The Śivalīlārṇava of Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita

[Full title: “The Passion of Hicks for Vernacular Texts”: The Śivalīlārṇava of Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita]

The “Sacred Games of Śiva” had become a pillar of local culture and religion and, in the literary sphere, a theme primarily inviting response rather than active recreation. Perhaps the most influential of these responses, articulated during the height of the public codification of the TVP, came from the pen of none other than Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita himself, one of the most celebrated figures in the literary and courtly circles of Madurai during the reign of Tirumalai Nāyaka. A closer look at his response—a Sanskrit mahākāvya, the Śivalīlārṇava—will illuminate the dynamics of response to an emergent fixture of popular culture and to the place of Sanskrit language and literature within the multilingual, multicentric literary sphere of seventeenth-century Madurai. Succinctly, Nīlakaṇṭha appears to have served as a sort of premodern public intellectual, remembered primarily for his interventions in the local and regional circulation of Sanskrit discourse. Indeed, his bold style and idiom display a degree of intellectual freedom than is typically associated with court poets of the cosmopolitan Sanskrit world order. Although unquestionably surviving through royal patronage, Nīlakaṇṭha never once deigned to mention the name of his patron in a single one of his works, a far cry from the politicization of Sanskrit aesthetic discourse regnant in Indic courtly culture for well over a millennium. And yet, we never meet with mention of a Tirumalābhyudaya (Victory of Tirumalai Nāyaka) to match the Raghunāthavilāsa (The play of Raghunātha Nāyaka) of Nīlakaṇṭha’s rival to the north, Rājacūḍāmaṇi Dīkṣita, patronized by the Nāyaka court of Tanjavur. Rather, Nīlakaṇṭha’s literary style is fiercely nonconformist and unrelentingly satirical, humorously highlighting the social degeneracy of his contemporaries as well as the decadence he perceived in Nāyaka period Sanskrit literature. Given this precedent, it should perhaps come as no surprise at all that Nīlakaṇṭha was bold enough to adapt into Sanskrit the most popular vernacular work of his day, the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam, while simultaneously denouncing the very idea of vernacular literariness: “[Bad poets] have acquired a taste for poetic feats [citra] of word and meaning—much like the passion of hicks for vernacular texts.”^[1]

Much like Nīlakaṇṭha’s other works of kāvya, the Śivalīlārṇava is replete with hints of its author’s intention and deliberately incisive wit. Indeed, the precedent of Nīlakaṇṭha’s idiosyncratic style, as well as the historical evidence of his public visibility in mid-seventeenth-century Madurai, would caution us against neglecting these hints of Nīlakaṇṭha’s contrarian ambitions by reading the Śivalīlārṇava as a passive fulfillment of royal commission or subservience to popular fashion. Similarly, we would be ill advised to read the Śivalīlārṇava, rather presumptuously, as a mere “translation” of a timeless—and essentially ahistorical—work of vernacular literature, thus reducing Nīlakaṇṭha’s agenda to faithful replication of the original Tamil. This is not to say, however, that Nīlakaṇṭha approached the narrative of Śiva’s sacred games with anything less than the highest respect. To the contrary, as a fiercely loyal devotee of Mīnākṣī, he exhibits a deep and sincere reverence for her earthly manifestation and sport with Śiva throughout the kāvya. This reverence, however, is directed in Nīlakaṇṭha’s voice to a canonical narrative that has been deliberately divorced from its original linguistic context. Distancing himself from “the passion of hicks for vernacular texts,” Nīlakaṇṭha has represented a traditionally Tamil legend that, for him, derives none of its virtue from an intrinsic connection to Tamil language or culture.

In the case of the Śivalīlārṇava, the re-Sanskritization of a vernacular work of literature reversed the typical historical dynamic of vernacularization: rather than the expected localization of the transregional, we witness a deliberate deregionalization of local culture. It is unquestionably true that the Sanskrit of seventeenthcentury south India regularly addressed itself to local concerns, but not necessarily in acquiescence or outright adulation. In fact, that Sanskrit literature remained a vital medium of discourse implies, by definition, that Sanskrit remained a vehicle for contestation as well as imitation. The Śivalīlārṇava, then, exemplifies an intriguing inversion of the vernacular by the still-vibrant values and presuppositions of a Sanskritic worldview. In the case at hand, two particularly noteworthy features stand out in Nīlakaṇṭha’s treatment of traditionally Tamil motifs, both of which deserve further exploration: first, Nīlakaṇṭha defiantly inserts the distinctive idiom of Sanskrit intellectual discourse into explicitly non-Sanskritic contexts; and second, he intentionally reads the canonical repertoire of Tamil Śaivism through the lens of the Sanskrit Śaiva tradition, as if to claim these legends for a SmārtaŚaiva orthodoxy that challenged the language and caste boundaries distinctive to the Tamil Śaiva community.

Certainly, it is no easy task to denude such a regionally inflected cycle of legends of its regional character, or even to “transregionalize” it—that is, to render it accessible to a cultured audience beyond the confines of its locality of origin. And like many Tamil works of the period, the TVP is emphatically Tamil in its ideology and literary texture. Among the sixty-four games of Śiva, several bear the overt impressions of a thousand years of Tamil literary and devotional history, reworking narratives from the Periya Purāṇam and other mainstays of the Śaiva canon that had long become ingrained in public memory. References to the Tamil Caṅkam, or to the Tamil Śaiva bhakti saints, for instance, would scarcely seem intelligible when translated out of a regional cultural framework. And yet, Nīlakaṇṭha proves himself exceptionally talented at rendering the core narratives of Tamil Śaiva culture in the idiom of elite Sanskritic, and even śāstric, discourse.

Perhaps the best example of Nīlakaṇṭha’s creative inversion of his material is his rendition of the Tamil Caṅkam cycle: indeed, where better to comment on the role of vernacular literature than while narrating the origin of India’s most celebrated vernacular literary academy? Before the TVP renaissance in Madurai, the preceding centuries had witnessed numerous literary and commentarial attempts to recover the quasi-historical origins of Tamil literature as it first emerged in Madurai’s prehistorical golden age, each of which took for granted the unique virtues of an intrinsically Tamil literary aesthetic. In Nīlakaṇṭha’s voice, however, the poets of the Tamil Caṅkam speak like Sanskrit śāstrins, intimately conversant with the history of Sanskrit thought from literary theory to Vedic hermeneutics.

In just this spirit, the Caṅkam cycle of the Śivalīlārṇava begins with an encounter between the forty-eight Caṅkam poets, incarnated from Sarasvatī as the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, and a host of “bad poets” (kukavis) who attempt to harass the Caṅkam poets with specious arguments derived from a deeply flawed understanding of Sanskrit literary aesthetics (Alaṅkāraśāstra):

Several non-poets, the worst of scholars, and other bad poets, who had made an agreement,
Struck up a specious quarrel with those poets who had no match in the [triple] worlds:

“‘Word and meaning, free from faults, ornamented, and of supreme virtue’—[śabdārthau doṣanirmuktau sālaṅkārau guṇottarau]
To those poets who define poetry as such, we fold our hands in salute.

What could be more flawed than the highest misdeeds of a lover, described in verse?
Indeed, that is why the prattling of poetry [kāvyānām ālāpaḥ] is cast off by the learned.

Then again, others conceive of flaws and virtues [guṇadoṣāḥ] based on their own whim.
One may as well investigate crows’ teeth and take up rustic village sayings.

The nonsensicality of poems that have no syntactical construal is hard to break through,
Like sentences about sprinkling with fire; how do people delude themselves with them?

If suggestion [vyañjanā] were accepted as a modality of language, conveying various meanings
While freed from all constraints, should not a prostitute be considered a wife?

Let fire be ‘implied’ [dhvanyate] by smoke; let a pot be ‘implied’ by the eye.
If meaning ‘implies’ a meaning, what consistency is there to the means of knowledge?”^[2]

After these and other spurious arguments pieced together from disconnected fragments of literary theory and logic—each of which would have been immediately recognizable to a Sanskrit-educated audience—Nīlakaṇṭha draws the dialogue to a close with his signature sarcastic wit:

“If the meaning of poetic statements conveys pleasure, even when distasteful,
Then listen with delight to your own censure composed by poets:

‘Ah! The ripening of suggested emotion [bhāvavyakti]! Ah! Concealed flavor [rasa]!’
With moist tears streaming from their falsely squinted eyes,
Their hair bristling repeatedly as if undigested food were churning in their guts—
How has the earth been pervaded by poets, those thick-witted beasts!”

Their pride wounded by those juveniles who in such a manner
Continued prattling on repeatedly, long disciplined in deviant doctrine,
Unwilling to listen to a single word of rebuttal,
Those best of poets betook themselves to the Moon-Crested Lord for refuge.^[3]

Thus, in Nīlakaṇṭha’s rendition, it is a barrage of third-rate literary theorists that prompts the Caṅkam poets to petition Śiva for the celebrated Caṅkam plank (caṅkappalakai, Skt. saṅghaphalakam),^[4] a magical device that automatically assesses the true aptitude of a poet. A small wooden platform measuring one square muḻam in length,^[5] the Caṅkam plank expands when approached by a genuinely learned poet, thus seating all forty-eight members of the Tamil literary academy and excluding all others. The same narrative outcome occurs in the Śivalīlārṇava as in Parañcōti’s TVP; and yet, it may come as a surprise to witness the Caṅkam poets debating in a language and idiom foreign to their actual literary practice (both historically and in cultural memory). Were Nīlakaṇṭha interested in either accurately depicting or extolling the legacy of the Tamil academy, many centuries of Tamil grammar and literary theory might have provided him with a foundation for contextualizing the narrative within the cultural ethos typically evoked by hagiographers and historians from within the Tamil tradition. As a point of contrast, Parañcōti’s TVP not only actively celebrates the distinctively Tamil character of the Tamil Caṅkam but also takes great pains to adorn the Caṅkam cycle of games with direct references to Tamil literary theory. In Parañcōti’s version, in fact, this set of episodes foregrounds the role of Agastya, the prototypically southern sage, whom legend regards not only as the primordial Tamil grammarian but also as the instructor of the Caṅkam poets themselves.

When Agastya was first dispatched by Śiva to the Tamil country, he confirmed his own role in the origin myth of Tamil literary culture:

Preparing to take leave, he requested one thing:
“They say the land I am going to, the Tamil land [tamiḻ nāṭu], is full of verse [toṭai].
As all the people dwelling in this land have researched sweet Tamil [iṉṟamiḻ] and possess its knowledge,
I ought to be able to give a reply to those who ask.

So that the flaws of my thinking may leave me, Father,
Please graciously grant me a work on the poetics (iyaṉūl) of refined Tamil [centamiḻ],
So that it may be clear to such a one, you have bestowed the first treatise [mutaṉūl].”
After he had understood, he said “I see your feet—I am your servant, O Eternal One!”^[6]

In addition to the clear ethos of linguistic pride prevalent in Tamil literary selfreflection, this passage incorporates a number of references to Tamil grammatical theory, from iyal tamiḻ—literally “natural Tamil,” referring broadly to Tamil composition extending beyond the bounds of prosody strictly speaking, one of the “three Tamils” (muttamiḻ)—to centamiḻ, a common laudatory expression for the literary register of the language. The remainder of the passage only increases in technicality, celebrating Agastya’s knowledge of the “two prefaces,” “seven tenets,” “four meanings,” “ten faults,” “nine beauties,” and “eight yuktis.”^[7] Parañcōti further manages to narrativize the origin of the southern sage’s legendary treatise on grammar, the Akattiyam, referred to above as the “primordial treatise” (mutaṉūl), a work believed by many commentators to have preceded the Tolkāppiyam. For Parañcōti, it was specifically this body of knowledge that constituted the learning of the Caṅkam poets: an intrinsically Tamil corpus of literary and grammatical theory innately suited to both the language of their compositions and their cultural identity as icons of Madurai’s Tamil heritage.

Not to be outdone by his near contemporary, Nīlakaṇṭha attributes a high degree of specialized knowledge to the Caṅkam poets—not of Tamil grammar but of Sanskrit śāstra, specifically of Mīmāṃsā hermeneutics. As we have seen previously, further into the Caṅkam legends, the king of Madurai, Campaka Pāṇḍya, had promised a rich reward to the poet who could present him with a verse convincingly explaining the fragrance of his queen’s hair. It was the young Brahmin named Tarumi, offering as his contribution a verse that Śiva had composed and revealed to him, who was awarded the prize. Green with envy, the illustrious Caṅkam poet Nakkīrar immediately demanded that Tarumi’s prize be rescinded on account of a literary flaw in the verse, arguing that poetic convention did not allow one to attribute fragrance to a woman’s tresses unadorned by flowers or fragrant oils. Upon hearing this insult, Śiva himself appeared before Nakkīrar and demanded an explanation for his insolence. Nakkīrar stood his ground and insisted upon the flaw, even when Śiva manifested his true form, complete with five heads and a third eye that threatened to burn the defiant poet to ashes.

While the debate ends here for most versions of the narrative, Nīlakaṇṭha inserted a few more choice insults, through which Nakkīrar foolhardily claims superiority over Śiva himself based on his encyclopedic knowledge of Sanskrit hermeneutics:

Although a devotee, seeing that great wonder Kīra rebuked him once again.
Stronger yet than the innate delusion of fools is the delusion contained in the semblance of intellect:

“Given that your own works, which have attained the great audacity of being called ‘scripture,’
Are intelligible only when those such as myself describe another intentionality [tātparyāntaravarṇanena]
And applying suppletion, inversion, contextualization, extraction, and conjunction, [adhyāhāraviparyayaprakaraṇotkarṣānuṣaṅgādibhiḥ]
Keep this in mind and don’t look to find fault with my poems, O Paśupati!”^[8]

Hearing Nakkīrar’s audacity, it is no wonder that Śiva responded by scorching his assailant with his third eye and sending him flying into the Golden Lotus Tank of the Madurai temple. The interpretive techniques Nīlakaṇṭha enumerates here, drawn from the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā school of Vedic exegesis—adhyāhāra, viparyaya, prakaraṇa, utkarṣa, and anuṣaṅga< sup>85—are highly specific terms of art, by no means common knowledge to those who are not thoroughly acquainted with Sanskrit philosophical discourse. One can only imagine that this misrepresentation of Nakkīrar’s identity would have struck Nīlakaṇṭha’s audience as intimately familiar, evoking the resonances of their own discursive community, while simultaneously comically absurd when applied to a legendary figure of the Tamil academy. I contend that Nīlakaṇṭha’s ambition in this passage is not one of simple cultural translation, replacing Tamil idiom with terms more familiar to an audience of Sanskrit scholars. The terms in question, first of all, are not equivalent;hence, “translation” as a category is an unlikely candidate for the situation at hand. What we witness here is more of a full-scale recoding of the narrative context, as Nīlakaṇṭha deliberately divorces the characters from a cultural context that is not merely original to the legends but also fundamental to their rhetorical intent, the reinforcement of the intrinsic Tamil-ness of the history and sociality of the city of Madurai.

What is at stake, then, in Nīlakaṇṭha’s attempt to remove the Tamil from the Tamil Caṅkam? His motivation certainly appears to be more complex than sheer antagonism or cultural bigotry, as he quite readily asserts in passing that the Caṅkam poets are learned in the dramiḍasūtrarahasya, the “secret of the Southern Sūtra” (possibly referring to the Tolkāppiyam). Further, despite his incisive wit, Nīlakaṇṭha never abandons his core stance of reverence toward the sacred site of Madurai, the abode of his chosen deity Mīnākṣī, and its legendary history as manifested in the divine sports of Śiva. In fact, Nīlakaṇṭha’s interpretation of some of the TVP’ s outwardly devotional episodes illuminates more clearly his attitude toward distinctively Tamil cultural and religious motifs. A number of the episodes in the “Sacred Games” directly concern the central devotional figures of the Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta tradition, including the Tamil bhakti saints Ñānacampantar (Jñānasambandha) and Māṇikkavācakar, whose Tamil-language compositions form an integral part of the Tamil Śaiva canon. Once again, Nīlakaṇṭha’s portrayal of these saints in no way lacks the reverence one would expect him to display toward the foremost devotees of the local Śaiva tradition, whom the legends at hand portray as carrying out the miracles of Śiva and Mīnākṣī at the heart of the Madurai temple. He refers most commonly, for instance, to Ñānacampantar with honorifics such as “Emperor among Spiritual Teachers” (deśikasarvabhauma). Nevertheless, Nīlakaṇṭha’s respect for their status as icons of Śaiva devotionalism does not stop him from shifting the emphasis away from the Tamil language of the devotees’ compositions and the distinctive regionality of their cultural legacy. That is, for Nīlakaṇṭha, the Emperor among Spiritual Teachers was simultaneously the Teacher of the Precepts of the Vedānta (trayyantasiddhāntaguru),^[9] who comported himself like an orthodox Smārta-Śaiva (atyāśramastha).^[10]

Take, for instance, the ubiquitous legend of the confrontation between the Śaivas and Jains in ancient Madurai, a narrative most commonly associated with Cekkiḻār’s Periya Purāṇam but retold in the TVPs of Nampi and Parañcōti as well. In this episode, misfortune had befallen the Śaivas of Madurai as the city was overrun by Jains; even the king himself had converted to Jainism. And yet, when the king was overtaken by a seemingly incurable fever, only the Śaiva saint Ñānacampantar was able to bring him relief by anointing him with sacred Śaiva ash. Upon witnessing the extent of Jain domination in Śiva’s sacred city, Ñānacampantar resolved to shed light on the errancy of their doctrine by challenging them to an ordeal, failing which the Jains were to willingly commit suicide by impaling themselves on stakes. According to both Parañcōti and the HM, Jñānasambandar and a representative of his Jain rivals each released a palm-leaf manuscript into a fire; on Ñānacampantar’s leaf was written one of his own devotional poems, which are now preserved in the Tēvāram, the first seven books of the Tirumuṟai, while the Jain representative cast into the flames a palm leaf with an array of magical mantras. Unsurprisingly, the Jain palm leaf was incinerated, while Ñānacampantar’s poem survived unscathed.

Nīlakaṇṭha’s version of this particular ordeal proceeds similarly, but with one crucial modification:

Abandoning all their exempla, fortified by hermeneutics and logic,
Overstepping the bounds of all reason, those fools came together, desiring to conquer him [Ñānacampantar] by ordeal.

“The Śākya seer has seen that nonviolence alone can dispel all the afflictions of saṃsāra.^[11] Maheśa must not be worshipped; ash is not auspicious.”
Thus, the Arhats wrote their own thesis.

“The Vedas are the authority, along with the Kāmika and so forth. Śaṅkara alone is the One Lord of the universe. Those desiring liberation on earth must bear ash alone.”
Thus, the teacher wrote his own thesis.^[12]

By shifting the ordeal to a test of doctrinal confession alone, an important detail has been elided from the narrative. Now that Ñānacampantar (or Sambandhanātha, as Nīlakaṇṭha refers to him) no longer wins the ordeal on the strength of his own composition, nothing in Nīlakaṇṭha’s version signals that Ñānacampantar was revered primarily as a devotional poet, much less that his compositions were written in Tamil rather than Sanskrit. To the contrary, we find the bhakti saint endorsing the inerrant validity of the Sanskrit scriptures, ranging from the Vedas themselves to the Kāmika Āgama and other scriptures of the S anskrit Śaiva Siddhānta tradition, which Nīlakaṇṭha himself considered indispensable for the Advaita-inflected Śaivism growing in popularity among the Smārta Brahmins of his circle. Given that the Sanskrit and Tamil Śaiva Siddhānta lineages had maintained institutionally and doctrinally distinct profiles for centuries before Nīlakaṇṭha’s own floruit, conflating the scriptural corpus of the two is no mere oversight. Rather, Nīlakaṇṭha has transformed Ñānacampantar’s character into that of a Sanskrit-educated scholastic ritualist rather than a Tamil devotional poet, a profile we would expect to see attributed to an Aghoraśiva rather than a poet of the Tēvāram.

In fact, the deliberateness of Nīlakaṇṭha’s recasting of Ñānacampantar’s legacy becomes unmistakable as this narrative continues, when the Pandian begs the Śaiva preceptor for initiation upon seeing the humiliating defeat of his Jain advisors.

Although no previous version of the episode recounts any details of this initiation, Nīlakaṇṭha inserts a technically accurate account of a Saiddhāntika initiation as typically described in the Sanskrit Āgamas:

The Pāṇḍya, who had surrendered in refuge to Sambandhanātha upon seeing this ordeal,
Asked for the initiation that cuts through all sin, capable of bestowing the knowledge of Śiva.

Purifying his six paths [ṣaḍadhvanaḥ] and his five kalās, that emperor of preceptors
Entered his body effortlessly, although it had been defiled with a heterodox initiation.
Having entered his body, purifying him by uniting with his channels [nāḍīsandhāna],
That guru, an ocean of compassion, extracted his caste [jātiṃ samuddhṛtya] and installed in him the knowledge of Śiva.

Having bestowed his own body, wealth, and heart at his lotus feet, the Pāṇḍya
Ruled the earth on the Śaiva path, worshipping the Lord with the Half-Moon Crest.

When that Lord of the people ascended to the state of Śiva, all his offspring were
Devoted to Śiva, intent on Śiva’s mantra, and proficient in the nectarous essence of the knowledge of Śaiva Āgama.^[13]

Through Nīlakaṇṭha’s erudite attempts at inversion, Ñānacampantar is transformed from a bhakti saint into a ritually accomplished Śivācārya of the Sanskrit Śaiva Siddhānta, effortlessly performing the esoteric procedures for entering the body of his pupil through the subtle channels (nāḍīsandhāna) and removing his birth caste,^[14] replacing the core of his identity with the knowledge of Śiva. His emphasis on the removal of caste, jātyuddharaṇa, as integral to Śaiva initiation is particularly intriguing, as the concept had fallen out of favor with the more conservative branches of the Sanskrit scholastic tradition, who preferred to align the Siddhānta with orthodox Brahminical social values. Nīlakaṇṭha, for his part, does not hesitate to endorse the practice, which entails the belief that all Śaiva initiates of a certain stature^[15] have been ontologically elevated above caste distinctions.^[16] Evidently, although Nīlakaṇṭha’s literary aesthetic endorses the near-exclusive valuation of the Sanskrit language and intellectual tradition, his conservatism in language choice does not equate with a conservatism in caste consciousness. The polemics of twentieth-century Tamil politicians notwithstanding, Sanskrit in Tamil Nadu did not always herald a social agenda of outright Brahminical supremacy. That is, the structure of multilingual literary practice does not correlate simplistically with social structure.

In fact, it is precisely the issue of caste, and its removal, that most directly unites Nīlakaṇṭha with his institutional rivals of the Tamil Śaiva lineages. Owing to the social constituency of the Tamil Śaiva community in Nīlakaṇṭha’s day, ascetic preceptors traditionally hailed from a Vēḷāḷa background, technically a Śūdra caste, which rendered them ineligible for preceptorial initiation according to the traditional strictures of Brahminical legal literature.^[17] Unsurprisingly, the Vēḷāḷa lineages were keen to defend their legitimacy on textual as well as de facto political and economic grounds. One unique textual artifact of the mid-to late seventeenth century makes this case explicitly: the Varṇāśramacandrikā of Tiruvampaḷatēcikar (a near contemporary of Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita),^[18] the only known Tamil Śaiva treatise to be written in Sanskrit. In this intriguingly belligerent work, Tiruvampaḷatēcikar openly advocates the ordination of Śūdras to the lineage seat, scouring the textual history of Śaivism in Sanskrit to identify a vast array of precedents for this practice.

The evidence he assembles aligns perfectly with Nīlakaṇṭha’s own views of Śaiva initiation, suggesting that Nīlakaṇṭha was far more aligned with his times than language politics alone might lead one to suspect:

The homa for extracting caste [jātyuddharaṇa], whether individually or by the hundreds,
Indeed incinerates Śūdra caste identity with fire, O six-faced one.^[19]

Ironically, it is not only traditional Āgamic sources that figure prominently in the Sanskrit citations of Tiruvampaḷatēcikar. The Varṇāśramacandrikā is also the earliest known work to cite the Hālāsya Māhātmya, a text that, as we have seen, had recently entered the Sanskrit textual corpus through the mediation of the “Tamil vernacular.” And yet, writing in the late seventeenth century, a Vēḷāḷa preceptor could cite the HM as an authoritative reference grounding the doctrines of the Tamil Śaiva community in the purported legal standards of a transregional Śaiva orthodoxy. Owing in no small part to the cross-linguistic circulation of works such as the HM and Nīlakaṇṭha’s Śivalīlārṇava, the Sanskrit-vernacular dichotomy in the Tamil country had truly come to function as a circular network of intertextual influence, resulting in a multicentric discursive sphere that reconstituted the shape of social and religious communities, such as the Tamil and Sanskrit Śaiva Siddhānta.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

ŚLA 1.37: vidvatpriyaṃ vyaṅgyapathaṃ vyatītya śabdārthacitreṣu kaler vilāsāt | prāpto ‘nurāgo nigamānupekṣya bhāṣāprabandheṣv iva pāmarāṇām ||

[2]:

ŚLA 20.1–6, 8–9, 12, 15–16. kapilakīramukhāḥ kavayas tataḥ katicid āsata tāmranadītaṭe | druhiṇaśāpavaśāj jananī girām avatatāra purā hi yadātmanā || atha caturguṇitā dvyadhikā daśa tridaśadeśikadhikkaraṇakṣamāḥ | prati yayur madhurām abhivandituṃ pramathanātham amī kavipuṅgavāḥ || kaviśarīrabhṛtā kavayas tu te samadhigamya hareṇa puraskṛtāḥ | samavagāhya suvarṇāsarojinīṃ dadṛśur adrisutādayitaṃ mahaḥ || dṛḍhavinītadhiyaḥ sudhiyas tu te dramiḍasūtrarahasyavivecane | mṛdusugandhivacaḥkusumasrajā vividhayā madhureśam apūjayan || akavayaḥ katicid vibudhādhamaḥ kukavayaś ca pare kṛtasaṃvidaḥ | kavibhir apratimair bhuvaneṣu taiḥ kalaham ādadhire ‘tha vitaṇḍayā || śabdārthau doṣanirmuktau sālaṅkārau guṇottarau | kāvyam ātiṣṭhamānebhyaḥ kavibhyo ‘yaṃ kṛto ‘ñjaliḥ || kāvyārthād api kiṃ duṣṭaṃ kāmiduścaritottarāt | ata eva hi kāvyānām ālāpaḥ sadbhir ujjhitaḥ || athānya eva kalpyante guṇadoṣā nijecchayā | kākadantāḥ parīkṣyantāṃ gṛhyantāṃ grāmyasūktayaḥ || ayogyānāṃ hi kāvyānām agnisekādivākyavat | mūkataiva hi durbhedā muhyanty eṣu kathaṃ janāḥ || arthān api vyāpnuvantī hatasarvaniyantraṇā | vyañjanā śabdavṛttiś ced veśyā patnī na kiṃ bhavet || dhūmena dhvanyatāṃ vahniś cakṣuṣā dhvanyatāṃ ghaṭaḥ | arthaś ced dhvanayed arthaṃ kā pramāṇavyavasthitiḥ ||

[3]:

ŚLA 20.17–19: duḥkhato ‘pi tu kāvyokteḥ sukhāyārtho bhaved yadi | sukhaṃ bhavantaḥ śṛṇvantu svanindāṃ kavibhiḥ kṛtām || aho bhāvavyaktēḥ pariṇatir aho gūḍharasa ity alīkavyāmīlannayanavigaladbāṣpasalilaiḥ | udañcadromāñcair udaralulitāmair iva muhuḥ kathaṃ vyāptā bhūmiḥ kavibhir apaṭujñānapaśubhiḥ || iti nigaditam evābhīkṣṇam āvarttayadbhiḥ pratikathakavacāṃsi kvāpy anākarṇayadbhiḥ | apathaciravinītair bāliśair āttagandhāḥ śaraṇam abhisamīyuś candracūḍaṃ kavīndrāḥ ||

[4]:

ŚLA 20.24: vijñāpitaḥ kavivarair iti sundareśaḥ smitvā dadau phalakam ekam adṛṣṭapūrvam | yatrāsate kavaya eva yathābhilāṣam anye tu nāṅghrim api vinyasituṃ kṣamante ||

[5]:

A muḻam is the measurement from the tip of the fingers to the elbow.

[6]:

Parañcōti, TVP 54.11–12: viṭaikoṭu pōvā ṉoṉṟai vēṇṭiṉā ṉēkun tēyan / toṭaipeṟu tamiḻnā ṭeṉṟu collupa vanta nāṭṭiṉ / iṭaipayiṉ maṉitta rellā miṉṟami ḻāyntu kēḷvi / uṭaiyava reṉpa kēṭṭārk kuttara muraittal vēṇṭum. cittamā cakala vantac centami ḻiyaṉū ṟaṉṉai / attaṉē yaruḷic ceyti yeṉṟaṉa ṉaṉaiyāṉ ṟēṟa / vaittaṉai mutaṉū ṟaṉṉai maṟṟatu teḷinta piṉṉum / nittaṉē yaṭiyē ṉeṉṟu niṉṉaṭi kāṇpē ṉeṉṟāṉ.

[7]:

Parañcōti, TVP 54.20: iruva kaippuṟa vuraitaḻīi yeḻumata moṭunāṟ / poruḷo ṭumpuṇarn taiyiru kuṟṟamum pōkki / oruvi laiyiraṇ ṭaḻakoṭu muttieṇ ṇāṉkum / maruvu mātinū liṉaittokai vakaiviri muṟaiyāl.

[8]:

ŚLA 20.57, 59: bhakto ‘pi kīraḥ paramādbhutaṃ tat paśyann api pratyuta durbabhāṣe

| mauḍhyān niruḍhād api pāmarāṇāṃ mauḍhyaṃ cidābhāsagataṃ garīyaḥ || bhāvatkyaḥ kṛtayaḥ śrutiḥ śrutir iti prauḍhiṃ parāṃ prāpitā adhyāhāraviparyayaprakaraṇotkarṣānuṣaṅgādibhiḥ | tātparyāntaravarṇanena ca samarthyante yad asmādṛśair taj jānan kavitāsu naḥ paśupate doṣekṣikāṃ mā kṛthāḥ ||

[9]:

ŚLA 22.17.

[10]:

ŚLA 22.12. For the significance of the term atyāśrama to intersectarian debate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see chapter 3.

[11]:

Interestingly, Nīlakaṇṭha’s description of the Jains betrays a possibly deliberate confusion between religious traditions he would have considered heterodox, especially Jainism and Buddhism, as he refers to the Jina variously as Śākya and Tathāgata. On the other hand, the doctrine articulated here is indubitably Jain. It seems unlikely, of course, that Nīlakaṇṭha would have encountered any living examples of Buddhist doctrine in the seventeenthcentury Tamil country.

[12]:

ŚLA 22.18–20: utsṛjya sarvāṇy upabṛṃhaṇāni mīmāṃsitanyāyadṛḍhīkṛtāni | ullaṅghya tarkān api pāmarās te sambhūya taṃ pratyayato ‘jigīṣan || saṃsāratāpān akhilān nihantuṃ śaknoty ahiṃsaiva hi śākyadṛṣṭā | nārcyo maheśo na śivā vibhūtir ity ārhatāḥ svām alikhan pratijñām || vedāḥ pramāṇaṃ saha kāmikādyair viśvādhikaḥ śaṅkara eka eva

| bhasmaiva dhāryaṃ bhuvi mokṣamāṇair ity ālikhan svāṃ sa guruḥ pratijñām ||

[13]:

ŚLA 22.28, 30–33: pāṇḍyas tataḥ pratyayadarśanena sambandhanāthaṃ śaraṇaṃ prapannaḥ | aśeṣapāpacchidurām ayācad dīkṣāṃ śivajñānavidhānadakṣām || ṣaḍadhvanaḥ pañca kalāś ca tasya saṃśodhayan deśikasārvabhaumaḥ | durdīkṣayā dūṣitam apy ayatnāt sambhāvayāmāsa śarīrakośam || śarīram āviśya sa tasya nāḍīsandhānamārgeṇa guruḥ punānaḥ | jātiṃ samuddhṛtya dayāsamudraś cakre śivajñānanidhānam enam || vittaṃ śarīraṃ hrdayaṃ ca tasya vinyasa pāṇḍyaś caraṇāravinde | abhyarthayann ardhaśaśāṅkacūḍaṃ śaivādhvapanthaḥ prasaśāsa pṛthvīm || śivavratasthāḥ śivamantrasaktāḥ śivāgamajñānasudhārasajñāḥ | prajā babhūvuḥ sakalās tadānīṃ prajeśvare śaivapadādhirūḍhe ||

[14]:

Take, for instance, the following initiation procedure from the Somaśambhupaddhati (3.111–114), a commonly circulating and highly influential Saiddhāntika ritual manual: śiṣyadehaviniṣkrāntāṃ suṣumnām iva cintayet | nijavigrahalīnāṃ ca darbhaṃ mūlena mantritam || darbhāgraṃ dakṣiṇe tasya nidhāya karapallave | tanmūlam ātmajaṅghāyām agraṃ veti matāntaram || śiṣyasya hṛdayaṃ gatvā recakena śivāṇunā | pūrakeṇa samāgatya svakīyaṃ hṛdayāmbujam || śivāgninā punaḥ kṛtvā nāḍīsandhānam īdṛśam | hṛdā tatsannidhānārthaṃ juhuyād āhutitrayam || David Gordon White (2009, 146) notes that, outside of the confines of the Saiddhāntika tradition, nāḍīsandhāna figures prominently in a number of accounts of yogin s of various sects entering into the bodies of their practitioners.

[15]:

With a few exceptions, Tantric knowledge systems preserve normative South Asian attitudes concerning the value of internally differentiated social hierarchies, as well as the importance of ritual eligibility (adhikāra). The key distinction is that the genealogical criteria for social inclusion of the Brahminical tradition are replaced by an equally stringent hierarchization on the basis of levels of ritual attainment, each with its own elaborate requirements concerning acculturation into discourse, examination, and credentialization. On the question of eligibility, Tantric traditions typically offer two understandings. Dualistic traditions, like the classical Śaiva Siddhānta, define it in terms of the pupil demonstrating mastery of a body of doctrinal and ritual knowledge that he has received from his teacher. More radical Śākta Śaiva nondualists, by contrast, equate adhikāra solely with the adept’s ability to achieve and maintain increasingly more intensive and potent states of ritual possession, a capacity that is again meditated through the guidance of a charismatic teacher.

[16]:

For instance, the Kāraṇa Āgama (20.54) specifies jātyuddharaṇa as an integral feature of viśeṣa dīkṣā, rather than the most general form of initiation, samaya dīkṣā: jātyuddhāravihīno yas sāmānyasamayī bhavet | tadyuktas tu viśeṣaḥ syāt cākṣuṣyādyās tu yāḥ smṛtāḥ ||

[17]:

What is under discussion here is a series of terms of art from within Śaiva discourse that specify different varieties of initiation and training given solely to those disciples who are expected to succeed their guru in his office, or who otherwise aspire to fulfill his social function, which carries with it particular responsibilities—of an esoteric as well as practical nature—towards future disciples.

[18]:

For further details on the Varṇāśramacandrikā and Tiruvampaḷatēcikar, seventh preceptor of the Tarumapuram maṭam, see Koppedrayer (1991).

[19]:

Varṇāśramacandrikā, citing from the Skandakālottara: jātyuddharaṇahomaṃ tu ekaikaṃ tu śataṃ śatam | dahed vai śūdrajātiṃ tu analena tu ṣaṇmukha ||