Programme
Srilata Raman
Assistant Professor
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Michigan
E/ sriraman@umich.edu
Saving the Body, Killing the Soul: Tamil Saiva Theology between Pre-colonialism and Colonialism
This paper focuses on the theology of Ramalinga Adigal, a Saivitepoet-saint of the first half of the 19th century in the Tamil country. Through a close reading of Ramalinga's early work the paper explores the construction of a reformist Saiva theology in the early colonial period and also seeks to address the broader issue of how to theorize about religious change in the transtion from the pre-colonial to the colonial period. Ramalinga Adigal wrote and published an essay, "The Tale of the Righteous Conduct of King Manu" in 1854. The tale is an ancient frame-story from the medieval Tamil Saiva hagiography, the Periyapuranam. While scrupulously adhering to the main plot - concerning a virtuous patricide - Ramalinga's "translation" of this tale ventures beyond the boundaries of the original to culminate in an empathetic vision of suffering visualized and accepted.
The article shows that the tale of King Manu is one which has a pan-Indian resonance, being part of the genre of tales, particularly common in early Buddhist literature, of the donation or sacrifice of the body as part of an act of moral empathy and compassion (re. Ohnuma 2007). Yet, even while exploring the parallels to the tale in Sanskrit and Pali literature, it will be shown that Ramalinga’s is a singular Tamil vision – one emphasizing the sacred corporeality of the human being. In fact, it is at the moment when the self dies to the body that this corporeality is seen to be most vividly felt, the suffering and dying body also rendered the most sacred. It has been suggested (re. Halbfass 1995) that reformist religious movements particularly neo-Hinduism reverses the classical Indian construction and understanding of the relationship between ethics and metaphysics. Utilising this insight I would suggest that just such a theological turn is in effect in Ramalinga Adigal's reformist Saivism, as it mediates the passage between pre-colonial Tamil Saivism and colonial reflections on religion.
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Prof. Raman works on medieval South Asian/South Indian religion, bhakti,
historiography and hagiography, religious movements in early colonial India from
the South as well as modern Tamil literature. Her current work focuses on early
colonial Tamil Saivism and the reformulations of religion, linked to notions of
the body, in the writings of Ramalinga Adigal (1823-1874). The areas of interest
in the medieval, on the one hand, and the early colonial, on the other, are
bridged by an overall concern with thematizing both the ruptures and the
continuities between pre-modernity and modernity, the historiography of
religious traditions in both as well as the insidious transformation of
theology. Her publications include, "Self-Surrender (Prapatt)i to God in
Srivaisnavism" in Tamil Cats and Sanskrit Monkeys (2007); Words and
Deeds. Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia (2005); "Who are the
Vellalars? 20th century constructions and contestations of Tamil identity in
Maraimalai Adigal" in Shared Idioms, Sacred Symbols: Process, Power, and the
Articulation of Identities in South Asia (2007), and "Departure and
Prophecy: The Disappearance of Ramalinga Adigal in the Early Narratives of His
Life" in Indologica Taurenensia (2004).