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Public Space, Public Canon: Situating religion at the dawn of modernity in South India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2018

ELAINE FISHER
ELAINE FISHER*
Affiliation:
Stanford University Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

What is ‘early modern’ about religion in South India? In theorizing early modernity in South Asia, the category of religion has been viewed with scepticism, perhaps to avoid painting India as the exotic ‘Other’ that failed to modernize in the eyes of Western social theory. And yet, Western narratives, drawn from secularization theory, fail to do justice to our historical archive. As a vehicle for approaching the experience of religion in early modern South India, this article invokes the category of space as a medium for the publicization and contestation of meaning across diverse language, caste, and religious publics. In the process, it excavates the codification of the ‘Sacred Games of Śiva’ as public religious canon of the city of Madurai, exemplifying the distinctive role played by religion in public space in early modern South India.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 5 , September 2018 , pp. 1486 - 1541
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 This episode is narrated in the twenty-second ‘Sacred Game’ of Parañcōti's Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam.

2 On the history and performance of Madurai's Cittirai festival, at which the marriage of Śiva and Mīnākṣī now takes place, see Hudson, Dennis, ‘Two Chitra Festivals in Madurai’ in Religious Festivals in South India and Sri Lanka, Welbon, G. and Yocum, G. (eds), Manohar, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 102–155Google Scholar; Hudson, Dennis, ‘Siva, Minaksi, Visnu—Reflections on a Popular Myth in Madurai’. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 14, no. 1, January–March 1977, pp. 107–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harman, William, The Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1992Google Scholar; Harman, William, ‘Kinship Metaphors in the Hindu Pantheon: Śiva as Brother-in-Law and Son-in-Law’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 53, no. 3, 1985, pp. 411–430CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Marx, Karl, ‘The Jewish Question’ in The Marx-Engels Reader, Tucker, Robert (ed.), Norton and Company, New York, 1978Google Scholar. Much more might be said concerning the relationship between secularism and modernity in Western social theory; while scholarship in European history may have long relegated secularization theory to the annals of the past, it remains alive and well in some corners of the sociology of religion, following on the legacy of Max Weber, Peter Berger, and, more recently, Charles Taylor. For a modernist approach to emic secularisms outside the European domain, see also Bilgrami, Akeel, Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014Google Scholar.

4 In the early centuries of the Common Era, philosophers across religious boundaries—Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and even atheist (Carvāka)—found common ground for intellectual debate through formal epistemology, or pramāṇa theory, a framework that, by foregrounding common means of ascertaining shared knowledge such as perception and inference, allowed for partisans to engage in dialogue while bracketing religious presuppositions entirely. On this issue, see also Lawrence McCrea, ‘Desecularization in Indian Intellectual Culture, 900–1300 AD’, in Religion, Conflict, and Accommodation in Indian History, Rajeev Bhargava and Sudipta Kaviraj (eds), forthcoming. In contrast to the European case, then, early modern intellectuals in South India instigated a radical theologization of public discourse, such that even the very tools of their intellectual work—approaches to text criticism and the interpretation of scripture (e.g. Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya), previously founded on a shared epistemology—were claimed as the exclusive property of particular Hindu sectarian communities. For further discussion, see Fisher, Elaine, Hindu Pluralism: Religion and the Public Sphere in Early Modern South India, University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2017CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we witness an upsurge of ‘intersectarian philology’—pugnacious critiques of theological rivals on text-critical grounds. Polemicists defended the orthodoxy of their chosen communities, in many cases by laying claim to disciplines of textual interpretation as the property of particular sectarian lineages. For instance, to be a Mādhva theologian in this period, one had little choice but to apply oneself to the study of Navya Nyāya, and over the course of time, Mīmāṃsā came to acquire an intimate association with the social circles of the Smārta-Śaivas, such that by the following centuries prominent Mādhvas expressed a wholehearted disdain for the very interpretive maxims of Mīmāṃsā philosophy. For further discussion, see Fisher, Hindu Pluralism; Elaine Fisher, ‘Public Philology: Text Criticism and the Sectarianization of Hinduism in Early Modern South India’. South Asian History and Culture, vol. 6, no. 1, 2015, pp. 50–69.

6 Said, Edward, Orientalism, Pantheon Books, New York, 1978Google Scholar. See also King, Richard, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’, Routledge, New York, 2001Google Scholar.

7 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2000, pp. 252–255Google Scholar. See also, for instance, on p. 28: ‘I take gods and spirits to be existentially coeval with the human, and think from the assumption that the question of being human involves the question of being with gods and spirits. Being human means, as Ramachandra Gandhi puts it, discovering “the possibility of calling upon God [or gods] without being under an obligation to first establish his [or their] reality”. And this is one reason why I deliberately do not reproduce any sociology of religion in my analysis.’

8 For a more modern, rather than early modern, take on these issues, see Barton Scott, J. and Ingram, Brannon D., ‘What is a Public? Notes from South Asia’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 2015, pp. 357–370CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as the rest of the articles in this special issue on the public in modern India.

9 A domain in which such a ‘Protestant metanarrative’ remains alive and well in the study of South Asian religion is the study of the South Indian Liṅgāyat/Vīraśaiva tradition; the ostensible founder of the tradition, Basava, has even garnered as a title ‘the Indian Martin Luther’ in some circles. See also Fisher, Elaine, ‘Multi-Regional and Multi-Linguistic Vīraśaivism: Change and Continuity in an Early Devotional Tradition’ in Modern Hinduism in Text and Context, Vemsani, Lavanya (ed.), Bloomsbury, London, 2018Google Scholar, on how this metanarrative actively obscures the early textual and ritual antecedents of Vīraśaivism across regions in South India.

10 If we define ‘scripture’, for our present purposes, as an authoritative text without a human author, whether perceived as authorless or articulated by the authority of a particular deity (or, in some cases, a saint viewed as a liberated being), we would be hard pressed to locate an instance of the translation or mass dissemination of a work of scripture in early modern South India from any of the ‘dharma traditions’ or Islam.

11 As is well known, the Sanskrit term for Vedic scripture—śruti, that which is heard—emphasizes the phonic, or even phonetic, nature of relevatory scripture. Śruti, in this model, is a phonemic reality intrinsic to creation that cannot be composed, but only heard, by Vedic sages with the capacity to perceive it. See, for instance, Pollock, Sheldon, ‘From Discourse of Ritual to Discourse of Power in Sanskrit Culture’. Journal of Ritual Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 1990, pp. 315–345Google Scholar. In the Sanskrit literary tradition, likewise, the language of Vedic scripture is known as śabda, pure sound—ritually functional as audible sound, but devoid of semantic meaning. Communicative language, such as śāstra, systematic thought, and epic itihāsa, by contrast, is pure ‘meaning’ (artha), whereas literature (kāvya) is a fusion of śabda and artha—word and meaning. This is a common assertion made in the classics of literary theory (e.g. Bhāmaha, Kāvyālaṅkāra, 1.9).

12 For instance, the grammar and style of the bhakti hymns differ substantively even from the early modern verse of Parañcōti, which itself is composed in literary form rather than in a language accessible to mass audiences (although its style is hardly as elevated as his predecessor, Nampi, in his earlier rendition of the ‘Sacred Games’).

13 Cezary Galewicz, A Commentator in Service of the Empire: Sayana and the Royal Project of Commenting on the Whole of the Veda, Roberto de Nobili Research Library, Wien, 2009.

14 The earliest efflorescence of Śrīvaiṣṇava Maṇipravāḷa commentaries took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A teleologically minded interpreter would certainly object that this period cannot possibly constitute the early modern and, indeed, there are many reasons not to apply this designation. In contrast, the period coincides with other distinctively South Asian historical breakpoints, such as Sheldon Pollock's Vernacular Age and the sectarianization of Hinduism (see Fisher, Hindu Pluralism). For further details on the Śrīvaiṣṇava commentarial tradition, see, for instance, Raman, Srilata, Self-Surrender (Prapatti) to God in Śrīvaiṣṇavism: Tamil Cats and Sanskrit Monkeys, Routledge, New York, 2006Google Scholar; Rao, Ajay, Re-figuring the Rāmāyaṇa as Theology: A History of Reception in Premodern India, Routledge, New York, 2014CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Bate, Bernard, Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic: Democratic Practice in South India, Columbia University Press, New York, 2009CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Significantly, the rhetorical strategies underlying this new oratorical style were drawn, Bate argues, from the Christian sermons, a theme which he had intended to pursue in greater depth in his second book. See also Bate, Bernard, ‘Arumuga Navalar, Saivite Sermons, and the Delimitation of Religion, c. 1850’. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 42, no. 4, 2005, pp. 469–484CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Selections from the Bible were translated into Tamil by the Jesuit missionaries Henerique Heneriques (1502–1600) and Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656), and later by the Lutheran Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719), who borrowed much of his language from Jesuit translations. See Jeyeraj, Daniel, Genealogies of South Indian Deities: An English Translation of Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg's Original German Manuscript With a Textual Analysis and Glossary, RoutledgeCurzon, New York, 2003Google Scholar; Israel, Hephzibah, Religious Transactions in Colonial South India: Language, Translation and the Making of Protestant Identity, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See, for instance, Pollock, Sheldon, The Ends of Man at the End of Premodernity, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, 2005Google Scholar; Pollock, Sheldon, ‘New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-century India’. The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 38, no. 1, 2001, pp. 3–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 The Kaḷḷar community, who live on the outskirts of Madurai, honour the caste deity Karuppucāmi or Karuppaṇṇacāmi in festival performances that intersect spatially with the high-caste Vaiṣṇava observances at the city's Aḻakar Temple. It should be made explicit, in this context, that Kaḷḷar participation in the Cittirai festival is our clearest example of how cultural knowledge is shared at the intersection of high-caste and low-caste public domains in Madurai's public religious culture. As will be discussed below, the very term ‘public’, when used analytically in the South Asian context, is bound to preserve certain literate and high-caste connotations, even when divorced from the Habermasian Eurocentric model of the bourgeois public sphere. This problematic is inherent in any attempt to understand the relationship between discursive knowledge production and the shared vocabulary of cultural practices in communities of diverse social status. Precise historical knowledge of the narratives and practices of the Kaḷḷar community in the seventeenth century is sadly constrained by the limits of our historical archive. As a result, I will make explicit the theoretical and methodological limitations of the present study by stating that, in light of these constraints, caste is merely a single analytic factor and cannot be the principle consideration for what constitutes a ‘public’ in early modern South India. Perhaps the best scholarly representation of Kaḷḷar participation in the Cittirai festival was captured on film by Joseph Elder, in his 1976 film Wedding of the Goddess, produced at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. See also Jeyechandrun, A. V., The Madurai Temple Complex, With Special Reference to Language and Literature, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, 1985, p. 127Google Scholar.

19 Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Burger, Thomas and Lawrence, Fredrick (trans), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989Google Scholar.

20 Fraser, Nancy, ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracies’. Social Text, vol. 25/26, 1990, pp. 56–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Warner, Michael, Publics and Counterpublics, Zone Books, New York, 2002Google Scholar.

22 Ikegami, Eiko, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2005Google Scholar.

23 Cengiz Kirli, ‘The Struggle Over Space: Coffeehouses of Ottoman Istanbul, 1780–1845’, PhD thesis, SUNY, 2001; Özkoçak, Selma, ‘Coffee Houses: Rethinking the Public and Private in Early Modern Istanbul’. Journal of Urban History, vol. 33, 2007, pp. 965–986CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Rahimi, Babak, Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590–1641 CE, Brill, Leiden, 2012Google Scholar.

25 Appadurai, Arjun and Breckenridge, Carol A., ‘Public Modernity in India’ in Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World, Breckenridge, Carol (ed.), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1995.Google Scholar

26 Novetzke, Christian, ‘Bhakti and its Public’. International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2007, pp. 255–272Google Scholar; Orsini, Francesca, ‘Booklets and Sants: Religious Publics and Literary History’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 2015, pp. 435–449CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See, for instance, Pollock, ‘New Intellectuals’; O'Hanlon, Rosalind and Minkowsi, Chrisopher, ‘What Makes People Who They Are? Pandit Networks and the Problem of Livelihoods in Early Modern Western India’. Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 45, no. 3, 2008, pp. 381–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Freitag, Sandria B., ‘Enactments of Ram's Story and the Changing Nature of “The Public” in British India’. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, 1991, pp. 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Elison, William, ‘Sai Baba of Bombay: A Saint, His Icon, and the Urban Geography of Darshan’. History of Religions, vol. 54, no. 2, 2014, pp. 151–187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘Of Garbage, Modernity, and the Citizen's Gaze’. Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 27, no. 10–11, 1992, pp. 541–547Google Scholar.

31 In the early modern centuries, we find a rapid upsurge of interest in issues of public religious decorum and embodiment, particularly in sectarian-specific embodiment practices such as forehead marks (tilakas), or the practice of branding the signs of Viṣṇu on one's body (taptamudrādharaṇa). Public debate, taking the form of rigorously argued text-critical polemic, focused largely on their role as public signifiers of identity, not on the ritual function of such insignia. See Fisher, Hindu Pluralism, for further details on how the embodiment of sectarian orthodoxy cultivated a polarized public space.

32 This is not to say, obviously, that religious meaning was never visible in the spaces inhabited before the early modern period. In scholarship on South India, it is well known that the Tamil bhakti traditions were evoked visually, and geographically, through networks of temple pilgrimage sites referenced in the hymns of the Nāyaṉārs and Āḻvārs. For the reasons I discuss below, however, I would not refer to these spatial practices as ‘public’. Likewise, while the hymns are canonized textually, they did not become equally accessible to multiple communities and interpretations. For further details on the visual culture and geographies of Tamil bhakti literature, see, for instance, Viswanathan Peterson, Indira, Poems to Siva: Hymns of the Tamil Saints, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1989CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Starting in the late seventeenth century and gaining momentum throughout the eighteenth century, numerous major as well as minor temple complexes throughout the Tamil region began to display individual and complete sequence mural paintings and sculptural reliefs of the ‘Sacred Games’. Amy Ruth Holt's dissertation research documents a series of sculptural images of the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal legends at the Naṭarāja temple in Cidambaram, the constructional style and iconography of which, she contends, date to the mid-seventeenth century: Amy Ruth Holt, ‘Shiva's Divine Play: Art and Literature at a South Indian Temple’, PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 2007, see pp. 151ff. A complete series of Tiruviḷaiyāṭal murals now adorns the outer wall of the Bṛhadīśvara temple in Tanjavur, which local authorities speculate date to the reign of Serfoji II. A recent study by Jean Deloche documents a number of Tiruviḷaiyāṭal mural panels at the Nārumpūnātacāmi temple in Tiruppudaimarudur, Tirunelveli district. Three Śaiva temples from the immediate vicinity of Madurai, in Tiruvappudaiyar, Tiruppuvanam, and Tiruvideham, which are typically thought to date from the Nāyaka period, contain Tiruviḷaiyāṭal mural paintings: Deloche, Jean, A Study in Nayaka-Period Social Life: Tiruppudaimarudur Paintings and Carvings, Institut français de Pondichéry, Pondicherry, 2011Google Scholar. In addition, Anna Seastrand's thesis also documents the appearance of Tiruviḷaiyāṭal imagery at a number of temple sites: Anna Seastrand, ‘Praise, Politics, and Language: South Indian Murals, 1500–1800’, PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2013. Further evidence for the widespread popularity of the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal theme outside of Madurai includes other surviving examples of material culture from the period, for exampe manuscript illuminations and book covers such as those preserved at the Sarasvati Mahal Library in Tanjavur (a similar series exists in the Government Museum in Chennai, although I have not been able to obtain photographs); temple chariot carvings dating to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across the Tamil region; and chariot textiles with images of the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal episodes. See, for instance, Kalidos, Raju, Temple Cars in Medieval Tamilaham, Vijay Publications, Madurai, 1988Google Scholar.

34 The most popular of the ‘Sacred Games’, depicted in both statuary and festival performances, include the following: Taṭātakaip pirāṭṭiyār (The birth of Taṭātakai); Tirumaṇam (Sacred marriage); Kallāṉaikkuk karumparuttiyatu (Feeding a sugar cane to the stone elephant); Aṅkam veṭṭiṉatu (Cutting the body [of Cittaṉ]); Karikkuruvikku upatēcam ceytatu (Giving the teaching to the blackbird); Naripariyākkiyatu (Turning foxes into horses); Maṇcumantatu (Carrying earth [in exchange for sweetmeats]); Camaṇaraik kaḻuvēṟṟiyatu (Mounting the Jains on stakes): Parañcōti nos 4, 5, 21, 27, 47, 59, 61, and 63 respectively.

35 See, for instance, Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex, p. 225: ‘It was to the credit of the most imaginative ruler of the Nayakkar dynasty, Tirumalai Nayakkar to have re-organised the temple activities and the festivals.’ See also Branfoot, Crispin, ‘Tirumala Nāyaka's “New Hall” and the European Study of the South Indian Temple’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, vol. 11, no. 2, 2001, pp. 191–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Branfoot makes the case that past scholarship, by and large, ascribes the architectural innovations of the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple to the renovation agenda of Tirumalai Nāyaka, even crediting him with improvements completed before his reign.

36 Muṉivar, Parañcōti, Tiruvilaiyāṭal Purāṇam, 3 vols, Vekaṭacāmi Nātār, Na. Mu. (ed.), Tirunelvelit Tennintiya Caivacittanta Nurpatippuk Kalakam, Tirunelveli, 1965Google Scholar. No original literary work detailing the 64 ‘Games of Śiva’ has yet been faithfully translated into English or any other modern language. Aside from numerous modern Tamil prose renderings, synopses of these 64 narrative legends can be found in English 1) as an appendix to the dissertation of Amy Ruth Holt, who has translated a modern Tamil summary of the games (although, it must be noted, what she has translated is a simplified work of modern prose and in no way, as she claims, a ‘printing’ or ‘edition’ of Parañcōti's Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam); and 2) in Taylor, Oriental Historical Manuscripts; and in French in Dessigane, Pattabiramin, and Filliozat's literary and art-historical study of the Sacred Games in Madurai. See Holt, ‘Shiva's Divine Play’; William Taylor (ed.), Oriental Historical Manuscripts in the Tamil Language, J. C. Taylor, Madras, 1835; Dessigane, R., Pattabiramin, P. Z. and Filliozat, J., La Légende des Jeux de Çiva à Madurai, d'après les Textes et les Peintures, Vols 1–2, Institut Français d'Indologie, Pondicherry, 1960Google Scholar.

37 Perumparṟapuliyūr Nampi, Tiruvālavāyuṭaiyār Tiruviḷaiyāṭarpurāṇam, U. Ve. Caminataiyar (ed.), Kapir Accukkutattir Patippikkapperratu, Chennai, 1906. The approximate flourit of Nampi is best estimated on the basis of an inscription appearing to date from the mid-fourteenth century (in the 86th year of the reign of Kulaśekhara Pāṇḍya, i.e. circa 1354) describing the appropriation of land in the vicinity of Cidambaram that had in previous generations been gifted to a certain Perumpaṟṟapuliyūr Nampi. The inscription in question is ‘ARE 183 of 1908’ (incorrectly specified by Jeyechandrun as ‘13 of 1908’). See Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex.

38 Based on passing references and the attestation of foreign observers, a number of these narratives were evidently circulating in some form during the early centuries of Tamil literary history. For instance, the Cilappatikāram refers to a legend in which a Pandian ruler famously hurled his javelin into the sea, which Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex, contends may prefigure the thirteenth Game in Parañcōti's TVP. In the fourth century ce, the Greek ethnographer Megasthenes recorded hearing a legend in which a Pandian ruler married the goddess of Madurai, evidently prefiguring the ‘Sacred marriage’, which had come to serve as the centrepiece of the legends for modern audiences. A full 14 of the ‘Sacred Games’ are referred to in passing by Ñānacampantar in his Tamil bhakti hymns (see Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex for this list). The number 64 is first associated with the ‘Games of Śiva’ in the Kallāṭam (circa twelfth–thirteenth century), although only 31 of the narratives are actually recounted. For a discussion of previous versions of the Tamil Caṅkam legend, which conforms in varying degrees to the now-familiar version found in Parañcōti's Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam, see also Wilden, Eva, Manuscript, Print and Memory: Relics of the Caṅkam in Tamilnadu, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2014Google Scholar; Zvelebil, Kamil, Tamil Literature, Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1975Google Scholar.

39 The following verse, concluding the episode in which Patañjali witnesses Śiva's divine dance, exemplifies the high literary style Nampi adopts periodically throughout his TVP, heavily ornamented with alliteration such as never appears in Parañcōti's work: matañcorikol kuñcaravi ruñcaruma kañcukava rañcayila vañci koḻunaṉ / vitañceṟipu rañcuṭane ṭuñcaramvi ṭuñcaturaṉ viñcaiyarvi rañcariṟaiva / ṉitañceykoṭu nañcavura kañcacimi laiñcacaṭai yeñcalila cañca laṉuḷam / patañcalini ṟaiñcaṭiyi ṟaiñciṭana ṭañceytapa rañcuṭarta ruñcorupamē (Nampi, TVP, 5.7).

40 While we lack documentary evidence of the precise duties executed by this Paramañānacivan in particular, a pontiff or preceptor (maṭhādhipati) of a Śaiva monastery would have been likely to have had responsibility not only for managing institutional affairs but also for overseeing the ritual duties of his disciples. In many cases, he would have been exclusively eligible for granting Śaiva initiation (dīkṣā), a ritual that conferred significant soteriological benefits—viewed as the sole cause of liberation in the Śaiva Siddhānta—as well as social privileges and obligations within lay or ascetic communities. In the wake of the increasing centrality of the monastery to economic and political life, these roles begin to differ substantively from those of the Mantramārga (tantric Śaiva) rājaguru, as seen, for instance, at the height of Cōḻa rule in the Tamil south. For the latter, see Sanderson, Alexis, ‘Religion and the State: Śaiva Officiants in the Territory of King's Brahminical Chaplains’. Indo-Iranian Journal, vol. 47, 2005, pp. 229–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Nampi, TVP, vs. 23 (p. 3): ‘I join my head to the feet of Paramañānaśivan, disciplined in the precepts of the Lord covered with matted locks who rules over me mercifully, abiding in the Māḷikai monastery in ancient Tillai [Cidambaram] that grants boons, with [my] mind on Vināyakan who graces the white forest of the sages of rare penance.’ varantarun tollait tillai māḷikai maṭattu maṉṉu / marunthava muṉiveṇ kāṭa ṉaruḷḷinā yakaṉma ṉattāṟ / parinteṉai yāṇṭu koṇṭa paṭarcaṭaik kaṭavu ṇīti / tiruntiya parama ñāṉa ciṟṟavaṉaṭi ceṉṉi cōrppām /

42 Harman, William, ‘Two Versions of a Tamil Text and the Contexts in Which They Were Written’. Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 1987, pp. 1–18Google Scholar; Dessigane et. al., La Legende des Jeux de Çiva à Madurai; Shulman, David, ‘First Grammarian, First Poet: A South Indian Vision of Cultural Origins’. Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 38, 2001, pp. 353–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilden, Manuscript, Print, and Memory.

43 The Hālāsya Māhātmya, given the radical proliferation of manuscripts transmitted in numerous South Indian scripts, seems to have been transmitted quite widely across the southern half of the subcontinent since at least the eighteenth century. See below for dating of the text. In short, given our current knowledge of the TVP's textual history, previous scholarship on the work(s) has focused nearly exclusively on two issues: a narratological comparison of the two Tamil purāṇams and the adjudication of the relative priority of Parañcōti's TVP and the Hālāsya Māhātmya. See, for instance, Harman, William, ‘The Authority of Sanskrit in Tamil Hinduism: A Case Study in Tracing a Text to its Sources’. Mankind Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 295–315Google Scholar; Wilden, Manuscript, Print and Memory; Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex.

44 The following is a list of the known variant narratives of the ‘Sacred Games’ prior to its public canonization: Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam of Perumpaṟṟapuliyūr Nampi, Tamil, circa thirteenth century; Payakaramālai, Tamil, date unknown (strictly a list of games following Nampi's order); Tiruvuccātāṉar Nāṉmaṇimālai, circa 1527 (includes one chapter that is a list of Nampi's games); Kālahasti Māhātmyamu of Dhurjaṭi, Telugu, circa 1509–1529 (includes allusions to the ‘Sacred Games’); Maduraic Cokkanātar Ulā of Purāṇa Tirumalainātar, Tamil, early sixteenth century (includes allusions to the ‘Sacred Games’); Cokkanātha Caritramu, Telugu, circa 1540 (an original retelling of the ‘Sacred Games’, differing substantively from Nampi's order); Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam of Aṉatāri, Tamil, late sixteenth century, manuscript incomplete (an original retelling of the ‘Sacred Games’); Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam of Parañcōti Munivar, Tamil, circa 1575–1625(?); Hālāsya Māhātmya, Sanskrit, circa 1575–1625(?); Katampavaṉapurāṇam of Vimanāta Paṇṭitar, Tamil, seventeenth century (an ‘alternative’ talapurāṇam that incorporates the ‘Sacred Games as one chapter); Śivalīlārṇava of Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita, Sanskrit, circa 1625–1650. After this point, the profusion of renderings is too great for an exhaustive enumeration. It is only by the late seventeenth century, however, that retellings in multiple languages are titled after the Hālāsya Māhātmya: for example, the Hālāsya Māhātmyamu of Rāmabhadra Kavi, Telugu, late seventeenth century; the Hālāsya Māhātmyamu of Mallamapalli Buccikavi, Telugu, eighteenth century; Hālāsyamāhātmyamu of Nañjarāja, with variants both in Telugu and Kannada (the same author retold the narratives in Sanskrit as well); Hālāsya Māhātmyamu of Subbātmaja, Marathi, eighteenth century.

45 Tiruvengalakavi, Paccakappurapu, Cokkanātha Caritramu, Chandrashekharan, T. (ed.), Govt. Press, Madras, 1954Google Scholar. To my knowledge the only piece of secondary scholarship to document this work in any detail is the Telugu monograph of Anjaneyaraju. See Anjaneyaraju, Vadhluri, Cokkanātha Caritra: Samagra Pariśīlana, Prin Phas Printars, Bhagyanagar, 1989Google Scholar. While providing a much-needed introduction to this otherwise neglected work of literature (even within the domain of strictly Telugu literary studies), Raju's work leaves something to be desired in terms of a critical awareness of literary transmission across linguistic boundaries. Raju repeatedly asserts that the numerous and significant variations from the latter can be explained strictly on the grounds of artistic licence and the desire to avoid prolixity, without citing any evidence that the Cokkanātha Caritramu is a direct translation of the Sanskrit Hālāsya Māhātmya.

46 While this is not the occasion for an in-depth engagement with contemporary translation theory and its implications for making sense of South Asian translation practices, it is important to note that ‘faithful translation’, which adheres to preserving as much of the exact meaning and syntactical structure of the original source language in a new medium, occurs rather rarely in South Asian discourses. This is a state of affairs that is often not apparent in the secondary literature. By transcreation, however, I mean to clarify that the new work of literature is a distinctive literary product with its own perspective and agenda which, while preserving something of the spirit and core narrative of the ‘original’, differs substantively from it in both form and content. In this coinage, transcreations are at the same time to be distinguished from adaptations that present themselves as only vaguely inspired by some original source. As we shall see, transcreations demonstrably have a more explicit genealogical relationship with a prior source text.

47 This text is appended to U. Ve. Caminataiyar's edition of Nampi's Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam.

48 For an English translation of the portions of the Dhurjaṭi Māhātmyamu that concern the origin of the Tamil Caṅkam, see Shulman, David and Narayana Rao, Velcheru, Classical Telugu Poetry: An Anthology, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2002Google Scholar.

49 Purāṇattirumalai Nātar, Cokkanātar Ulā, U. Ve. Caminataiyar (ed.), Madras, 1931.

50 The Cokkanātar Ulā is another example of a text that only barely survived the vicissitudes of history. In his introduction to the edition, U. Ve. Caminataiyar informs us (p. x) that some 40 years prior to its publication, a single manuscript of the Cokkanātar Ulā was located in the home of one Śrī Kālivāṭīcuvar Ōtuvār, and this manuscript copy itself was quite old at the time. No further manuscripts were known to the editor at the time of publication.

51 Tiruntupukaḻp parañcōti māmuṉivaṉ civaṉaruḷār ceppu meṇṇeṇṇ / poruntivaḷar tiruviḷaiyā ṭaṟpurā ṇamumirukkap piṉṉum yāṉīr / taruntaraṇi pukaḻpatiṉō rattiyā yattorvakai cāṟṟap pukkēṉ / maruntaṉaiyāṉ viḷaiyāṭaṟ kataiyōti yavaiaruḷum vaḻakkāṉ maṉṉō.

52 Ramanujacharya, A. (ed.), Hālāsya Māhātmya, Prabhakara Press, Madras, (n.d.).Google Scholar

53 ōtariya vattaramā purāṇan taṉṉu ḷuṇmaitaru cāracamuc cayattu muṉṉa / mētakunaṉ kataiviriviṟ kaṇṭe ṉakku viyāta vāṉ mīkiyeccaṉ coṉṉa veṇṇeṇ / ṭītilviḷai yāṭalkaḷiṟ piṟaṅku mintat tiruviḷaiyā ṭaliṉ parappaic carukki minṟu / pōtamuṟa numakkuraittēṉ yāṉuñ cokkaṉ pukaḻiṉaiyār karai kaṇṭu pukalu vārē.

54 See Fisher, Hindu Pluralism, for more on Nīlakaṇṭha's views on the literary vernacular.

55 Pollock, Sheldon, ‘India in the Vernacular Millennium: Literary Culture and Polity, 1000–1500’. Daedalus, vol. 127, no. 3, 1998, pp. 41–74Google Scholar.

56 One intriguing example is the Tamil Vacucaritram of Ambalattatum Ayyan, an adaptation of the Telugu Vasucaritramu of Rāmarāja Bhūṣaṇa. N. Venkaṭa Rao offers some general discussion on the intersection of Tamil and Telugu literature during and after this period: Venkata Rao, N., The Southern School in Telugu Literature, University of Madras, Madras, 1978Google Scholar.

57 maturai nāyakaṉ cuntara pāṇṭiya vaḍanūṟ / katiru lāmaṇi yāṟukāṟ pīṭattiṟ kallū / ratipa ṉāntiru viruntava ṉavaiyiṉil vāyaṟ / patiyil vāḻaṉa tāricen tamiḻiniṟ pakarntāṉ.

58 aṟukāṟpī ṭattuyarmā lāḻikaṭain tamutaiyaraṅ kēṟṟu māpōl / aṟukāṟpē ṭicaipāṭuṅ kūṭaṉmāṉ miyattaiyarun tamiḻar pāṭi / aṟukāṟpīṭuyarmuṭiyār cōkkēcar caṉṉatiyi lamarar cūḻum / aṟukāṟpīṭattiruntu parañcōti muṉivaraṅ kērri ṉāṉē.

59 Ebeling, Sascha, Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India, SUNY Press, Albany, NY, 2010Google Scholar.

60 For the literary education of U. Ve. Caminataiyar, whose early studies at Tiruvavatuturai included transcribing talapurāṇams composed by his teacher, Minatcicuntara Pillai, which were regularly debuted at formal araṅkērrams for the benefit his patrons, see Cutler, Norman, ‘Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture’ in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, Pollock, Sheldon (ed.), University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2003Google Scholar.

61 See Blake Wentworth, ‘Yearning for a Dreamed Real: The Procession of the Lord in the Tamil Ulās’, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2011.

62 cīrvaḷartaṇ katampavaṉa māṉmiyamām vaṭanūlait teruḷu maṉpā / lōrvaḷarteṉ maturaiyilvā ḻīsaṉaippū caṉaiceyvō riyainta celvap / pārvaḷarntōṅ kiyapukaḻcēr talattōrteṉ moḻiyākap pakareṉ ṟōta / nīrvaḷarpaintoṭaivirutta yāppa taṉā lavararuḷā ṉikaḻtta luṟṟēṉ.

63 It is also worth noting that the caste affiliation of Nāyaka subordinate officers may have played a significant role in their incentive to patronize works of Tamil literature (see the discussion below on the relationship between caste and the Tamil Śaiva monasteries), as those employed under the Nāyaka regime were nearly exclusively of Brahman or Vēḷāḷa background, the latter forming the constituency typically observed sponsoring these works: David Ludden, ‘Agrarian Organizations in Tinnevelly District’, PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1978, p. 139.

64 Aṉṉava ṉarasar cūḻaṅ kacci vīrappa ṉeṉṟu / maṉṉava ṉaruḷcēr maṉṟaic cevvanti tuṇaivaṉ vāymait / teṉṉavaṉ ṟiruvi runtāṉ cauntaraṉ ṟēva pāṭait / tuṉṉiruṅ kataiteṉ ṉūlāṟ colleṉac colla luṟṟēṉ.

65 Vētanūṟ ṟenmuḻaisai vīramā ṟaṉkaṭalcūḻ / pūtalaṅka ḷaṉpāyp purakkunāḷ ātinerit / teyva maturait tiruvāla vāyuṟainta / aiyarulāk koṇṭaruḷi ṉār.

66 For documentary information concerning the economic influence of the Tarumapuram and Tiruvavatuturai ātīnams in the nineteenth century, see Oddie, G. A., ‘The Character, Role, and Significance of Non-Brahman Saivite Maths in Tanjore District in the Nineteenth Century’ in Changing South Asia: Religion and Society, Ballhatchet, K. and Taylor, David (eds), School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, London, 1984, pp. 40–50Google Scholar. For instance, by the late nineteenth century, Tiruvavatuturai directly owned and maintained 25,000 acres of land and managed the cultivation of thousands of additional acres of land and other endowments under the control of various local temples. In 1841, Tarumapuram controlled property amounting to nearly half of the temple lands in Tanjore district. Although such statistical information is not available for earlier periods, inscriptions dating back to the seventeenth century confirm that ascetics served as managers of endowments at this time as well. See also K. I. Koppedrayer, ‘The Sacred Presence of the Guru: The Velala Lineage of Tiruvavatuturai, Dharmapuram, and Tiruppanantal’, PhD thesis, McMaster University, 1990, p. 25.

67 By at least the early eighteenth century, the Tamil Śaiva maṭams made centralized repositories of literary manuscripts available for consultation. Missionaries appear to have gained access to these collections, as is testified by Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg in his Bibliotheca Malabarica. See Sweetman, William (ed. and trans.), Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library, Institut Français d'Indologie, Pondicherry, 2012Google Scholar.

68 It is important to note that the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta tradition is both institutionally and theologically distinct from the earlier pan-Indian Sanskritic Śaiva Siddhānta, an influential school of tantric Śaivism (Mantramārga) dating back at least as far back as its earliest known textual exemplar, the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā (circa fifth/sixth century ce). On the history of the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta lineage and its exclusively Tamil-language scriptures, see Prentiss, Karen Pechilis, ‘A Tamil Lineage for Śaiva Siddhānta Philosophy’. History of Religions, vol. 35, no. 3, 1996, pp. 231–257CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 While the earliest writings of the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta tradition date back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the monasteries themselves seem to have acquired their present institutional shape at a somewhat later date. Although precise historical documentation is lacking, Aroonan attempts to calculate the intervening generations of preceptorial rule, which preceded our earliest dated references, to arrive at an estimate of the mid-fifteenth century for the founding of Tiruvavatuturai and the mid-sixteenth century for Tarumapuram. See K. Nambi Aroonan, ‘Three Saivite Mutts in Tanjavur’ in Changing South Asia: Religion and Society, Vol. 1, Ballhatchet and Taylor (eds).

70 The social prominence of the Vēḷāḷa caste groups as controllers of the region's agricultural production has perhaps been most convincingly explicated by Burton Stein, who refers to a ‘Brahmin-Vēḷāḷa alliance’, arguing that the establishment and maintenance of Brahmadeyas in the Tamil region proceeded largely at the discretion of Vēḷāḷa landholders. See Stein, Burton, Peasant, State and Society in Medieval South India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1980Google Scholar.

71 In respect to both caste and patronage, another exemplar of these trends is the Tamil poet Antakakkavi. A Vēḷāḷa by heritage, Antakakkavi's works appear to have been sponsored by a number of subordinate officers, including Oppilāta Maḻavarāyaṉ of Ariyilur and Mātait Tiruveṅkaṭanātar of Kayattaru near Tirunelveli. See Wentworth, ‘Yearning for a Dreamed Real’, p. 232.

72 poṉṉalarpūṅ kaḍampavaṉa purāṇan teṉṉūṟ potiyamuṉiyakattiyaṉmuṉ pukaṉṟa vāṟē / paṉṉupaya kaviñarcevik kamutamākap paraṉaruḷiṉ ceḻuntamiḻāl viḷaṅkac ceytān / ṟeṉṉavarā yaṉpukaḻmāk kaṇṇaneytaṟ celvaṉuyar tarumilampūr vīmanāta / ṉaṉṉeṟitēr purāṇamuḻu tuṇarntōṉ kaṅkai natikulavēḷ peruntoṇṭai nāṭṭi ṉāṉē.

73 Much more could be said about Kumārakurupara (fl. seventeenth century) and his contribution to the present-day public culture of Madurai. As I have restricted my analysis to complete renditions of the TVP narrative beginning in the final decades of the sixteenth century, space does not permit a fuller examination of his works and his influence in Tamil Śaiva circles in the present context. A particularly intriguing aspect of Kumārakurupara's legacy is the cultural memory of his influence in establishing a Tamil Śaiva branch monastery in Varanasi. It should be noted, however, that the move to transregionalize—one might even say, authenticate—a sectarian lineage through representation in Varanasi had become a habitual strategic manoeuvre among South Indian religious communities by the seventeenth century. Well-known works of Kumārakurupara include his Mīṉāṭcīyammai Piḷḷaittamiḻ (the piḷḷaittamiḻ genre captures the childhood and youth of a particular deity over the course of several life stages), Mīṉāṭcīyammai Iraṭṭaimanimālai, and Maduraikkalampakam. See also Richman, Paula, Extraordinary Child: Poems from a South Indian Devotional Genre, University of Hawai‘i Press, Honolulu, 1997Google Scholar. For further details on the life and works of Kumārakurupara, see, for instance, Ka. Cuppiramaniya Pillai, Kumārakurupara Aṭikaḷ Varalāṟum Nūlārāycciyum, The South Indian Saiva Siddhanta Works, Tirunelveli and Madras, 1947.

74 U. Ve. Caminataiya refers to this particular branch of the lineage as based out of the Kāñcī Ñānappirakāca Maṭam (Cokkanātar Ulā, p. xiii.)

75 pūmaṉṉu poliḻveṇṇai meykaṇṭāṉ kaccip / pukaḻpuṉaita tuvañāṉa prakācamāy vantu / pāmaṉṉa vurai yeṉṉa vavaṉaruḷā lavaṉṟaṉ / patamparavic citamparappāṭ ṭiyaleṉappōr vakuttāṉ.

76 Seastrand, ‘Praise, Politics, and Language’.

77 Cokkanātha Caritramu p. 4: bhaṭavaṃśamuna meccu paccakappuramu / tipparājasutuṇḍu tiru veṅgaḷuṇḍu / ceppaṃga nērcu brasiddhambugāṅga / nani vinna vincina nā cinna rāmu / manujēndru ḍadhikasammadamutō navuḍu / nanu bilipinci mannana gāravinci / vinutinci karpūra vīḍyambu licci / yanaghuṇḍu mī lāta yagu timma rāju / tana tammu ḍayyalu dānu nimmahini / brauḍuṇḍai vidyala baraga meppinci / prauḍarāyalacēta bacca kappurampu / rāju nāmbaḍe dimmu rājuku dippa rājudayaṃce virājitammuganu / rājula meppiṃce rasiku ḍātanita / nujuṃḍa vārya sannuta kavīndruṇḍavu / prāvīṇya mativi śōbhanakā vya līlaṃ / gāvuna nīvokka kāvyambu māku / dvipada bhāvambuna delivondi migula / nupamagā satyavu lullambu lalara / madhura vākyammula madi goniyāda / madhurāpurēśu nirmala puṇyacarita / cauṣaṣṭi līlā vilāsambu lāndhra / bhāṣanu bedarāma pārthivu pēra / sucaritra vaibhavasutrāmu pēra / raciyaṃci vikhyāti rācēyu murvi.

78 Examples of the latter include Kālahasti Kavi's Sanskrit Vasucaritracampū, adapted from the Vasucaritramu of Rāmarāja Bhūṣaṇa; the Rāmāyaṇasāra of Madhuravāṇī, a Sanskritization of Raghunātha Nāyaka's Telugu Rāmāyaṇasāratilaka; and, without question, the Śivalīlārṇava of Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita. Within the domain of strictly Purāṇic as well as theological textual traditions, cross-linguistic transmission has a somewhat older history that remains to be studied in detail. For instance, the Tamil Periyapurāṇam had made significant inroads in Śaiva circles outside the Tamil country, and the earlier Telugu Śaiva traditions had witnessed the adaptation into Telugu of other local South Indian narratives, such as the Basavapurāṇamu of Palkuriki Somanātha. In the context of more formal theological exposition, the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta had begun to engage in a certain re-Sanskritization as well, such as the Sanskrit commentaries of Nigamajñāna II on works from the Tamil Śaiva tradition. See Ganesan, T., Two Saiva Teachers of the Sixteenth Century, Institut français de Pondichéry, Pondicherry, 2009Google Scholar.

79 Harman, William, ‘The Authority of Sanskrit in Tamil Hinduism: A Case Study in Tracing a Text to its Sources’. Mankind Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3, 1987, pp. 295–315Google Scholar.

80 Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex.

81 Wilden, Manuscript, Print and Memory.

82 The earliest citations of the Hālāsya Māhātmya of which I am aware (aside from Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita's replication of one of its verses, discussed below) occur in the Varṇāśramacandrikā, a late seventeenth-century theological treatise in Sanskrit on the role of caste in the selection of preceptors in the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta tradition. See below for a discussion of this work.

83 In the single preliminary Telugu-language study of the Cokkanātha Caritramu available today, Raju insists mechanically, providing no evidence or argument, that Tiruvēṅgaḷakavi has simply elided these episodes from his otherwise direct ‘translation’ of the Hālāsya Māhātmya.

84 Shulman, ‘First Grammarian, First Poet’.

85 In Tamil grammatical theory, consonants (mey) are said to attain movement (iyakkam) through the vowels (uyir, from the same root as the verbal participle uyttiṭum used in this verse), particularly the first vowel, the short ‘a’: ‘meyyiṉ iyakkam akaramoṭu civaṇum’, Tolkāppiyam 2.13. Hence, this verse homologizes Śiva's authority over the Caṅkam poets and the city of Madurai with the power of the vowels to enliven the consonants. Ālavāy is another name for Madurai.

86 Parañcōti, TVP 51.8–10: ūṉiṭa rakaṉṟō yuṉṉā ruyirttuṇai yāvē ṉinta / māṉiṭa yōṉip paṭṭu mayaṅkukō veṉṉa vaṇṭu / tēṉiṭai yaḻunti vētañ ceppumveṇ kamalac celvi / tāṉiṭa rakala nōkkic caturmukat talaivaṉ cāṟṟum. mukiḻtaru mulainiṉ meyyā mutaleḻut taimbat toṉṟiṟ / ṟikaḻtaru mākā rāti hākāra mīṟāc ceppic / pukaḻtaru nāṟpat teṭṭu nāṟpatteṇ pulava rāki yakaḻtaru kaṭalcūḻ ñālat tavatarit tiṭuva vāka. attaku varuṇa mellā mēṟiniṉ ṟavaṟṟa vaṟṟiṉ / meyttaku taṉmai yeyti vēṟuvē ṟiyakkan tōṉṟa vuyttiṭu makārat tiṟku mutaṉmaiyā yoḻuku nātar / muttami ḻāla vāyem mutalvaram muṟaiyāṉ maṉṉō. tāmoru pulava rākit tiruvurut tarittuc caṅka / māmaṇip pīṭat tēṟi vaikiyē nāṟpat toṉpa / tāmava rāki yuṇṇiṉ ṟavaravark kaṟivu tōṟṟi / yēmuṟap pulamai kāppā reṉṟṟaṉaṉ kamalap puttēḷ.

87 HM 57.13–17: atha vāgvādinī bhītā bhartuḥ pādāmbujadvayaṃ / natvā spṛṣṭvā ca pāṇibhyāṃ prārthayāmāsa taṃ tadā // mayā cājñānavaśataḥ kṛtaṃ sarvaṃ ca bhartsanam / kṣamasva karuṇāsindho kaṭākṣeṇa vilokya mām // punaḥ punar iti brāhmyā prārthito 'haṃ savāhanaḥ / pratiśāpaṃ dadau tasyai bhāratyai cānukampayā // tvadaṅgasambhavā varṇā ādisāntāś ca vāṅmayāḥ / janiṣyanti mitho bhinnair ākārais sudhiyo bhuvi // hakārarūpī bhagavān sarvavyāpī sadāśivaḥ / teṣāṃ ca sudhiyāṃ madhye 'bhavat tv ekaḥ kavīśvaraḥ / āhatyaikonapancāśat saṅghinaś śatkavīśvarāḥ //

88 If anything, the ambiguity regarding the total number of letters would suggest a later provenance for the HM. While the Tirumantiram (see below) unambiguously accepts a total of fifty-one letters, Parañcōti vacillates uncertainly between 49 and 51, whereas the HM settles squarely on 49.

89 Shulman localizes the term ‘vidyāpīṭha’ within a ‘northern’ or ‘northwest’ Śaiva tradition on the basis of a brief allusion to Sanderson's ‘Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions’: Shulman, ‘First Grammarian, First Poet’; A. Sanderson, ‘Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions’ in The World's Religions: The Religions of Asia, Friedhelm Hardy (ed.), Routledge, London, 1988. In fact, Sanderson's original point with regard to this term was to distinguish two subsets of the scriptural corpus of the early Bhairava Tantras, the mantrapīṭha and vidyāpīṭha. Note that the term vidyāpīṭha discussed by Sanderson does not refer to a ‘seat’ or ‘plank’ such as occurs in the HM (pp. 668ff.). Nevertheless, were we to posit a line of influence from the early Bhairava Tantras extending through to the HM, we would be left with an entire millennium of intervening textual history to account for, thus arriving at no useful information concerning the more proximate origins of the HM.

90 For instance, HM 57.69–70: vidyāpīṭham iti prāhus tat pīṭhaṃ munayo khilāḥ / kecid vyākhyāpīṭham iti jñānapīṭham itītare // sarasvatīpīṭham iti mātṛkāpīṭham ity api / sārthaiś ca nāmabhiś cānyair varṇayanti kavīśvarāḥ // The term mātṛkā typically refers to a particular esoteric sequence of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet; hence, its appearance here is especially appropriate to the plot of the episode.

91 HM 1.16: navaratnamayaṃ pīṭhaṃ navaśaktidhruvaṃ mahat / tanmadhye rājate liṅgaṃ śivasya paramātmanaḥ //

92 Tirumantiram vol. 4, p. 1219.

93 Ibid., p. 924.

94 The traditional dating of the Tirumantiram, extending back as far as the fifth to seventh centuries ce, while accepted by Brooks and some others, is historically inconceivable and incoherent outside of a Tamil nationalist agenda. See Dominic Goodall, The Parākhyatantra: A Scripture of the Śaiva Siddhānta, École française d'Extrême-Orient, Pondicherry, 2004, p. xxix. A date of the twelfth or thirteenth century is far more plausible. On the transmission of Śaiva and Śākta traditions from Kashmir to the Tamil country in the early second millennium, especially with regard to the Kālī Krama, an allied Śākta school, see Whitney Cox, ‘Making a Tantra in Medieval South India: The Mahārthamañjarī and the Textual Culture of Cōḻa Cidambaram’, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2006.

95 Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam, Tāṇṭavac Curukkam, vs. 1.

96 The precise date of the composition of the Śivalīlārṇava is unknown. Nīlakaṇṭha's oeuvre can be dated fairly accurately based on the exact date of composition he provides for his Nīlakaṇṭhavijayacampū: 1637–38 ce.

97 The Śivalīlārṇava follows precisely the sequence of games in the twin texts—Parañcōti's Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam and the Hālāsya Māhātmya. Nevertheless, as an innovative work of literature in its own right, it demonstrates how a theme such as the ‘Sacred Games’ can make the transition from a fluid to canonical narrative while remaining open to social commentary and literary experimentation. We learn quite a bit about Nīlakaṇṭha's views on vernacular literature and religion through his interpretations of the Tamil Caṅkam myth cycle and the episode about the Tamil bhakti saint Ñānacampantar. See Fisher, Hindu Pluralism, for further details.

98 Ludden, David and Shanmugan Pillai, Muthumperumal (trans), Kuruntokai: An Anthology of Classical Tamil Love Poetry, Chennai International Institute of Tamil Studies, Chennai, 1997Google Scholar.

99 The Sanskrit translation runs as follows: jānāsi puṣpagandhān bhramara tvaṃ brūhi tattvato me 'dya / devyāḥ keśakalāpe tulyo gandhena kiṃ gandhaḥ // In fact, both versions do succeed in preserving a sense of the distinct texture of the Tamil verse, given that the surrounding chapter of the HM is written entirely in anuṣṭubh, and this is the sole āryā verse in the twentieth canto of the Śivalīlārṇava.

100 ŚLA 20.46; HM 58.32.

101 See Cokkanātar Ulā, p. xiii (nūlāciriyar varalāṟu). Unfortunately, U. Ve. Caminataiyar does not cite a source for this anecdote, but as his early employment—as well as that of his chief instructor in Tamil literature, Minatcicuntara Pillai—was carried out through the facilities of the Tamil Śaiva maṭams, the narrative was likely to have been passed down orally in these circles. See Cutler, ‘Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture’ for the institutional context of Tamil literary education in the nineteenth century.

102 Cited in Shulman, David, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South Indian Saiva Tradition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1980, pp. 37–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 David Shulman, ‘The Mythology of the Tamil Śaiva Talapurāṇam’, DPhil thesis, SOAS University of London, 1976.

104 Branfoot, Crispin, ‘Approaching the Temple in Nayaka-Period Madurai: The Kūṭal Aḻakar Temple’. Artibus Asiae, vol. 60, no. 2, 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105 On the Putu Maṇṭapam, see Crispin Branfoot, ‘Tirumala Nayaka's “New Hall” and the European Study of the South Indian Temple’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, series 3, vol. 11, no. 2, 2001. See also Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex. The patronage and dates of construction can be ascertained through historical documentary sources maintained, for some centuries, in the possession of the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara Temple, particularly the Tiruppaṇimālai. This source is published as P. Pandithurai Thevar (ed.), Tiruvālavāyuṭaiyār Tiruppaṇimālai. Sthala Varalāru. Tiruppaṇi Vivaram, Madurai Tamil Sangam Publications, Madurai, 1929. The principle royal portrait sculpture in the Putu Maṇṭapam is typically identified as Tirumalai Nāyaka. See Branfoot, Crispin, ‘Royal Portrait Sculpture in the South Indian Temple’. South Asian Studies, vol. 16, 2000CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106 See Jeyechandrun, The Madurai Temple Complex, for a thorough treatment of the phases of temple construction and approximate dates of all temple improvements from the Second Paṇḍian empire onwards. Although Jeyechandrun's analysis deserves critical scrutiny in places, his encyclopedic work is foundational to our understanding of the history of the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple and its role in the changing cultural and political landscape of Madurai over the centuries.

107 Jeyechandrun notes a sequence of stucco figures depicting 47 of the 64 ‘Sacred Games’, currently located around the outer compound wall of the Sundareśvara shrine. While he dates these figures rather boldly to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries purely on the basis of the date of the Sundareśvara shrine itself, he acknowledges that they appear to have undergone substantial renovation. Thus the physical characteristics of the figures furnish no concrete evidence in support of such an early date, nor do we have any grounds for affirming that these figures were original to the Sundareśvara shrine.

108 Among the 64 games, one concerns the saint Māṇikkavācakar's role in transforming foxes into horses, and another concerns the transformation of the horses back into foxes.

109 Stāṉikarvaralāṟu, pp. 270–271: karttākkaḷ tirumalaiccavuriyayyar avarkaḷ mīṉāṭcī cuntarēcuvararkaḷiṭattil nirambavum paktiyuṇṭāki ammaṉ piracaṉṉam āki viḷaiyāṭukiṟa nāḷaiyil, ayyar tīṭcitar cāmācikattil purāṇa cittamāy irukkiṟa tiruviḷaiyāṭalai stāṉītarkaḷ mūlamāy naṭappivikkac collik kaṭṭaḷaiyiṭṭatāvatu: catācivappaṭṭarkku aṅkam veṭṭukiṟa līlaiyum, vaḷaiyal viṟpatum piṭṭukku maṇ cumappatum kulacēkarappaṭṭarkku poṟkiḻiyaṟuppatum, kutirai kayiṟu mārukiṟa tiruviḷaiyāṭalum yāṉaiyēṟṟamum, maṟṟa līlaikaḷ cirṟutu pērpātiyākavum; ciritu līlaikaḷ parijanaṅkaḷaikkoṇṭu ceytuvarac colliyum kaṭṭaḷaiyiṭṭum kaṇkāṭcikaḷ pārttuc cantōṣamāyintappaṭi naṭantuvarukiṟatu.

110 For more on this narrative trope, see Davis, Richard, ‘A Muslim Princess in the Temples of Viṣṇu’. International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 8, no. 1/3, 2004, pp. 137–156CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 See footnote 33 above, for further details. Further evidence for the widespread popularity of the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal theme outside of Madurai includes other surviving examples of material culture from the period, including manuscript illuminations and book covers such as those preserved at the Sarasvati Mahal Library in Tanjavur (a similar series exists in the Government Museum in Chennai, although I have not been able to obtain photographs); temple chariot carvings dating to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across the Tamil region, and chariot textiles with images of the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal episodes. See, for instance, Kalidos, Raju, Temple Cars in Medieval Tamilaham, Vijay Publications, Madurai, 1988Google Scholar.

112 Knott, Kim, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis, Equinox Publishing, London, 2005Google Scholar.

113 The agency of images is perhaps most productively treated in the theoretical literature of New Materialism, which presumes a monistic ontology that declines to differentiate the human as agent and the inanimate as object. See, for instance, Braidotti, Rosi, Nomadic Subjects, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994Google Scholar.

114 Beyond the spatial enactment of the TVP narratives in early modern Madurai, space emerges as a significant factor for understanding shifts in early modern Hindu religiosity across sectarian communities. In particular, the very religious institutions that were active in the making of the city's public canon in early modern Madurai—that is, megatemples and monastic networks—played a principle role in spatializing sectarian difference both in urban centres and transregional devotional networks. Because of the extensive evidence required to present this case, a more complete conceptualization of the relationship between religion and public space in early modern South India must be pursued in other contexts. See also Fisher, Hindu Pluralism.

115 Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1992Google Scholar.

116 Appadurai, Arjun, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’. Theory, Culture and Society vol. 7, 1990, pp. 295–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 Baudrillard, Jean, Simulacra and Simulation, Sheila Faria Glaser (trans.), University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1991Google Scholar.