The sites of Multilingual Literary production in Nāyaka-period South India

By the very definition of the genre, the Tamil talapurāṇam, a narrative of place, deals with the unique soteriological properties and divine exploits associated with a precise locality in the Tamil country. As these legends, more often than not, owe relatively little to the pan-Indic corpus of Sanskrit purāṇa s, one might expect that authors of Tamil talapurāṇam s, composed primarily of narratives that are strictly Tamil in geographical and cultural origin, would look no further than the extensive literary and devotional archive accumulated by well over a millennium of Tamil textual history. Nevertheless, from the very inception of the Tamil talapurāṇam genre, poets evidently felt compelled to provide these temporally and geographically delimited narratives with a stamp of approval from the transregional Sanskritic tradition by framing their compositions as translations, or perhaps transcreations, from original Sanskrit exempla. Such was the case with Nampi’s TVP, one of the earliest-known examples of the talapurāṇam genre, which, despite the obviously Tamil origins of many of its episodes, Nampi informs us, was not originally transmitted in Tamil at all. Nampi claims, rather, to have drawn on an otherwise unattested Sanskrit “text” known as the Sārasamuccaya, contained in the Uttaramahāpurāṇa.^[1] Based on the title—even setting aside its absence in manuscript history—there is good reason to doubt that an excerpt titled the “Compilation of Essences” (Sārasamuccaya) in the “Other Great Purāṇa” (Uttaramahāpurāṇa) ever existed at all.

The relationship between Sanskrit and vernacular in the early modern Tamil South, succinctly, may not be quite as cut-and-dried as it appears. Regardless of how strongly Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita may have personally disapproved, the Nāyaka-period Tamil country belonged unmistakably to what Pollock (1998b) has termed the “Vernacular Millennium”;and in fact, vernacular literature flourished there in abundance. Not only did the region continue to foster its vibrant and prolific heritage of Tamil literary production, but also Nāyaka rulers, hailing from Andhra and formerly employed under the Vijayanagara Empire, imported along with their political rule a predilection for Telugu literature, which began to take root in the far South through their continued patronage. Of course, the social and political functions of vernacularization had been fully present in the Tamil region since the height of Cōḻa rule, when Tamil literature began to assume the role of the primary medium for royal encomium, adopting numerous stylistic and tropic features from the preexisting Sanskrit cosmopolitan tradition. Moreover, high Cōḻa literature was indubitably a courtly phenomenon, produced and publicized within the central networks of the empire’s ruling elite and often directly underwriting the interests of royal power.

The vernacular of the Nāyaka period, however, took shape within a sphere of multiple competing cultural currents, creating a dynamic in which the emulation and implementation of received literary models did not flow unilaterally from the cosmopolitan to the vernacular, from the transregional to the language of place. In fact, literary classics were often adapted from one vernacular to another,^[2] and just as often from the vernacular back into Sanskrit.^[3] While the cosmopolitan vernacular, so to speak, often accompanies a certain documented social trajectory, much less is known about the sort of extratextual environment that would support such a multidirectional sphere of literary influence.

Given this apparent fluidity of interchange between competing literary currents—that is, given the ease with which the content of the literary craft traversed the boundaries of language—should we presume an equally fluid social structure facilitating the production and transmission of literary texts across distinct language-based communities? Certainly, the answer to this question varies considerably by geographical region, even during the time frame we have been referring to as India’s “early modern” period (ca. 1500–1800). Literary production in the Nāyaka-period Tamil country need not have operated within institutional frameworks equivalent to those of the seventeenth-century Rājput courts of Rajasthan or anywhere else in the Indian subcontinent. The situation in south India, however, is further complicated by the coexistence of multiple vernacular traditions within a shared geographical and cultural space. In such a context, Pollock’s model of the vernacular age might suggest that the competing vernacular literatures of south India ought to have equally inherited certain constitutive features of the Sanskrit cosmopolitan paradigm. For instance, we might expect, in the present case, that Tamil and Telugu works of literature were patronized at the same Nāyaka courts, performed in the same venues, and influenced equally by the rhetoric and values of the Sanskrit literary tradition.

With its broad appeal across linguistic lines, the TVP and its numerous multilingual variants provide us with an ideal arena where we may explore the extent to which these assumptions hold true for the south Indian case. Fortunately, the texts in question speak for themselves, providing information about their contexts of patronage and performance both explicitly and implicitly through the rhetorical tropes they invoke.

Take, for instance, the following verse from the introduction to the Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam:

Aṉatāri of the town of Vayarpati, in the court of
The king Tiruviruntavaṉ in Kallur, offered in pure Tamil
The Sanskrit text about the Nāyaka of Madurai Cuntara Pāṇṭiyaṉ,
On the six-legged seat [aṟukāṟpīṭam] with jewels emitting rays of light.^[4]

What precisely is this “six-legged seat” that Aṉatāri so specifically foregrounds at the outset of his work? The remainder of the Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam provides us with no further clues, but fortunately Aṉatāri is not the only one of our authors to mention just such a six-legged seat with the same emphatic placement in the introductory verses of a work.

In fact, the first verse of Parañcōti’s TVP is structured around a fourfold pun on the term aṟukāṟpīṭam, suggesting that the term is more than an idiosyncratic turn of phrase:

Like the nectar, the treasure presented [araṅkēṟṟum] by Māl who had churned the ocean, exalted on his serpent seat [aṟukāṟpīṭam],
Having sung in rare Tamil the greatness of Madurai where the female beetles [aṟukāṟpēṭu] play music,
Parañcōti Muṉi premiered [araṅkēṟṟiṉāṉ] [this work] from the sixlegged seat [aṟukāṟpīṭam] surrounded by the gods in the
Sanctuary of Cokkanātha, whose crown is dignified by the glory of a six-strand topknot [aṟukāṟpīṭu].^[5]

Not only does Parañcōti inform us here of the location of his “six-legged seat”—that is, in the interior of the Madurai temple’s shrine (caṉṉati / sannidhi) dedicated to Śiva as Sundareśvara or Cokkanātha—but he also connects this particular ritual platform directly with the institution of the literary premiere, or araṅkēṟṟam. The araṅkēṟṟam, as a literary-performative institution, survived well into the nineteenth century,^[6] as a central pillar of preprint culture Tamil literary practice.^[7] Seventeenth-century evidence suggests unambiguously that the araṅkēṟṟam was an established institution of Tamil literary performance in the period; one notable instance is an extant correspondence written by the poet Antakakkavi to his patron inviting him to the araṅkēṟṟam of his forthcoming work.^[8] What we learn here, however, is that in the Nāyaka-period literary sphere in which Parañcōti premiered his highly influential TVP, the araṅkēṟṟam of a talapurāṇam, and possibly of other works bearing on the sacred sites of the Tamil Śaiva religious landscape, seems to have been directly facilitated by temple institutions. Thus, as Parañcōti informs us quite clearly, his TVP was debuted in the Madurai temple within the central shrine of Sundareśvara itself. Further evidence is supplied by the repeated mention of the aṟukāṟpīṭam, evidently a type of ceremonial platform on which a poet sat when premiering his work.^[9] Although little memory remains today about just what type of material artifact the aṟukāṟpīṭam was and how it was employed in literary performance, sufficient evidence exists to confirm that such a platform did (or perhaps still does) exist in the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara Temple,^[10] if not also in similar Śaiva temples elsewhere in Tamil Nadu. Succinctly, Parañcōti informs us here that his TVP was presented publicly within a ceremonial-performative context that linked the text’s literary virtues with the temple itself as a venue of performance, a politicoreligious institution that structured the social prestige of literary patronage.

But just who were these sponsors of the literary works, such as Parañcōti’s, that were publicly premiered at major temple sites? In some cases, temple officials or priests seem to have played an instrumental role in encouraging an author to embark on composing a sacerdotal literary work in the Tamil language, ostensibly translated from a Sanskrit original.

Vīmanāta Paṇṭitar, author of the Katampavaṉapurāṇam, for instance, describes his impetus to begin his work in just such a fashion, claiming that the temple priests (talattōr) requested that he translate into Tamil the Sanskrit Purāṇa on the greatness of the Kadambavana, the Kadamba forest that preceded the urbanized landscape of Madurai:

When the temple priests [talattōr]—endowed with a fame that that has risen to flourish across the prosperous earth
That is suitable to those who worship of the Lord who lives in southern Madurai of singular fertility—said to tell in the southern language,
With love that perceives clearly, the northern book on the Greatness of the cool Katampa forest fertile with beauty,
I commenced to narrate through His grace, with verdantly flourishing garlands of verse in the Viruttam meter.^[11]

That said, as the regional megatemples of south India—such as the Madurai temple—had by this period become significant centers of political and economic exchange, we should not underestimate the impetus for subordinate chieftains to participate as exhaustively as possible in this transactional network. Numerous other authors, such as Aṉatāri, author of the Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam, cite as individual patrons of their works, not the Nāyaka kings of Madurai or Tanjavur, but generally their subvassals who had established smaller regional courts at various locations throughout the Tamil region. This decentralized form of patronage is a distinctive feature of what has been described, though not without some trepidation, as the feudal political structure of the Nāyaka regimes. From the Vijayanagara period onward, the term nāyaka was applied to describe a regional feudatory ruler subservient to the centralized authority of the empire. Even after Madurai and Tanjavur had attained functional independence from the declining Vijayangara state, the term was retained as a key feature of political discourse, first perhaps as a rhetorical gesture of humility but later as a functional description of the similar political hierarchy that had emerged under the Nāyaka regimes themselves. Nāyaka vassals, too, often referred to themselves by the title nāyaka, and breakaway states frequently emerged in competition with the generally prevailing authority of Madurai and Tanjavur. This increasingly decentralized political structure appears to have provided subchieftains and subordinate officers with a heightened incentive to engage directly in the patronage of Tamil literature, especially works of more overtly theological import that offered avenues for advancement in the competitive prestige economy centered on major temple institutions.^[12]

Such was the case with Aṉatāri, author of the Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam, who in the above verse describes his patron as a certain subordinate officer, Tiruviruntavaṉ of Kallur.

He then further elaborates the complex chain of hierarchy that linked his direct patron, Tiruviruntavaṉ, with the centralized Nāyaka authority of Madurai under Kacci Vīrappa Nāyaka, apparently through the mediation of a certain tertiary figure, Cevvanti, who held some official role at the Madurai court and evidently held favor among the Nāyaka as well:

The truthful southern one, Tiruviruntāṉ Cavuntaraṉ—friend of
Cevvanti of the sabhā, who is endowed with the favor of such a man, surrounded by sovereigns,
Known as the king Kacci Vīrappa—said to tell with a southern treatise
The story flourishing in the language of the gods; thus I undertook to tell it.^[13]

Such was the case as well for the author of the Cokkanātar Ulā, Purāṇa Tirumalainātar, who names as his patron Vīramāṟaṉ, functionary or ruler in a certain locality known as Mulaicai, whose anniversary of rule he celebrates with the composition of the work in question, narrativizing the occasion as the impetus for Cokkanātha’s public procession:

On the day commemorating the affectionate rule of the earth,
Surrounded by the ocean, by Vīramāṟaṉ, of southern Mulaicai of the Vedic books,
The primordial sovereign god, the Lord residing of Madurai Tiruvālavāy,
Graciously came in procession.^[14]

In short, whereas patronage may in some cases have derived from temple officials directly, in most cases it was more likely granted by various subvassals of the Nāyaka rulers or upstart rivals at minor courts who aimed to enhance their standing in the economy of ritual exchange centered on honors distributed by the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara Temple. A third factor, however, that significantly influenced the structures of literary circulation among Tamil Śaiva poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was participation in the devotional networks of prominent Tamil Śaiva monastic centers, such as Tarumapuram or Tiruvavatuturai. These monastic centers had increased dramatically in economic social prominence over the preceding centuries^[15] and, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, seem to have provided a crucial venue for circulating of literary works and fostering poetic talent among those who wished to participate in Tamil literary circles.^[16] Cultivating a distinctively Tamil Śaiva identity in contrast to the Sanskritic lineages of the Śaiva Siddhānta,^[17] these monasteries attracted mainly lay participants of Vēḷāḷa social origin.^[18] While Vēḷāḷa castes were technically considered Śūdra in origin, their representatives had often attained an elevated social standing in this period as major landholders and managers of agricultural property.^[19]

It is no accident, in fact, that the vast majority of Śaiva poets writing in Tamil during this period who provide us with any biographical information explicitly professed a Vēḷāḷa caste origin^[20] as well as affiliation with spiritual preceptors of the Tamil Śaiva lineages.

Among the authors of TVP variant narratives, a prime example is Vīmanāta Paṇṭitar, author of the Katampavaṉapurāṇam, who directly links his poetic endeavors with his caste origin:

I aim to expound the ancient book, the Purāṇam of the forest of young Katampa trees with golden blossoms, by the nectarean grace of the Lord,
While sweetly singing poets recite, in fertile Tamil, in the manner stated by Agastya, sage of the Potiyam mountain.
I, Vīmanātaṉ of Ilambur, who gives renown to the Lord with the great lotus eyes, the fame of the southern king,
Examining thoroughly the Purāṇam that inquires into the true path, I compose the great devotion of the Vēḷāḷas of the clan of the river Gaṅgā.^[21]

It was not merely caste alone, however, that provided a social foundation for the continued patronage of Tamil literature; rather, it required the mediation of monastic institutions that structured their ideological self-representation on the Vēḷāḷa heritage of its founders and lay participants. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Vēḷāḷa authors of Tamil Śaiva literature in this period often participated openly and actively in the development of these increasingly prominent devotional centers. The prototypic example of such a poet is Kumārakurupara, a seventeenthcentury contemporary of Tirumalai Nāyaka who authored numerous works dedicated primarily to the goddess Mīnākṣī of Madurai.^[22] After a long-standing connection with the maṭam s at Tarumapuram and Tiruvavatuturai, Kumārakurupara is believed to have been sent northward by his lineage preceptors to establish a branch maṭam of the Tamil Śaiva tradition in Varanasi. From among authors of the TVP corpus, one highly specific reference speaks to the sectarian allegiance of the family of Purāṇa Tirumalainātar, author of the Cokkanātar Ulā.

His son, in his grammatical work the Citamparappāṭiyal, informs us of his family’s close affiliation with the Tamil Śaiva lineage,^[23] referring unmistakably to the lineage’s founder, Meykaṇṭar, and even suggesting that he composed the work in question at the behest of a later preceptorial figure, Tatuvañānaprakācar (Skt. Tattvajñānaprakāśa):

Meykaṇṭāṉ of Veṇṇai, whose gardens flourish with flowers,
Having come as Tatuvañānaprakācar, who adorns Kanchi with fame,
By the grace of him who said to tell it, so that the meters may flourish,
Having praised his feet, I apportion the Citamparappāṭiyal.^[24]

A great deal of research remains to be done on the influence of Tamil Śaiva monasteries on both the literary sphere of early modern Tamil Nadu and its expression in public religious culture, despite their social influence and avid patronage of religious expression in diverse media. For instance, a significant portion of temple mural paintings produced during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was sponsored directly by highly ranked administrators or members of these same Tamil Śaiva monasteries.^[25] In short, present evidence strongly suggests that the Tamil literary sphere of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had become intimately intertwined with the Tamil Śaiva monastic lineages as an institutional foundation for literary patronage and circulation. The dynamics of Tamil textuality in the early modern Tamil country, then, were markedly distinct from what we observe in the case of both Telugu and Sanskrit literature of the period: Tamil literariness, in early modern Madurai, was centered upon its production, performance, and circulation within the Śaiva monastery.

The patronage of Telugu literature, on the other hand, even within the same time frame and geographical region, diverges significantly from the Tamil case. One striking example, for instance, is the Cokkanātha Caritramu of Tiruvēṅgaḷakavi, a text that relates the same cycle of narratives but with a rhetoric that marks its social location as distinct from that of its Tamil counterparts. This unique work was patronized by a pair of subchieftains, Pedda Rāma and Cinna Rāma,^[26] who operated out of southern Tamil Nadu in the vicinity of Ramnad. It is arguably the earliest example of a complete translation—or perhaps more accurately “transcreation”—of the complete sixty-four sacred games of Śiva into a language other than Tamil, and it dates to the mid-sixteenth century and likely predates the most influential renderings of the narrative, the TVP of Parañcōti and the Hālāsya Māhātmya. As a result, this previously unstudied work stands well-positioned to expand our perspective on the institutional foundations and linguistic media of literary circulation during this period.

In terms of patronage, the Cokkanātha Caritramu, much like a number of the Tamil texts of the period, was sponsored by relatively minor chieftains from a subregional court to the south of Madurai. Its performative rhetoric, however, is quite different from that of its Tamil counterparts, explicitly evoking the imagery and prestige of a courtly literary sabhā—a world where kings are attended with yak-tail fans and offered an uninterrupted flow of betel leaf. One might even describe the setting as “secular” in this case, as the work betrays no connection with any temple-based or monastic institution but, rather, emphasizes the aestheticized political power of its patrons.

As we can glean from the following passage, Pedda Rāma and Cinna Rāma felt that their worldly prestige stood to benefit considerably from attracting skilled Telugu poets hailing from long-celebrated literary families:

“Praiseworthy among the Bhaṭa lineage, like green camphor,
The son of Tipparāja, Tiruvēṅgaluṇḍu, clever at propagating through narrative”—
When he was so informed, that king of men Cinna Rāma,
Then, with great joy, called me and welcomed me with respect,
Praising me and offering me betel—
“O faultless person, the younger brother of your grandfather, Timmarāja,
Exalted across the entire earth, received the name
‘King of Green Camphor’ from Prauḍharāya [of Vijayanagara]—
Timmarāja begat Tipparāja, who extolled kings brilliantly. You, an Indra among poets, who are praised by the noble, Are the son of that literary connoisseur [rasika].
You have a mind dexterous in the play of illustrious poetry.

Therefore, compose a poem for me, and make it known across the earth—
In the Dvipada style, with clarity, as a great exemplar,
So that it shines in the minds of great poets,
Such that they praise it in their minds with sweet sentences—
About the sixty-four sports of the one of stainless, auspicious acts,
The Lord of Madurai, in the Andhra language,
Dedicated to the name of Pedda Rāma,
An Indra for the grandness of his good deeds.”^[27]

In this respect, the Cokkanātha Caritramu, unlike the Tamil texts we have examined, is undoubtedly an heir to the political, social, and literary values of the Sanskrit cosmopolis.

Unsurprisingly, the linguistic register as well is highly Sanskritized, and we meet with a celebration of cosmopolitan literary history in the guise of the traditional kavi praśaṃsā (praise of previous poets), not only of the great celebrities of the Telugu literary world but of the Sanskrit tradition as well:

Having extolled all the poets existing on the earth
With true sentences of praise shining with true devotion—
Those by the names of Vyāsa, Vālmīki, Mahākavi Kāḷidāsa,
Bhavabhūti, Daṇḍi, Māghu, Bhīma of Vēmulavāḍa,^[28] Nannaya,
Tikkana, Eṟṟana, Śrīnātha—making effort with great devotion
To compose such a work by which work I obtain the desired aim.^[29]

Succinctly, it is the Telugu literary sphere that has inherited many of the more overtly political functions of aestheticized discourse in Nāyaka-period south India. The same pattern holds true for the central Nāyaka courts of Madurai and Tanjavur,^[30] which extensively patronized works of Telugu literature but rarely works in Tamil, a strategy that was perhaps intended in part as a political statement of hegemony by a dynasty still perceived by the local populace as foreign in origin, Telugu speakers by heritage rather than Tamil. The Nāyaka rulers of Tanjavur in particular were not only avid connoisseurs of Telugu verse but also themselves active participants in the literary sphere. A prime example is Raghunātha Nāyaka,^[31] who as a child was showered in gold (kanakābhiṣeka) for his extemporaneous yakṣagāna drama, and who continued throughout his career to craft ornate renditions of the Sanskrit classics, including a Telugu adaptation of the Naiṣadhīyacarita. In fact, for the Tanjavur Nāyakas, literary talent was primarily a royal virtue embodied in the king’s own persona. This royal embodiment of poetic virtuosity was iconically represented by the Śāradā Dhvajamu, the “literary banner” gracing the court to announce, for instance, that no poet could surpass the poetic prowess of Vīrarāghava Nāyaka,^[32] Tanjavur’s king, a prolific author of exclusively Telugu compositions. Language, in short, was a central determining factor of literary excellence at the Nāyaka courts. For the duration of the Nāyaka regimes, cosmopolitan courtly literature remained the exclusive property of Telugu and Sanskrit rather than Tamil, the true vernacular of the region, which had successfully carved out for itself an independent institutional domain.

Given the preceding evidence—that is, in light of the multicentric structure of literary production in the Nāyaka period—how can we explain the increasing popularity of the TVP across the boundaries of language and place? Previous scholarship has speculated that the TVP owed its popularity directly to Tirumalai Nāyaka, thought to have been a likely patron for Parañcōti’s celebrated re-creation of the legends, but the sixteenth-century evidence renders this conclusion highly improbable. And yet, given the diverse attributions of patronage for these works, no single regime or ruler can be held responsible for their circulation, including—as counterintuitive as it may seem—the Nāyaka rulers of Madurai, in light of the central iconicity the legends eventually attained as signifiers of Madurai’s cultural heritage and religious authority. Alternatively, as many of the narratives record exploits of the quasi-historical rulers of the Pandian dynasty, one might have suspected an incentive for the southern Pandians of Tenkasi to encourage the production and circulation of a narrative that eulogizes the ancient Pandian dynasty. No evidence, however, is available to support such a hypothesis. As a result, we are left to posit a much more complex discursive dynamic by which literary influence and interchange traveled fluidly beyond the boundaries of social institutions and regional polities, a process deserving of further research and inquiry.

Although an intriguing phenomenon in its own right, the multiplicity of institutional sites that supported literary production in the Nāyaka period also bears significant implications for our understanding of how literary themes are developed, circulated, and disseminated into the domain of public culture. The TVP is simply one example of a narrative that grew to maturity and attained its now cherished place in cultural memory by navigating this multicentric, multilingual literary milieu. As a literary theme that received substantial attention throughout the sixteenth century across the boundaries of language, institution, and locality, the TVP appears to defy a number of our normative assumptions about how works of literature attain a position of social or cultural prominence, whether through the genius of an individual poet or through the direct patronage of a single political ruler or other social agent wishing to legitimize his claim to authority. In fact, the TVP’s widespread dissemination throughout the sixteenth century—and this presuming a flawed and incomplete historical archive—defies the very possibility of reading its reemergence in the Nāyaka period as a top-down act of political legitimation. To the contrary, Tirumalai Nāyaka interventions coincide closely with the period of textual codification witnessed in the following decades, as the TVP began to circulate outside the boundaries of elite literary circles, entering the domain of popular literary culture.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

ōtariya vuttaramā purāṇan taṉṉu ḷuṇmaitaru cāracamuc cayattu muṉṉa / mētakunaṉ kataiviriviṟ kaṇṭe ṉakku viyāta vāṉ mīkiyeccaṉ coṉṉa veṇṇeṇ / ṭītilviḷai yāṭalkaḷiṟ piṟaṅku mintat tiruviḷaiyā ṭaliṉ parappaic curukki yinṟu / pōtayuṟa numakkuraittēṉ yāṉuñ cokkaṉ pukaḻiṉaiyār karai kaṇṭu pukalu vārē (1.35).

[2]:

One intriguing example is the Tamil Vacucaritram of Ambalattatum Ayyan, an adaptation of the Telugu Vasucaritramu of Rāmarāja Bhūṣaṇa. N. Venkata Rao (1978) offers some general discussion on the intersection of Tamil and Telugu literature during and after this period.

[3]:

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 Periya Purāṇam had made significant multilingual inroads in Śaiva circles outside the Tamil country; take, for instance, the Sanskrit Basava Purāṇa of Śaṅkarārādhya, adapted from the Telugu Basavapurāṇamu of Palkuriki Somanātha. The Sanskrit rendering is an intriguing work of Ārādhya Vīraśaivism (see Fisher, 2017). 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 of the Tamil Śaiva tradition (Ganesan 2009).

[4]:

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

[5]:

aṟukāṟpī ṭattuyarmā lāḻikaṭain tamutaiyaraṅ kēṟṟu māpōl / aṟukāṟpē ṭicaipāṭuṅ kūṭaṉmāṉ miyattaiyarun tamiḻaṟ pāṭi / aṟukāṟpī ṭuyarmuṭiyār cōkkēcar caṉṉitiyi lamarar cūḻum / aṟukāṟpīṭattiruntu parañcōti muṉivaraṅ kēṟṟi ṉāṉē (cirappuppāyiram, 1).

[6]:

Ebeling (2010).

[7]:

Cutler (2003) further documents this phenomenon in the literary education of U. Ve. Caminataiyar, whose early studies at Tiruvavatuturai included transcribing talapurāṇam s composed by his teacher, Minatcicuntara Pillai, which were regularly debuted at formal araṅkēṟṟam s for the benefit of his patrons.

[8]:

See Wentworth (2011).

[9]:

The University of Madras Tamil Lexicon defines aṟukāṟpīṭam simply as a “six-footed stool, used in Śiva temples.”

[10]:

Contemporary and historical references to an aṟukāṟpīṭam in the Madurai temple do exist, although limited information is available as to its past or present function. For instance, Devakunjari (1979) writes with respect to the same temple, speaking first of the Ammaṉ (Mīnākṣī) caṉṉiti and second of that of Sundareśvara: “Facing the gopura is the aṟukāl pīṭha of the shrine” (217); “on the eastern prākāra is the Swami Sannidhi aṟukāl pīṭha which leads to the maha mandapa “(218). The historical chronicle of the priests of the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, the Stāṉikarvaralāṟu, includes brief mentions of an aṟukāṟpīṭam in both the Mīnākṣī and Sundareśvara shrine as follows: “paiyalāḷukkuc cuvāmikōvil āṟukāṟpīṭattil nampiyār poṭṭukkaṭṭukiṟatu. Pūjai paṇṇukiṟa pērkaḷ vālipattil vētam, ākamāstiraṅkaḷellām paṭittu kurukkaḷiṭattil parīkṣai koṭuttu vīvākamāṉatin pēril kāṇikkārar ammaṉkōvil āṟukāṟpīṭattil ācāriyavapiṣēkam paṇṇikkoṇṭu pūjai paṇṇivarukiṟatu” (Stāṉikarvaralāṟu, pgs. 298–299).

The chronicles recording renovations and additions to the temple complex over the centuries also reveal a memory of the construction of an aṟukāṟpīṭam in the Mīnākṣī and Sundareśvara shrines. From the Tiruppaṇivivaram: “cuvāmikōvil arttamaṇṭapam maṇimaṇṭapam makāmaṇṭapam āṟukāṟpīṭam cannitikkōpuram... kulacēkarapāṇṭiyaṉ piratiṣṭai ceytavai”; “ammankōvil mutaṟpirākārac cuṟṟa maṇṭapamum paḷḷiyaṟaiyum āṟukāṟpīṭamum nāyakarcannitimaṇṭapamum ceyvittatu caka 1374” (Tiruppaṇivivaram, pgs. 14–15). Although the date(s) of composition/redaction of the Tiruppaṇivivaram are not known, evidently the aṟukāṟpīṭam in the Sundareśvara shrine was believed to have been built by Kulaśekhara Pāṇḍiyan, and the aṟukāṟpīṭam in the Mīnākṣī shrine by a certain Māvali (Skt. Mahābali) in Śaka 1374, ca. 1452 c.e.

Note that the irregular spelling āṟukāṟpīṭam, while not conventionally accepted in Tamil grammar, is employed in common by Aṉatāri in the Cuntara Pāṇṭiyam, by the Stāṉikarvaralāṟu, and by the Tiruppaṇivivaram, suggesting that this irregular orthography seems to have been conventionally accepted at the time.

[11]:

cīrvaḷartaṇ katampavaṉa māṉmiyamām vaṭanūlait teruḷu maṉpā / lērvaḷarteṉ maturaiyilvā ḻīcaṉaippū caṉaiceyvō riyainta celvap / pārvaḷarntōṅ kiyapukaḻcēr talattōrteṉ moḻiyākap pakareṉ ṟōta / nīrvaḷarpain toṭaivirutta yāppa taṉā lavararuḷā ṉikaḻtta luṟṟēṉ

(pāyiram, 16).

[12]:

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 discussion below on the relationship between caste and the Tamil Śaiva monasteries), as those employed under the Nāyaka regime were nearly exclusively of Brahmin or Vēḷāḷa background (Ludden 1978, 139), the latter forming the constituency typically observed sponsoring these works.

[13]:

aṉṉava ṉaracar cūḻaṅ kacci vīrappa ṉeṉṟu / maṉṉava ṉaruḷcēr maṉṟaic cevvanti tuṇaivaṉ vāymait / teṉṉavaṉ ṟiruvi runtāṉ cavuntaraṉ ṟēva pāṭait / tuṉṉiruṅ kataiteṉ ṉūlāṟ colleṉac colla luṟṟēṉ (nakarac carukkam, 47).

[14]:

vētanūṟ ṟeṉmuḻaicai vīramā ṟaṉkaṭalcūḻ / pūtalaṅka ḷaṉpāyp purakkunāḷ ātinerit / teyva maturait tiruvāla vāyuṟainta / aiyarulāk koṇṭaruḷi ṉār (nūṟ ciṟappup pāyiram, 2).

[15]:

Substantial documentary information concerning the economic influence of the Tarumapuram and Tiruvavatuturai ātīnam s in the nineteenth century has been gathered by Oddie (1984); for instance, by the late nineteenth century, Tiruvavatuturai directly owned and maintained twenty-five thousand 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 (Koppedrayer 1990, 25).

[16]:

By at least the early eighteenth century, the Tamil Śaiva maṭam s provided centralized repositories of literary manuscripts available for consultation. Jesuit missionaries appear to have attained access to these collections, as is testified by Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg in his Bibliotheca Malabarica. See Sweetman (2012) for further details.

[17]:

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 at least as far back to its earliest known textual exemplar, the Niśvāsatattvasaṃhitā (ca. fourth or fifth century c.e.). On the history of the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta lineage and its exclusively Tamil-language scriptures, see Pechilis Prentiss (1996). It must be noted that great strides have been made in the study of the Sanskrit Śaiva Siddhānta since the composition of her article. Although no publication to date lays out our current knowledge of the Śaiva Siddhānta for nonspecialists, one can begin by consulting the work of Dominic Goodall.

[18]:

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 (1984) attempts to calculate the intervening generations of preceptorial rule preceding our earliest dated references to arrive at an estimate of the midfifteenth century for the founding of Tiruvavatuturai and the mid-sixteenth century for Tarumapuram.

[19]:

The social prominence of the Vēḷāḷa caste groups as controllers of the region’s agricultural production has perhaps been most convincingly explicated by Stein (1980), who refers to a certain “Brahmin-Vēḷāḷa alliance,” arguing that the establishment and maintenance of Brahmadeyas in the Tamil region proceeded largely at the discretion of Vēḷāḷa landholders.

[20]:

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 a certain Oppilāta Maḻavarāyaṉ of Ariyilur and Mātait Tiruveṅkaṭanātar of Kayattaru near Tirunelveli. See Wentworth (2011, 232).

[21]:

poṉṉalarpūṅ kaṭampavaṉa purāṇan teṉṉūṟ potiyamuṉiyakattiyaṉmuṉ pukaṉṟa vāṟē / paṉṉupaya kaviñarcevik kamutamākap paraṉaruḷiṉ ceḻuntamiḻāl viḷaṅkac ceytāṉ / ṟeṉṉavarā yaṉpukaḻmāk kaṇṇaṉeytaṟ celvaṉuyar tarumilampūr vīmanāta / ṉaṉṉeṟitēr purāṇamuḻu tuṇarntōṉ kaṅkai natikulavēḷ peruntoṇṭai nāṭṭi ṉāṉē (ciṟappup pāyiram, 18).

[22]:

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; see Richman 1997 for details on this work), Mīṉāṭcīyammai Iraṭṭaimaṇimālai, and Maduraikkalampakam.

[23]:

U. Ve. Caminataiyar refers to this particular branch of the lineage as based in the

Kāñcī Ñānappirakāca Maṭam (Cokkanātar Ulā, xiii.)

[24]:

pūmaṉṉu poliḻveṇṇai meykaṇṭāṉ kaccip / pukaḻpuṉaitat tuvañāṉa prakācamāy vantu / pāmaṉṉa vurai yeṉṉa vavaṉaruḷā lavaṉṟaṉ / patamparavic citamparappāṭ ṭiyaleṉappōr vakuttāṉ (See Cokkanātar Ulā, xvi).

[25]:

Seastrand (2013).

[26]:

See above for local inscriptions referring to these figures.

[27]:

Cokkanātha Caritramu, pg. 4: bhaṭavaṃśamuna meccu paccakappuramu / tipparājasutuṇḍu tiru vēṅgaḷuṇḍu / ceppaṃga nērcuṃ brasiddhambugāṅga / nani vinna vincina nā cinna rāma / manujēndruṃ ḍadhikasammadamutō navuḍu / nanu bilipinci mannana gāravinci / vinutinci karpūra vīḍyambu licci / yanaghuṇḍu mī lāta yagu timma rāju / tana tammu ḍayyalu dānu nimmahiniṃ / brauḍuṇḍai vidyalaṃ baraga meppinci / prauḍarāyalacētaṃ bacca kappurampu / rāju nāmbaḍeṃ dimma rājukuṃ dippa rājudayaṃce virājitammuganu / rājula meppiṃce rasikuṃ ḍātanita / nujuṃḍa vārya sannuta kavīndruṇḍavu / prāvīṇya mativi śōbhanakā vyalīlaṃ / gāvuna nīvokka kāvyambu māku / dvipada bhāvambuna delivondi migula / nupamagā satyavu lullambu lalara / madhura vākyammula madiṃ goniyāḍa / madhurāpurēśu nirmala puṇyacarita / cauṣaṣṭi līlā vilāsambu lāndhra / bhāṣanu bedarāma pārthivu pēra / sucaritra vaibhavasutrāmu pēra / raciyiṃci vikhyāti rāṃcēyu murvi.

[28]:

This circa-twelfth-century Telugu poet is remembered by subsequent authors in the tradition, such as Śrīnātha and Appakavi, as one of the greatest poets in the language. While a number of kāvya s are attributed to him, which are said to have been written in a style that makes heavy use of śleṣa, as well as the first work of Telugu prosody, none of his works seem to have survived. In the popular social imaginary of the Telugu literati, Bhīmakavi lives on as a Durvāsas-like figure with supernatural powers who curses the unfortunate kings who failed to pay him homage. See Datta, Encylopaedia of Indian Literature, 2005, 502–503.

[29]:

Cokkanātha Caritramu, pg. 3: vyāsu vālmīki mahākāvyuṃ gāḷi- / dāsuni bhavabhūti daṇḍi māghunini / birudu vēmulavāḍabhīmu nannayanu / narayaṃ dikkana neṟṟapāryu śrīnāthu / nilaṃgalgu kavulanu nella sadbhakti / vilasita sadvākya vinuti nutiṃci / yēkṛti raciyiṃpa niṣṭārtha siddhi / yākṛti raciyimpa natibhaktiṃ būni.

[30]:

For further details on the works of literature produced at the Tanjavur and Madurai Nāyaka courts, see N. Venkata Rao (1978) and Kodandaramaiah (1975).

[31]:

Raghunātha Nāyaka’s Telugu compositions are said to have originally included one hundred works (a common rhetorical trope of the period, applied to a number of celebrated intellectuals, including Appayya Dīkṣita), although only two have come down to us today, the Raghunātharāmāyaṇamu and Vālmikicaritramu. Further attestations are available through the numerous works of royal encomium composed by his court poets in both Telugu and Sanskrit. Further Telugu works attributed to the Nāyaka include a number of yakṣagāna s—Gajendramokṣa; Rukmiṇīkṛṣṇavivāha; Jānakīpariṇaya; a certain Pārijātāpaharaṇa, said to have been composed in only two yāma s in his youth, prompting his father, Acyutappa Nāyaka, to reward him with a kanakābhiṣeka;a Nalacaritra in eight cantos; and the Acyutābhyudayamu, a work of royal praśasti dedicated to his father.

[32]:

See for instance Satyanarayanaravu (1966) on the iconicity of the Śāradā Dhvajamu in the Tanjavur court.