Hegemony of Religious Texts and Development of Tamil Ritual System called Thamiḻ Arccaṉai

Priesthood and the use of religious texts in South Indian temples have undergone immense politicisation on various stages, and the evolution of related hegemonic traits into particular ritual systems has been fully dependent upon the dialogue produced by this politicisation process. As a result of this textual phenomenon, the Sanskrit and Tamil priesthoods emerged as two heterogeneous communities that underwent representation and ‘re-presentation’ with enormous challenges by engaging in a discourse of Subject versus subject. Representations of Tamil priests originated mainly from Tamil nationalists, through re-presentations of Tamil bhakti texts, whereas their Sanskrit counterparts, which had been patronised heavily in the past by both the British colonisers and India’s kings, used hegemonic ritual texts – written in Tamil grantha script, but in the Sanskrit language – as the primary source of ritual process in South Indian temples. The main objective of this work is to study the discourse of Tamil nationalism and its development, focusing on the hegemony of religious texts of the past and how this shaped the current ritual system in the temples of Tamil Nadu. In particular, an attempt is made to show how indigenous methods of worship from the ancient Tamil era, featuring predominantly bodily performance, folk songs and the art of divine/spiritual possession, conflicted with the later development of a Hindu ritual system instigated by Vedic concepts of a North Indian source.

Dr. Vasu Renganathan has been teaching Tamil language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA since 1996. He earned his Masters from the University of Washington, Seattle and Ph.D. in medieval Tamil language and literature from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has another Ph.D. in linguistics from the Annamalai University, India.

Dr. Renganathan began his teaching career in 1989 and previously taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of Washington, Seattle. In addition to teaching, he has also worked on various curriculum and instructional material development projects. Vasu also served as the Chairman of the International Forum For Informational Technology In Tamil (INFITT) and currently serving as one of the Executive Committee members of the South Asian Language Teachers Association (SALTA). Vasu is also in the International Advisory Board member for the Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, (e-FLT), Singapore.

His research interests include: History of Tamil language and literature, History of the Tamil Religious developments from medieval period, Language of Sangam Tamil literature and Tamil inscriptions, Teaching and learning of Tamil language and Impact of Technology in the pedagogical methods. Some of his Publications include: Tamil Language in Context: A comprehensive approach to learning Tamil and An English Dictionary of Tamil Verb (Associate Editor).

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Hegemony of Religious Texts and Development of Tamil Ritual System called Thamiḻ Arccaṉai

Prof. Dr. Vasu Renganathan

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Secondary Sources