Monius LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST - ŚAIVAS AND JAINS IN MEDIEVALSOUTH INDIA

LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST: ŚAIVAS AND JAINS IN MEDIEVAL
SOUTH INDIA
Author(s): ANNE E. MONIUS
Source: Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 32, No. 2/3 (June 2004), pp. 113-172
Published by: Springer
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ANNE E. MONIUS
LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST:

SAIVAS AND JAINS IN MEDIEVAL SOUTH INDIA *
'There is now and there has always been something about violenc
Jody Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty
'Who does not admire a hero?'

Kampan, Irâmavatâram
The stories of the sixty-three saints of the Hindu god Siva told in the Tamil
speaking corner of southeastern India are striking for their vivid depictions
of violence done in the name of love for the lord. In the twelfth-century
Tamil hagiographie text known as the Tiruttontarpurânam, 'The Ancient
Strory of the Holy Servants', or more simply, the Periyapuran am, 'The
Great Story',1 limbs fly, blood flows, and bodies fall to the ground as
the saints or nâyanmâr (literally 'leaders')2 express their profound devo
tion to their god. The child saint, Cantëcurar, cuts off his father's feet
(v. 1261); Kannappar gouges out his own eye to heal the bleeding wound
on a Siva image (v. 827). Cimttontar gleefully kills and cooks his son
at the request of a visiting Saiva ascetic (vv. 3727-3730), while Kôtpuli
slaughters his entire family - including an infant - for the crime of eating
rice reserved for Siva in a time of great famine (vv. 4146-4148). Non
believers are relieved of their tongues (vv. 4046-4047), wives are maimed
and disfigured (v. 4024), and the nâyanmâr subject their own bodily
* Research for this project was generously funded by an American Council of Learned
Societies ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship and a Fulbright
Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship.
1 The Periyapurânam has been published in a number of editions over the last century.
All references to the text in this essay refer to Cêkkilâr (1999).
2 The term nâyanmâr (or, more precisely, the honorific singular nâyanâr) is applied
only to Siva in the Periyapurânam, not to his devotees. Nâyanâr is first used to describe at
least three of the most important saints in the Tamil Saiva tradition only in the thirteenth
century, in an inscription dated to the tenth regnal year of the Cola king, Râjendra III (1256
CE); see Vamadeva (1995: 3-4) and Nagaswamy (1989: 226).
Journal of Indian Philosophy 32: 113-172,2004.

© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
114 ANNEE. MONIUS
appendages to the sickle,3 the grindin

the sixty-three saints whose stories are
one-third7 commit some heinous crim
(Tamil anpu) for Siva.
The normative moral codes broken
the most sacredly held in Hindu cultu
fathers, chaste wives suffer amputati
the sword, and the cherished ties of
formed forever. Unlike the lives of the later medieval saints of North India
narrated in such hagiographie texts as the Hindi Bhaktamâl studied by
Hawley (1987b), the violent ruptures wrought by the Tamil nayanmñr are
not always healed. Whereas the virtues of the Hindi-speaking saints find
a place in more conventional notions of dharma or ethics, and everything
often seems to turn out 'all right' in the end, many of the victims of the
Tamil saints' violent impulses are emphatically not restored by Siva.8 In
the complex of Hindu traditions often characterized, in the post-Gandhian
era, by firm commitments to ahimsâ (literally 'non-harming') and vege
tarianism, the violent love of Siva's Tamil-speaking saints stand quite apart
from other exemplars of Hindu bhakti or 'devotion' ,9
3 As in the story of Arivattayar, who, exhausted, drops his offerings intended for Siva
and, in utter despair at having ruined the lord's food, begins to saw at his neck with a sickle
(v. 923).
4 As in the story of Mürtti, who, denied access to sandalwood by an evil Jain king,
begins to grind his own arm against a stone (vv. 992-993).
5 As in the story of Kanampullar, who burns his own hair in the temple lamps when he
can no longer afford anything else (v. 4066).
6 The Periyapurânam actually narrates the stories of seventy-one saints or 'leaders' of
the community; eight of these, however, are collective groups without much personality or
character, from 'the brahmins who live in Tillai' (tillai val antanar) to 'those who depend
on [the lord's] feet beyond [the Tamil region]' (appâlum atic cârntâr).
1 There is, quite surprisingly, no scholarly agreement as to how many of the nâyanmâr
actually commit a violent act. Vamadeva (1995: 97-98) limits her analysis to violence
that relates directly to love (anpu) for Siva and provides a list of only twenty acts of
'violent love' in the Periyapurânam-, she also mentions six other acts of violence in the
Periyapurânam, but does not include them in her analysis (pp. 30-31). Hudson (1989: 40,
note 9) outlines a typology of violence that includes twenty-four among the saints. Yocum
(1988: 7) adds several more incidents of violence, and details a list of thirty violent acts in
the Periyapurânam.
8 A disproportionate number of these hapless victims are women; see discussion below.
9 Hardy (1995: 34), for example, cites a number of North Indian saints whose lives are
tinged with violence, from the story of a humble potter whose meditation on Visnu is so
profound that he fails to notice his small son being crushed by the clay to the tale of the
wife of Tukârâm ranting at Visnu to provide her with necessary household items. Such
LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST 115
Indeed, the violence of the Periyapurânam has been a source of contro

versy and discomfort for Tamil-speaking Saivas - no less scholars of
South Indian religious and literary history - for much of the past nine
hundred years. Despite the incorporation of the text in the daily Saiva
devotional recitation known as the pañcapuránam,10 despite the common
assumption among Saivas that the Periyapurânam presents a genuine
history of the great leaders of their community,11 and despite the great
frequency of lectures on and public readings from the text throughout
Tamilnadu today,12 Tamils have struggled to come to terms with the seem
ingly grave moral breaches of their most revered religious figures. On the
one hand, a Marxist-oriented Saiva religious leader such as Kunrakkuti
Atikalâr finds value in the service to temple and community championed
by saint Tirunâvukkaracar, also known affectionately in the tradition as
Appar or 'father' (Ryerson, 1983: 183-184). On the other hand, many
scholars from within the Tamil Saiva community have noted the discomfort
modern Saivas feel, particularly those 'among the educated classes', at
the Periyapurânam's 'apparent ... sacrificing of] moral principles' in its
depiction of the nâyanmâr 'committing] the vilest of crimes' (Ponniah,
1952: 51). Others have attempted to weave the violence into a nationa
list rhetoric of the 'soldiers of Siva' championing a nation-state without
tolerance for 'soft-minded milksops ... who, sooner or later, would cause
its spiritual death' (Ramachandran, 1990: xx). Indeed, for a number of
scholars of South Indian religious history, the cruelty of the nâyanmâr
finds chilling echoes in the violence perpetrated by the Tamil-speaking,
and largely Saiva, LTTE in modern Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan-born scholar
Vamadeva, for example, wonders whether the nâyanmâr simply represent
one historical example of violence that is endemic to Tamil culture, with
narratives, however, although displaying a certain chutzpah toward the divine on the part
of the saint, lack the single-minded intensity to the nâyanmârs' acts of violence.
10 The pañcapuránam refers to five Tamil devotional texts from the canonical collection
known as the Tirumurai, recited at the end of puja to (worship of) Siva, performed by the
non-brahmin ôtuvar or temple singer. The first text is taken from the first seven bools of
poetic hymns known collectively as the Têvâram, the second from a ninth-century hymn
attributed to the saint, Mànikkavàcakar, and known as the Tiruvâcakam, the third from the
Tiruvicaippá hymns found in the ninth canonical volume, the fourth from Cëtanàr's Tirup
pallântu in the same volume, and the fifth from the Periyapuránam. For a brief discussion
of the use of Tamil canonical texts in the daily worship rites of the Kapàlïsvarar temple in
Chennai, see Cutler (1987: 190-192).
11 Note, for example, Peterson's (1994) comment that 'the PP remains the standard
Tamil source for the lives of the Nàyanàrs' (p. 196).
12 While living in Chennai in 2001, I noted daily advertisements for lectures on the
Periyapuránam in the local English- and Tamil-language daily newspapers, The Hindu and
TTnattanti.
116 ANNEE. MONIUS
the saints 'just a link between ... genera

tendency differently (1995: v). Yocum
of the saints to 'Rambo on the Kaveri'1
atrocities committed by Tamil Tiger g
of the Periyapurânam' (1988: 7).
How is one to understand the violence
in the name of religious love for the l
mothers maimed, of children killed, b
ling religious values? This essay exam
the Periyapurânam and argues that th
and human cruelty can fully be under
to the twelfth-century South Indian li
was composed. As van Kooij (1999) p
on violence and non-violence in Sou
relative concept' (p. 251), culturally con
larized ways. Gommans' (1999) article,
addresses the horror expressed by a yo
Golkonda upon receiving a graphic Dut
the disjuncture between European and
arena in which the use of excessive
The Periyapurânam, despite its controv
Tamil scholars as a great kâvya or ornat
treatise that is highly literary, carefully
in nuanced and subtle forms. This essa
qualities of the text, the violence in th
stood apart from the literary culture i
culture that had long sustained sop
among competing sectarian communitie
literature.
1. THE TEXT
The Periyapurânam, attributed to an author known as Cëkkilâr, cons

the twelfth and final text of the Tirumurai, the canon of the
speaking Saiva community that also includes: the hymns of the thre
prolific poets among the nâyanmâr (Appar, Campantar, and Cuntar
hymns of several other saints, the most important of whom is the
century poet, Mânikkavàcakar; and a rather esoteric philosophic
13 A reference to the Kâveri River that flows through the heart of the modern s
Tamilnadu.
known as the Tirumantiram.14 As a text that represents Tamil Saiva tradi

tion 'self-consciously reflecting upon itself (Peterson, 1983: 341), the
Periyapurànam 'truly completes' (Peterson, 1983: 340) the canon, and,
in the modern era, has been published in a number of editions,15 retold
in children's books and temple pamphlets, and even dramatized on film.16
Unfortunately, no tradition of commentary accompanies the text until the
modern period, leaving us with little by way of direct historical evidence
of pre-modern audience reception.
The Periyapurànam itself reveals little of its author, Cëkkilàr; dating
of the text and identification of its author have rested largely on what
Cëkkilàr has to say about his royal patron, one Anapâyan, and a fourteenth
century narrative of Cëkkilàr's life attributed to the great philosopher and
consolidator of the Tamil school of Saivism known as the Saiva Siddhânta,
Umâpati Civàcàriyâr. Umâpati's Cëkkilârpurânam ('The Great Story of
Cëkkilàr'), also known as the Tiruttontarpurânavaralâru ('The History of
the Tiruttontarpurânam'), identifies Cëkkilàr as the scion of a wealthy
Vëlàn or Vëlàlan (agricultural) family from Kunrattür, a suburb of the
modern city of Chennai (vv. 11-13). While serving as minister to the Cola
king, Cëkkilàr composed the Periyapurànam, according to Umâpati, in
order to wean his royal patron away from an interest in the Tamil Jain
work known as the Cintâmani (vv. 20-21).17 Upon its completion, the
Periyapurànam was hailed as a fifth Veda, engraved on copper plates, and
placed at the feet of Siva in the golden hall of the great temple at Citam
param. Cëkkilàr names his royal patron, Anapâyan, eleven times in the
text of the Periyapurànam, as the Cola king who covered in gold the roof
of Siva's temple at Citamparam (vv. 8, 1218), as a fearless king of right
eous scepter (v. 22), as a great protector of his Tamil realm (v. 85), and as
the privileged inheritor of a glorious Cola lineage (v. 1218). Although the
precise identity of Anapâyan has been a matter of some scholarly debate, a
consensus now exists that identifies Cëkkilàr's royal patron with the Côla
monarch Kulôttunka II (1133-1150 CE) (Zvelebil, 1995: 131-132).
14 For a discussion of the canonization of the Tamil Saiva poetic corpus, see Peterson
(1989: 16-17) and Prentiss (1999: 143-144).
15 See Zvelebil (1995: 547-548) for a partial list of published editions and partial trans
lations. Nambi Arooran (1977: 20-21) also provides a short history of the early printing of
the Periyapurdnam.
16 Film portrayals of the lives of individual nâyanâr began with the release of
'Siruthonda Nayanar' in 1935; see http://www.intamm.com/movies/movielist/movielist.
htm.
17 The full name of the extant Tamil text to which Umâpati refers is the CTvakacintâmani,
'CTvakan, the Wish-Fulfilling Gem'. This aspect of Umapati's story will be taken up for
detailed discussion below.
118 ANNEE. MONIUS
In his opening verses, Cëkkilàr claim

of Siva's most devoted servants foun
Tiruttontattokai ('Collection of Holy
century poet-saint Cuntaramürtti (or si
the saints of Siva by name (vv. 47-48
('Holy Verses in Antâti From about
the tenth-century poet and anthologi
Nampi (v. 49); and (3) the complete or
given by the great sage, Upamanyu (v
in relation to Cuntarar in the previou
claimed as the source for the Periyapu
two texts. The Periyapurânam, as disc
much of the sparse information pro
Nampi, and here claims the author
allegiance to the Tiruttontattokai an
heaven before his rebirth on earth cle
character in the Periyapurânam text.
tions to lord, land, king, and assemb
begins with the early life of Cuntar
life throughout the stories of other sain
ascension to Siva's holy Mount Kailâs
ordering his lives of the saints, and t
are grouped according to the first li
Periyapurânam is, in this sense, prim
remaining narratives carefully crafte
In addition to the texts that Cëkkilà
clear that the Periyapurânam, if the
as reliable, was composed in a cultu
of Siva - particularly the first three
were increasingly revered as beings
significant components of cycles of
centers patronized by powerful Cola
to the increasing importance of the
hymns of the first three saints,19 i
ninth century; recitation of the hym
of the poets appear to have been for
the great Brhadïsvara temple at Ta
I (985-1014 CE) (Nagaswamy, 1989:
18 For a full translation of the hymn into

Shulman (1990: 239-248).
19 Later known collectively as the Têvâram
narrating the story of the hunter-devotee, Kannappar, has been located

at Tirukkâlukkunram (Lockwood, 1982: 95-96). The Amrtaghatesvara
temple at Mëlaikkatampûr, built or rebuilt during the reign of Kulottuñka I
(1070-1120 CE), depicts 'scenes from the lives of the Tamil saints ... in
bas-relief on the plinth', including the stories of Kannappar and Cantëcurar
(Balasubrahmanyam, 1979: 123; see also Meister, 1983: 296-298). In
short, by the twelfth century (when the Periyapurânam was composed),
worship of the saints of Siva and recitation of the hymns of the poets
among them already constituted a significant element in Saiva temple
practice.
After the mid-twelfth century and the appearance of Cëkkilâr's text,
however, worship of the sixty-three nâyanmâr (both collectively and
individually) and recitation of their poetry grows exponentially, as do
inscriptional references to both Cëkkilàr and his text. According to
Rajamanickam (1964: 211-213), an inscription from the ninth year of
Ràjàdhiràja II's reign (1166-1182 CE) refers to the public recitation of the
Periyapurânam before the king during a major annual temple festival;20
during the reign of Kulottuñka III (1178-1218 CE), an inscription from
the Tañcávür district records an endowment for the worship of the three
Tëvâram poets and Cëkkilàr (Nagaswamy, 1989: 227; Annual Report,
1952: 33, no. 239). The number of references to festivals celebrated in
honor of the saints also increases dramatically (Nagaswamy, 1989: 239
246). The Airàvatesvara temple constructed at Târâcùram during the reign
of Kulottuñka II's successor, Ràjaràja II (1133-1150 CE), narrates the
stories of all sixty-three of the nâyanmâr, seemingly in close accord with
the text of the Periyapurânam, in a series of friezes on the outermost wall
of the shrine.21 In the centuries following Cëkkilàr, the stories of the sixty
three saints are told and retold in Telugu (Somanàtha, 1990) and Sanskrit
(Upamanyu, 1931), a tradition that continues to this day.
The Periyapurânam is composed in the 'most frequent meter of Tam[il]
medieval poetry' (Zvelebil, 1995: 777), viruttam, and estimates of its
proper length range from 4253 quatrains22 to 4286.23 The text is divided
20 The text in the inscription is not called the Periyapurânam, but rather the Sri Parana
of one Âlutaiya Nampi; Rajamanickam (1964) convincingly argues that the title refers
to the Periyapurânam of Cëkkilâr (pp. 211-213). For the full text of the inscription, see
South-Indian Inscriptions (1925: 494).
21 For an exhaustive study of the Aira vates vara temple and the Amman (goddess) temple
that stands alongside it, see l'Hernault, et al. (1987).
22 As claimed by Umâpati (v. 53).
23 As in the edition of the Saiva reformer, Arumuka Nâvalar, roughly a century ago;
for a discussion of the discrepancies among various contemporary editions, see Vamadeva
(1995: 95).
120 ANNEE. MONIUS
into two parts or kânîam and thirteen

first and last addressing the life of C
comprised of stories of five to eight
Periyapurânam is thus quite unique in
of the lord rather than on the deeds o
the earlier Sanskrit Mahâpurânas. So di
genre, in fact, that Shulman (1980) cla
a true purâna is a 'misnomer', with
texts] only by virtue of [its] name' (p
polation and genre, there exists little
merits of the Periyapurânam. For som
Tamil literature (Peterson, 1994: 96;
great Kâvya' (Rajamanickam, 1964:
style' (Zvelebil, 1974: 176)-aTamil 'n
and the 'crown of Saivite literature'
bemoan its 'prolix and often obscure'
and 'sever, pedantic' tone (Shulman,
elegant Irâmâvatâram the true jewel f
(Shulman, 1993: 19).
Even if little scholarly consensus exis
the Periyapurânam, all scholars of Tam
to which many of Cêkkilâr's character
the following description of the saint
army of his enemy, Aticüran:
Rivers of blood flowed.
Bodies, their flesh pierced, crumpled.
The clashing soldiers were cut and fell about.
Bowels spilled out from punctured bodies.
Vultures of frightening [countenance] swarmed about, as drums, severed from their leather
straps, rolled.
[Thus] the two armies faced and fought each other fiercely on the battlefield, (v. 626)
While the eye-gouging Kannappar and the leg-slashing Cantëcurar are

well-known to the earliest of the poet-saints, Appar, Campantar, and
Cuntarar,24 Cëkkilâr self-consciously expands and exaggerates the level
of violence found in his source texts. Cuntarar refers explicitly to only
three acts of violence in his Tiruttontattokav. to 'Lord Canti' (cantip
perumân; Cantëcurar) 'who chopped his father's foot with [his] axe'
24 Vamadeva (1995: 72-76) counts no fewer than thirteen references to Kannappar's

story in the Tëvâram and twenty-two references to Cantëcurar.
(itâtai tâl maluvinâl erinta);25 to Kalikkampan, who 'who cut off a hand'
(kai tatinta)-,26 and to Nampi Munaiyatuvân 'whose spear cuts [flesh]'
(araik konta vet)?1 Nampi Àntàr Nampi, in his tenth-century elabora
tion of Cuntarar's work, the Tiruttontar Tiruvantâti, increases the level of
gore, narrating briefly fourteen episodes of violence (Nampi Ântàr Nambi,
1995b); elsewhere, in a separate hymn of praise to Campantar, Nampi
narrates for the first time in Tamil the story of the child-saint impaling
eight thousand Jain monks on stakes in the city of Maturai (Nampi Ântâr
Nampi, 1995a).28 While the stories of Kannappar and Cantëcurar obvi
ously predate even the Tëvâram, and violent activity on the part of the
saints is not unknown to Nampi Àntàr Nampi, Cëkkilàr expands that vision
of the axe-wielding saint to new and rather stunning heights. This vision
of violent devotion is further placed concretely, in the introduction to the
Periyapurânam, within the context of the righteous rule of Cola kings.
In addition to praising Anapâyan for his patronage of the great temple
at Citamparam (v. 8) and honoring his patron's glorious Côla lineage
(vv. 98-135), Cëkkilàr locates his hagiographie narratives in the discourse
of kingship, even reminding his readers of their official obligations to pay
taxes (v. 76) !29
2. THE ACADEMIC RESPONSE
As noted above, the violent imagery of the Periyapurânam has lo

scholars of Tamil literature, who have found little in the literature
bhakti to explain such bloodshed or imbue it with religious mean
25 VII-39. This and all following references to the poetry of Appar, Cam
Cuntarar are drawn from Tëvàram (1984-1991). Note that Cuntarar devotes
to Cantëcurar than to any other servant of Siva.
26 The Periyapurânam expands this epithet to narrate the story of Kal
displeasure at his wife's hesitation in washing the feet of a Saiva ascetic wh
been their servant.
27 The Periyapurânam expands this epithet to the story of a mercenary soldier who hires
himself out for battle and donates all his spoils of war to worthy Saiva devotees.
28 Note that even Cëkkilâr shies away from this scene of grisly violence, appearing 'to
be uncomfortable with the idea of Campantar's complicity in such a gruesome punishment
as impalement' (Peterson, 1998: 181). In the Periyapurânam (vv. 2756-2760), it is the
king of Maturai who orders the death of the Jains, not the child-saint who 'bears [them] no
enmity' (ikal ilar).
29 The verse adds 'paying taxes due the government' (aracu kol katankal ârri to the
traditional list of citizens' duties listed in the fifth-century Tamil work on ethics, the
Tirukkurat, the Kural list includes five duties of hospitality to one's ancestors, the gods,
guests, relatives, and oneself (Tirukkuraf, v. 43).
122 ANNE E. MONIUS
there exists no scholarly consensus on ho

nâyanmâr, certainly many have noted t
for blood.
Vamadeva (1995) has produced the most sustained study of the
Periyapurânam! s violence, and her work, while not an exhaustive treat
ment of the subject, covers most of the significant interpretive themes that
emerge from scholarship on the text. Most prevalent is that violent action
serves as a metaphor for the single-minded intensity of devotion demanded
by Siva. Coining a new Tamil phrase, vannanpu, literally 'violent love',
to describe the lives of the nâyanmâr, Vamadeva contends that 'violence
has to be perceived as an affirmation of anpu [love] for Siva' (p. 35), the
manifestation of an automatic, reflexive action born of the frustration of
interrupted service to the lord. In a similar vein, Hudson (1989) deems
the single-minded focus of the Saiva devotee 'fanatical' (p. 377), Hardy
(1995) represents the saint on the verge of violent eruption as 'the person
"with a bee in his bonnet" ' (p. 341), while Shulman (2001) speaks of
'an ideal carried to its limit' (p. 79). For Yocum (1972-1977) the violent
deeds of the nâyanmâr represent an attitude of 'total surrender to Siva in
all his unpredictability' (p. 70). The violence of the Periyapurânam, in
other words, represents the single-minded devotion of the elect few who
embody the highest ideals of bhakti: a life in which nothing else matters
save service to Siva, in which the ties that bind one to a life with the lord
are stronger than those of family and community The violent actions of
the saints are in no way meant to represent the lives or values of ordinary
people in the everyday world, but rather ideals of selfless devotion toward
which one can, and must, strive. The story of Cantêcurar, in this reading,
is not a call to chop off the legs of one's father, but rather to serve the lord
with unwavering focus, attention, and true love.
Vamadeva (1995) further elucidates the nature of the Periyapurânam's
violence by tracing its roots to earlier Tamil literary texts, suggesting that
the cult of Siva portrayed by Cëkkilàr has ancient and uniquely Tamil
roots in the classical or 'Cañkam' literary culture of southern India that
depicts powerful links between love and violence, milk and blood, life
and death. In the heroic Cañkam poetry dating from the early centuries
of the Common Era, Vamadeva notes, violence is 'an essential quality
of a hero' (p. 2). Cëkkilâr 'project[s] [the] kingly role of the ancient and
mediaeval Tamil country' onto the lives and deeds of the nâyanmâr (p. 12).
In sharp contrast to the elegant and ritually 'clean' worship prescribed
in the Sanskrit Àgamas (see Davis, 1991), the anpu or love of the Saiva
saints is likened to blood sacrifice by Peterson (1994), with 'themes of
blood, violence and sacrifice' representing a 'continuation of ancient Tamil
concepts' (p. 221). Hudson (1989), whose analysis of the Periyapurânam

rests heavily on the interpretation of the nineteenth-century Saiva reformer,
Àramuka Nàvalar,30 likens the text to an extended commentary on the
Sanskrit Bhagavadgîtâ, a Tamil rumination of sorts on the processes by
which a devotee remains active in the world while offering the fruits of
all activity to the lord (p. 376). Within that context, he further argues
that the violent love of the saints mirrors Siva's own propensity toward
violence (p. 385) and is expressed in ways consistent with 'the ancient
Tamil belief that in blood and death the sacred power that regenerates life
reveals itself' (p. 390). Shulman (1993: 18^17) and Hart (1980: 219-220),
in their analyses of the story of Ciruttontar's gruesome sacrifice of his own
son, both see echoes of earlier Tamil poetic ideals of blood, war, sacri
fice, and love. Violence, through this interpretive lens, is an expression of
ancient Tamil cultural values within the new religious framework of bhakti,
devotion to Siva.
In short, scholarly opinion remains divided over the religious import of
the saint who cuts off his father's legs or the 'leader' who cooks up his son
into a tasty curry, and certainly the interpretations outlined briefly above
fall somewhat short of explaining fully the ethos of the Periyapurânam and
its enduring popularity among Tamil-speaking Saivas.31 If the violence of
Kôtpuli or Kannappar is merely symbolic of the single-minded intensity
of devotion demanded by lord Siva, then one must wonder why the pan
Indian hagiographie literature of Hindu bhakti is not more rife with violent
imagery. Other saints, in other communities in the Tamil-speaking region
and in other parts of India, flout the prescriptions of dharma, from Àntâl's
and Mïrâbàï's steadfast refusals to marry any husband other than their
beloved lord Krsna to Kabïr's endless railing against brahminic ritual, but
few are the stories to rival the stream of blood generated by the zealous
adoration of Siva's Tamil saints. If the violent deeds of the nâyanmâr
represent the resurrection of ancient Tamil poetic ideals that wed the
themes of love and violence, then the question must be raised as to why
this sudden resurgence of heroic blood sacrifice should take place at the
height of Côla power, in an era of temple-building, of the consolidation of
Âgamic forms of worship, and of burgeoning authority of Saiva matam or
monastic establishments. Why harken back to the bloodlust of yore, to the
30 For more on Ârumuka Nàvalar, see Hudson (1992).

31 Yocum (1988) remarks that it is precisely the 'awesome self-destruction or self
sacrifice' of the nâyanmâr that is 'the most puzzling aspect to my mind of sainthood among
the Tamil Saivas' (p. 13).
124 ANNEE. MONIUS
classical poetic ideals of 'inner' (akam

in a century of unprecedented peace
If the images of blood in the name
in the Periyapurânam, equally rem
commentary on the lives of the sain
Saiva community itself, at least un
no commentarial tradition on Cëkk
pre-modern historical reception of th
throughout the Tamil literature of t
providing anything by way of moral co
The one exception to the rule above
rains in venpâ meter attributed to T
and dated to 1178 CE, the Tirukka
of the fourteen canonical works of T
TirukkaUrrupatiyâr, whose title lite
Placed on the Step by an Elephant',34
canonical status, and is often conceiv
the first of the canonical texts, the T
Uyyavanta Tëvanâyanàr and dated
studied work of the Saiva Siddhàn
describing the nature of lord Siva, t
tion, draws many examples from the
impossible to know whether or not U
the Periyapurânam specifically in m
deeds of many among the saints, for
two-fold:
In this excellent world, effort is of two kinds:

gentle action (melvinai) and harsh action (velvinai)\
both are the dharma of Siva.
Praise them both, in order to dispel the karma of birth, (v. 16)
After explaining the 'gentle' activities as those forms of worshiping Siva

which are 'easy for us' (namakkum efi) (v. 17), Uyyavanta Tëvanâyanàr
then provides examples of 'harsh' acts of devotion to Siva, drawing directly
32 The irony of the resurgence of literary violence in an era of remarkable peace is taken
up for further discussion below.
33 References to the text refer to the edition found in Meykantacâttiram (1994).
34 Saiva Siddhànta tradition maintains that the work was initially rejected by the scho
larly community. The author left his text as an offering to Siva on the steps leading up to
the main shrine at Citamparam; a stone elephant, standing to one side, lifted up the text
and placed it before the image of the dancing Siva. This divine acceptance of the text thus
led both to its incorporation into the philosophical canon and to its rather peculiar title
(Siddhalingaiah, 1979: 85-86).
upon the life stories of some of the most violent saints found in the
Periyapurânam:
I have classified as harsh activity
the terrible deed of killing
without pity and cooking [his son] with [his] own hands
for the Bhairava [ascetic] who grants boons, (v. 18)35
Not seeing it as a fault or a grievous crime,

the lord witnessed [Cantëcurar] cutting off his father's two feet,
and bestowed on him the [lord's own] garland, (v. 19)
How are we able to narrate [the deeds of]

he who slipped into [a fissure in] the field and,
because of this holy [mis]step,
began to saw at his neck, in order to feed the lord? (v. 20),f)
For Uyyavanta Tëvanàyanâr, then, the ways of 'harsh' devotion are some
what mysterious, beyond the ken of the ordinary, 'terrible', certainly not
'easy for us' to emulate or understand, an admirable but perhaps distant
ideal for those who follow the path of 'gentle' action. The author further
notes that the path of harsh devotion is marked by a turn inward, away
from the material world, a life in which the only thing that matters is the
inner state of complete surrender to the lord:
Through the stone, the fissure, the shining sword, the grinding stone,
and the gaming board, they transformed themselves through the inner path (akamârkkam),
not through the path joined [to the world] (sakamârkkam). (v. 50)37
In this rare commentary from within the tradition itself, the violent deeds
of the nâyanmâr are marked as dharma, morally correct in every way,
conducive to life in the presence of Siva, yet little more is said. Modern
Tamil scholars, commenting on the Periyapurânam, have simply noted
the division into 'gentle' and 'harsh' modes of devotion made in the
Tirukkahrrupatiyar and moved on to other topics (Ponniah, 1952: 28;
Àramuka Nâvalar, quoted in Hudson, 1989: 380-381). A text roughly
contemporaneous with the Periyapurânam that exists now only in frag
ments, the Tillai ulâ, refers to the Siva's request for Ciruttontar's son not
35 This is an obvious reference to the story of Ciruttontar.

36 The reference here is obviously to Ariváttayar, who, in the Periyapurânam, attempts
to kill himself with a sickle after falling and spilling his offerings of food for Siva.
37 Here the stone refers to Càkkiyar, an erstwhile Buddhist who throws stones at a Siva
liñga to express his devotion. The fissure refers, as above, to Arivàttâyar. The 'shining
sword' is wielded in devotion by a number of saints, including Ëyarkônkalikkàmar and
Kôtpuli, slayer of his entire family. Mürtti resorts to grinding his own flesh when deprived
of sandalwood for worship by evil Jains. Mürkka is the unrepentant gambler who offers
the fruits of his dicing to Siva and his devotees.
126 ANNEE. MONIUS
merely as harsh but as a 'heinous s

40; Dorai Rangaswarny, 1990: 1011-101
attitudes toward the more violent activities of the saints in the Cola court.
Yet none of these explanations of the violence found in the Periyapurânam
are entirely satisfying, nor do they explain Cëkkilâr's twelfth-century
propensity to exaggerate what little violence exists in earlier hagiograph
ical literature. Why do these particular forms of gruesome devotion rise to
the fore? What is Cëkkilâr suggesting about the nature of Saiva devotion
through these startling images?
3. TAKING UMÀPATI SERIOUSLY
One additional piece of literary evidence regarding the nâyanmâr perhaps

sheds new light on their curious proclivity toward violence: a story told
by the fourteenth-century Saiva philosopher mentioned above, Umâpati
Civàcâriyâr, a brief comment noted in many studies of Tamil Saivism and
thq Periyapurânam (Shulman, 1993: 19; Hudson, 1989: 373-374; Prentiss,
1999: 117; Davis, 1998: 217; Stein, 1985: 323) but explored in depth by
none. In his Cëkkilârpurânam cited previously, Umâpati maintains that
Cëkkilâr composed the Periyapurânam in order to lure his royal patron,
Anapâyan, away from a profound interest in the Tamil Jain narrative
known as the Cïvakacintâmani. Having noticed the king's interest in the
Jain text, Cëkkilâr tells the Cola monarch (valavan):
This book of the Jams (camanar) is false.
You must guard and protect [your] next life.
[This book's qualities] are insensible.
The stories of Siva's [devotees], flowing with abundance,
benefit both this life and the next life. (v. 21)
Is there anything to be gained by taking Umâpati's declaration of

authorial intent seriously, by investigating further its interpretive possi
bilities in regard to the violence exercised by so many of the nâyanmâr?
Certainly it requires no great literary insight to locate many instances in
which the Periyapurânam rails explicitly against the Jains, particularly
Jain ascetics; the text is full of anti-Jain invective, and Yocum (1988:
11) notes that eight of the sixty-three saints of Siva directly confront
and defeat members of the Jain community. Appar, for example, spends
much of his adult life regretting viscerally his misspent youth as a Jain
ascetic; Campantar bests the Jains of Maturai in a variety of contests and
debates. Mürtti subjects his own flesh to the grinding stone when a despic
able Jain king deprives him of sandalwood to offer Siva, while hapless
Jains are vanquished by soldiers in the story of Tanti Atikal. Indeed, as
Peterson (1998: 164) notes, Jains have long served as useful foils for the
construction of Tamil Saiva identity, beginning with the poetry of Appar:
He is the cosmos, the blue-necked One,
who destroyed the arrogant and fat Jains,
lacking in both virtue and clothing.38
Taking seriously Umâpati's assertion regarding Cêkkilâr's intent, the

remainder of this essay will consider the ways in which interpreting
the Periyapurânam as a response to the Clvakacintâmani may shed new
light on the text, particularly on the narratives of violence interwoven
throughout. Assuming that the Periyapurânam provides a case study of
sorts for the Saiva-Jain model of 'productive encounter' proposed by Davis
(1998), it will conclude by arguing that the focal points of contention
between these two Tamil texts lie not in matters of doctrine or ritual prac
tice, but with aesthetics, with distinct and competing views of the manner
in which aesthetic experience can lead one to transcend quotidian norms
and values.
4. THE CAVA KA CI NT À MA NI
The Clvakacintâmani is the product of a Jain literary culture with a long

history in the Tamil-speaking region. From the earliest of the Tamil Brâhmï
inscriptions39 to the so-called 'didactic' works of the early centuries of the
Common Era,40 long narrative works such as the Nïlakëci,41 and important
treatises on grammar and poetic theory,42 Jain authors writing in Tamil
made significant contributions to South Indian literary culture through at
least the fourteenth century. Such literary activity attests to a long and
influential Jain presence in the Tamil-speaking South, a presence also
recorded in a large corpus of inscriptions, temples, and images.43 The
38 Tëvâram V-58; translation from Prentiss (1999: 72). Note that Jain literature is
likewise full of anti-Saiva rhetoric in several languages; see Handiqui (1968).
39 These inscriptions, clustered around the modem city of Maturai, attest to a Jain
presence in the Tamil region from at least the second century BCE (Mahadevan, 1970:
12-14).
40 Such as the collection of moral teachings known as the Nâlatiyar, said to have been
composed by eight thousand Jain monks and presented to the king of Maturai (Pope, 1984).
41 The tenth-century story of a deity serving the fierce goddess Kali who is converted
to Jainism and tours the Tamil countryside, defeating various non-Jains in debate (Chakra
varti, 1984).
42 Such as the influential tenth-century treatise on prosody, the Yâpparunkalam, attri
buted to Amitacâkarar (Amitacákarar, 1998).
43 The history of the Jain presence in the Tamil-speaking region of southern India
warrants far more scholarly attention than it has received to date. For an introduction to the
128 ANNEE. MONIUS
Cîvakacintâmani ('Cïvakan, the Wish-F

takkatëvar, said to be a Jain monk living
dated to the early tenth century (Zv
prets the story of Jlvandhara found in
in viruttam meter and 3,145 verses lon
composed on a dare of sorts. The p
takkatëvar, saying that while Jains wer
renunciation, none knew how to prais
he could master the poetic art of love
the Cîvakacintâmani and presented it in
delight of the king.46
The Cîvakacintâmani is also known as the Mananül, 'The Book of
Marriages',47 for each of its thirteen chapters (ilampakam) describes the
hero, Cïvakan, as he marries yet another beautiful young girl. Even his final
renunciation is likened to a marriage of sorts to omniscience, personified
as a woman. The narrative begins with King Caccantan foolishly handing
over his kingdom to his minister that he might enjoy the company of his
wife more fully. The minister kills the king, but, before Caccantan dies,
he sends his pregnant queen, Vicayai, away on a flying machine shaped
like a peacock. She gives birth to Cïvakan on a cremation ground and
abandons him there; a merchant finds the infant and raises him as his
own. Cïvakan eventually learns the truth of his birth, but continues to live
as the merchant's son. A succession of amorous exploits on the part of
the hero follows; at the end of each chapter, Cïvakan weds the charming
girl who gives each ilampakam its name. His first wife, Kôvintai, he wins
by returning the king's stolen cattle; his second wife, Kântaruvatattai, he
secures after a singing contest and a furious battle. Këmacari's heart is won
at first sight, and Curamañcari's hand is won through trickery as Cïvakan,
disguised as an old brahmin, laughs and jokes and compels the girl to break
her vow of never looking upon a man. Eventually, Cïvakan defeats the evil
minister who murdered his father and stole his kingdom, and ascends to
history of Tamil Jainism, see Desai (1957), Chakravarti (1974), Champakalakshmi (1978),
Ekambaranathan (1988), and Orr (1998, 1999).
44 See the fourteenth-century commentary on verse 3143 by Naccinârkkiniyar in Tirut
takkatêvar (1986: 1518-1519). All further references to the text of the Cïvakacintâmani
are taken from this edition.
45 Such as the ninth-century Uttarapurâna of Gunabhadra. For a detailed discussion

of the ways in which Tiruttakktëvar's text differs from its Sanskrit antecedents, see
Vijayalakshmy (1981: 51-77).
46 See Câminâtaiyar's introduction to the edition of the Cïvakacintâmani cited above,
17-19. The origin of this story is unknown, and Câminàtaiyar merely cites 'tradition'.
47 Ibid., p. 20.
the throne himself. Amid much love-play with his wives, one day Cïvakan
witnesses a male monkey seducing a female in front of his mate; when the
male monkey offers his mate a bit of fruit to beg her forgiveness, the fruit
is snatched away by a palace guard. The scene thrusts Cïvakan into a state
of despair and disgust with the world, and he renounces all before the Jina
Mahâvlra.48
As a long and beautifully poetic narrative attributed to a Jain author,
the Cïvakacintâmani seems a bit out of place in a tradition known for
its commitment to ascetic restraint, even among members of the lay
community. Not only does this 'Book of Marriages' focus on the wedded
bliss of Cïvakan cavorting with his many wives, but the text is extremely
explicit, almost painfully graphic, in sexual imagery and double entendre,
not to mention vivid depictions of the gruesome horrors of the crema
tion ground (place of the hero's birth) and the battlefield (where Cïvakan
defeats many a foe, particularly the evil minister). Cïvakan's sexual antics
with his many wives are described in shockingly wild terms, in sharp
contrast to the more nuanced subtleties characteristic of earlier classical
Tamil love poetry; the Tamil telling of the hero's story is full of explicit
detail not found in its Sanskrit antecedents either.49 Consider, for example,
the description of the hero and his wife Patumai:
His garlands ripped, the saffron on him was ruined, his chaplet was charred - because
of the enthusiasm of intercourse her girdles broke, her beautiful anklets cried out and the
honeybees were scared off as the young couple made love. (v. 1349)50
Love-making is vigorously and pointedly described with gusto, the poetry

full of sly humor and hidden meanings. In describing the love games of
the hero with his wife Curamañcari, for example, Tiruttakkatëvar plays
on the phrase kumari âta, which can mean both 'to bathe in the the
Kumari River' and 'to lie down [sexually] with a virgin' (v. 2020).51 The
vividness of the sexual imagery has proven troubling, even embarrassing,
for commentators pre-modern and modern alike. The fourteenth-century
commentator on the Cïvakacintâmani, Naccinàrkkiniyar, offers little by
way of explanation or elaboration. Modern scholars, such as Vijayalak
shmy (1981), interpret the sexual imagery 'as sugar coating to his religious
pill' (p. 48), revising only slightly the opinion of earlier Tamil interpreters
such as the Jesudesans (1961; quoted in Zvelebil, 1974: 138, note 24),
48 A brief synopsis of the story can be found in Zvelebil (1995: 170), Vijayalakshmy
(1981:54-69), and Ryan (1985: 100-112).
49 For example, the story of Jîvandhara found in Gunabhadra's Uttarapurâna
(Gunabhadra, 1968: 494-528).
50 Translation adapted from Ryan (1998: 67).
51 This particular double entendre is discussed in brief by Zvelebil (1974: 138, note 23).
130 ANNEE. MONIUS
who maintain that the text offers 't

senses' and should, in fact, be 'banne
does seem hard to reconcile the conte
is with sex and violence, with the Ta
Tiruttakkatëvar was a Digambara asc
Yet, as Ryan's (1998) work on th
argues, this excess of images of love
tions of aesthetic reception as rasa, t
of emotion, serves not to elevate the
to denigrate it.52 Compared to the s
poetry, Ryan argues, the graphic de
one as coarse, a bit 'over the top',
dangerous, even ridiculous. Women's
to directly in the text of the Clvaka
using a Tamil phrase, akul, that appea
poetry only one hundred twenty-six
point for enthusiastic and loving des
eight times likened to spears in th
References to women's breasts most
adjective vem, meaning 'desirable',
of this, argues Ryan, amounts to
Tiruttakkatëvar 'skilfully manage[s]
the subtle love imagery' of classical T
lascivious and frightening sexuality w
'cumulative effect' (p. 79) upon the re
verses, of such unbridled cynicism a
'skillfully poisonous parody' (p. 81) o
of Cïvakan's turn toward omniscienc
monkey attempting to reconcile w
offering of fruit knocked away by a gu
text's disdain for the hero's previous
at sexual play teaches the hero of the
of suffering; Cïvakan's love exploits
counter-example,
The Clvakacintamani's condemnat
the themes of love and sexuality, but
52 For a discussion of the basics of Sanskri

Tamil equivalent to rasa, termed meyppâtu, li
in the fourth- or fifth-century treatise on Tam
a comparison of the Tamil concept with its Sa
31-33).
and kings as well. Tamil classical poetry is replete with images of war
and violence in its pur am (literally, 'outer') or heroic mode, and the
Cîvakacintâmani similarly transforms such nuanced classical poetics into
graphic depictions of war through excess. The following Cañkam poem,
for example, typifies the classical treatment of violence and the human
anguish wrought by war:
If I think I'll receive an elephant and go home,
all the elephants like hills on which glowing clouds
are caught have been shot full of arrows and have died ....
You who labor with the plow of your sword so that men
are stacked like hay! On the broad, savage field where
those who have come in need, stripped of joy, grieve,
for there is nothing to bring away, I sang and beat out sharp rhythms
on the clear eye of my ... drum. (Puranânûru v. 368)53
Alongside such subtle, even haunting images of war, the Cîvakacin

tamani's description of the battlefield's 'deluge of blood' makes a mockery
of the violence of war:
As though to say that this was the level of the deluge of blood from the pale bodies, the
goblins with irregular, elephant-toenail like teeth joined their palms in obeisance on top of
their heads and danced, singing of what had been given. The small jackals on the elephants
called out laughing. Eagles and kites lay down, sides splitting with laughter, (v. 804)54
As in the case of Ryan's treatment of the erotic excesses in the Cîvakacin

tâmani, one might argue that the excesses of violence yield similar fruit: a
disdain for the blood of the battlefield, for the responsibilities of kingship,
an ennui that culminates in Cïvakan's eventual withdrawal from the plea
sures of both women and the sword. Tiruttakkatëvar, in short, satirizes the
classical or Cañkam poetic conventions of both love and war.
In fact, within the rubric of aesthetic reception and appreciation of text
noted above, the pan-Indic theory of rasa, asethetic 'flavor', and its Tamil
analogy, meyppátu, the Cîvakacintâmani would appear to emphasize the
rasa of bîbhatsa,'disgust', the meyppátu of ilivaral.55 Although several
scholars of Sanskrit poetics have noted that there is nothing uniquely
53 Translation from Hart and Heifetz (1999: 210).

54 Translation from Ryan (1985: 168).
55 According to the classical Tamil treatise on grammar and poetics, the Tolkâppiyam
(v. 250), ilivaral or 'the disgusting' is evoked by scenes of old age, disease, pain, and low
social status. The commentator on the verse, Ilampüranar, cites several poetic examples,
including the following couplet from the fifth-century ethical work, Tirukkural, on menmai
or low status (Tolkâppiyam, v. 8):
When one is cursed with want,

even one's own mother looks at [one] as a stranger.
132 ANNEE. MONIUS
Jain about the aesthetic model of Jain

342-347; Kulkarni, 1983: 180-183; Tu
the great tenth-century Sanskrit liter
with vira, 'the heroic', culminates i
of rasa experience for Abhinavagup
142). Indeed, sânta is enumerated as th
rasa experiences in a second-century c
Anuogaddâra Sutta (Warder, 1999: 343
at the feet of the Jina Mahâvïra woul
aesthetic experience given pride of pla
The CïvakacintâmanVs evocation of
literary culture in which satire - pa
in particular religious commitments -
developed art form. The oldest extant
example - the Mattavilâsa-prahasana
and the Bhagavadajjukam-prahasana, 'T
- are attributed to the seventh-centur
Káñclpuram, Mahendravarman I (Loc
raucous fun of various religious figure
for example, a drunken Saiva asceti
search for his lost skull-bowl and accu
of stealing it.56 The Manimêkalai, a
the Cïvakacintâmani by at least severa
images of non-Buddhist characters, in
along 'like an elephant in distress' (Càt
who 'fights with his shadow' like a
uncouth chieftain surrounded by 'dried
and vats of boiling toddy' (vv. xvi.66-6
literary culture are remembered tradition
a direct - and often directly satirical
Manimêkalai as a response to the earli
to the lost Buddhist Kuntalakëci and its
Nïlakëci (Monius, 2001: 60-77). The Cïvakacintâmani, in other words,
was composed in a literary culture already familiar with satire and literary
denigration in at least two languages.
How does Tiruttakkatëvar's stance on the love-play of his hero make
sense within a Jain context, as well as within the larger literary community
in Tamil-speaking South India dominated by non-Jains? Above and beyond
56 The Buddhist monk, Nagasena, is said to yearn for the 'unexpurgated, original texts'
of the Buddha that permit drinking and the enjoyment of women (Lockwood & Bhat, 1994:
66).
the obvious Jain narrative tendency toward extolling sensual restraint and
asceticism, it requires no great leap of the imagination to assume that
the Jain poet, by ridiculing human love in its many mental and phys
ical aspects, also seeks to denigrate non-Jain religious tendencies that
focus specifically on love - on the evocation of the rasa of srngâra,
'the erotic' - namely Hindu devotionalism or bhakti. By the era of the
CTvakacintamanVs composition, Tamil literary culture had created new
genres of devotional literature centered on the deities Visnu and Siva, much
of it addressed to the lord as lover. Whereas Tiruttakkatêvar undermines
the classical literary tradition, the bhakti poets employ the love themes
of earlier texts to forge a new 'poetry of connections' (Ramanujan, 1981:
166), a first-person plea to the lord for union with him, often expressed,
particularly among the Vaisnava poets, in explicitly erotic terms.57 The
themes of landscape, mood, and secular love prevalent in the classical
Cankam corpus are used, in the poetry of Hindu devotionalism, to describe
human yearning for union with the lord, to capture the profoundly phys
ical and mental aspects of human love and transfer them to the realm of
devotee and divine (Ramanujan, 1981: 126-169). In denying the value of
human love, Tiruttakkatêvar strikes at the emotional core of Hindu bhakti,
its positive valuation of the physical body and mind that can know and
experience love on many complex levels.
This is not to suggest, however, that Tamil-speaking Jains in general,
or even Tiruttakkatêvar in particular, did not themselves engage in any of
the practices of pan-Indic 'devotion', including the erection of elaborate
temples, the consecration of images in metal and stone, and the composi
57 Consider, for example, the erotic anguish of the ninth-century female devotee of
Krsna, Ântâl:
My soul melts in anguish -

he cares not
if I live or die.
If I see the lord of Govardhana
that looting thief,
that plunderer,
I shall pluck
by their roots
these useless breasts,
I shall fling them
at his chest,
I shall cool
the raging fire
within me.
In Nâlâyira Tivyap Pirapantam (1993: 272-273); translation from Dehejia (1990: 125—
126).
134 ANNEE. MONIUS
tion of songs and poetry to be used d

(1998, 1999, 2000) recent work amply
speaking Jain women (and men) wer
rituals lives of temples large and sm
women participating most actively
period. Tiruttakkatevar himself puts
the mouth of his hero,58 and Cïvakan
his amorous pursuit of women and t
various Jain temples and holy sites.
the Jain context is, of course, somew
or Vaisnavas. In the rite of pujâ, ritu
deity or the Jina, the Hindu present
then taken back as prasada, holy rem
soul of the worshiper until next he o
the Jain context, however, as Babb (
tiation of the material substance offe
unmoved, even unaware, of the lay J
not 'giving to' but 'giving up', an opp
for a discrete time in the renunciator
If one imagines, with Cort (2002),
present in all Indie religious tradit
saints tend toward an embracing of
of devotion occupy the opposite end
of 'sober veneration' of the Jinas wh
ciation (p. 85). The practices of devot
- are no less present in Jainism than
the emotional context in which such rituals are understood to be effective
differs markedly from the Hindu devotional poets' ecstatic search for union
with the lord.
The fact of Jain devotional practice and its obvious importance to

Tamil-speaking Jains throughout the medieval period render the Cïva
kacintâmanfs denigration of love and sex all the more nuanced and
complex. To return to the language of rasa, of aesthetic reception and
58 As at v. 1242:
Oh you who created the primeval Veda!

Oh you who submit to a pouring rain of flowers!
Oh you who know the path of right!
Oh you who possess knowledge beyond compare!
Oh you called Lord!
May you unbind the worldly bonds of those who
worship your lotus feet in this punishing ocean of births.
appreciation, Tiruttakkatëvar's narrative suggests nothing less than a re

ordering of the list of nine rasas, demoting spigâra, 'the erotic', that
begins most brahminical lists, and substituting instead bïbhatsa, 'the
disgusting', as it paves the way for Cîvakan's final experience of sânta,
the poised, detached equanimity that heralds the dawning of omniscience.
Jain ritual practices, no less the hymns praising the Jinas that issue forth
from the hero's mouth, are directed toward the ideal detachment, the ideal
sânta, of the Jinas.
In the twelfth-century Côla court of Kulôttunka II where Cëkkilâr
is traditionally believed to have composed his Periyapurânam, Tirut
takkatëvar's Cïvakacintâmani represented nothing peculiar in the literary
discourse of the proper cultivation of sânta as a response to the realities of
human life. The themes of love and violence - and the appropriately moral
responses to the human facts of sexuality and aggression - constituted a
significant core of poetic narratives that, by Cëkkilâr's day, spanned several
genres and crossed sectarian boundaries. Tiruttakkatëvar's technique of
employing erotic and violent excess to make his religious point aestheti
cally is, in fact, one well established across a variety of poetic genres by
the mid-twelfth century.
South Indian literary culture in the centuries before the composi
tion of the Periyapurânam produced a number of Jain 'romances' in
Sanskrit; indeed, the majority of Sanskrit romance narratives composed
in the tenth and eleventh centuries were authored by Jains (Handiqui,
1968: 53). Peterson (1998: 179) speculates, for example, that the Cin
tâmani cited by Umâpati might be a text other than Tiruttakkatëvar's
Tamil version of the Cïvakan story; while she points to the tenth-century
Kannada version of the Uttarapurâna, Câmundaràya's Trisastilaksana
mahâpurâna, (Gnanamurthy, 1966: 33) ties a Sanskrit version of the
Cïvakan/Jïvandhara narrative to the Côla court: the Ksatracûdâmani attri
buted to Vâdhïbasimha.59 When Vâdhïba's narrative is compared to other
versions of Jïvandhara's story, its considerable escalation of violence
becomes obvious. While the Ksatracûdâmani, most likely composed after
the Tamil Cïvakacintâmani, is at pains to ensure that 'all the sensuous
59 'It may be this Cola king's admiration for the Cintâmani story written by Vàdhïba
Simha that is referred to in Cëkkilâr Purânam'. The dating of this text and the identity of
its author have been matters of considerable scholarly disagreement. Hultzsch (1914), for
example, assigns the text to the tenth century (pp. 697-698), while Venkatasubbiah (1928)
argues for a slightly later, early eleventh-century dating (pp. 156-160). The early eleventh
century date is also favored by Winternitz (1999: 515). The text was first published in
the early twentieth century (Vâdhïbasimha Süri, 1903). I am indebted to John Cort of
Denison University for his assistance in tracking down references to this text (personal
communication, November 28, 2001).
136 ANNE E. MONIUS
ness [of the earlier Tamil text] [is] ov

[it] emphasise[s] in the last half of ev
33), the number of violent episodes t
the story increases exponentially. In th
Jïvanadhara/Cïvakan wages a bloody wa
against the evil minister who usurped hi
In the literary culture of Cëkkilâr's d
through literary excess had come to f
Tamil court literature known as paran
has killed 700 or 1000 elephants on [t
excellence, and poetic expression of gru
1995: 524). Best known among the paran
attributed to Cayankontar, which narra
(Sanskrit Kaliñga) during the reign of K
the Takkayakapparan i attributed to the
which tells the famous story of Daksa's
twelfth-century texts, literary references
now lost (Zvelebil, 1992: 63-64). What to
such as the Kaliñkattupparani - its staid
royal patron, dark descriptions of the g
humorous) scenes of ghouls feasting on
battle - is unclear, and the few scholars
reach little agreement as to its proper
(1890), one of the earliest Tamil scholar
views its wild descriptions as 'far-fet
in which oriental poets delight', its bat
'appropriate to the grandeur of [its mar
the way in which the cadence of the ve
Zvelebil (1974: 211) interprets the paran
development from earlier heroic genres
(1985: 276-292), however, has seen the po
the macabre feast of the ghouls on the b
echoing of the sounds of battle, in 'the c
excess' (p. 279) whose humor Shulman ul
'king and clown' in South Indian literary
It is the potential for humor in the p
tion that the descriptions of battles and
something like irony - that is of intere
discussed above, literary excess of im
a significant authorial technique in the
60 A full discussion of the merits of Shulman's
example, the following two stanzas, in which the 'gruesome job' of the
ghouls is expressed through a 'horribly suggestive rhythm, which reflect[s]
marvellously the eagerness, the hunger, the perverse joy of the demons'
(Zvelebil, 1974: 210):
The blood, the blood of the Kaliñgas,

to enjoy, to enjoy Kaliñgam,
kill the tender bodies,
kill the tender bodies!
To eat and drink,
rejoicing at refreshing [our] bellies with food;
rise up, oh hosts of demons,
rise up, rise up, oh hosts of demons! (vv. 302-303)
It is hard not to read irony into such a poetic description, a condemnation

of war rather than an embracing of battle and valor in the classical heroic
genre. 'Hyperbole', in the case of Sanskrit literature, as Siegel (1987)
notes, 'demands either awe or laughter' (p. 40); scenes of battle - with
'elephants ... whose wounds gushed blood' (Kaliñkattupparani, v. 456)
and where the defeated slink away pretending to be Jinas, Hindu pilgrims,
Buddhists, or wandering bards (vv. 466-469) - like the ghoulish imagery
above, abound in comic hyperbole.
If the Kaliñkattupparani shares with the Cïvakacintâmani the literary
techniques of excess, the two also display a biting irony in their treatment
of women. Like the perverse use of female eye imagery in the Jain text
noted above, the parani also likens a lady's eyes - often in classical Tamil
an emblem of her beauty - to deadly weapons:
[Your] great eyes, like spears,

pierce the breasts of young men
and rip open wounds ... (v. 56)
Women are portrayed with a kind of biting irony - as when a woman

chides her fallen husband for biting his otherwise perfect lips in the
throes of a violent death (v. 483) - and one wonders if such descriptions
might not, in fact, bear much in common in terms of technique with the
Cïvakacintâmani. In the Takkayâkapparani, Daksa, the principal character,
takes on the head of a goat after suffering Siva's fury of decapitation
(Zvelebil, 1974: 212-213), suggesting again that perhaps such texts are
to be read as poking fun at, or questioning the value of, the classical poetic
presentations of war and female sexuality.
If the parani genre can be read as undermining, or at least calling into
question, the heroic praise of the violence of battle, another new and more
productive genre of Tamil literature, the ulâ, continues along the same
lines, focusing on the issues attending female sexuality. With more than
138 ANNEE. MONIUS
seventy extant examples in Tamil, the

set in a common poetic meter known
the king as he processes through the s
women of various ages along the way a
love with him, each according to her c
719). Ottakküttar, author of the Takka
successive Cola kings (Vikkiraman, Ku
Ràjarâja II), composed the most famous
psychology of female love, the Müvar
to each of his royal patrons. So graph
women in passionate love that commen
onward regard the female characters
(Shulman, 1985: 312). What is importa
the stage for interpreting the violent
that the king, surrounded by women l
utterly dispassionate, unmoved by even
of interest on the part of his audience.
of this study is the condemnation, by
poem, the Tillai ulâ,61 of the violence
The text maintains that Siva perform
the father to serve up his own son fo
1011-1012; Shulman, 1993: 39-40).
Leaving aside the question of the over
or ulâ texts as a whole, it is certainly
Indian literary culture, the issues of v
sexuality were being re-thought, re-e
the Cïvakacintâmani evokes in its audi
sexually graphic scenes it plays over
ture features ghouls feasting rapturous
while the ulâ poems portray a king un
he evokes while processing through h
emerges, no less, in what appears to h
peace and prosperity in the Cola realm,
bloodshed that extended from the last
through the rule of Ràjarâja II (Nila
61 The Tillai ula survives only in fragments, p

ajournai known as Tamilppolil\ this incomplet
62 Given the spotty historical record in pre
cautious in arguing from lack of evidence. On
inscriptional evidence of battle documents hist
simply shifted to portray the monarch in a mo
themes and the literary techniques employed by Tiruttakkatëvar in his Jain

condemnation of human sexuality and love in the early tenth century find
wider voice in a variety of new literary genres by the mid-twelfth century,
creating a literary ethos of ironic - even humorous - dismissal of the old
Cankam poetic values of love and war.
5. JAIN HEROES AND SAIVA SAINTS
Given this reading of the Cîvakacintâmani as well as of poeti

newly emergent in the reign of Cëkkilâr's royal patron, how m
Periyapumnam be understood as a 'response', as a reaction to the
Jain text? If Umàpati's claim that Cêkkilâr composed his tex
his royal patron away from an interest in Jainism is correct, how
Periyapumnam best understood as a productive endeavor in that d
At the level of form, of poetic structure and narrative frame
the Cîvakacintâmani establishes a set of conventions for lo
narratives that all subsequent medieval Tamil narrative works, f
Periyapumnam to Kampan's Irâmâvatâram, follow. The Cintâman
example, is the first narrative poem to employ the meter (v
commonly used by the great poet-saints of Siva and Visnu and f
by Cêkkilâr as well. The Jain text is the first in Tamil to em
literary device known as avaiyatakkam, the author's expression of
regarding the faults of the composition to follow; Cêkkilâr follow
takkatëvar's lead by likening his feeble attempt to capture in w
glories of the saints to 'a dog of great avarice, [trying to] drink up th
expanse of ocean' (Periyapumnam, v. 6). Just as the Jain author b
long story with elegant descriptions of the bounty of the Tamil coun
the grandeur of the royal city, and the virtue of the ruling monarch
does Cêkkilâr preface his long set of hagiographical narratives w
same glorious praise of the Côla country, the capital city, and h
patron.
Moving beyond this relatively superficial, formal 'influence' that the
Cîvakacintâmani exerts not only upon the Periyapumnam but upon all
subsequent Tamil poetic narratives, the Periyapumnam arguably does
nothing less than attempt to recover the idea of love, the aesthetic
experience that literary depiction of love evokes, from the wastebin of
sarcasm constructed so subtly by Tiruttakkatëvar. In response to the
Cîvakacintâmani and perhaps to a host of other Tamil literary composi
tions of the Côla era that similarly dismiss love and war (as discussed
above), the Periyapumnam recovers love or anpu as a worthy human
experience of religious import, not simply by harkening back to older
140 ANNEE. MONIUS
classical depictions of love, but by i

through the cultivation of a new kind
vira, the 'heroic'. In so reconstituting the
Cëkkilâr champions a new definition o
lord that befits a king (such as his roy
act decisively in the world. Against th
of erotic love and the amorous exploit
depictions of battle and female sexual
and ula genres, the violence of the Pe
heuristic role in this project of recov
and literary value.
As Ledbetter (1996), in his study of v
fiction, suggestively notes, the momen
violence done to the human body 'that
often 'provides transforming moments
the Cîvakacintâmani or the parani depi
seek to evoke revulsion or disgust in t
the Periyapuranam's use of violent ima
in Ledbetter's terms, to shock the read
once in the Periyapuranam, Cëkkilâr's
at the violent deeds of the bhaktas; the
example, simply cannot believe the sc
remarks: 'He is the servant of the one
is not the killer' (v. 585). The Periyapu
full of commentary on the value of hu
literary techniques of excess to evoke
Emotion, particularly the emotional ex
in a new key and with new religious s
text as human experiences of great sot
- on the issue of the relative value of v
experiences - that the Periyapuranam
Cïvakacintamani and other literary wo
value of love and heroism in battle. If T
a revulsion for the worldly life that cu
'the quiescent', then the Periyapurana
constitutes a central element in any hu
subtly constructs a vision of love ting
literary contention that love and battle
or any other living being - in search of
Even before Cëkkilâr begins to recoun
of Siva, he presents his audience wit
encapsulates the themes of love and violence, self-inflicted suffering and

redemption, to come. The story of the progenitor of the Côla dynasty, King
Manunïticôlan (vv. 98-135), constitutes a paradigm of sorts for each of the
nâyanâr tales to follow. In this, perhaps the most emotionally wrenching
story in the entire text, the king's son, 'abounding in the exalted virtues
coveted by his rare father... [and] like a young sun' (v. 104), inadvertently
crushes a young calf to death under the wheels of his chariot.63 While the
guilt-ridden prince seeks redemption through brahminic performance of
Vedic rituals, the mother cow, distraught with grief, stumbles to the palace,
where she summons the king by ringing a bell with her horns. The king,
feeling 'as if his head had taken up the harsh poison of all the sorrow that
had befallen the cow' (v. 117), rages at his ministers who advise the ritual
expiation for cow-slaughter prescribed in the Vedic law books: 'Will [such
ritual penance] cure the illness of the cow crying from grief at the loss of
her young calf (v. 120)? Explaining further the hypocrisy that would be
evident to all if he let his own son escape a death-sentence freely meted out
to other murderers, King Manunïticôlan demands that he must suffer as the
wronged mother cow has suffered and issues a terrible death-warrant for
his own son; when his minister prefers suicide to carrying out the king's
wishes, the king himself crushes his son to death under the wheels of his
own royal chariot. As all weep in agony, Lord Siva appears and restores all
to life again: the calf, the minister, and the young prince. King and mother
cow alike rejoice.
In what way does this short and poignant story anticipate the longer
and more complex hagiographical narratives to come? First, the story
highlights the prominence of the father-son relationship, a bond starkly
and often wrenchingly emotional, demanding, precious yet difficult. As
will be discussed farther below, the father-son relationship is paradigmatic
throughout the Periyapurânam, with Siva clearly cast in a paternal role
rather than that of lover or king. Another theme to emerge from this story
that resonates with the hagiographie narratives to follow is, as Shulman
(1993) rightly describes it, a profoundly emotional, and perhaps uniquely
Tamil, insistence on the external manifestation of emotion; as Shulman
describes the king's profound experience of empathy with the grieving
mother cow, 'having internalized the emotion initially, he is still driven
in the direction of a concrete externalization in action' (p. 14). Unlike his
ministers, who insist that he follow the letter of brahminic law in meting
out punishment to his son, the king demands that attention be paid to
the emotional spirit of the law; the only proper punishment will be one
63 Shulman (1993: 10-17) discusses this narrative within the larger framework of his
examination of biblical and Indian aqedah stories.
142 ANNEE. MONIUS
that evokes the same emotionally drai

mother cow has suffered. Emotion ha
such demands, as Shulman notes, mus
In this context, the violent death of th
bespeaks both emotional commitment
the grieving mother wronged manifes
made all the more terrible by the fathe
story, like the larger narrative frame
tially about emotion, about the value a
of love and empathy, and the high c
to embrace them. The power of the k
the attention of Siva, who, as above, r
of King Manunïticôlan, in short, celeb
human - and humane - feelings of emp
the figure of a heroic Cola king. In the
theory, karuna (empathy or pathos) an
merge with vira, the 'heroic', in this sh
saints. In recapturing the value of t
motivating - forces of love and empat
images of the heroic warrior, the Peri
ling response to the earlier Jain Cïvak
heroic - as rasa or meyppâtu and as w
and humanely - constitute the very co
cultivating disgust for the ties that bi
the world, the Periyapurânam argues
tempering and redirecting of love and
'the heroic', courageously externalized
Love as anpu in the Periyapurânam i
in the earlier Jain narrative. If the
stood as a creative response to the Cïv
responsive tasks is the redefinition of
Periyapurânam, love as srngâra is enti
any connotation of bodily lust or se
physically expressed but in a completel
quite in contrast to earlier depictions
While Siva never quite exudes the sexu
women from their marital beds with th
the poetry of Appar, Cuntarar, and C
portrayed in strikingly sexual terms,
64 See Periyapuranam, v. 104, where the you

rare father who rejoiced greatly in love' (arum
wandering beggar of enchanting beauty, as a virile young warrior atop

his martial bull. One of the most frequent references to Siva in sexu
ally alluring form in this early devotional poetry is to his appearance as
Bhiksâtana, the beggar who wanders the earth with his skull-bowl followed
by a mangy dog. Yet, in Tamil verse, he is no ordinary beggar; so mesmeri
zing is his beauty that women's garments slip spontaneously from their
bodies as he walks by. Appar sings, assuming the voice of such a young
girl:
Listen, my friend,
yesterday
in broad daylight
I'm sure I saw
a holy one,
as he gazed at me
my garments slipped ...
If I see him again
I shall press my body
against his body
[and] never let him go.65
Campantar vividly evokes the sexual yearning of a young woman who

adores Siva in physical terms:
'O god with matted hair' ! she cries.

'You are my sole refuge' ! she cries.
'Bull rider' ! she cries, and faints in awe.
O Lord of Marukal
where the blue lily blooms in field waters,
is it fair
to make this woman waste from love's disease?66
Such images of the sexually alluring Bhiksâtana and the virile young
warrior making young women swoon are nowhere to be found in the
Periyapurânam. As the story of King Manunlticôlan suggests, Siva in
Cêkkilâr's literary vision plays a paternal role, that of a father always
loving, at times playful and demanding, but always moved by a 'son's'
displays of love. Siva 'loves' only in a fatherly, and never sexual, way; like
a good father, he spends much of his time in the background, allowing his
human devotees to take center stage. In the story of the hunter, Kannappar,
for example, a narrative that dwells on the anpu of its hero more than any
other, Siva does not appear until the ninety-fifth verse; in most stories, he
appears only in the final verses of the narrative, ready to reward the saint
for his display of devotion. Siva is most commonly referred to with epithets
65 Tevaram VI-45.8; translation from Dehejia (1988: 110-111).

66 Têvâram, II—18.1; translation from Peterson (1989: 248).
144 ANNE E. MONIUS
and phrases that speak to his paternal,

than to his form as enchanting mendic
'he who dances in the [golden] hall [of
attu âtuvân), as 'he whose half is a w
who is unknown to Visnu and Brahma
as 'the lord who rides the martial bull'
arriving on the final scene with his co
of heroism and battle readiness, strip
literally assumes the role of father to
Campantar (whose father leaves him at
Cantêcurar (who cuts of the legs of h
adopted by Siva), and Kôtpuli (who kil
of eating rice reserved for Siva). In th
emerges as a wholly paternal figure, d
genuine, acted out through sometimes
with even the slightest hint of sexuality.
Against the backdrop of the Cïvak
disgust or ennui for human sexuality
hero, Cëkkilàr's portrayal of marital r
Many among the nâyanmâr are househ
or may not share their husbands' deep
relations between man and wife appea
the text; nowhere does the reader wit
tionship, except for the occasional app
are often described with the suggestiv
ones' or 'simpletons', they are anythin
Cïvakacintâmani or the ulâ literature.
strict chastity is observed between Nl
the ends of a bamboo pole to enter the
physically grasping each other's hand
beautifully resplendent like an avatâr
wealth and beauty, Laksmï (tirumat
diately loses, in a graphically phys
her once-beautiful form when she enc
skeletal that onlookers run away in fe
Not only is love non-sexual in the Per
cism of the Cïvakacintâmani and Appar
but it is also infused with a sentimen
earlier works: the transformative, mar
heroic', a heroism in turn tempered by
empathy. Quite ironically, Cëkkilàr's e
of vira is quite in keeping with Jain literary-aesthetic theory. In one of

the few obvious departures of Jain literary theoreticians from brahminical
paradigms of rasa, the second-century Anuogaddâra inverts the first two
elements in the standard lists of emotional 'flavors', favoring vira as the
first rasa over srñgára, the 'erotic' (Kulkarni, 1983: 180; Warder, 1999:
343). Numerous among the nayanmâr are called virar, 'heroic ones',
including Iyaipakai, whose boundless love for Siva erupts into violent
excess, littering the battlefield with those who would have him ignore
Siva's command (v. 425).
Nowhere do these themes of love and violence, emotion and heroism,
come together more clearly against the backdrop of the Clvakacintâmani
than in the story of the child-saint, Cantëcurar, who amputates the legs
of his father and wins as a result the rights of Siva's own adopted son. As
above, Cantëcurar's violent attack upon his human father is identified, in at
least one Tamil source roughly contemporaneous with the composition of
the Periyapumnam, as an evil deed of heinous proportions.67 Cantëcurar,
or Canda/Candesa/Candesvara (literally, 'the fierce one') as he is known
in Sanskrit, also plays an important role in the mythology of the Sanskrit
Àgamas and the rituals of Saiva temple worship they describe.68 Canda,
described in the Kâmikâgama (4.525) as 'an angry emanation of Para
masiva' (quoted in Davis, 1991: 156), is the only being powerful enough
to consume the nirmâlya, the utterly pure remains of the food offered to
the Siva liñga in daily temple worship; these ritual 'leftovers' are offered
to Canda at his shrine, to the northeast of the central liñga. The Âgamas
describe Canda's family life, assign him a wife, and dwell at some length
on his receiving of Siva's glorious grace.69 As an emanation of Siva's
highest form (Paramasiva) and his most immediate subordinate in the
temple, inscriptional evidence suggests that Canda functioned as an inter
mediary between the lord and his human devotees, with all royal donations
to temples made directly to Canda (acting as a sort of supervising temple
authority) rather than to Siva himself.70
67 I.e., in the Tillai ula cited above.

68 For further discussion of the role of Canda in Àgamic temple worship, see Af Edholrn
(1984), Smith(1996: 209-210), Diehl (1956: 111, 134, 137, 142), Davis (1991: 155-157),
Dorai Rangaswamy (1990: 523-525, 963-967), and Rajamanickam (1964: 35-36, 178).
69 A striking visual image of this Candesánugrahamürti, literally 'the image of
grace [coming] down to Candesa', can be found on the northeast wall of the
Gañgaikondacolapuram temple built by Ràjaràja's son, Ràjendra I, circa 1020-1030.
70 In an inscription from Kâficîpuram, Cantëcurar is named the âdidâsa or 'first servant'
of Siva who donates substantial wealth to a local village; see South-Indian Inscriptions
(1890: 115-116). An inscription from the time of Kulottuñka III 'registers the exchange
of lands belonging [to various] temples ... The exchange was effected in the names of
146 ANNEE. MONIUS
Cêkkilâr's portrayal of Cantëcur

more significantly from that of the
transformed in the Tamil text into
Vicâra Carumanàr, conceived through
(v. 1221),71 learned in all Vedic and A
the feet of Siva 'who performs the d
scene reminiscent of King Manunïtic
by his son, one day Vicâra Carumanà
beating a cow who has recently give
lectures the young man on the sacra
to tend the herd himself, thinking th
to guarding this herd of cows with
rishes under the loving care of 'the l
kanru) (v. 1240), and they begin to pr
possessed by an urge to worship S
bathes it with the now plentiful pots
stranger who fails to understand the
by; he reports to the brahmin owner
required for their own Vedic rites is
riverbank. Incensed, the brahmins ap
that he put a stop to such an outra
performing his pûjâ, and, enraged b
emerges from the bushes and kicks ov
devastating violence rapidly and disp
of the techniques of literary excess em
parani authors, Vicâra picks up a near
appropriately hacked off and scatter
Siva arrives atop his bull and, in an u
embraces Vicâra and announces, 'From
Siva renames the child Cantîcan, beq
garment, and garland, and restores lif
father while the heavens rejoice. 'Wh
writes Cëkkilâr in the final lines of t
devotees who give love to the one wit
Let us praise it' (v. 1269)!
Many aspects of this narrative are stri
current discussion of violence and it
Sñ Sênâpati Âlvâr and Chandësvara on be

Inscriptions, 1955: 1239).
71 'She performed austerities in order to re
world' (ulakil tunaip putalvar perru vilañkum
the story's emphasis on innocence, childishness, and the love between

father and son. The married Candi of the Âgamas is here stripped of
all sexuality, rendered a prepubescent child conceived not through sexual
intercourse but via the austerities of his mother. In a bucolic setting of cattle
and pasture that calls to mind the escapades of that other cow-herding
boy, Krsna, nowhere does Cëkkilàr hint of the sexual play that so domi
nates Krsna's stories; Cantëcurar's knowledge is knowledge of Veda and
Àgama, of Siva and the ritual ministrations that most please him. Irony
and humor, applied in the Cïvakacintâmani and the parani literature to
sexuality and violence, are here reserved for the boy's earthly father who
quivers in fear at the accusations of his fellow brahmins against his son
and placates them with an obseqious, 'Oh brahmins of abundant greatness,
you must forgive that which has happened' (v. 1253)! Pathetic are the
ensuing scenes of the father crouching in the bushes and spying on his
young son, in sharp contrast to the gracious embrace of Cantëcurar's 'true'
father, Siva. Cantëcurar's story, couched in the non-sexual love of father
and son, exudes an innocence, a childlike sense of playfulness.
Indeed, it is in the context of a child's innocent play that Cantëcurar's
act of violence must be understood. This relatively short narrative of
fifty-nine verses is full of images of play, both linguistic and ritual.
While Cëkkilàr often indulges in word-play and double entendre in the
Periyapumnam, nowhere does he celebrate the play of language so slyly
as he does in this story. The pathetic images of Cantëcurar's earthly father
slinking from bush to bush, for example, are made all the more pathetically
humorous by the author's use of the term marai, literally 'that which is
hidden', most often used in this text to refer to the Vedic tradition and
those who practice it. The father is described as the marai mutiyôn, the
one 'matured in Vedic knowledge' or, alternatively, 'the one matured in the
art of concealment', as he climbs a tree and conceals (maraintu) himself
from his young son (v. 1254). In the act of spying he is again described
as maraiyôn, the 'concealed' or 'Vedic' one (v. 1255). In a rather wicked
play on the word tunai, which means either 'pair' or 'to cut', Cantëcurar
'falls in the shade of [Siva's] two feet' or 'in the shade of [his father's]
cut feet' (v. 1264).72 Building on this verbal play, Cëkkilàr refers to the
ritual worship of the child who knows the Vedas and Àgamas as 'play':
'[He] began the precious pujà according to the play (vilaiyâttâl) of the
established rules, his heart one with truth' (v. 1257).
It is in this context of lovingly devoted ritual play that Cantëcurar hacks
off his father's feet that 'he knew [only] as an impediment to his püjcC
72 tunait tâl nilal kil viluntavar.
148 ANNEE. MONIUS
(v. 1262),73 like a child absorbed in a

fly. Through the decidedly non-erot
literally, in this story, to those betwe
through his love, is transformed for an
protecting his beloved liñga of sand
threatens to disturb them. The violence of Cantëcurar's action is couched
in the discourse of play, of a game interrupted; the father is, in the end,
restored to life in the world of Siva (civalôkam) along with the rest of his
family (v. 1268). The innocent and precocious child's unconscious - and,
in any other context, unconscionable - act of violence moves Siva himself
to open displays of fatherly affection, again reminiscent of the martially
compassionate focus that drives Manunïticôlan and demands the attention
of the lord. Violence, in the story of Cantêcurar, simply constitutes part
of an innocent child's play of love, the reflexive reaction to a game inter
rupted, a game whose ultimate end lies in bringing together devotee and
god, child and father.
Another of Cëkkilâr's most violent stories, one equally steeped in the
pastoral imagery of forest and mountainside that calls to mind the stories
of Krsna's adolescent escapades, is the tale of Kannappar, the unlettered
hunter who sacrifices his own eye to heal a bleeding wound on a Siva
image. Like the story of Cantêcurar above, Kannappar's narrative act
of self-mutilation is couched in the terms of impromptu ritual play, of
the expression of heartfelt and innocent love suddenly threatened. In a
literary move that perhaps seeks to rehabilitate the uncouth and unkempt
hunters whom Cïvakan encounters in his wanderings,74 Kannappar, origi
nally named Tinnan, 'the powerful one', is born, through the grace of Lord
Murukan (v. 661), amid a wild yet strikingly beautiful forest to a father
of great austerities performed in past lives (v. 657). The parallels drawn
to the young Krsna's antics are striking throughout the long description
of Tinnan's happy childhood. Cêkkilâr dwells at length on the emotional
-y-3
'As that [stick-turned-axe] that chopped became a weapon to remove the impediment
to the worship, the son who had cut off the two feet of his fallen father removed what he
knew [only] as an impediment to his puja and entered into worship as before' (erinta atuvê
arccanaiyin itaiyüru akarrum patai âka marinta tâtai iru talum tunitta maintar pücanaiyil
arinta itaiyüru akarrinarây mun pól aruccittitap pukalum).
74 Tiruttakkatëvar provides the following description of a vetar or hunter whom Cïvakan
encounters in the forest:
He resembled a piece of dark darkness that had been fed with black. He had a sunken chest
from seizing and plucking lizards from deep holes in the ground. He resembled a bear with
flourishing hair. He did not know of betel leaf for his mouth. He had the voice of a ram.
(v. 1230)
Translation from Ryan (1985: 178-179).
bonds between doting parents and mischievous child and on the mother's
loving efforts to stem the tears brought on by paternal punishment. Like
young Krsna gleefully kicking down the sandcastles of his village play
mates in the poetry of his ninth-century Tamil devotee, Àntàl,75 Tinnan,
'with his small foot like a tender shoot scattered the playhouses built by
the girls of the hunter tribe' (v. 673). After Tinnan is made chief of his
tribe and leads the band of village bowmen on the hunt, the stream of
hunters moving through the dense forest is likened, in a direct allusion to
the mythic lands of Krsna, to 'the river Yamuna of deep waters and great
dark currents, entering into the great ocean of billowing waves' (v. 722).
One day, while avidly pursuing a boar into the forest, Tinnan happens upon
an image of Siva; not realizing who or what the god represents, the hunter
in nonetheless overcome by love for the deity 'due to his storehouse of
austerities performed in previous lives' (munpu cey tavattin ïttam) (v. 751).
With an almost maternal concern for the well-being of the lord, Tinnan
resolves to serve the image and sets about securing daily offerings of meat,
water, and fragrant forest flowers. A brahmin trained in Vedic ritual sees
the offerings left by the uneducated hunter and is horrified at the thought of
impure meat and other substances placed before the lord; Siva appears to
the brahmin in a dream, however, and commands him to watch a true test of
Tinnan's devotion. While the concealed brahmin looks on in amazement,
a despairing Tinnan, in a swift phrase of violence, gouges out his own eye
to heal the gushing wound on the eye of his beloved image (v. 827).76 The
image's other eye begins to bleed and, just as Tinnan raises his arrow to
75 Well known among Tamil-speaking Vaisnavas, for example, is the following verse
from Àntâl's Nâcciyâr Tirumoli (p. 234):
You dark as the rain clouds,

your charming ways
and sweet words
enchant us,
bind us like a spell.
In truth your face
is a magic mantra.
We are but urchins,
we shall not retort and hurt you,
You of the lotus eyes,
do not break our sandcastles.
Translation from Dehejia (1990: 80).

76 'Standing before [the image of the lord] with great joy in his heart, [he] took out
his own eye with an arrow, held it, and applied it to the [bleeding] eye of the First One'
(matarttu elum ullat tôtu makilntu mun iruntu tam kan mutai caram atuttu vañki mutalvar
tam kannil appa).
150 ANNEE. MONIUS
gouge out his own remaining eye, Siv

him 'Kannappa', literally 'dear one of
In addition to the allusions to Krsna'
logy noted above, not only is Tinnan's
completely stripped of eroticism, imb
maternal love expressed through the
the image, but Tinnan himself is repe
grandeur, his tribal chieftainship liken
While the hunters encountered in the
above, are anything but royal, depicte
Tinnan as 'the powerful one' is most of
wild boar likened to battle. His 'strengt
of fiery eyes' (cem kan vayam kôl ari
wears the anklets of the hero (vïrak
referred to as 'the heroic one' (vTrar
him on the hunt carry 'their bows
(v. 719). This king of the hunters, the bo
performs the ultimate sacrifice of the
himself. The simple love of the untut
to a martial character of inherent nob
engagement in the world, meets simp
love in the story of Kannappar.
Yet Cëkkilâr's depiction of Kannap
more different from the depictions
Cïvakacintâmani and the bloodletting
certainly employs the techniques of e
writers, but he does so only to describe
both 'murderous' (kolai puri) and 'cruel
of Clvakan's battles and the paranis' ca
describes the carnage of the hunt in str
The legs, mid-sections, and heads of the stags w

the elk died, their intestines flowing down the
Their bodies penetrated by arrows, wild cattle
many deer, their bodies severed by the arrows
Before wild buffaloes who ran past in panic, th

arrows as red fire [blood] and still more arrows
great wild boar passed, their heads held high, a
ferocious teeth with an anger that bubbled ove
While Cëkkilâr thus lingers over the g

audience an ethos of disgust for the s
noble animals, the self-mutilation of hi
violent episode above, is quickly passed over in a short phrase, couched

in far longer depictions of Kannappar's innocent and complete love that
leads to utter empathy (as in the case of King Manunïticôlan) with the
pain of the wounded image. Unlike the bloody gore of the warriors who
offer their heads to Kâlï on the battlefields of the parani literature (as at
Kaliñkattupparani, v. Ill), Kannappar's act of self-sacrifice is a swift act
of great healing power: 'Standing before [the lord] with great joy in his
heart, [Tinnan] took out his own eye with an arrow, held it, and applied it
to the eye of the First One' (v. 827).
Although the above discussion provides only two examples of the
contexts in which Cêkkilâr couches the violence of the saints, the stories
of Cantëcurar and Kannappar are among the most well known and
oft-depicted in South Indian literature and temple iconography. Both
are narratives of child-like innocence and love, power and play; so
extraordinary, in fact, is the power of Kannappar's story that Cêkkilâr
claims that merely by narrating it he will 'annihilate [his own] bad karma'
(v. 790). Both stories resonate with references to another child wielding
tremendous powers through play - Krsna - and emphasize that even
love for Siva manifest through violence to others or through bloody self
mutilation must be understood in the context of play. Using the metaphor
of play that is as old as the Brahmasütras to indicate the divine's imma
nence yet ultimate transcendence,77 Cêkkilâr takes great care to distinguish
this sort of devotional or divine play from the love-frolicking of the Jain
Cîvakacintàmani or the ghoulish play of Kâlï and her demonic retinue
in the Kaliñkattupparani. Whereas Clvakan's stunningly beautiful mother,
with her wide eyes, red lips, and heaving breasts, is said to be 'ambrosia for
the king [Cïvakan's father]' (vëntarku amutây) and the 'cause of his play'
(vïlaiyâtutarku ëtu) (v. 8), the 'play' of Cantëcurar lies in the actions of
ritual worship, in honoring his liñga of sand with loving devotion. Whereas
the warriors of the ferocious goddess Kâlï sever their own heads in sacri
ficial offering and then engage in a joyous dance of 'play' (vilaiyâtu)
(.Kaliñkattupparani, v. 113), Kannappar's self-sacrifice is born of tender
love and affection, a maternal urge to nurture and heal. The erotic and
violent play of adults is here transformed into the innocent and loving play
of children, even in its most violent manifestations.
Indeed, the loving play of the nâyanmâr and its seemingly inherent
potential for violence makes sense only in the broader context of love
for Siva that is salvific, in the arena of a divine presence whose action
77 See Brahmasütra 2.1.33, the so-called lîlasutra or 'verse of play': lokavat tu

lïlâkaivalyam, 'play only, as in the world'. The sütra is discussed by Goodwin (1998:
3-23).
152 ANNEE. MONIUS
in the world is itself often likened

manner in which the Periyapurânam'
[and] play' results in the 'transfor
this brand of play tinged with terro
evident throughout Cêkkilàr's text. S
of disguise, appearing at Cuntarar's w
pluck the young prince away from h
to toy with the saint, again in the gu
his feet against Cuntarar's head (vv.
his devotees/playmates, whether that
of legs that interfere with ritual pla
thrown in great love at the liñga by
violence likened by Cêkkilâr to the
inpamë ) at the occasional teasing, pu
(v. 3650). Siva enjoys the violent 'play
where his heroic (virar) devotee, Iya
as they attempt to interfere in his s
an indulgent parent watching the rou
enjoys even the most heinously violen
of love between lord and saint. The rivers of blood on the battlefield are
of no more cosmic or moral import than rivulets of water trickling through
a sandbox in the arena of lïlâ, where Siva serves simultaneously as lord,
referee, and playmate.
Indeed, all of the Saiva texts composed in Tamil during the twelfth
century emphasize this theologically complex and productive notion of
lord as player, including the first of the canonical philosophical works
that would, in later centuries, define the school known as Saiva Siddhânta.
Like the second of these philosophical treatises, the TirukkaUrrupatiyar
(discussed above), the Tiruvuntiyâr (attributed to Tiruviyalür Uyyavanta
Tëvanâyanâr and dated to 1148 CE),78 has been dismissed by modem
Saiva scholars as 'minor' (Ponniah, 1952: 24) for its 'practically nil' philo
sophical content (p. 27). Yet, even through its very form, the Tiruvuntiyâr
develops a theology of Siva as personal lord specifically engaged with his
devotees through the rubric of cosmic love-play. The refrain at the end
of the second and third lines of each stanza that gives the text its name
- untî para, 'rise up and fly' ! - has been the source of some scholarly
confusion,79 but the phrase and structure of each stanza suggest a song
78 References to the text refer to the edition found in Meykantacattiram (1994).

79 Periyâlvàr, the great Vaisnava poet-saint of the late eighth or early ninth century,
devotes eleven verses to enjoining his audience to praise the grace and beauty of the
LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST 15 3
form sung by young women playing a game perhaps akin to shuttlecock.80

Using the language of 'melting' (uruki) and 'attachment' (parru), the poet
presents a dynamic image of lord and devotee at play in the sea of ever
changing forms, inviting the devotee to break free of worldly bondage and
soar toward the lord's abode (v. 5):
He is both one (ëkanum) and not one (anëkanum).
He becomes our master (nâtan) - rise up and fly!
He grasps us - rise up and fly!81
Here and throughout the Tiruvuntiyâr, all activities of Siva are rendered in
the context of game-song, voicing a theological commitment to a vision of
divine power exercised through play that does not survive within the Saiva
Siddhânta philosophical system. The great fourteenth-century scholar and
consolidator of the Saiva Siddhânta school, Umàpati Civàcâriyàr, himself
author of eight of the fourteen canonical works, clearly limits the scope
child Krsna: 'Singing of the strength of our lord, fly! Singing the praises of our lord, fly' !
(Nâlâyirativyappirapantam, 1993: 150):
en nátan vanmaiyaip patip para

em pirân vanmaiyaip pâtip para
Moving closer to the Saiva world of the Tiruvuntiyár, Mànikkavàcakar's ninth-century

Tiruvâcakam devotes twenty verses to the unti genre in praise of Siva's miraculous and
fearful exploits, focusing especially on his destruction of the three heavenly cities and the
decapitation of his father-in-law, Daksa:
[His] bow bent, the battle commenced,

and the three cities were vanquished - rise up and fly!
They went up in flames and burned together - rise up and fly!
From Mànikkavàcakar (1971: 344):
vafaintatu villu vilaintatu pücal

ulaintana mup puram untlpara
oruñku utan ventavâru untTpara
The Tiruvuntiyár mimics precisely the refrain of Mànikkavàcakar's unti song, but the
subject matter shifts significantly from Siva's heroic exploits to the nature of the human
condition vis-à-vis the lord. Pope (1995) translates the phrase untT para as 'fly away, UnthT'
or 'fly aloft, Unthï', Subramania (1912) translates the phrase as 'rise and fly'. Dhavamony
(1971) interprets the phrase and the poetic meter as one 'which children employ when
singing to the butterfly' (p. 175).
80 In this reading of the phrase, the title would mean 'those who play the holy unti game'.
According to the ninth-century Tamil lexicon known as the Piñkalanikantu, unti refers to 'a
game of Indian women somewhat akin to the English game of battled ore and shuttlecock'
{Tamil Lexicon, 1982: 417).
OI _ _
ekanum aki anekanum anavan
nâtanum ânân enru untl para
nammaiyë ântân enru untT para
154 ANNEE. MONIUS
of divine play envisioned in the Tiruvu

Civappirakâcam, Umâpati 'declares tha
recognized in the system of Saiva Sidd
from God's gracious concern for the de
permissible to say that Siva's acts of c
and so forth, are his sports' (Hein, 19
Yet in the Tiruvuntiyâr, as in the Pe
and defines seemingly all of Siva's act
arrival in the world of form (cakalam
form, he came and appeared - rise up
the fetters that bind his devotees to t
para: 'He cuts away attachments - ri
the lord - like the ritual play of Cant
bloody sword of Iyaipakai on the play
understand; as Shulman (1985) notes,
can never play by the rules, or even tr
the anguish of the devotee in search o
each of the nâyanmâr to catch a gli
the god's vilaiyâtal [play]', for 'our tor
The extraordinary actions of devotees
make sense only within the theological
context in which distinctions between
morality and immorality, good and evil, a
in the world of Siva, and normative f
apply.
Yet the love borne by Cantëcurar and Kannappar and expressed through
the violent 'play' of amputation and self-mutilation is a love tempered by,
wholly defined by, its association with tapas (Tamil tavam), the power
wrought by severe ascetic practice. Far from the love-'games' of Clvakan
and his many consorts, love in the Periyapurànam is all-encompassing,
emotionally overwhelming, a motivating agent in and of itself, but one
crafted in the fires of the renunciatory practices of meditation and self
denial. While nowhere does the text mention the institutional frameworks
for medieval South Indian asceticism - there are no mathas (Tamil matam)
82 As Spariosu (1989: 2-3) remarks in his study of play as a philosophical category

newly reborn in Euro-American discourse:
On this view, play appears as a contingency-free, self-enclosed realm that nevertheless

manifests itself only in and through the phenomenal world. And it may be precisely this
amphibolous nature of play that accounts for its centrality in contemporary thought, where
it has become an expedient way of mending the age-old split between subject and object,
if not a universal remedy for all our metaphysical and practical problems.
or monasteries, no àcâryas or teachers, no rites of dïksâ or initiation83

- virtually all acts of violence are prefaced with references to tapas
performed in previous lifetimes. Unlike the medieval Cola ulâ or proces
sional poems discussed above, in which the king remains aloof from the
love-displays of his female subjects and walks away seemingly unaffected
(Shulman, 1985: 312-324; Ali, 1996: 183-215), no devotee of Siva - not
even the most powerful king, the most innocent child, or the most uncouth
and barbaric hunter - can remain unmoved by a vision of the lord. Even
Kannappar, utterly innocent of the name or nature of Siva, is utterly over
come by anpu or love at the sight of a stone liñga in the wilderness. Yet
such love, even in the case of the unlettered hunter, is made possible by the
tapas of former lives.
The emphasis that the Periyapuranam places on tapas as generating a
fiery heat or power must be understood against not only the backdrop of
the Jain Cïvakacintâmani but also in relation to older Saiva critiques of
Jains precisely because of their emphasis on renunciation and self-denial.
As Peterson (1998) notes in her study of the first three Saiva poets, 'Jain
asceticism is a major target of the Saiva critique' (p. 170). In the poetry
of Appar (whose self-reflexive poetic comments suggest that he was once
himself a Jain renunciant) and Campantar in particular, Jain teachings and
lifestyle habits are ridiculed for their pointless severity, impugned in harsh
tones for an absurdly irrational focus that ultimately does nothing to lead
one toward Siva. As Appar, the ex-Jain, sings:
A shaven monk, I stood by the words
of the base, ignorant Jains.
I was a hypocrite, running away
and bolting the door
at the sight of lotus-eyed young women.
A miserable sinner
who did not know the Lord of Arur
who saved my soul and possessed me
I was one who starves to death,
begging for food in a deserted town.84
In this context, the Periyapuranam does nothing less than attempt to

rehabilitate the notion of tapas/tavam, making it a prerequisite of sorts
for the full and overwhelming experience of anpu that leads one to Siva.
83 Given the fact that inscriptional evidence suggests the presence of numerous
Saiva monasteries with significant links to royal centers of power by the time of the
Periyapurânam's composition, this silence on the part of the text proves interesting. Does
the lack of reference to monastery and initiating teacher suggest that the text in some
way means to counter their ever-expanding influence in the Tamil-speaking South? Such a
question lies beyond the scope of this article and will be the subject of a forthcoming essay.
84 Têvâram IV-5.8; translation from Peterson (1998: 169-170).
156 ANNEE. MONIUS
Kannappar's story in particular high

role that tapas plays in setting the st
ence of love for the lord. Kannappar h
Jain ascetic of earlier Saiva poetry; h
and hunt. Only eight verses into the
however, the audience learns that Kan
simply a ferocious king of the jungl
have rendered him a mighty and crue
Even though he [Nàkan] had performed asceti
because of a subsequent birth he lived a life of
He lived well-established in cruelty.
He was one of great skill with the bow.
He was like an angry and ferocious lion. (v.
The power of that previous tapas/tav

seek help from the heroic warrior go
guileless Kannappar, as a young chief
by a profound love, a feeling he doe
the holy mountain of Siva. The abilit
bloody from the kill of the hunt, to fe
he does not know and has not yet seen i
of austerities performed in former live
He bore a love that became joy without end,
[due to] his storehouse of austerities performe
and he was overwhelmed by a limitless love.
Seeing the mountain of the Benevolent One
(enpu nekku uruki), while a tremendous desir
Kannappar's ability to be moved by t

on the 'storehouse' (Tttam) of tapas
from being an emotionally unstable
powered here by the work of ascetici
love in the context of divine play, is a
of Cïvakan and his wives. This love
former austerities continues, in the c
the unthinking impulse to self-mutila
lord; so moved is Siva by this display
could endure [it] no longer' (tarittila
his devotee before a second eye is lost
The destructive violence of the chi
couched in terms of love fired in th
in former lives. While the child's
stripped of the sexuality of the adult
toward his father results directly fr
by previous tapas, here defined as unending performance of ritually loving

worship of the liñga:
[Although still] playing [as a child], through the unending succession of worship [rites]
performed there previously [in former lives], and with an ever-expanding love,
[Cantëcurar], under the àtti trees on the banks of sand on the Manni River, built with sand
the holy body of the one who rides the red-eyed bull and constructed a temple, surrounded
by tall kôpurams, as well as a shrine to Siva. (v. 1242)
Like Kannappar, the child Cantëcurar has no direct knowledge of Siva in

his present birth, no direct training in ritual worship in the temple setting.
What turns his heart from the cows he guards so tenderly to love for the
lord is this storehouse of rigorous worship and self-discipline. Anpu for
Siva is rendered unshakably strong through the power gained across many
lifetimes.
Yet in these two brief references to tavam or tapas, and in the many such
references scattered through the Periyapuránam, the category of tapas
remains quite empty of content. What sort of worship did Cantëcurar do in
previous lives? What was the nature of Kannappar's and Nâkan's renuncia
tory practice? How did such practices render each character strong in this
life? For how many lifetimes were such practices necessary before bearing
fruit in the present existence? Not only does the audience find no answers
to such questions, but the text allows no room even to raise them. The focus
of the Periyapuránam remains throughout the external expression, through
acts of devotion, of the love made possible through internal processes of
self-discipline that the audience does not witness first-hand. What matters
most to Cëkkilàr is not the content of tapas but its ultimate role in forging
a new vision of devotional love, replacing the torrid depictions of sexual
love and its sentiments ridiculed in texts such as the Cïvakacintâmani with
a heroic, martial love purified and made strong by self-discipline exercised
over many lifetimes.
This vision of tapas suffused with love, and of love built on the
foundations of self-denying austerities, challenges the vision of love and
asceticism found in the Jain Cïvakacintâmani in yet another way: by trans
forming the love wrought by tapas into a community-building enterprise,
in sharp contrast to the world-renouncing ethos of Jain literary presenta
tions of tapas. Tapas in the Periyapuránam is constitutive of worldly
community, the very basis upon which Siva's earthly gathering of loving
devotees thrives. In the Jain Cïvakacintâmani, the central character, having
grown disillusioned with his world of luxury and women, leaves society
behind in search of a wholly individual liberation. His final 'battle' -
against the karmic forces that ensnare his body - ends in victory, and
Cïvakan undertakes his final 'marriage' vows to knowledge personified,
158 ANNEE. MONIUS
the 'woman of liberating knowledge'

a solo activity, liberation the ultimat
Yet tapas/tavam, as reconstituted b
suffused with profound emotional at
to forge human community, to rear
the central figure of Siva. As Hawl
examining other Hindu hagiographie
austerities in the Periyapurânam for
'extended sacral family' (p. xix) th
of the most violent nâyanmâr - the n
example, who slaughters all his livin
family transformed in the world of S
In that way, the Lord Siva stood before the d
'With the sword in your hand,
you have cut away the fetters (pâcam) of your
entering into the world above the golden wor
they will reach us.
Oh glorious one! You come to us even now' !
Commanding [him thus], [the lord] gracious
Here and in the other instances of sa

restores the worthy to life, rearrang
of affection with an intense love for th
reward. The worthy - those whose lo
profound through previous tapas - ar
while the unworthy remain in their
esting in this regard, and reading th
Jain railing against sexuality and th
instances in which a violated female character is left out of Siva's restora
tion. Kalikkampar, for example, cuts off his wife's hand when she hesitates
at washing the feet of a visiting Saiva ascetic who was once their household
servant (v. 4024); he performs the rite of service, and only he is said to enter
into the 'shade of the feet of the one whose throat is adorned with poison'
0kalattil nañeam anintavar tal nilal kïr) (v. 4025). The wife of the great
king and servant of Siva, Kalarciñkar, suffers horrible mutilation twice
over for having touched and then inhaled the fragrance of a flower intended
for the lord: first an ascetic, Ceruttunai, cuts off her nose (v. 4106), then
her own husband cuts off the offending hand that first touched the flower
(v. 4110). As above, nowhere does Cëkkilàr mention any restoration of the
wife's appendages. The community of Siva's devotees, it would seem, is
thus an exclusive one, one whose members have been tested and proven
their unfailing devotion, one reluctant to admit anything of the sexuality
that peripheral female characters introduce.
One final way in which, following Umàpati's suggestion, the

Periyapurânam might be construed as an 'answer' of sorts to the Jain
Cîvakacintâmani lies in the characterization of Cuntarar or CuntaramOrtti,
arguably the central character among the nâyanmâr as presented by
Cëkkilâr. Repeatedly called Siva's van tontar or 'harsh devotee,85 - for
his continual demands that the lord provide him with gold (vv. 3265
3268) and serve as liaison to his estranged first wife (vv. 3467-3534)
- Cuntarar's story provides the framework for the entire text. Cëkkilâr
opens with the story of Cuntarar's first wedding ruined by the appear
ance of Siva disguised as an old brahmin; he ends with the nâyanâf s
ascension to civalokam, Siva's heavenly abode, on a white royal elephant.
In between, several episodes in Cuntarar's life are woven into the stories
of other nâyanmâr, with particular focus on his relationship with his two
wives: Paravaiyâr and Cañkiliyar. Cuntarar's centrality to Cëkkilàr's work
is heralded early in the text, as the great sage, Upamanniyar (Upamanyu),
notes that 'through the grace of my father [Siva], the celebrated harsh
devotee, king of Nàvalar, will come to the south' (v. 27); to the assembled
brahmins, he adds, 'he is worthy of our worship' (nam tolum tanmaiyân)
(v. 29). Cuntarar's Tiruttontattokai is hailed as the basis of Cëkkilàr's text
(vv. 47-48), and the poet himself is called 'the lord's friend' (tampirân
tôlar) (v. 275). The language of mürti (Tamil mürtti, 'divine embodiment')
(v. 172)86 and avatâram (v. 90)87 is used throughout the text to refer both
to Cuntarar and his female consorts.
Yet why does Cëkkilâr so privilege the life of Cuntarar in his anthology
of nâyanâr stories? Is it because he is the author of the Tiruttontattokai, the
first poetic work to list the saints of Siva and the 'root' (mülam) (v. 4234)
of the Periyapurânam? Were that the case, one would expect, perhaps,
equal treatment of Cëkkilàr's two other sources: Nampi Àntâr Nambi
and Upamanyu. Was Cëkkilâr perhaps a particular devotee of Cuntarar,
eager to promote in his literary work the glories of his favorite among the
nâyanmâr? That, of course, will never be known for sure. Yet Umàpati's
claim that the Periyapurânam constitutes a Saiva response to the Jain
Cîvakacintâmani suggests another possibility. Read in that light (and given
the discussion of violence above), the characterization of Cuntarar - as an
eminently human devotee who struggles with his passions, who endures
85 Vanmai in Tamil also connotes anger, violence, strength, and thoughtfulness.

86 Here onlookers praise the beauty of the young Cuntarar on the eve of his wedding:
'To see him thus bejeweled is to see a virtuous mürti'.
87 Here the reference is to the heavenly servant of Siva's consort taking incarnation
as Paravaiyàr, Cuntarar's first wife: 'Paravai made her womanly avatâram'. Verse 149
describes Cuntarar as having 'made a holy avatâram in order to raise up the world' (ulakam
uyyat tiru avatâram ceytâr).
160 ANNEE. MONIUS
the trickery of his lord88 - emerges a

Tiruttakkatëvar's Jain hero, Cïvakan.
Immediately striking upon reading C
others told in the Periyapurânam is its
trickery. As discussed above, the Periy
deity of the sexuality afforded him
Siva here is paternalistic, a father figu
in the Tëvâram. Indeed, within the Tëvâram, it is Cuntarar's voice in
particular that voices the language of sexual love for lord Siva, exhib
iting precisely that sort of bodily love or bhakti that, as argued above,
the Cïvakacintâmani seeks to ridicule. In a hymn sung by Cuntarar at
Tiruvarür, for example, the poet, in the voice of a love-struck young
woman, invokes the birds, bees, and clouds to serve as messengers to her
beloved; her plaintive refrain to her would-be ambassadors echoes with
love-sick desperation: 'Are you able to make [him] realize [the depths
of my love]' (unartta vallïrkalë)? (Tëvâram, Vll-37). Cuntarar speaks
to the sexually beguiling form of Siva Bhiksâtana in seventeen hymns
(Dorai Rangaswamy, 1990: 1250), where both Siva and his consort, no less
the voice of the poet, take on their most sexually provocative language.
The poet's entanglement with two wives leads, in his poetry, to startling
requests for material sustenance from the lord, ironically charging that Siva
himself knows full well the expense of living with two women:
You have a woman as half your self;
the Lady Gangâ lives on your spreading matted hair;
you know well the problems
of supporting two good women.
In Kuntaiyür surrounded by beautiful groves
I got some grain.
Primal Lord, God of miracles,
send me men to carry the grain!89
These themes of sexuality, passion, and reliance on the material world

are elaborated by Cékkilâr at some length in the Periyapurânam. Like the
royal Jain hero of the Cïvakacintâmani, Cuntarar, although born a brahmin,
has his claims to kingship: he is adopted by King Naraciñkamunaiyar and
raised in the royal palace (v. 151). His story contains the only hints of
sexuality and the only open displays of affection between men and women
in the text, as when Cuntarar's first wife, Paravai, flies into a rage when she
learns of her husband's marriage to a second wife, suffering the physical
sickness of separation typical of classical Tamil love poetry:
88 As at Periyapurânam, vv. 230-233, where Cuntarar's sleep is repeatedly interrupted

by Siva, disguised as an old brahmin, who places his dusty feet upon the nâyanâr's head.
89 Tëvâram VII-20.3; translation from Peterson (1989: 313-314).
She was not able to rest in slumber on her bed [strewn with] soft petals, nor was she able
to rest in wakeful joy;
she could not sit on her seat of flowers and gold, nor was she able to stand or walk or go
outside;
she could not purge the shower of flower-darts [shot by] the god of love;
she could not think about [her] lord, nor could she forget him.
She was situation between the two - [the sorrow of] separation and sulking - both of which
melt one's bones, (v. 3474)
The scene of Paravai's joyous reunion with her husband evokes physical
union in a way not encountered in the life-stories of other married devotees
of Siva, however chaste and indirect the reference:
Praising the nature of the wealth of compassion and holy grace that the lord had performed
for them,
their minds were immersed in a flood of joy;
They become a single life,
in their positioning of one in the other, (v. 3540)
Cuntarar, as the sole nâyanâr whose domestic relations the audience

is allowed to witness at some length, provides a unique link in the
Periyapurânam among the themes of earthly life, sexuality, and feeling.
Such thematic patterns are also interspersed with scenes of tremendous
humor - as Shulman (1985) notes, 'Cuntarar's checkered career is riddled
with comic episodes' (p. 251) - extending even to the final scene in which
Cuntarar's great friend, King Ceramàn Perumâl, is left standing at the
gates of Siva's kingdom. When finally brought before the lord, bowing
and showing all due respect, Siva inquires slyly: 'How is it that you have
come here without being invited by us' {inku nâm alaiyâmai nïeytiyatu en)
(v. 4278)?90 Cuntarar berates his lord, as noted above, making requests for
money to support his wives, taunting the lord with images of his own divine
wife, and, in general, displaying much more of a full-bodied personality
than his nâyanmâr companions.
Cuntarar is, in short, something of a counterpart to Clvakan, experi
menting with the domestic life while all the while being pulled toward the
deity. Cuntarar's relationships with his wives demand Siva's intervention;
love for lord and love for spouse are not wholly unrelated. Yet passion and
love must be tempered in a life of devotion to Siva; love is a legitimate
human experience, but human love always exists in tension with love for
the divine. When Cuntarar, for example, falls in love with the beautiful
Cañkili, he begs that Siva help him to marry the girl (v. 3391); through a
series of dream interventions, Siva extracts a promise from Cuntarar, the
itinerant poet, that he will never leave this second wife (v. 3404). They are
married, but soon the spring winds of love begin to blow, and Cuntarar is
90 This scene is discussed at some length by Shulman (1985: 253-256).
162 ANNEE. MONIUS
drawn to see his beloved lord in Tiravâ

town, he is stricken with blindness:
As he left the expanse of the city of Orri [Tiru

the ground before [him] was hidden from [his]
In this odd give-and-take between g

must suffer for not being a good husb
leave his second wife (even if he doe
Cuntarar, like Cïvakan, sings a song o
of the Periyapurânam (v. 4263),91 it i
of Siva's holy mountain, in the compa
heaven as servants of the goddess. Wh
variety of characteristics - their travel
- Cuntarar offers a markedly differen
and freedom from earthly bonds mean
as in the Jain text, but a life of loving co
Love, tested in the human realm and te
a vital part of Cuntarar's narrative trajec
6. ADAPATION OF JAIN LITERARY STRATEGIES
Ironically, perhaps, many of the literary techniques used by Cëk

forge a new vision of anpu or devotion to Siva can be traced
sources. While seeking to recover the value of love as the founda
bhakti against the challenges posed by the Cîvakacintâmani (as w
works in the ulâ and parani genres), Cëkkilâr borrows heavily fr
very Jain material he seeks to resist. This is particularly clear w
looks to the Jain Sanskrit tradition of purâna composition, part
the Mahâpurâna attributed to two ninth-century Digambara mon
Karnataka: Jinasena, author of the Àdipurâna, and Gunabhadra, au
the slightly later Uttarapurâna.92 Cïvakan's (Sanskrit JIvandhara
is first told in the latter text, Gunabhadra's Uttarapurâna.93 By C
day, several version of the Mahâpurâna existed in other lan
91 Here Cuntarar sings a hymn meant 'to eradicate the bonds of this world'
pâcam atutía). Shulman (1985: 253) reads this as a gloss on the hymn Cuntarar re
beginning with the lines: 'I hate the householder's life; I have renounced it co
(veruttën manaivâlkkaiyai vittolintën) (Tëvâram VII-4.8).
92 For a brief overview of the contents of the texts, see Cort (1993: 191-195).
93 For an English translation of the text, see Hultzsch (1922).
including the Apabhramsa version of Puspadanta and the Kannada version

of Câmundarâya (both tenth-century).94
When considering the Periyapuranam in light of Jain material to which
it may have been responding, several characteristics - oft noted in the
scholarship, but seldom developed - strike even the casual reader imme
diately. First, there is the name. Periyapuranam, albeit the text's popular
name rather than its formal title, is a direct Tamil translation from the
Sanskrit Mahâpurâna, or 'Great Collection of Ancient Stories'. Like the
trisastisalâkâpurusa or 'sixty-three great beings' of the universe whose
lives are narrated in the Mahâpurâna,95 Cëkkilàr narrates the stories of
sixty-three 'leaders' or nâyanmâr. Peterson (1994), in fact, argues that the
Mahâpurâna tradition of sixty-three great beings provided the impetus to
the 'canonization' of the nâyanmâr (p. 196).
Yet why would Jain literature provide such a compelling model for a
twelfth-century Tamil Saiva poet? Certainly the Mahâpurâna narratives
are full of the kind of martial heroism with which Cëkkilàr infuses a
redefined bhakti, stripped of the eros so maligned by earlier Jain literature
in Tamil. Jina means 'victor', and the Mahâpurâna paints a martial view
of the jina as the victor over karma (Dundas, 1991: 173-174). Like the
most violent among Cëkkilâr's nâyanmâr, Bâhubalï, son of the first Jina,
Rsabha, is a 'heroic figure', a 'Jain warrior' (p. 180), yet he suddenly
withdraws from mortal combat with his brother to become an ascetic.
While stridently martial in tone, the Mahâpurâna's ascetic warriors are
combatants against karma, against the passions and bodily ties to this
world. As Strohl (1984) notes in his study of the Àdipurâna of Jinasena,
'the weapons of the mendicant warrior are considered to be the variety
of lists of vows, qualities, virtues, and modes of self-restraint' (p. 108).
Images of violence and battle, in the Jain literary tradition, are invoked -
as in the Periyapuranam - to a new end: renunciation of the world to be
a warrior against the karma that enslaves us all. The story of Jïvandharà
makes explicit the connection between worldly power and personally
transformative, inner power:
With joined hands, I salute that lord JTvandhara who, in consequence of former good deeds,
won eight virgins hard to be won by others; who at the head of battle dispatched into the
other world the enemy who had killed his father; and who became an ascetic, dispelled the
94 Cort (1993: 205) provides a useful chart of pre-modem Jain purânic composition.
Peterson (1998: 179) suggests that Câmundarâya's Kannada text is the true source of
Cëkkilàr's inspiration, not the Cîvakacintâmani.
95 These are the twenty-four Tírthañkaras or Jinas, the twelve Cakravârtins or world
rulers, and the twenty-seven Baladevas, Vàsudevas, and Prati-Vâsudevas. For a discussion
of the characteristics of each, see Cort (1993: 196-202).
164 ANNEE. MONIUS
darkness of his deeds, and was illumined by

347-348)
Throughout the Mahâpurâna, from

Jïvandhara, the warrior's weapons of
warrior of the Mahâpurâna is the prac
karma-burning tapas, literally 'heat', t
existence.
While Cëkkilâr, as discussed above, tempers his vision of divine love

with insistence that it be accompanied by tapas, the Periyapurânam would
seem to depart from the Jain images of martial and heroic figures by
insisting on a movement outward rather than inward; anpu for Siva must
be externalized, enacted in the world. Whereas Jain heroes renounce the
world entirely, turning their weapons to the karmic ties that bind one to
samsara, Cëkkilâr's nâyanmâr must outwardly display - through gentle
acts of supplication, through violent responses to service interrupted - their
unswerving devotion to the lord. Where Bàhubalï's warrior asceticism has
him enduring 'hunger and thirst, cold and heat, both gadflies and gnats, for
the sake of full success in movement along the [Jaina] path' (Strohl, 1984:
104), Cëkkilâr's characters emote openly, flying into rages at interruptions
to their acts of devotion, giving up life and home to wander singing the
praises of the lord. Their tapas, whether Cantëcurar's or Kannappar's,
sends them out into the world to display heroically their devotion to Siva.
Cëkkilâr's vision of the v/eurior-bhakta, constructed against the back
drop of Jain images of the warrior-ascetic, presents new possibilities
for kingly behavior, possibilities strenuously denied throughout the
Mahâpurâna. In the Jain presentation of kingship in the Mahâpurâna
- as in the Tamil Cïvakacintâmani - dharma and rule are antithetical:
Jïvandhara cannot win liberation while engaged in the world of kingdom
and consorts; Bàhubalï moves from the world of chaos and violence to
one of serene practice and movement 'along the Jain path'. There is, in
short, no dharma for kings allowed in the Mahâpurâna (Strohl, 1984:
1092); the royal duties of war and engagement in the world prevent any
true upholding of the ascetic ideals that define the Jain moral system. The
Periyapurânam, however, offers here a markedly different vision of king
ship for its royal sponsor: a vision of spiritual warfare, of the weak made
strong (as in the stories of the child-saint, Cantëcurar and the innocent
hunter, Kannappar) through rigorous engagement with the external world,
what Shulman has, as noted above, called the Tamil tendency toward the
'externalization' of emotion. Cëkkilâr's vision of anpu for the lord is
infused with the Jain elements of vira, 'the heroic', but those elements are
turned outward for display to the world, making possible a life of engaged
worldly activity while pursuing a path toward Siva and his grace.
7. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Cêkkilâr's depictions of violence done in the name of devotion to

interspersed with descriptions of profound love expressed in far g
ways - thus emerge as central to a vision of religious life lived in
engagement with the world, an active engagement ridiculed in its v
and passions by the Jain Cïvakacintâmani and in the medieval lite
genres of parani and ulâ. Using the imagery of the martial warrior
from the Jain purânic tradition, the Periyapurânam constructs a v
rigorous - even heroic - bhakti at work in the world.
While Umâpati's comment about Cêkkilâr's intended audien
steered this study in the direction of Jain literature, equally possib
foil of sorts - for Cêkkilâr's text is the growing popularity of Krsna-r
Vaisnava traditions in twelfth-century South India. The Periyapurâ
the first Tamil text to use the term avatâram (Sanskrit avatâra),
reserved for Vaisnava accounts of god's earthly incarnations. Cun
said to take earthly form (avataritta) in Tirunâvalûr to foster Vedic Sai
there (v. 148); as noted above, at his birth he is said to be an avatâram o
heavenly self (v. 149). Mânakkaficâranâr becomes a 'holy avatâram
avatâram ceytâr) (v. 877), while Siva's holy ash is deemed 'the o
avatâram' (mülam avatâram) (v. 1231). So ubiquitous and unique
Saiva use of avatâram terminology, one wonders if it might not se
argue for Siva's enduring presence in the world; although he never
full incarnational form, his favored devotees and holy ash do.
Such use of avatâram language is coupled with a number of
that seemingly seek to turn upside-down the pastoral images of
frolicking with his gopï friends. As noted above, both Cantêcura
Kannappar begin their lives steeped in the ethos of Krsna: Can
befriends a cow being molested by a herdsman and takes up the
caring for the entire herd; Kannappar's village in the forest is the
many playful scenes with the local girls. Ànâyar is the master of t
(vv. 931-972). Yet these bucolic, pastoral settings reminiscent of
boyhood home steer their emotion-laden characters in decidedly
directions; for both Kannappar and Cantêcurar, the experience of
neither sexually charged nor gentle. The pastoral realm of Krsna b
an arena for the martial display of utmost devotion of lord Siva.
Whether influenced by Jain literary tradition or Vaisnav
Periyapurânam clearly does not emerge from a literary vacuum;
it is a complex and sophisticated narrative in dialogue with a wide
genres and sectarian traditions. The construction of Saiva identity
here - the single-pointed focus, the engagement in the world - e
in conversation with and resistance to a variety of texts. As a lit
166 ANNEE. MONIUS
product of the 'productive encounter'

and Saivas in medieval South India, the
Periyapuranam belies the indebtedness
counterparts. As Spiegel (1993) notes in
in thirteenth-century France, the telling
adverse historical change beneath the c
of ... narrative' (p. 10), imagining cl
fact, historical reality is far more com
his study of violence in medieval Spain
violence as necessary for the peacefu
violence is merely one form of 'asso
Cëkkilâr's treatment of non-Saivas, his
easy victories over adversaries, perhaps
Periyapuranam itself: complex patterns
of resistance accompanied by borrowing
As Cëkkilâr seeks to frame a life lived in utter devotion to Siva
against a Jain backdrop of sarcastic denigration of passion and violence,
literary aesthetic theory emerges as a significant marker of religious iden
tity. Against the Cîvakacintâmanïs evocation of the rasa or meyppâtu of
bïbhatsa or 'the disgusting', leading eventually to the renunciation of the
world and sânta, 'the peaceful', Cëkkilâr posits a new form of srngâra,
'the erotic', here stripped entirely of eros, redirected toward the lord, and
infused with a hearty does of vira, 'the heroic'. He turns the Jain use of
heroic imagery outward, focusing not on the ascetic's inner powers of
transformation but on life lived in complete and passionate engagement
with the world. Nowhere are the relative ontological or epistemological
merits of Jainism and Saivism taken up for discussion; the heart of the
debate between the Periyapuranam and the Cïvakacintâmani would seem
to be the relative value of human emotions, the extent to which the rasas
can lead one to self-transformation. The use of such aesthetic elements
in defining and articulating sectarian identity in pre-modem South Asia
demands further scholarly attention.
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LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST: ŚAIVAS AND JAINS IN MEDIEVAL

LOVE, VIOLENCE, AND THE AESTHETICS OF DISGUST:

'Who does not admire a hero?'

Journal of Indian Philosophy 32: 113-172,2004.

appendages to the sickle,3 the grindin

Indeed, the violence of the Periyapurânam has been a source of contro

the saints 'just a link between ... genera

The Periyapurânam, attributed to an author known as Cëkkilâr, cons

known as the Tirumantiram.14 As a text that represents Tamil Saiva tradi

In his opening verses, Cëkkilàr claim

18 For a full translation of the hymn into

narrating the story of the hunter-devotee, Kannappar, has been located

into two parts or kânîam and thirteen

While the eye-gouging Kannappar and the leg-slashing Cantëcurar are

24 Vamadeva (1995: 72-76) counts no fewer than thirteen references to Kannappar's

2. THE ACADEMIC RESPONSE

As noted above, the violent imagery of the Periyapurânam has lo

there exists no scholarly consensus on ho

concepts' (p. 221). Hudson (1989), whose analysis of the Periyapurânam

30 For more on Ârumuka Nàvalar, see Hudson (1992).

classical poetic ideals of 'inner' (akam

In this excellent world, effort is of two kinds:

After explaining the 'gentle' activities as those forms of worshiping Siva

Not seeing it as a fault or a grievous crime,

How are we able to narrate [the deeds of]

35 This is an obvious reference to the story of Ciruttontar.

merely as harsh but as a 'heinous s

3. TAKING UMÀPATI SERIOUSLY

One additional piece of literary evidence regarding the nâyanmâr perhaps

Is there anything to be gained by taking Umâpati's declaration of

Taking seriously Umâpati's assertion regarding Cêkkilâr's intent, the

The Clvakacintâmani is the product of a Jain literary culture with a long

Cîvakacintâmani ('Cïvakan, the Wish-F

45 Such as the ninth-century Uttarapurâna of Gunabhadra. For a detailed discussion

Love-making is vigorously and pointedly described with gusto, the poetry

who maintain that the text offers 't

52 For a discussion of the basics of Sanskri

Alongside such subtle, even haunting images of war, the Cîvakacin

As in the case of Ryan's treatment of the erotic excesses in the Cîvakacin

53 Translation from Hart and Heifetz (1999: 210).

When one is cursed with want,

Jain about the aesthetic model of Jain

My soul melts in anguish -

tion of songs and poetry to be used d

The fact of Jain devotional practice and its obvious importance to

Oh you who created the primeval Veda!

appreciation, Tiruttakkatëvar's narrative suggests nothing less than a re

ness [of the earlier Tamil text] [is] ov

60 A full discussion of the merits of Shulman's

The blood, the blood of the Kaliñgas,

It is hard not to read irony into such a poetic description, a condemnation

[Your] great eyes, like spears,

Women are portrayed with a kind of biting irony - as when a woman

seventy extant examples in Tamil, the

61 The Tillai ula survives only in fragments, p

themes and the literary techniques employed by Tiruttakkatëvar in his Jain

5. JAIN HEROES AND SAIVA SAINTS

Given this reading of the Cîvakacintâmani as well as of poeti

classical depictions of love, but by i

encapsulates the themes of love and violence, self-inflicted suffering and

that evokes the same emotionally drai

64 See Periyapuranam, v. 104, where the you

wandering beggar of enchanting beauty, as a virile young warrior atop