Temples and the State in South India in the Colonial and Post-colonial
Periods
Chris Fuller
In south India, temples have been crucial institutions for
kingship and the state since ancient times. The British colonial government initially assumed the royal
duty to protect temples, but after legislation in 1863 they were handed over to local management committees. But
complaints about mismanagement quickly arose and numerous political and legal disputes followed. In 1926,
the government of Madras acquired new powers over temples through the Hindu Religious Endowments Board; after 1951, the more
powerful Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department progressively gained control over almost all major temples,
and many minor ones, in Tamil Nadu.
The government,
supported by the courts, claims it is fulfilling the ancient kings’ duty to protect temples, whereas temple priests
insist that a secular government cannot act like a Hindu king as the deities’ regent. The trustees
of temples still controlled privately also dispute the state’s legitimacy on various grounds; Brahmans and Non-Brahmans,
as well as politicians from different parties, typically disagree about the government’s role; the Śaṅkarācāryas
claim rights in temples that priests dispute; ordinary worshippers regularly complain about incompetence and corruption.
For at least 150 years, contention, rather than consensus, has therefore characterized the state’s relationship
with the temples.
Chris Fuller, who studied social anthropology at the University
of Cambridge, is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. His first fieldwork
in India was in Kerala in 1971-2. In 1976, he started research in the Minakshi temple in Madurai, Tamil
Nadu, and during the next twenty-five years, he periodically visited the temple to study both the priests and its elaborate
rituals. In 2003-8, with Haripriya Narasimhan, Fuller carried out research on company managers and IT professionals in Chennai,
and then on Tamil Brahmans and their transformation from a traditional elite to a modern, trans-national community.
His publications include Servants of the
Goddess (1984) and The Renewal of the
Priesthood (2003) about the Minakshi temple priests; The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society
in India (1992, 2004); and, with Haripriya Narasimhan, Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class
Caste (2014). Fuller’s current research is on the history of the anthropology
of India.
Unveiling
Changes of Faith in Medieval Tamil-Speaking South: the Cases of Tirupparaṅkuṉṟam and Tiruccentūr
Valerie Gillet
The god Murukaṉ/Subrahmaṇya is one of the most popular deities of
the Tamil-speaking South. The Tamil tradition holds that a sacred geography of Lord Murukaṉ was established in the Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai,
one of the first poems of Tamil Bhakti literature dated to the 6th
or 7th century of the common era: six sacred locations―the āṟupaṭaivīṭus, literally “the six abodes of the army”―are hailed as the dwellings of the god. The temples of Tirupparaṅkuṉṟam (6 kilometres from Madurai)
and Tiruccentūr (a costal town south of Tirunēlveli) are two of the āṟupaṭaivīṭus,
and their temples dedicated to Murukaṉ attract millions of pilgrims every year. The core of both these temples, drastically
enlarged and modified over the centuries, is a rock-cut temple which can be assigned to the 8th century in the case of Tirupparaṅkuṉṟam and to the 9th century at the latest in the case of Tiruccentūr. However, a close scrutiny of these archaeological data reveals
the fact that these early monuments were not originally dedicated to Murukaṉ/Subrahmaṇya: it is very clear in
the case of Tirupparaṅkuṉṟam which was dedicated to Śambhu, and is very probable in the case of Tiruccentūr,
which may have been a Vaiṣṇava or a multi-religious shrine.
Valérie
Gillet (b. 1975) is a member of the École française d’Extrême-Orient. Her research focuses on material
mostly found in the religious monuments excavated or built on the territories of the two main early medieval South-Indian
dynasties, the Pallavas and the Pāṇḍyas. She also attempts to map the emergence and the develop- ment of
the cult of the deity called Subrahmaṇya/Murukaṉ in the medieval Tamil- speaking South. Since 2007, she has been
posted at the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO, of which she became Head in 2011. She has written a study of the narrative iconography
of the 8th century structural Pallava temples entitled La création d’une iconography śivaïte
narrative: Incarnations du dieu dans les temples pallava construits, as well as several articles on material
from the Pallava period and sacred places related to Murukaṉ.
Changes in Temple Ritual and in the Social World of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava Sampradāya
Vasudha Narayanan
Ramānuja, the most important Śrī Vaiṣṇava ācārya,
is best known in many parts of India as the teacher who went to the temple tower in Tirukkōṭṭiyūr and,
unmindful of the caste and social station of all those who heard him, shared a secret mantra which is said to give one salvation.
This, and several other incidents narrated in the many maṇipravāḷa biographies and commentaries
of the the Śrī Vaiṣṇava sampradāya, as well as the chronicles of the Srirangam temple
(Kōyil Oluku) project the ācārya as one who initiated social change and a champion of social justice.
The Kōyil Oḻuku also speaks of the many changes he made in the temple administration and ritual.
My paper
will explore the nature of the reforms attributed to him, the provenance of these narratives, the parameters of the recent
acrimonious controversy, which questions his agency in the ritual reform, and then discuss the ways in which such changes
are initiated within temples and sectarian communities.
Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor, Department of Religion, and Director,
Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra) at the University of Florida. She is a past President of the
American Academy of Religion (2001-2002). Vasudha Narayanan was educated at the Universities of Madras
and Bombay in India, and at Harvard University.
She is the author or editor of seven books and numerous articles, chapters in books,
and encyclopedia entries. In addition, she is also the associate editor of the six-volume Brill’s
Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from several
organizations including the Centre for Khmer Studies; the American Council of Learned Societies; National Endowment
for the Humanities; the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies/ Smithsonian,
and the Social Science Research Council. She is currently working on Hindu temples and traditions in Cambodia.
Books relating to the Sri Vaishnava tradition include: The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual
(1994), The Tamil Veda: Pillan’s Interpretation of the Tiruvaymoli (with John Carman, 1989), and The Way and the Goal: Expressions of Devotion in the Early Srivaisnava Tradition (1987).
From Priestesses to Performers: Changes in Women’s Roles in Tamil Temples
Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan
In a Classical Tamil text, the Maturaik Kāñci, we find a non-Brahmin
priestess called cāliṉi worshipping in a temple. In the post-Classical epic, the Cilappatikāram,
we come across a non-Brahmin priestess referred to as cāliṉi, who worships Koṟṟavai. That
these priestesses must have enjoyed high status is indicated by a Classical Tamil poem, in which a priestess is called vēṇmāḷ
which word also happened to refer to any woman of vēḷ lineage, who were often married to Tamil kings.
The Cilappatikāram seems to indicate that
Brahmin women might have served as priestesses initially as religious rituals transitioned from being non-Brahminical to Brahminical.
In course of time, Brahmin women were replaced by Brahmin men
as priests. Concomitantly, temple women must have been recruited from non-Brahmin courtesans skilled in music and dance to
perform during religious events. Thus, we finally end up with Brahmin priests and non-Brahmin women performers. Some of the
temple women also got married to kings and princes.
The changes
in roles of women from priestesses to performers in Tamil temples will be presented using information from literary and epigraphic
sources.
S. Palaniappan is the President of South Asia Research and
Information Institute. He has presented papers at various academic conferences on topics such as: cultural change in
ancient Tamil society, Tamil philology, Dravidian etymology, and Tamil nationalism. He has published articles on the
Tamil Bhakti (devotional) movement and the development of caste in Tamil society. His articles on the date of Bhavatrāta
(a commentator on the Sāma Veda) and the history of the Tamil Pānar will be forthcoming later this year. He earned
a BTech (Aeronautical Engineering) from IIT Madras, an MBA from the Wharton School, and a PhD (Civil Engineering: Transportation)
from the University of Pennsylvania where he also pursued his passion in Indology. He is interested in researching
Indian cultural history using philology, linguistics, and epigraphy.
Dramatic Changes in the Chidambaram Temple Tradition
Paul Younger
Hindu
temples have for well over a millennium proven to be the most enduring of human institutions. The combinations of priestly
service, political support and popular ritual forms they are known for have often changed over time, but usually the changes
are carefully managed so as to preserve the reputation for sacred presence the place is known for. Because a temple tradition
relies on a number of different bases of support it is a challenge for a historian to explain exactly how important changes
in tradition were managed.
In the case of the Chidambaram temple tradition some of the
dramatic early changes were initiated by political figures, but the longer term religious implications spun off from those
initiatives were managed by the priestly community that continued with its rituals and the worshipping public that responded
to the new devotional opportunities. There are two political initiatives that will be examined in this paper. The first is
the placing of a gold-shingled roof on the thatch-styled temple by the Cōḻa emperor Āditya I (871-907). And
the second is the thorough rebuilding of the temple compound by Naralōkavīraṉ, the retired general of Kulottuṅga
I (1070-1122).
Paul Younger began to take an interest in South Indian
temple history after a family friend invited him to spend a year living with a priestly family within the walls of the Srirangam
temple. (See “Srirangam” in Temple Towns of Tamil Nadu, ed. George Michell, Marg, 1993; “Wandering
and Romance with Lord Raṅkanātaṉ” and “Singing the Tamil Hymnbook” in Playing Host to Deity: Festival Religion in the South Indian Tradition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Many more years were later spent
in Chidambaram. (See The Home of Dancing Sivan:
The Traditions of the Hindu Temple in Citamparam,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; “Ritual Life of the Nataraja Temple” in Chidambaram: Home of Nataraja,
ed. Vivek Nanda, Marg, 2004.)
Paul Younger has an M.A. from Banaras Hindu University and
a PhD from Princeton University. He taught in McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada from 1964 to 1996. He was married
to Susanna Oommen of Kerala from 1961 to 1985. He married Cathy Hird in 1987. He and his family live on a farm in Ontario,
and he is working on a book about Hindus in Canada.
