WHITNEY COX

THE TRANSFIGURATION OF TI N NAN THE ARCHER* _ _ _ (Studies in Cekkilars Periyapuranam I)

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PROLOGUE: AGHORASIVAS LITTLE PROBLEM As Aghorasivacarya, the foremost proponent of the Saivasiddhanta living in Cidambaram in the middle decades of the twelfth century, l neared the conclusion to his commentary on the Ratnatrayapar"k sa of _ l u ur"ka nthas"ri, he took up as his theme a topic beloved of his school, _ _ the sublime uninvolvement of Siva with the created world. That that of Siva, as pure consciousness, is utterly free of this contagion of material existence formed one of the fundamental theses of the Siddhanta, yet this was a transcendence that needed always to be reconciled with the equally central fact of Gods compassion and grace towards all beings. Accounting for this provides one of the principal motivations for the architecture of the Saiva cosmos as seen by the Siddhantins, and l occupied most of the argument in Sr"kantha`s doctrinal precis. __ l a What Aghora seeks to clarify ad Ratnatrayapar"k s" 313 emerges _ from a corollary to this fundamental thesis: why is it that some beings achieve liberation while others remain caught in the snares of existence? Or, as he puts it, if Siva creates the universe for the sole purpose of bestowing grace, Bwhy is it that He gives liberation to some people and not to everyone? Is this His essential nature? In that case, He would be subject to inward passion and hatred.[1

* This essay would have been impossible in both design and execution without the help and encouragement of Dr. R. VIJAYALAKSHMY, who originally suggested that I look into the story of Kannappar, and who with patience and great learning rst guided me __ through the text. Earlier versions of this article were presented to the Theory and Practice of South Asia workshop at the University of Chicago and to the second Classical Tamil Winter School held at the Ecole Fran$ aise d`Extr^me-Orient, Centre de c e Pondichery. I would like to thank all those involved. Thanks especially to Harunaga ISAACSON, Christian NOVETZKE , Sheldon POLLOCK , and David SHULMAN for their comments, suggestions, and corrections. Finally, I should note that MONIUS 2004, which contains an interpretation of the story of Kan nappar rather different from mine, _ only came to my attention after the completion of the_ draft of this article. 1 ...sivah katham kesancid eva moksam karoti na sarvesam, ayam evasya svabha vo ~ . . . _ _ va tarhy antah r"gadvesayuktah sy"t: a _ a _ _ _

Indo-Iranian Journal 48: 223Y252, 2005 DOI: 10.1007/s10783-005-2198-7

* Springer 2006

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The Lord is like the sun, the text before Aghora reads (continuing an image begun several verses earlier): just as the sun is unaffected when its rays at once dry a patch of earth and melt a piece of beeswax, so too Siva either binds or give liberation to souls because of their actions, deemed either good or wicked, are either in balance or imbalance with each other. Following Aghoras reading:2
It is true that Siva grants his grace to all. Furthermore, he has no passion or hatred, given that he is eternally free from Stain. Further, [he] is the agent of the bondage and liberation of souls, owing to [the souls] tness [scil. for their particular destinies]. This has already been explained. And therefore, just like the sun, precisely insofar as it possesses a single form, can, by virtue of its proximity, render liquid beeswax (i.e. something suited to liquication), while drying out earth (i.e. something suited to desiccation), Siva too causes the liberation of those t for liberation (i.e. those whose Stain has matured) [and] he causes the bondage of those t for bondage (i.e. those whose Stain has not yet matured). [In the latter case, he does so] for the sake of [the Stains] maturation. Hence, there is no contradiction. And thus here by the use of the phrase F[works] said to be meritorious and unmeritorious_ puny"puny"khyaabdena, he refers to the pair of actions Y a a s _ _ either benecial or harmful Y in line with the principle that, FThe man who is equal to all beings Y who neither delights in benets nor becomes angry at harm Y that man is said to be liberated-in-life._ Liberation occurs when there is an awareness of the equality of these two [kinds of actions] owing to the complete maturation of the Stain [malaparipakavasat]; when this is not the case, there is only bondage. However, [the text] should not be interpreted to say that it is the equality of two actions, one meritorious and the other not Y such as performing a horse sacrice and murdering a brahman Y that is the cause of liberation, for this contradicts sastra. [Also, this interpretation is incorrect] because this kind of the equality of action [karmasamya] is possible even in the state of worldly existence. [Further this is incorrect],

 " satyam sarvanugr"hakah sivah: na c"sya r"g"dir vidyate an"dimalarahitatv"t. a a aa a a _ bandhamoksakartrtvam c"tman"m _eva yogyatv"d ity uktam. tatas ca yathaik"k"ra a _ a a a a _ _ a _ ev"rkah svasamnidh"nena dravatvayogyasya madh"cchistasya dravat"m sosatvayogy"y" a u a  a a _ _ _a a _ a_ a  m rdah_ suskatvam ca karoti, tath" sivo _pi pakvamal" n" m mok sayogy" n"m moksam a _ _ _ _ an" _ _ _ _ " karoty apakvamalanam bandhayogyanam tatp"k"rtham bandham _ karot"ty avirodhah. a a l _akhyaabdena: Fna hrsyaty up"k"rena n"_pak"rena kupyati, ya_h _a atas catra puny"puny" a s a a a _u _ l __ _ _ _ samah sarvabh"tesu j"vanmuktah s a u c y a t e _ i t i ny"yenopak"r"pak"r"tmakam a a a a a _ _ _ _ karmadvayam ucyate. tayor malaparipakavasat samyabuddhau saty"m mokso bhavati, a tadabha ve tu bandha eva. na tv as vamedhabrahmahatya dir upau pun _y"pun yau; a " _ _ _ tayoh s"myam moks ahetur iti vy"khyeyam sastravirodhat, t"dr asya karmasamyasya a a a s _a a _ " a s"m sar avasth"y"m _api sam bhav"t svanasamatra eva caritarthatvat, samastakara _ ar" _ _ myasyapi vijnanakevalitvamatra eva hetutvat, moks ahetutv"sambhav"t: mala_ masa a a _ paripakasyaiva proktakarmasamyacihnanumeyasya d"ks adv"ren a moks ahetutv"c ca. l " a a _ _ _

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because in that it succeeds only in the destruction of the actions themselves [svanasamatra], the equality of all of ones actions brings about only the state of being a vijnanakevalin [i.e. a spiritually advanced but unliberated denizen of the upper reaches of the Saiva cosmos], [and thus] cannot act as a cause of liberation. And [nally, it is incorrect] because it is only the complete maturation of Stain, which is inferrable by the sign of karmasamya spoken of earlier, by way of the mediation of the ritual of initiation, that is the cause of liberation.

Thus, on the strength of a single compound word in the text he was preaching, Aghora introduces the concept of malaparipaka (Bthe com plete maturation of Stain[) as the prerequisite to initiation. The importance of this notion is not original to Aghorasiva; rather, he has borrowed it wholesale from the tenth century Kashmirian thinker R"makan tha, a __ especially from the latters commentary on the Kiranatantra.3 The stakes _ n tha as well as of this are as follows: for thinkers prior to R"maka a __ crucially in a number of works of Saiva scripture, the descent of Sivas liberating grace was thought to arise from a karmic blockage Y when two actions were seen to come to fruition simultaneously, their ensuing results are checked by one another. It is only through the intercession of Sivas salvic power or sakti that this impasse could be brought to an end. This notion, then, is of a stasis arising in the mechanisms of how one undergoes ones own karma, the idea being that there occurs in certain souls career on Earth a crisis where the consequences of two existing actions clash, and the soul is accordingly unable to have new experiences without divine intervention. Aghorasiva satirizes this view in the passage quoted above, foisting upon it the absurdity that this crisis could emerge as a consequence of a person performing both an act of great merit and a moral atrocity. The same idea had been found unacceptable rst by R"makan tha, who in an act of virtuoso semantics a __

3 The recent work of Dominic GOODALL (1998) has provided not only a critically edited text and scholarly translation of this very important early work of scriptural exegesis, but has also opened up the whole question of the problematic history of the interpretation of karmasamya (pp. xxxiiYxxxvii). R"makanthas new interpretation a _ emerges principally in his interpretation of two text places _in the Kirana: 1.20Y1.22 _ and 5:8Y10 (text pp 26Y31, 116Y121; trans. 215Y221, 331Y341). The same passage from the Ratnatrayapar"ksollekhin" is cited and translated (with some slight differences) by l l _ GOODALL on p 218 n. I would like to thank Dr. GOODALL for rst drawing my attention to this passage and to its importance.

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reinterpreted karmasamya to refer not to the equality (-s"mya) of two a actions, but rather to the equanimity towards action, be it good or evil, cultivated by a spiritually advanced Saiva aspirant. This equanimity could be witnessed through certain outer signs (cihna-s) of the aspirant, l a warranting the guru to perform d"k s". But Aghoras problem does not _end here, for in the very next verse  Srikantha writes, __
parasparavirodhena niv"ritavip"kayoh a a _ l  karmanoh samnip"tena saiv" sa ktih pataty anau a _ _ _ _ Sivas Power descends on the soul because of the conjunction of two actions, each preventing the others fruition through their mutual opposition.

That is, the earlier author argues for precisely the interpretation that Aghora had just rejected. Unable to accept that his received text says what it does, Aghorasiva had to come up with a stopgap. Instead of l  a karmanoh samnip"tena saiv" saktih pataty a nau with samnip"tena as a _ _ _ an unproblematic instrumental of _ cause, by_ resegmenting the phonemes of the verse, he reads *samnip"te na. . .patati, i.e. as a locative a absolute with the negation of the_ following nite verb, transmitting a verse then that says precisely the opposite of its intended sense (Bwhen there is a conjunction of two actions. . .Sivas Power does not descend on the soul[). The reason he adduces for this reading has a certain nality to it, although one can perhaps detect in it a slightly defensive tone:
l a ...karmanoh samnip"te sati saiv" sivatvadayikanugrahika saktir
_ _ a t m ani na _ patati; tasya malaparip"ka eva p"taravan"t. . . a a s a _ d"ks"y" eva malaparip"k"vin"bh"t"y"h karmak sayadv"rena l a a a a a ua a a _ _ _ _ mok sahetutvam. _ When there is a Fconjunction of two actions_ the FPower_ [said to be FSivas because it] grants the favor that is the state of equality with Siva does not descend on the soul, as its descent is taught [to occur] only when there is the complete maturation of the Stain. . .it is initiation alone, inseparable from the complete maturation of the Stain, that acts as the cause of liberation, through the destruction of [ones existing] karma.

Outside of the elevated realm of soteriological argument, Aghoras emendation had real consequences, for precisely the reasons he adduces: an unforseen consequence of the acceptance the older view could be that l a the Saiva ritual of d"ks" would forfeit its fundamental importance. For Aghora, whose view _ the Saiva religious community was that of a of

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series of guru-disciple generations receding back to an originary dis pensation of sivajnana, this would be disastrous. For it is only the Saiva guru who was thus empowered to perform the forensic task of reading 1 a the signs of an initiands readiness for liberating grace. To devalue d"ks" _ would thus unseat the guru from his place as central gure in any Saivas ritual and social life, the communitys preeminent source of authority. Thus for Aghora, the text before him simply could not have been read in any other way.

" I. THE PERIYAPURANAM AND THE _ " " " YANARPURANAM KANNAPPANA _ _ _ This sort of commentarial sleight-of-hand, however warranted, might seem an odd way to begin a discussion of the gure the S aiva n"yan"r Kannappar as he appears in the Cekkilars medieval Tamil a a _ masterpiece,_ the Periyapur"nam. The story of Kannappar at rst glance a _ __ seems totally divorced from the sort of abstraction that occupied Aghorasiva: Kannappar, who blinds himself out of devotion to Siva, __ provides a paradigmatic example of the Fharsh devotee_ whose stories are said to typify the unique and extreme spirit of southern Saivism. He would appear emblematic of the world of bhakti enthusiasm at diametrical odds from the Sanskritic, dogmatic world of Aghoras theological writing. At most, one might say, the worlds of hagiography and theology could be conceptualized in terms of the faith of the laity (Fpopular religion_) versus the speculations of the elite. As I shall argue, however, in telling the story of Kannappars sal__ vation, Cekkilar shows himself in a crucial way to be a contestant in the world of theological argument current in twelfth century Cidambaram, the same world from which Aghorasiva issued forth his reinterpretation r"kanthas"ri. Indeed, the logic of the narrative text of the text of S  u __ depends in a signicant way on precisely the conundrum that Aghora labored there to resolve. Aghorasivas location in space and time is a largely settled issue, thanks to his repeated references to the form of Siva under worship in Cidambaram, and the presence of a chronogram at the end of his Kriyakramadyotika dating the completion of that work to 1157 CE. He was thus an almost exact contemporary of Cekkilar, whose masterpiece was written Y again, at Cidambaram Y under the patronage o _ of the C"la king Anapayan, identied with Kul"ttunga II (ruled 1133Y o 1150). The gruesome yet transxing image at the heart of the story of

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Kannappar Y that of a man offering his own eye to his god Y had by this _ time_ already attracted plastic representation, as in the bronze masterpiece _ a of Tiruvenk"tu (now held in the Tanjore art gallery) dated to ca. _ 975.4 Yet this image comes almost as an afterthought in Cekkilars telling, forming only the nal seventeen of the pur"nams 180 verses. a _ It is signicant that the storys horric, magnicent denouement would have already been known to Cekkilars initial audience; thus, how Kannappar comes to this nal transguration can form the poets prin__ cipal theme. The main narrative may be briey summarized as follows: Tinnan Y _ 1 a a who is later to receive the name Kannappar as a sort of d"k s"n"ma_ Y was _ near the holy __ born into a hunter clan in the wild country of Pottappin"tu, a mountain of K"latti K"lahasti. His birth to the tribal _chieftain N"kan a a a _ was the result of boon given by Murukan after long _ and his wife Tattai austerities performed by the couple. Named Tinnan (roughly, Bthe tough _ " one[) for the strength he already displayed as _an infant, the naya ar is ayan" described as leading a childhood lled with the mischief typical of genres such as the later pi l laittamil or Bchilds song[. While still a boy, __ he is trained in the bow and other weapons, in an elaborately detailed ceremony of initiation. Once thus enabled, his father Y whose advancing age could no longer endure the privations of the hunt and of the tribes wars with its neighbors Y prepared to pass on the chieftaincy to Tinnan, _ whose eligibility was to depend on the success of his Bmaiden hunt,[_ the kanniv"t tai. Assured of success by the portents seen by his lineages e t"var"t ti, an elderly shamaness, Tinnan sets off at the head of a hunting e "" a _ _ __ party. _ _ Along with his army of hunters, Tinnan rst prepares the chosen site _ by penning up the woods and sending _out beaters to ush out the game. They then descend upon the trapped and frightened animals and slaughter them with terric violence. Giving chase to an especially erce boar, Tinnan is separated from the rest of the hunters, except for a two youths, N"_nan and K"tan. After killing and dressing the animal, they a_ _ _ set off in search of fresh water and come upon the Mukali river, at the foot of Mt. K"latti. Told of the presence of Siva atop the mountain, a _ drawn to it, and insists upon climbing to the summit. Tinnan is strangely _ As_ he crests K"latti, he is touched by the grace-lled gaze of Siva and a _ undergoes a sudden and dramatic conversion. No longer wishing to be

Thanjavur Art Gallery acc. no. 174, date according to NAGASWAMY 1983, 113.

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separated from the Lord, but wanting desperately to give offerings (and dismissive of the owers and water left there by Bsome brahman[, whom N"nan recalls meeting years before), Tinnan forces himself back to the a __ _ foot of the mountain. There, to the shock of his companions, he cooks the meat of the boar, tastes it to nd the choicest piece, throws the rest away, and returns to the summit of K"latti with a plateful of meat and a a _ mouthful of water to offer to the god. Now abandoned by his two fellowhunters, he clears away the ower offerings with his foot and offers the meat and spittle-water to Siva. After keeping watch over the god for the night, Tinnan again tears __ himself away in the day to hunt for more offerings. His exit cues the return of the brahman who had earlier made the pure, agamic offerings, one Civak"cariy"r (=Skt. Sivagocarin). This devout brahman is horried o a by the sight of the barbaric offering he nds in the presence of the god, removes it, does penance and offers owers and water as is his habit. This cycle continues for some days, with Tinnan hunting by day and __ keeping watch by night, and Civak"cariy"r coming by day and bemoano a ing the sacrilege wrought by Bsome hunter[. Siva then brings this cycle to an end, appearing in a dream to the brahman and tells him to watch the hunters offering the following day. Secreting himself near the summit, Civak"cariy"r sees all of the days awesome events. Tinnan rst returns o a __ to nd the eye of Siva bleeding. Panicking, he tries to staunch the wound with his hands and forest medicines. When this fails, he remembers the adage Besh for esh[, takes an arrow and gouges out his own eye to replace the gods injured one. But the nal test yet remains, and blood begins to pour from Sivas second eye. Placing his foot on the god to direct his hand, Tinnan readies himself to take his other eye. His point proven, __ Siva then stays his hand, saying three times BKannappa, stop![, and shows his favor to the hunter, His perfect devotee. _ _ a There are two principal themes within C"kkil"rs telling of this e story to which I would like to draw attention here. These occur sequentially within the pur$nam and, as it happens, to cumulative effect. They _ are:
 The remounting of motifs and thematic material adopted from one

of the ve tinai-s or landscapes of classical Tamil poetics, viz. the _ a kuri~ci theme. From the very beginning of the pur" nam, C"kkil"r n a e " _ employs material from the earliest body of literary Tamil. The poet does this not only to lend suggestive undertones to the story of Tinnans life, but in order to pointedly locate his narrative within a __

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longer literary continuum, and one particular to the Tamil literary sensibility. And,
 The logic of the transformation of Tinnan from barbaric hunter to

__ perfect devotee, and the relation between the PP and the circum ambient world of Saiva systematic thought. From within the frame of the pronouncedly Tamil story of Tinnans early life, Cekkilar _ unexpectedly raises the question of the _ individuals readiness for aiva beatitude, and can offer, as we shall see, his own novel S answer.

II. GODS, MEAT, AND MOUNTAINS For a reader with even a casual knowledge of Tamil literary history, it is readily apparent that the world of the mountain-dwelling hunters into which Tinnan is born possesses a long genealogy. In the mountain __ fastnesses where they make their homes, in the animals they hunt and keep, in their diet, and in the wild revels that form their commerce with the divine, Tinnans clan are the direct literary descendants of the _ n peoples of the _ kuri~ci tinai, the mountainous landscape of the akam _ poems of the Ca"_ kam corpus of classical Tamil. Within the akam n _ (Finner_ or erotic) poems of the Ca nkam texts, but especially in the tradition of criticism and theory that they inspired, one can observe a taxonomic imagination at work, in which the situations of idealized lovers from rst meeting to post-marital indelity are projected onto a spectrum of ve landscapes. Each landscape, the earliest works of theory inform us, has three sets of element typical of it: Fprimary elements_ muta rporul of time and space, Fthematic elements_ uripporul " _ _ of the love situation, and Fgenerative elements_ karupporul, the raw _ in their _ materials of nature and culture utilized by the Ca nka m poets description of each landscape. It is the third of these that in turn provides a C"kkil"r with his set of diagnostically recognizable borrowings from the e earlier poetry. Now, merely recording that a medieval Tamil poet reworks the _ conventions of the Cankam forms a rather banal exercise. For one thing, a as I mentioned, the debt owed by C"kkil"r to the akam tradition is e obvious; further, practically every literary work of middle Tamil borrows material from the older corpus. While it is worthwhile to give a

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brief accounting of the lexical and thematic indebtedness of the story of Kannappar,5 it is altogether a more interesting question to see what __ a use exactly C"kkil"r makes of his inherited material. The motivation for e the poets reliance on this earlier material is introduced, elegantly yet forcefully, from the very rst verses of the KP:
_ m"valar purankal cer ra vitaiyavar v"tav"ymai e e a " _ " ka _ " k avalar tirukk alattik " nnappar tirun"tenpa a __ _ ni _ o n" valar pukalntu p"rru nalvalam peruki " nra a "lai c"lnta pottapin"tu " " "" _ a p"valarv"vi c" u a o u " _ To tell of the country of Kannappar of Tiruk"latti, a _ _ home to the guardian of the _truth of the Vedas, the Bull-rider who destroyed the cities of his enemies: It is the Pottappi n"tu, honored by poets, fertile and far spreading, a _ surrounded by gardens and ower-lled tanks. (650)

The following is a working list of the kuri~cikkarupporul material to be gleaned n " from the Kannappan"yanarpur"nam (hereafter KP). The list _follows that of the two a a __ " _ earliest commentators on the poetic treatises (Ilamp"ranar on the Tolk"ppiyappou a _ a rulatik"ram, ad c"ttiram 20 (p. 16) and Nakkra nar_ on Iraiyan"rakapporul ad c"ttiram a u u " _ _ 1 (p. 19Y20) who cites the Tolkappiyam c"ttiram as his"authority). Verse _ numbers are u given as in MUTALIYARS edition; X = no occurrences in the KP. foods: ti nai (millet) 683, 684; aivanam (wild rice): 652; vetirnel (Ilamp"ranar only) X u " " _ _ animals: yanai (elephant): 651, 653, 655, 663, 670, 674, 679, 727, 728, 731, 735, 736, etc; puli (tiger): 652, 653, 658, 665, 669, 672, 675, 679, etc. pa nri (boar): 652, (the "" synonymous enam:) 693, 723, 727, 729, 737 ff. birds: mayil ( peacock): 658, 660, 661 (referring to Murukan ), 679, 697; kili (parrot): X " _ drums: veriy"ttupparai (Fdrums of possession_) X but see below; tontakam (-drum): 687 a " __ " occupation: t"nalital (gathering honey) no reference as such but see the following e " references to honey: 656, 679, 684, 698, 714, 750 musical mode: X _ owers: venkai (kino) 708, k"ntal X, ku ri~ci 706 a n " __ _ (kinds of) water: aruvi (waterfall): 651, 653, 654; cunai (mountain pool): 705 " The following two categories are found only in Nakk"ran"r: l a " settlements: cirukuti X, but ci r"r 664; kuricci (mt. hamlet) 657, 681 u " _ " " ethnonyms: Kuravar: 664, 688, 692, 698 Iravular: 665 Ku nravar: 652 " _ "" Not mentioned by either commentator is the noun v"ttuvar (Bhunter[) which, however, e _ _ naipeyar. . .; different editions of bears the warrant of Tol. P. c" 23 (ayar v"ttuvar atuut ti u e __ the text number this as c" 21, while WILDEN 2004 lists it _as 22): this lexeme occurs at vs. u 654 while the synonymous v"tar occurs passim. e _

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The conventional beauty of the nal lines epithet for the n"tu Y one a which could just as easily apply to one of the many regions in _ C" la the o " heartland of the Kaveri delta Y immediately gives way to starker images, more tting to the poets theme,
" ittirunatu tannil ivartirvuppati y"t ennin a "" " "" _ u a_ N nittil aruvicc" ral n"lvarai c"lnta p"nkar a _ttuvanrotar v"li k"li " e o _ mattavenkali r ruk k" o "" _ _ "" u _ ottap"rarana~ c"lnta_ mutupati u tupp"r akum e n u " " _ _
" kunravar atanil v" lv"r kotu~cevi~amali a rtta a a n n "" " " _ _ vanriral vilavin k"ttu v"rvalai marunku t"nkap o a u_ "" _ _ " _ _ _ _ panriyum puliyum enankun katamaiyum m"nin p"rvai a a "" "" _ _ _ _ anriyum p"rai munril aivanum unankum enkum a "" " "" " _ And should one ask what is his place in that country, it would be the ancient town of Utupp"r, u _ with its two surrounding battlements: its sides girt by tall mountains, with waterfalls lled with pearls, and a fence built of the tusks of wild rut-elephants. (651) The Kun ravar dwell there; their nets and straps hang " thick-growing wood-apple trees, from the " where bent-eared dogs are tied. There are boars, tigers, bears, and stags kept as decoys; not only that, in every stony fore-court wild rice is laid out to dry. (652)

Already the sustained inclusion of the generative elements associated with the kuri~ci country is in evidence: the details of the natural and the lived n " environment are all borrowed from the older poetry. In the rst of these verses, in an effect that the translation does not attempt to duplicate, the mention of mountain, waterfall and elephant (all diagnostic of the kuri~ci n " land) build up to the nal mention of the Utupp"r at verses end, drawing u the background, as it were, into higher _ relief than the foregrounded town. The litany of kuri~ci motifs Y beginning with the crucial n " ethnonym kunravar (Bpeople of the mountain[) Y continues in the "" following verse, mainly in the third lines enumeration of wildlife. Over the course of following verses the pur"nam continues to be front-loaded with a the kuri~ci elements: the children_ of the village play with tiger-cubs, n young"elephants, and fawns (653), the sound of the hunters drums and horns cannot drown out the sound of mountains many cataracts (654), and the lowing of the animals seized in cattle-raids rivals the trumpeting of wild elephants and the thunderous rain-clouds (655).

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This deployment of the karupporul in these early verses is an an_ nouncement to the presumptive audience of the text, alerting the audience that the imagined world of the mountain peoples will serve as a C"kkil"rs raw poetic material in what is to follow. Rather than simply a e a mannerist reworking of a stock of available themes, C"kkil"rs mountain e village sustains an implied argument, as can begin to be gathered from his next narrative Fmove_:
maiccerintanaiya m"ni vanrolil maravar tamp"l e a " " " accamum arulum en rum a"" " ar u" taivil" taivan r"l"r oa "" "" _ _ _ " poccaiyin a ravum unin pulukkalum unavu kollum " " "" " __ _ naccalarpakali v"tarkk atipati n"kan enp"n e a a "" " _ " " " " a a a a pe r riyar rava mu n ceyat"n "yi num pi rappi n c"rp"l " " "e " " a "" " " kur ram" kunam" v"lv"n kotumaiy" talai nin rull"n e a a a "" " " _ "" " _ vi r rolil vi ralin mikk"n venci na matankal p"lv"n _ a _ o a_ e ""r" avan ku ricciv""kkai manaiviyum tattai enp"l " " " "a _ ma r al " _ "" " " " " Among the Maravar, their labours erce and their bodies heavy with blackness, " there were hunters, knowing neither fear nor mercy, clad in rough leather, who live on rice mixed with meat and mountain honey, their arrows dipped in a ery poison. Their leader was named N"kan. (656) a
Though he did penance in an earlier life, through the propensities of his birth, he lived as if crime itself were a virtue, and cruelty was his highest aim. He was a great archer, like a ferocious lion. Joined with him in his life in the mountain hamlet was Tattai, his wife. (657)

In the matter-of-fact narrative tone of these verses, C"kkil"r begins to e a subtly add undertones to the picture of the mountain world. The violence of the hunters lives is inescapably made present in the rst verse, an a effect that is heightened by C"kkil"rs deliberate choice of the ethnonym e ma ravar , which is not among the peoples listed as appropriate for the "n kuri~ci landscape in the early commentaries on poetics.6 Ma ravar is " " a name appropriate to the bandit tribes of the blasted desert landrather scape of palai; its employment here, sanctioned by the rubric of tinaimayakkam, the Bconfusion of landscapes[ of the traditional poetics, _ would seem motivated by the names etymological link to the lexeme

pace Ci. Ke. Cuppiramaniya MUTALIYAR, the editor and learned commentator of the _ _ Kovait Tamilc Cankam edition of the PP, who adds the note ad loc ( p. 836) Bma ravar - ku" nci nila makka l peyar[ (BMa ravar: name for people of the kuri~ci ri~ n " _ " " country[). "

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ma ram Bviolence, violent power.[ The life of the hunters is one of force " and death, linked crucially, as we already see here, to the reliance on esh as food. N"kan is seen to typify this life. Indeed, he stands at a " the center of its moral logic: pirappin c"rp"l / kurram" kunam" v"lv"n, a a e a a a " " " _ " " Bthrough the propensities of his birth, he lived as if crime itself were a virtue.[ Here we see the rst glimpse of the questions of ethics and a subjectivity that link C"kkil"rs narrative with the theological spece ulations of the Saivasiddhanta; signicantly this benighted life is not the result of an ill birth, it is rather the fruit of previous lives well lived. The universe bounded by the commonplaces of the kuri~ci landscape is an n " ethically coherent one: it is a form of life with its own set of criteria, a grounded in the embodied fact of karma-determined birth. Yet, C"kkil"r e already implies, as N"kan stands judged as soon as he enters the nara " rative, there is a transcendent standard Y a means whereby crime and virtue can be absolutely distinguished Y by which the hunters lifeworld may be measured, and may be found wanting. Both of these central themes Y the coherence of mountain dwellers world, and its bounded limitation Y gure into the following verses on e a Tinnans conception and birth. Here, however, C"kkil"r turns to the __ world of ritual practice of the kuri~ci country, a commonplace in the n earlier literature. Hoping to attain"the birth of a son, Tinnans parents __ e take themselves to Bthe courtyard of bright-speared Murukav"l[ (celvel _ murukav"l mun rir cenru, vs. 659) to honor the god of the kuri~ci e n " country. _The "" " "" they perform Y Bwhile marking the kuravai, worship _ they performed the dance in which ananku is great[ (B. . . kuravai _ _ a t"nkap=p"ranank"tal ceytu. . .[, 660), each of the monthly protective u_ e _ _ rites after conception were performed Bwith the requisite entranced dances[ katanuru veriy"t t"tum Y all speak of the putatively autocha o " __ _ _ " " _ thonous outpourings of Tamil religiosity as gured forth in the Cankam texts, lled with collective rites of dance and possession. The ku ravai " dance, whose meaning and social locus shift within the anthologies themselves, connotes especially a group-dance accompanied by song, while the veriy"ttu is a dance most often (though not exclusively) a " __ associated with the shaman-priest of Murukan (v"lan, Bwho bears a e " acquires soothsaying " spear[), a possessed frenzy where the priest _ powers.7 Of greater importance here is the use of the lexeme ananku. I _

On these dance-forms, much discussed in secondary literature, see especially SIVATHAMBY 1981, 188Y190, 334Y341.

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do not intend here to enter into the controversies that have sprung up around this difcult words interpretation,8 but I do think its use by Cekkilar is both deliberate and meaningful. While by no means de bunked or delegitimated Y it is after all linked here with the Saiva gure of Murukan Y it would seem to typify for the poet the wild and the " uncontrollable aspect of the kuri~ci lifeworld Y a supernatural corollary n " to the ethical quandary presented by N"kan. a " a In crafting this image of a cultural and moral order, C"kkil"r doesnt e merely depend on the self-conscious adaptation of the kuri~ci motifs. Ren " lying upon the technique of the confusion of landscapes tinaimayakkam, _ a C"kkil"r is able to modulate his implicit message by drawing in material e _ from elsewhere in the Cankam poetic universe. He does so as was already seen through the use of the p" lai ethnonym ma ravar,9 along with a " its synonym eyinar=eyir riyar (vss. 653, 683, 685). Outside of this sort of " the altogether more interesting question of the liberties "" bricolage, there is Cekkilar takes with his sources, with the innovations and improvisations that draw upon this preexisting matrix. The most striking and thematically the most important of these innovations is the recurrent presence of meat ("n, tacai, iraicci). This makes a certain intuitive sense u " " Y meat is after all the inevitable outcome of the hunters violence, it is the substance emblematic of what distinguishes their life from that of others. Especially as it is intoxicatingly mixed with honey Y a kuri~cikkarupporul that coats and incorporates the cooked esh into n " _ the order of the landscape Y meat reoccurs throughout the account of Tinnans early life. The young Tinnan is fed esh night and day by an __ _ old _Ku rava nursemaid (676), and his initiation into the life of a hunter is " passage is marked by a Rabelaisian tumult of feasting and drink, a rite de in which meat plays a chief part (683Y685). We can identify in this a
_ For George HART ananku is descriptive of a Fpotentially dangerous sacred force_ that _ inheres in places and persons, especially chaste women (HART 1976, inter alia). This view was subjected to a thorough critique by V.S. RAJAM (RAJAM 1986), who con_ vincingly showed the untenability of Harts interpretation within the Cankam corpus as a whole Y wherein ananku and its derivatives refer to a generalized feeling of a sort of _ awesome intensity _Y and further demonstrated the semantic change undergone by the lexeme over time, as it comes in the medieval period to refer to a variety of feminine spirit or demoness. Recently, Alexander DUBIANSKY, while acknowledging Rajams demur, has attempted to salvage much of Harts old argument to produce a mythopoetics _ exhaustive of the Cankam poetic corpus (DUBIANSKY 2000). 9 With the exception of the ubiquitous v"tar (Bhunters[) Y itself a name of an oce _ cupation rather than some sort of ethnic label Y ma ravar is the most frequently de" ployed name in the whole puranam; cf. vss. 656, 658, 677, 678, 687, 704, 735, 737, _ 740, etc.
8

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commonplace in the PP, in which the instinctive horror that segments of the poets audience would have felt towards the idea of meat-eating is taken up and transvalued. While the long history of the equation between Tamil Saivism and vegetarianism has yet to be written,10 one can see this troped poetic play upon the prejudices of the upper caste vegetarian ethic here, as it is even more radically to be found in Ci ruttontars " __ cannabilistic licide, told later in the poem.11 The gure that best captures the dynamic between renvoi and invene a tion in Cekkilars text is that of the t"var"t ti . It is to this prophetess of _ a the Ku ravar tribe that N"kan turns when he _wishes to pass the rule of his " people" onto Tinnan. Ancient, repeatedly and pointedly connected with _ _ unseen forces of the mountains, and exuberantly nonpossession by the vegetarian Y both feeding on esh and adorned with earrings cut from stag-horns and a brow-mark of musk of deer stomach (vs. 697) Y the t"var"t ti seems the most powerfully drawn character of the old mountain e a __ taxonomy, Bthe very image of an old Korava woman,[ as the text itself has it (vs. 698: mutu ku rak"lappatimatt"l). Yet the noun t"var"t ti itself apo a " e a " Ca nkam_ corpus, and the image that emerges from __ _ _ pears nowhere in the 12 the PP is without precedent in the early literature. The character of the
The word caivam in the modern language itself denotes vegetarian food and practices, a usage that the Madras University Tamil Lexicon, s.v. identies as a colloquialism. 11 On Ciruttontar, see HART 1980 and SHULMAN 1993. As HART aptly puts it, BEating " __ can produce internal, not external, pollution: the consumption of dangerous foods [such as esh -wmc] leaves one in a precarious position that is almost impossible to rectify.[ (op.cit. 219Y220) cf. also Harts observation that the PPs version of Ciruttontar is " __ centrally concerned with the Btransformation of human values[ (ibid.), a statement that precisely captures the tone of the KP. 12 There is no reference to t"var"t ti (or either of its components in juxtaposition) in e a __ e a any of the published indices to the anthologies. The MTL, s.v. t"var"t ti gives this very _ passage of the Kannappan"yan"rpur"nam as attestation. Perhaps one _can see an ancesa a a _ti in the kuramakal,_ priestess of Murukan in the Tirumuruk"rrupatai, _ tress of the t"var"t e a a " " "" __ _ _ ln. 242Y244: kurutic centinai parappik kuramakal " " murukiya niruttu muraninarutka _ " patutta urukelu viyanakar muruk" rrup a "" _ In Ramanujans evocative translation (RAMANUJAN 1985, 216, somewhat modied): B[the awesome vast temple...] where the daughter of the hill tribe, spreading fearful blood-smeared millet, sounds Murugans favorite instruments and offers worship to Murugan until He arrives and comes into her to terrify enemies and deniers.[
10

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t"var"t ti in the PP is clearly one of mediation: she praises the omens that e a attend_ _ young Tinnan to be the best shes ever seen Y pointedly telling N"kan that Bthis_ _triumphant bowmen, this son of yours, Tinnan, shall a _ in attain"a greatness greater than even your own[13 Y and thus sets _ motion the hunt that begins Tinnans progress to transguration. That her __ prophecy is perfectly correct Y Kannappar, as slave of the Lord, is _ possessed of a glory far oustripping _his warrior-father Y serves only to magnify the distance between the storys inception and its promised dee a nouement. The t"var"t ti , the priestess of the gods of the mountain, indeed __ the iconic representation of the physical and ethical universe of the kuri~ci, is possessed of real power, Cekkilar tells us, though it only is the n " power to prophesy her own supersession, as the world of esh and spirittrances that she represents is to be replaced by the higher truths of the Saiva path. Her last words to Tinnan before his departure are pregnant __ with this power, made all the more prominent by the narrated silence of his reply:
m"naccilaiv"tar murunku nerunku p"tir a e _ _ o p"" rkulam"malari r patarc"tiy"r mu n " ana a_ o a " _ " r"" "racai t"ral caruppori mar rum ulla enar e " " "" " "" k"nappali n"rkatavu tpo raiy" t ti vant"_l_ a e a a " _ _ " __ _ N_ nin r e_ ku moykkuD cilaiv"tarkal n"nkap pukkuc n e "" _ _ a cen ra_ ku vallal tirune r riyi r c"tai c "tti n e "" " _ "" __ un rantai tantaikkum innanmaikal ulla alla "" " _ __ nan rum perit unvi ral nammalav an rit en r"l a "" " " "" "" _ _ " appe r r iyin valttum a na nkutaiy"tti tannaic _ a "" " " _ __ "" _ ceppark` arit$ya cirapp` etir ceytu pnkkik " " r riya tincilaik k"rma laim"kam e nna kaippa a e "" "" " meypporputai _ e t taiyin m"rkont e luntu p"nta" v" e o r " _ " __ " __ " As the strong-bowed hunters gathered all around, that woman who bears the presence of the god, having given the forest-offering of honey, fresh meat, toddy, and parched rice came before that man, who shone black like a cluster of blue lilies. (714)
The crowding hunters gave way, and she came, she put yellow rice-paste on that generous mans forehead, and said: BThe omens were not this good for your father, or his father Y truly, your strength is great, it surpasses us all.[ (715)

_ To that women, possessed of ananku , who had praised him in this way, he offered service in return, in a_way that dees words, and sent her on her way.
13

vs. 700: unmaintan tinnan"na = ve r rivariccilaiy"n ninn alavil an ri m"mpatakin r"n. a o e a " __ " " "" " "" _ "" _ "" "

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Then, bow in hand, like a rain-darkened cloud, he set out on the wondrous hunt (716)

So impelled by familial duty and foretold by omens, Tinnan departs on __ the kanniv"ttai, his maiden hunt, and so heads off towards his destiny. e " " _ _of the hunt forms an indispensable transition from the world The episode of the mountain hunters to the awful transguration atop Mt. K"latti. In a _ this brief passage (it covers only 24 verses) of sustained poetic intensity, Cekkilar signals the import of his theme through two principle means: that of meter and that of guration. While the rst sixty-six verses of the KP are by no means bare of gures of speech and of explicitly poetic language, there is a sudden density of elaborately troped language in the description of the hunt. To a adopt a Sanskritic idiom that is (I think) by no means alien to C"kkil"rs e modus operandi, the early verses depicting the mountain world are cast in a predominately svabhavokti mode, while in the description of the hunt itself proceeds by way of vakrokti. As Tinnan passes across the __ limit of the circumscribed world of the kuri~ci village, through the wild n "K"latti, this use of vakrokti forest and towards his destiny atop Mt. a _ continues, as the stuff of language itself becomes thick and tense with the anticipation of what is to come. The description of the maiden hunt can be divided into two sections, based on an internal shift in the meter: vss. 717Y727 and vss. 728Y740. In the rst half of the passage, composed in a variety of aciriyaviruttam, the march of Tinnan and his hunting party into the cloud-swept forest of the mountain is_ _described, along with their preparations for the hunt. Hunting dogs run everywhere before them, Btheir red tongues lolling from their mouths, stretching out before them like the [reddened] feet of the goddess of victory, at home on the tip of the hunters bows[(718).14 With a fanfare of trumpets and thundering drums, the army of the hunters plunge into the forest, laying nets and leather straps throughout it, so none of the creatures can escape what is to come (724). Tinnan and the __ other hunters nock their arrows, release the dogs, the beaters dive into the thicket and, as the frightened animals of the forest emerge and try to escape, the hunters fall upon them (725Y727).

_ ve n rimankai v"tarvillin mMtu m8vu p"tamun=cen ru n"lum"ru pnlva ceyya n"vin e a  a a " " " _ " _ " " " . . .n"ykal: as IRACAMANIKKANAR points out (1978, "" a "" 254) this phrase recalls Na r rinai _ " " _ _ 252 Y muyalv"tt elunta mutukuvicaikkatan"y=nann"ppuraiyum c"rati Ba little " foot e a a  __ " _ _ [red] like the good tongue of a savage dog rushing "" it gives chase"to a hare.[ as

14

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In the second half, in kaliviruttam, a terric slaughter ensues. The animals are cut to pieces in the cross-re of arrows (728). The forest becomes a gruesome phantasmagoria: boars vomiting blood fall into the mouths of dying tigers, stags seem to charge one another as arrows rip through their heads, lions and elephants fall dead beside each other, and seem to stripe the forest oor with day and night come together (729Y 731). Many deer leap into the sky, so appearing as if they were the deerin-the-moon fallen from its resting-place, pursued by the eclipse of the hunters arrows, while the dead of other beasts fall upon the forest oor like black rain on the ocean (732,733). Chasing a boar, Tinnan is drawn _a away from the hunting party and into the vicinity of Mt. _K"latti along _ with his two remaining companions N"nan and K"tan. Caught up in the a a " " _ leader of _ the violent tribe of berserk fury of the hunt, Tinnan, Bthe maravars [ forgets the arrow _ _ on his bowstring, charges the animal, set " draws his sword and Bstabs it and breaks its body in two[ (740).15 As even this cursory description hopefully illustrates, the two metrically differentiated halves of the episode pronouncedly differ in their tone and affective power. This effect of the narrative is carefully augmented by the prosodic shape of the verses. In the rst section, the effect rests on the insistent syncopated rhythmic pulse that emerges from within the basic structure of the verse (called cantam in Tamil metrical theory). This provides a martial cadence that is meant to excite; it is an easy rhythm to recite or for a listener to anticipate Y sweeping up the audience in the rush of movement described, it subtly imitates the tattoo of drums that are said to accompany the hunting party. This pattern remains the same as the narrative reaches the climax of the hunt. Its a stability allows C"kkil"r to play with the relation between sound and e sense, producing unexpected effects:16

kuttinar utal mu ripata e rikulama ravarkal talaivar, the key phrase here being the " " " " _ _ unexpected utal mu ripata_, closest perhaps to Bsuch that [its] body might snap like a " _ _ murital can bear the sense of Bbe defeated, be discomted, to cease to twig[. While " exist[ (MTL), the primary sense is something like Bto snap in two[. cf. the noun muri " Bpiece, half, broken half of a coconut[ (ibid ). 16 In order to emphasize their rhythmic dimensions, I have reproduced the text of this verse and the two following exactly as they occur in the edition, divided according to the 1 boundaries of the metrical feet (Tamil c"r). Elsewhere in this article, I have not followed this practice, and have occasionally resolved the sandhi-s that occur metri causa. On Tamil meter generally see Niklas excellent descriptive study (NIKLAS 1996).

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_ neru nku painta rukku lanka ntu k"tu k"tan"r _ " a u e _a _ _ _e a varunka runci laitta takkai m"na v"tar c"nait"n _ e " " " _ _ _ta rpa rappi taippu kumperun porunta tanti raikka _ranka nlpu na rka linti kanni yottat8 _" _ karunta _ " _ "" _ ""
That army of hunters, black bows in their strong hands, plunged straightaway into the great forest, lled with copses of dark green trees, just like the Kalinti river, its waters great with huge black waves, goes into the great billows of the far-spreading sea. (722)

The perfectly elaborated and quite Sanskritic uvamam here is played out, as it were, across this rhythmic pulse. The verse is marked by _ extensive compounding Y save the plural noun kulankal , the two contrasting adjectival participles varum and porum, and the_ nal nite verb ottatu, no words in the verse are even minimally inected Y while the individual words are largely spread across the boundaries of the metrical feet. The rhythm here thus provides a contretemps to the meaningful semantic units of the verse. In this verse, as throughout this passage, an urgency of motion provides the dominant impression, here working in an internally maintained tension with the careful craft of the simile. The result is a temporary merger of the swinging rhythm of the march with the irresistible rush of a river in ood pouring into the sea. The drums of the march carry the scene through to the very moment the killing begins. The meter, the verse form, the affective tone: all of these shift radically with the onset of the description of the hunters grim work in the forest. In contradistinction to the earlier cadence the audience now is faced with a series of staccato lines, in which very few long vowels or geminate consonants make the lines tense with the details they record:
_ " venkanaipatu pitarki lipata vicaiyuruviya kayav ay " _ _ _ _ _ " ce nkanalpata vatanotuka nai ce riyamuniru karum a " _ _ _ _ va nkelucira muruviyapolu tataleyi rura vatanaip " " " _ po_ kiyacina motukavarvana puraivanacila pulikal n " _ _ "
Arrows rip through the backs of huge boars necks driving all the way through their mouths, and blood pours out of their mouths, and even more, their forequarters are lled with arrows; when these shoot through their heads, the boars fall into the teeth of tigers, who seem to have ferociously captured them. (729)

Here, few words cross the boundaries between metrical feet; each foot now becomes an isolated unit, a series of disconnected images of the

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slaughter, delivered with a rapid, strobe-like tempo. The high degree of gural language continues in this passage, but now the language takes on a distinct quality of horric hypertrophy. A wild propulsive energy remains to undergird the description of young Tinnan as he tears through __ the forest, and hints at the bloodlust that drives his sword as he kills the boar at the passages end. Yet before this nal act of violence closes the hunt narrative, there occurs a striking moment when Cekkilar suddenly and surprisingly changes the tone of the description. The metrical effects remain the same as before and, as elsewhere, Cekkilar continues with the conceit that so tremendous was the violence that the maravars visited upon the forest that he must cast around for language t " describe it. to Yet the language is very different indeed:
palatu raikalin veruvaralotu payilvalaiya ra nu laim" a " " " _" _ valamotupatar vanatakaivu ra vu rucinamotu kavarn"y a " " _ nilaviyaviru_ vinaivalaiyitai nilaiculalpavar _ne ric"r e " " " e _ pulanu rumana nitaitataiceyta po rikalinala vulav" " " " "_ " _ _ _ _ Fearful, deer plunge in to break the nets strung on the many trails, rushing down rocky paths, as savage hunting dogs block their way, just as in the hidden truth: minds set on release of those men caught up in the nets of their fullled prior deeds, good and bad, are impeded by the senses. (734)

Here it is unexpectedly the language of emancipation to which Cekkilar turns: the desperate straits of the animals escape are likened to the well-nigh impossible striving for release of men in the world. The tension which this verse is meant to evoke is perfectly captured by the staccatissimo of the third lines nilaviyaviru vinaivalaiyitai . With this _ phrase (Bwithin the nets of their two fullled "prior deeds,[ i.e. their pu nya - and papakarmans), which summons up the quandary that as _ weve already seen so troubled Aghorasiva, the drama of salvation is introduced into the minds of the audience, just before Tinnan breaks __ away from his clansman and sets out towards K"latti. a _ III. BEARING WITNESS As Tinnan stands over the shattered carcass of the boar, and his com_ panions_ look on in amazement, the narrative enters into its nal and most signicant phase: the relation of the transguration of Tinnan into the __ " " Saiva n ayan ar Kannappar. Caught up in the insistent movement of the " __

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hunt, he nds himself near the foot of the holy mountain that is to be the site of his trial and rebirth. Told of the mountain and of the god at its summit by N"nan, one of his two remaining companions, Tinnans a " __ reaction begins _ as mere curiosity. But as Tinna and his companions n approach the mountains foot, they see the rst glimmer of the transformations yet to come:
katiravan ucci nannak katavunm"lvaraiyin ucci a " " __ " "_ atirtarum ocai aintum arkali_mulakkan k"tta _ a " perunt"n__ ulntu itu enkol n"n" en r"rkk immalaip a a a e c" " "" " " _ matumalar"_ l moyttu marunk elum oli kol en r"n 1 ka a "" " _ " As the Sun reached its peak, on the peak of the god-haunted mountain, the ve sounds thundered forth, giving a roar like the ocean. BWhat could this be, N"nan?[ he asked, a _ BIs and, in reply N"nan said: " it that the bees who swarm around that a " _honey-combs are rising up everywhere mountains great and making such a sound?[ (750)

Tinnans old life still seems close at hand, yet charged with new __ a meaning: ka tavunm"lvarai (Bthe god-haunted mountain[17), especially, _ _ usage, laden with resonances of the world of the is a very pregnant _ kuri~ci. In the universe of Cankam reference, the divinity katavul one n " _ expects to encounter atop mountains is Murukan, the very god by _whose " in the rst place.18 Yet intercession Tinnan took birth among the hunters __ it is not Murukan whose presence is announced by a fanfare of divine " music; the hunters have now gone beyond the world of the familiar, as is perfectly captured by N"nans ingenuous reply: trying to accoma " modate what he is experiencing, _he places this portent within the everyday world of the honey-combs said to dot the mountains of the kuri~ci n " country. In this verse, in a certain sense the pivot around which the entire narrative turns, the physical and ethical order on which Tinna exist n

" m al mayakkam, Bconfusion,[ Bbewilderment,[ pace MUTALIYARs commentary " ad loc, for whom m al periya Bbig.[ 18 Cf. Kuri~cipp"ttu ln. 207, malai ma micai ka tavul , Fthe divinity atop the mounn a " __ _ _ tain_ = Murukan (cited in HARDY 1983, 136). Less _denitely, also cf. Ainku run"ru 259 u " n k atanmatamakal . . . malaiyu rai katavul kulamutal v" lutti Fthe sim1Y3: ku nrakku rava _ " a " " " " " _ " " _ _ _ ple girl, "the beloved of the man of the hills...having worshipped her family god, the divinity that dwells on the mountain_. On the semantics of the word ka tavul gener_ _ ally, especially as the localized presence of the divine, see HARDY op cit pp 131ff. and DUBIANSKY op cit pp 4Y6.

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ence rests begins to irrevocably change. Immediately, the rst stage of Tinnans transguration into Kannappar follows: __ __
muncey tavattin n tta mutivil" inpam"na a a " " " _ a "" anpinai etattuk k"_t_ alavil" a rvam ponki a ta _ __ l a " nperun_ atal k"ra va_ lal"r malaiyai n" kki " _ k" ma u o " __ " enpunekkuruti ullatt eluperuv"tkai otum e " __ " _ _ " a n"nanum anpum munpu nalirva ra i eratt"mum a " " _ o a " e p"nutattuvankal ennum perukuc"p"nam " ri e_ " _ " " _ ""a "naiy"~ civattaic c"ravanaipavar pola aiyar a _ an _ nilai malaiyai "ri n"rpatac cellumpotil _ n e e _ " _ _ tinkal cer ca taiy"r tammaic cenravar k"n" munn" a a a e ""o _ _ anka_nar karu_ k"rnta aru t tirun"kkam eytat "" nai u _ _ _ _ _ _ tankiya pavattin munnaic carpu vit t` akala n nkip _ "  lal"poruvil anpuruvam " n"r " __ _ ponkiya oliyin n a a _ " " " " That noble man looked towards the mountain, and as his limitless enthusiasm swelled, he showed the devotion, the endless joy that was the treasure of the tapas done in earlier births, and as his great steadfast love increased, as his very bones grew soft, and as his desire grew great, (751)

His love Y and N"nan Y went before him, up that cool mountain, a _ and the lord climbed that wide-terraced peak, just as those who cleave to the truth that is Siva climb the great staircase that are the tattvas, worthy of reection. (752) Before that man who was approaching the One in Whose locks rests the moon could catch sight of Him, the One with lovely eyes cast a grace-lled glance charged with His compassion; as all of the propensities from his previous births fell away, he left them, transgured into matchless love, in a shadow of spreading light. (753)

Several points in these verses are worth drawing attention to. Continuing with the language of Saiva systematic thought that we have seen already informing the narrative of the hunt, Cekkilar here invokes one of the central speculative concerns of Saiva theology, the set of thirty-six hierarchically ranked constituent principles (skt. tattvas) extending from base earth to the utterly pure Siva. Equating the mountain to these, the given natural world of the kuri~ci is further charged with a larger species n of meaning, and the events"yet to take place are set within a grander context. Yet a more signicant indication of Cekkilars craft is the primacy of vision in the narration of Tinna nal passage to salvation. ns As Tinnan Blooks towards[ (nokki, from nokkutal, Fto see_, Fto intend_) __ a the mountain, he Bshowed[ (k"tta, the effective form of k" n nutal, Fto a

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see_, related to ka n, Feye_) his newly arisen bhakti. The very moment he o crests Mt. K"latti, the benevolent gaze of Siva (aruttirun"kkam, noun a derived from the same nokkutal) falls upon him, and he becomes rmly set on the path to liberation. Given the storys well-known climax, it is perhaps unsurprising that the paired motifs of vision and blindness come to dominate the nal sections of the KP. Here, this dynamic is gured forth in the play of light and darkness, powerfully articulated in the nal, paradoxical image of _ the Bshadow of spreading light[ ponkiya oliyin nilal that envelops the " " n"ya n"r. One may carry the conceit even _further, and take this as the a a " leitmotif of the entire pur"nam: the moral blindness of the lifeways of a _ the v"tar give way in the course of the narrative to the liberating insight e _ Saiva path. Yet this process of dawning insight is in a crucial way of the incomplete Y the moral horizon of the benighted world of the hunters has not yet been totally overcome, as is made clear by the anarchic presence of meat in Tinna devotions to the Lord atop K$latti. Tinna continues to kill n_s n animals to offer worship; even more transgressively, his offering to Siva are his ucchista, his impure leftovers Y he has tasted the meat, carried the water in his mouth, worn the owers on his head. To make this all the more clear, C"kkiar even describes Tinna wiping off the pure, agamic e l" n offerings that are already present with his sandalled foot (vs. 772). Of all of these transgressions, however, it is the esh, the scandalous remnant of Tinna old life, that most clearly indexes the unnished n course of his transguration. This much is made clear by the return of the S aiva brahman Civako cariya r to the mountains summit, after n Tinna has again set out to hunt. Seeing Bthe esh and bones[ left by Tinna the brahman cries out, BDamn me Y who did this horrible n, _ e thing?[ (vs. 785: inta anucitan kett"n yar ceytar), but of course fails to see the would-be culprit. This is " crucially important, for, just like Tinna Civakocariyars incomplete insight is relevant to the logic of the n, narratives climax. That the two men somehow mirror one another in their limitations of vision is made clear enough: it is tempting to see as comic the parallel lives lived by the two during the weeks time between a Tinna taking up residence on Mt. K"latti and his nal ordeal. As n Tinna ends his watch over the Lord every morning and exits stage right, n as it were, the pious Brahman comes in stage left to remove the cooked esh, do penance, and perform his own worship. No sooner does Civakocariyar depart than Tinna returns, wipes away the others n offering, and gives his own (vss. 790Y801). The twinning so implied is made explicit at the close of this brief episode: Cekkilar in successive verses describes each of the two men identically Y tanneriyil olkuv"r, Bhe a " "

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remains steadfast in his ways[ (said of Tinna in vs. 800, and of n Civakocariyar in 801). Such cyclic half-ignorance could continue indenitely, but the a pur"nams nale is now close at hand. N"nan and K"tan, Tinna a a ns " _ ns erstwhile companions, return to the scene along with Tinna " father and e a Bthe woman possessed of a nanku,[ the t"var"tti. They all entreat Tinna _ n to return to the life he had known before. As they realize the impossibility of pulling Tinna away from his devotions, the poet himself n addresses the audience:
munpu tirukk"latti mutalvan"r arun"kk"l a a o a " e inpuruv"takatt irumpu pon" an"r pol yakkai n" a "" " " tanparicum vinaiyirun tum c"rumalam" n rum a ra a u " " tirivar avar karuttin alavi" o " " nar" anpupilamp"yt a " " " " There, before them, through the gracious gaze of the god of holy K"latti, a he became a ery column [or, Fgreat mass_, pilampu] of love, " as his corporeal nature, the pair of actions and the three stains that had clung to him were all destroyed Y like iron become gold through joys alchemy. How could they have possibly understood him? (803)

After a series of its sidelong introductions, here we encounter theology en clair. Again, the agency at work here is the compassionate gaze o arul n"kku of Siva raining down on Tinna in this case, however, n; we see the actual workings of Gods grace on the individual. The body is left behind, as it is the soul that is transformed; the triad of eternally present stains Y "nava, may"ya, and karma Y are all cast off. Most a l signicant of all is the vinaiyiruntum, the Bpair of actions[. Just as in the " synonymous occurence of iruvinai in verse 734 (discussed above), this " evokes the theological controversy with which we began, the question of the interpretation of the Sanskrit theologeme karmasamya, which necessitated Aghorasivas tendentious interpretation of the text of the 1 a Ratnatrayapar"k s", with which we began. This theological dilemma, I contend, was also present in the mind of a a a Cekkilar as he composed the Kannappan"yan"rpur"nam. In contrast to " able to provide his own the theologians efforts, however, the poet is novel solution to the question of karmasamya. What can be seen here is the ability of literary narrative to at once accommodate the signicance of systematic thought while providing a solution unique to itself. For, one can see in Tinnan as he approaches the moment of his nal trans formation a gure at once embodying both pak sas of the theologians controversy, a sort of doctrinal s0lesa. Here is a man divided by the

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consequences of his birth and prior actions. As a result of the circumstances of his birth, and of the lifeways which guided his actions up to the encounter with Siva atop K"latti, Tinnan acted in a fashion completely at a odds with the Saiva ethic of the initial audience of the PP, as seen most clearly in the hunters horric violence. Yet, his ethically scandalous prior life is placed in the balance with his sudden and dramatic devotion of the worship of Siva, the god whose majesty, it is implied, transcends the details of place and station. The particular yet pervasive evils of the life of the kuri~ci hunter is countered by the immeasurable good of Saiva belief n " and practice. At the same time, Tinna has also achieved the clarity of n vision regarding the things of the world that is consonant with the interpretation of karmasamya championed by Aghorasiva. In his new found singlemindedness, the mundane world Y as gured in the group of his father, his comrades, and the t"var"tti Y no longer holds any power e a over him. Both of these rival interpretations, it may be seen, are made tangible in the tainted remnant of cooked esh used in worship by the hunter. As a the material means of Tinna propitiation of Siva atop K"latti obtained ns through his adherence to the moral order in which he was raised, the esh points to his precarious position halfway between the hunters life of violent ignorance and the good of the Saiva religion, mirroring the existential stalemate between the effects of two actions that one side of the controversy sought to resolve. At the same time, Cekkilar portrays Tinna indifference to the fundamental transgression contained in its ns offering, recalling the cultivated equanimity of R"makanthas and Aghoraa sivas version of karmasamya. On this view, the tableau of Tinna ns iva can be seen as a hypertrophic echo of the classic uncanny offerings to S an topos of the man indifferent to worldly things, the samalostak"~cana for whom dirt and gold are one and the same.19 Unattached, Tinnan has become emblematic of the man Bequal towards all beings[ yah samah sarvabh"tesu that formed Aghorasivas ideal image of the libu erated soul.
As depicted, e.g. in Bhagavadg"ta 14.24 (Poona critical edition 6:26.34): 1 0 samaduhkhasukhah svasthah samalost" smak"~canah a an _ priyo dh"ras tulyanindat masa mstutih _ _1 _ __ tulyapriya _ _ BThe wise man is established in himself, one_for whom happiness and sorrow are equal, and for whom a clod of dirt, a stone, and a piece of gold are the same, one who is equal in the face of agreeable and disagreeable things, [and] who is indifferent to praise or blame.[ cf. also BhG 6.8 (=6:28.8); elsewhere in the Mahabharata: 3:247.42, 12:185.3, 12:254.13, etc.
19

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But, why is this important? What does Cekkilars knowledge of what is now a dimly-remembered theological polemic tell us about story of Kannappar, much less about the PP as a whole? For the Tamil poet, as l with Aghorasiva, the Sanskrit sastr", the signicance of karmasamya lies in an altogether more proximate domain, that of the Saiva rite of ini l a tiation or d"ks". The centrality of this ritual for a medieval Saiva cannot be overestimated, especially with regard to its highest and most important form, the nirv"nad"ks", or Fliberating initiation._ This formed in a l a effect the raison detre of the entire religion: it provided the necessary condition for liberation, the principle goal of the Saiva householder, while also providing through the gure of the initiating guru, the model of authority for the community. Recall Aghorasivas specication that the cause of liberation is Bonly the complete maturation of Stain, which is inferrable by the sign of karmasamya spoken of earlier[ (malaparipakasyaiva proktakarmasa myacihnanumeyasya). The task of reading these signs, of assaying the readiness of the initiand for the all-important ritual event, is that of the guru. According to the mature Saiddhantika theology current in Cidambaram in Cekkilars time (as espoused by Aghorasiva and others), the condition of the maturation of the indwelling impurity, which is interpretable through the outward signs of karmasamya is itself the effect of the descent of Sivas sakti (sakti[ni-]pata), an event that must always precede the process of initiation. In his own liturgical writings, Aghorasiva stipulates a year-long period in which the guru should assess the readiness of his disciple: B...having rst come to know of the maturation of the Stain and the descent of sakti of his student who has dwelt [with him] for a years time, the teacher, once he has assembled everything that is necessary, should perform the liberating initiation[.20 It is precisely this moment Y that of the gurus forensic assessment of the aspirants readiness for liberating initiation Y that I take to be encoded in the conclusion of Cekkilars account of Kannappar. Betting _ a the pur"nams economy of vision, the poet, instead of_ the abstract and _ fall of Sivas sakti, focuses on the gods grace-giving gaze mediated (arunn"kku) as the instrument of Tinnans inner transformation. And so o __ __ "

0 0 ...samvatsarositasya sisyasya malaparip"kam saktinip"tam ca jnatva sampannak"a a a _ nirv"_nad"ks"m vidadh"ta, cited in BRUNNER_ 1977, 159; a _ somewhat _ _ rako gurur a l a l _ different text is _given_ in the South Indian Archaka Association edition of the Kriyakramadyotika (vol. 1, 304).

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the presence of Civak" cariy" r at the summit of Mt. K"latti forms an o a a absolute necessity, one that the god himself must conspire to ensure through a dream visitation.21 As Tinna offers one and then the other of n his eyes, it is the Saiva guru who bears witness to the depths of his devotion, and who thus renders possible the nal transguration and salvation of Kannappar. __ As the conclusion draws near, there is an insistent focus on signs and on sight, on vision and its obscuration. As Civakocariyar conceals himself in the presence of the god, Tinnan returns with his daily portion of cooked game, water, and owers for offering. As he draws near, he catches sight of kites wheeling in the sky over the summit, to which Tinnan thinks Bthese evil birds show that bloods being shed near here[ _ a l l (v. 812 ittaku t"ya putkal "nta mun utiran k"ttum). Then, Bso that the " nna n"rs true nature to the sage[ (v. Master of holy K"latti might show Ti a a a a a a 813 tirukk"latti atikal"r munivan"rkkut=tinnan"r parivu k"tta), blood a " " his begins to pour from one of the gods eyes.22 In " panic, Tinna tries to n rely on the knowledge of his old life Y searching out and applying forest remedies to staunch the wound. It is only when this fails that Tinnan u u recalls the hunters adage Y ur ran"y t"rpat " nukk " n, BFlesh for esh is o l "" the cure for true illness[ Y pointing at once " back to"the violence of his old life (as mediated through the substance that is its chief consequence)

In fact, the dream itself just might contain a reference to the d"ks"-liturgy. l a BRUNNER claims that BLa principale indication relative au succes du rituel est cependent ` tiree des reves que les disciples Y et le guru lui-meme Y font pendant la nuit[ (op. cit., xxxix, emphasis added). She, however, cites no authority for this claim, and the Somasambhupaddhati itself speaks only of the dreams of the candidates (p 225: guruh::: s0isy"n svapnam yath"d rstam samprcchec chubhahetave, Ble guru...demande a a _ _ _ aux _ disciples ce quils ont vu _ _ _ dormant,_ pour savoir si leurs reves sont fastes [ou en _ non][ (trans. BRUNNER)). Elsewhere in the world of Saiva practice, however, the dreams of both the guru as well as the initiand are specically mentioned: see, e.g. Tantraloka 15.483 (I thank Harunaga ISAACSON for this reference): 0 0 _ pr"tar guruh k rt"sesanityo bhyarcitasankarah a a 0 _ svapnad rst"v "rthau vitte bal"bal"t _ _ a a sisy"tmanoh a a _a _ morning [of the_ _initiation] the guru performs all of his regular worship and _ _ BOn the honors Siva. He [then] considers the things seen in both his own and the initiands dreams relative to one another.[ 22 It is striking that the image of Siva atop K"latti is at no point explicitly described by a _ Cekkilar. One presumes that the god is present in the form of a linga, but this is never actually said. The Lord of K"latti thus forms the apophatic center of this entire mediation a on sight and its absence.

21

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as it points forward to the now-inevitable conclusion. After he has removed one of his eyes, there is yet the nal assay of his devotion, and the other eye of Siva begins to bleed. The text grows dense with the word a for Feye_, kan, and the closely related verb Fto see_, k"nnutal, as Siva, ns kannutal, BHe whose brow bears an eye[ puts Tinna love to its a ultimate test, all in the concealed presence of Civak"cariy"r. For it is o a l a only as the brahman, the initiating guru in this extraordinary d"ks", witnesses this that the sky may rain with owers, the Vedas may resound from heaven, and Siva may offer the newly-baptised Kannappar the __ aiva liberation. beatitude of S

IV. SOME CONCLUSIONS For other contemporary interpreters of the PP, the texts message and its social location are unproblematic: it narrates a world of peculiarly Tamil Saivism, in the service of proclaiming its superiority over any and all competitors.23 The presence of such theological issues as the interpretation of karmasamya within the narrative would appear on this view to be equally unproblematic, merely marking the recording by the poet of one of the doctrinal truths of the religion. Yet, even within the circumscribed world of Cidambaram during Cekkilars day, institutional Saivism was much more diverse than such a reading of the PP presumes, as can be seen in the rst instance by the multiple contestants in the controversy surrounding the interpretation of karmasamya, a controversy that Cekkilar appears to be attempting to overcome through narrative ravar means. Put simply, it was not just Tinnan, the son of the wild Ma aivasiddh"nta theology itself that was transgured at the peak tribe, but S a of Mt. K"latti. Through the trial that gave birth to Kannappar, Cekkilar a __ could recast the universalistic, abstract realm of systematic thought in Sanskrit within the local and the narrative. The solution to the problem of karmasamya to which Cekkilar arrives is not a philosophical, dialectical one, but rather a magical resolution to the soteriological conundrum. And it is precisely that he has cast this resolution in the

Jainism being the most frequently noted opponent tradition, Tamil Saivisms antipathy to which being generally thought to date back to the period of the Tevaram poets. See PETERSON 1998 and now MONIUS 2004.
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form of a poetic text, in language able to compel and beguile its audience, that it is able to step beyond the ambit of sastra, and become something new. a a The story of Kannappanayan"r is only one among the PPs many episodes. It is then probably overly hasty to take its dynamics, especially its relationship to the Siddh"nta, as representative of the poem as a a whole. I will nevertheless conclude with some suggestions to that end. As just mentioned, the localization and incorporation of the Sanskrit Siddhanta within the represented world of literary Tamil seems to me central to Cekkilars project in the KP. This seems to capture something truly distinctive about the Periyapur"nam as a whole, a work founded on a the seeming paradox of trying to hold _in a single simultaneous order both Bthe entire world[ (ulak el"m, the poems rst, supposedly divinely a inspired, words) and the central Tamil heartland of the K"v"ri river delta. a e Cekkilar, I would argue, sought to wed the universalistic vision of theological and liturgical Saivism with the lived world of the C"la polity, o " forging a new sense of a particular, identiable Saiva community within the bounds of the region. Interestingly, he did this while the polity itself was beginning to wane, something that the conventional encomia contained within the PP of course say nothing about, so we are left with only speculation as to the poets awareness of the fragility of the order in which he lived. That he succeeded, and that the new world of Tamil Saivism with its network of matams linked to the many temples of the region arose in the wake of the PP and of the nal collapse of C"la authority, should not deter us from o " seeing this creation for what it was, a contingent project by no means bound to success or failure. And, while this is for the moment com pletely speculative, one may argue that this new Saiva order, which turned increasingly to Tamil as its language of systematic thought, may have in fact rst taken root in the semantic space created by the PP, by virtue of its own complex negotiation between literature and theology. REFERENCES
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C"min"taiyar (U.Ve.), 1993: Pattupp"ttu m"lam. Cennai. Reprint. a a a u "" Cat" civa Aiyar (Ti), 1999: Ainkurun"ru m"lamum uraiyum. Cennai: International a _ u u " " "" Institute for Tamil Studies. Dubiansky (A.), 2000: Ritual and mythological sources of early Tamil poetry. Groningen: E. Forsten. Dviveda (V.V.), 1988: Astaprakaranam V"r"nas": Samp"rn"nandavivvavidy"laya. a a l u a a _ Dwivedi (R.C.), & Rastogi (N.), 1987: The Tantraloka of Abhinavagupta with the Commentary of Jayaratha. 8 vols. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Goodall (D.), 1996: Bhatta R"makanthas commentary on the Kiranatantra. Critical a Edition and Annotated Translation. Pondichery: Institut Francais de Pondichery. Hardy (F.), 1983: VirahaYbhakti: the early history of Krsna devotion in South India. Delhi: OUP India. Hart (G.), 1976: The Poems of Ancient Tamil: their milieu and their Sanskrit counterparts. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hart (G.), 1980: BThe Little Devotee,[ in: Sanskrit and Indian Studies: Essays in Honor of Daniel H. H. Ingalls, ed. by M. Nagatomi. Dordrecht. Ir"cam"nikkan"r (Ma.), 1990: Periyapur"na "r"ycci. Madras: Palaniyapp" Piratars. a a a a a a a " _ " Reprint. Kalaviyal enru I raiyan"rakapporul Nakk"ran"r uraiyutan 1969: Cennai: Kalakam. a l a "" " " " _ _ _ " "" " Kuri~cipp"ttu in C"min"taiyar (1993). n a a a " _ Lehmann (T.) & Malten (T.), 1993: A wordYindex of Cankam literature. Madras: Institute of Asian Studies Monius (A.), 2004: BLove, Violence, and the Aesthetics of Disgust: Saivas and Jains in Medieval South India.[ Journal of Indian Philosophy 32, pp. 113Y172. Mutaliy" r (Ci.K" .), Cuppiramaniya, 1964: C"kkil"rcuv"mikal ennum Arunmolit"var a e e a a e _ " " _ "" _ aruliya Periyapur"nam. Coimbatore: Kovait Tamilc Cankam. a _ _ Nagaswamy (R.), 1983: Masterpieces of Early South Indian Bronzes. New Delhi: National Museum. Niklas (U.), 1996: BIntroduction to Tamil Prosody.[ Bulletin de lEcole francaise dExtreme-Orient LXXVII. Peterson (I.), 1998: BSramanas Against the Tamil Way,[ in: Open Boundaries: Jain Communities and Culture in Indian History, ed. by J. Cort, Albany: SUNY Press. Rajam (V.S.), 1986: BAnanku: A Notion Semantically Reduced to Signify Female Sacred _ Power.[ Journal of the American Oriental Society 106, 2: pp. 257Y272. Ramanujan (A.K.), 1967: The Interior Landscape: Love Poems From a Classical Tamil Anthology. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Ramanujan (A.K.), 1985: Poems of Love and War. New York: Columbia University Press. Ratnatrayapar"ks" of Sr"kanthasuri Accompanied by the Commentary (ullekhin" ) of l a l 1 Aghorasiva. In Dviveda (1988). Shulman (D.), 1993: The Hungry God. Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sivathamby (K.), 1981: Drama in Ancient Tamil Society. Madras: New Century Book House. Subrahmanian (N.), 1966: PreYPallavan Tamil Index. Madras: University of Madras. Sukthankar, V. S. et al. (1927Y1959). Mahabharata. For the rst Time Critically edited [etc.] 19 vols. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute.

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Tirumuruk"r rupatai in C"min"taiyar (1993). a a a " Tolk" ppiyam"Porulatik"ram I lampuranar uraiyutan (2000). Cennai: Kalakam Reprint. a a " "" " _ _ _ University of Madras, 1924Y1936: Tamil Lexicon. _ " 7 vols. Madras. Wilden (E.), 2004: BOn the Consolidation and Extension of Knowledge: The S"tra Style u in the Tolk" ppiyam Porulatik"ram,[ in: South Indian Horizons: Studies in Honor of a a Francois Gros, ed by J.-L. Chevillard and E. Wilden, eds. Pondichery: Ecole Francaise dExtremeYOrient.

Department of South Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 804 Williams Hall, 36th and Spruce Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305, USA E-mail: wmcox@sas.upenn.edu