Kutiyattam's history is written in temple architecture and caste duty. The kuttampalams, the theatre halls standing inside major Kerala temples such as those at Thrissur, Irinjalakuda and Guruvayur, were built to house it, their proportions discussed in the architectural texts, and the right and obligation to perform in them belonged to specific hereditary communities: the Chakyars as actors and reciters, the Nangiars as actresses and cymbal players, the Nambiars as drummers of the mizhavu.
Tradition and inscription associate the art's codification with the Chera king Kulashekhara around the tenth century, credited with reforms recorded in the tradition's staging manuals, and the attaprakarams and kramadipikas, the handbooks transmitting how each play is to be elaborated, carry interpretive decisions across generations, a written record of an oral art. The twentieth century forced a transformation. Temple patronage shrank with the feudal economy, and the art faced extinction; the painter and scholar of the tradition Mani Madhava Chakyar and other masters took Kutiyattam outside the temple walls for the first time, and in 1965 the Kerala Kalamandalam academy began teaching it to students regardless of caste, decisions contested at the time and vindicated by survival. UNESCO's 2001 proclamation, the first ever accorded an Indian form, brought support and international attention. The temple performances continue as offerings alongside the academy stage, and the art now lives the double life of many great ritual traditions: sacred duty in its home precincts, world heritage abroad.