeeshanandha Natha
Ananganadha Natha
Veera Sri Sami Gurukkal
Three lines converging in one man. GVS Gurukulam exists to carry that legacy forward.
The Lineage Today
Three Gurukkals carry the tradition now.
Sri Lakshmanan Gurukkal
Exponent of Kalaripayattu and Kalari Chikitsa
Founder of Kalarigram. Received all three streams — Kalari, Ayurveda and Tantra — from his father Veera Sri Sami Gurukkal and Guru Anagananda Natha.
Sri Shatrughnan Gurukkal
Exponent of Kalaripayattu and Kalari Chikitsa
Hindustan Kalari Sangam, Kozhikode.
Smt Radhika Gurukkal
Exponent of Kalaripayattu and Kalari Chikitsa
Hindustan Kalari Sangam, Kozhikode.
The Lineage Crosses into Auroville, Pondicherry
In 2010, Sri Lakshmanan Gurukkal established Kalarigram near Auroville, an offshoot of the Hindustan Kalari Sangam, carrying the lineage into a new landscape. It has run continuously for fifteen years offering regular Kalari classes, Kalari Diploma training, Kalari Chikitsa, and Natyashastra based theatre productions that put the tradition on stage.
At its centre is a Kodungallur Bhagavathy shrine, and around it a calendar that keeps the streams in conversation, most visibly Tantrotsav, the annual Shivaratri festival, now in its thirteenth edition, which explores the unity of Tantra, Kalari and Nāṭya.
Kalarigram was never meant to be the final form. It was proof that the transmission still works outside the place it came from.
What the Lineage Is Now Building
Kalarigram proved the transmission survives. GVS Ayurveda Gurukulam is where it grows.
A residential gurukulam for fifty shishyas each year, living with their Gurus and studying body, scripture and healing as one education. It is being established under the Central Sanskrit University Act, 2020, which for the first time since independence provides a legal route for a gurukulam to grant recognised qualifications in Ayurveda.
Students will complete the Pre-Ayurveda Programme and continue into BAMS, a seven-and-a-half-year path, without leaving the Gurukulam.