Studies in Comparative Religion

Innovations, Transformations, Reconsiderations

Linda Penkower, Tracy Pintchman, Linda Penkower, Tracy Pintchman

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781611173901
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Induismo

Hindu Ritual at the Margins explores Hindu forms of ritual activity in a variety of "marginal" contexts. The contributors collectively examine ritual practices in diaspora; across gender, ethnic, social, and political groups; in film, text, and art; in settings where ritual itself or direct discussion of ritual is absent; in contexts that create new opportunities for traditionally marginalized participants or challenge the received tradition; and via theoretical perspectives that have been undervalued in the academy.

In the first of three sections, contributors explore the ways in which Hindu ritual performed in Indian contexts intersects with historical, contextual, and social change. They examine the changing significance and understanding of particular deities, the identity and agency of ritual actors, and the instrumentality of ritual in new media. Essays in the second section examine ritual practices outside of India, focusing on evolving ritual claims to authority in mixed cultures (such as Malaysia), the reshaping of gender dynamics of ritual at an American temple, and the democratic reshaping of ritual forms in Canadian Hindu communities. The final section considers the implications for ritual studies of the efficacy of bodily acts divorced from intention, contemporary spiritual practice as opposed to religious-bound ritual, and the notion of dharma.

Based on a conference on Hindu ritual held in 2006 at the University of Pittsburgh, Hindu Ritual at the Margins seeks to elucidate the ways ritual actors come to shape ritual practices or conceptions pertaining to ritual and how studying ritual in marginal contexts—at points of dynamic tension—requires scholars to reshape their understanding of ritual activity.

PART 1

Transformations
History and Identity

The Medieval Murukaṉ

The Place of a God among His Tamil Worshipers

LESLIE C. ORR

The god Murukaṉ enjoys immense popularity in Tamilnadu today and is virtually an emblem of Tamil identity. The temple dedicated to Murukaṉ at Palani, in the hills to the northwest of Madurai, receives the largest number of pilgrims and the greatest quantity of gifts of any temple in Tamilnadu. While it is acknowledged that the pilgrimage and patronage activities focused on Murukaṉ have seen an upsurge in the last several centuries, this is often regarded as a “revival” of devotion to a god who was widely worshiped in the Tamil country in ancient times—two thousand years ago or more. There is indeed an abundance of devotional literature and textual evidence of rituals dedicated to Murukaṉ dating from before the seventh century. But in subsequent times, up until the fourteenth century, literary sources have virtually nothing to tell us about this god—variously referred to by the Tamil and Sanskrit names Murukaṉ, Skanda, and Subrahmaṇya—or about those who may have worshiped him.

This discontinuity, the gap between the seventh and fourteenth centuries, is quite puzzling. Fred Clothey has suggested that the dearth of medieval textual references to the god is a consequence of Sanskritization and of a movement toward “proliferation and concretization,” in which Murukaṉ—along with other deities—was subsumed within the Śaiva pantheon (1978, 77). That such processes took place seem to be borne out by a shift between the seventh and eighth centuries and the eleventh century in the depiction and significance of Somāskanda (Śiva together with his consort, Umā, and his son Skanda). These three figures are first found sculpted on the stone walls of temples in a variety of compositions. By the eleventh century, the composition becomes fixed, and the three figures become a single icon cast in bronze; this image is taken in procession as the main festival image representing Śiva (L’Hernault 1978, 63–66). Here indeed the god Skanda/Murukaṉ/Subrahmaṇya has lost his autonomy.

But in fact the Somāskanda image is not the only image of Murukaṉ to be found. The rich architectural and artistic heritage of medieval Tamilnadu has a great deal to tell us about how Murukaṉ was regarded and how he continued to be worshiped. For if the literary sources of the seventh to fourteenth centuries are silent on these subjects, the inscriptions engraved on temple walls in this period are not. In this essay I focus on what the art historical and epigraphical evidence has to say about the variations, shifting patterns, and significance of the worship of Murukaṉ within the ritual context of the medieval temple. Indeed these sources provide us with precious on-the-ground testimony of how people actually carried out forms of ritual worship at specific sites. With a sculpture of the god before us, we get a vivid sense of the form of the divine with which the medieval worshiper was confronted; meanwhile the inscriptions provide us with details of how worship was conducted—with offerings of lamps, flowers, and food, for example—and document the image donation and temple building of various types of patrons.

Of particular interest to my inquiry is the question of where precisely the god Murukaṉ was placed within the ritual space of the temple; both the physical fabric of the extant temple and the inscriptions at the temple speak to these issues and show the variety of possible arrangements that were made. Does the material evidence from the medieval period indicate that there was a “central” deity in the temple, that therefore it was “his temple,” and that he was the main object of worship—and that this “central” deity was ever Murukaṉ? Does the placement of gods (such as Murukaṉ) in smaller structures, usually referred to as “shrines,” around a “central” deity suggest hierarchical theological notions or ritual protocols? What is the significance of the appearance of Murukaṉ in a rock-cut cave in the company of other deities, or of his appearance on a temple wall, or on a śikhara (temple tower) or gopura (gate tower)? And how do worshipers interact with the space of the temple once the gods are emplaced: do they acknowledge a single god’s centrality? Is it possible for them to reconstruct or reinterpret the space? What scope is there for innovative or even subversive ritual performances?

My exploration of Murukaṉ’s worship in the period between the seventh and fourteenth centuries—when relevant literary sources are so scarce—is thus based on two sorts of evidence, which allow me to trace chronological changes as well as geographical variations. With reference to the latter, I consider medieval Tamilnadu to be divided into four areas: a northern region (Chingleput, North Arcot, and South Arcot districts), Cholanadu or the Kaveri River zone (Thanjavur and Tiruchirappalli districts), western Tamilnadu (Coimbatore, Kolar, and Salem districts), and southern Tamilnadu (Kanyakumari, Madurai, Ramnad, and Tirunelveli districts).¹

The first body of evidence employed in this study consists of the nearly one hundred temple inscriptions that I was able to locate that refer to the ritual worship of Murukaṉ or whose placement on a Murukaṉ shrine or temple indicates the existence of a context for this worship. One hundred inscriptions, it must be recognized, represent a very tiny fraction of the nearly twenty thousand inscriptions that have been found in the Tamil country. Although there are surely more epigraphical references to Murukaṉ than I have thus far found, it is nonetheless clear that through the whole of the period under review, Murukaṉ worship was not a prominent feature of religious life or, at any rate, the religious life centered on the temple.

The second type of evidence I employ is art and architecture. I have catalogued more than two hundred stone and bronze images or other material evidence—apart from inscriptions—of Murukaṉ worship, including in my survey only those images which are still in situ or whose provenance is known and excluding Somāskanda images. For this study of Murukaṉ’s images, I drew on a variety of sources, including my own fieldwork at temples, but am especially indebted to the comprehensive and masterful work of Françoise L’Hernault, particularly her book L’Iconographie de Subrahmaṇya au Tamilnad.

Before and After

The material evidence of the seventh to fourteenth centuries—when there are virtually no literary references to Murukaṉ—must be placed within the chronological frame that is built in large part from just such references. I offer a brief outline of Murukaṉ worship in the historical periods that precede and follow the span of time with which I am concerned.

The earliest references to Murukaṉ occur in the so-called Caṇkam literature, the classical Tamil literature of the first few centuries of the Common Era. Here Murukaṉ is portrayed as the beautiful god of the forested hills, bearing a lance (the vēl); he is married to the hunter-maiden Vaḷḷi and is the enemy of the demon Cūraṉ. Ceremonies dedicated to Murukaṉ were officiated over by the vēlaṉ, a priest who offered the god mountain rice mixed with blood and who was sometimes called in to perform exorcisms on young women who were possessed by the god (Zvelebil 1991, 78–80). The poems Paripāṭal and Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai—composed in the fourth or fifth centuries or somewhat later—contain extensive descriptions of the god and his attributes, including his association with the elephant, the peacock, and the rooster. These poems also introduce us to a second wife, Devasenā (called in Tamil Tēvayāṉai), and provide an account of Murukaṉ’s birth as the son of Śiva. Paripāṭal describes Murukaṉ’s abode Tirupparankunram, a hill just outside of the city of Madurai to the southwest. Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai mentions the presence of Murukaṉ at six places; these references are, however, quite brief, being marginal to the main theme of the poem, which is the praise of the god’s qualities and exploits. Only three of the six sites mentioned in Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai can be identified with any degree of certainty: Tirupparankunram near Madurai, Tiruccentur further south on the coast east of Tirunelveli, and Palani in the hills far to the northwest of Madurai (Filliozat 1973, xxxv–xxxvii; Clothey 1978, 64–69; Clothey 1983, 23–39; L’Hernault 1978, 185ff.).

Nearly a millennium passed before Murukaṉ resurfaced in Tamil literature, most famously in the poems Tiruppukaḻ, Kantar aṉupūti, and Kantar alaṇkāram that were composed—probably in the early fifteenth century—by Aruṇakirināta. Aruṇakirināta is supposed to have spent a dissolute early life in the great Śaiva tem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Tracy Pintchman and Linda Penkower
• Part 1. Transformations: History and Identity
• Part 2. Innovations: Globalization and the Hindu Diaspora
• Part 3. Reconsiderations: Context and Theory
• Contributors
• Index