Kalidos 2020 Akananuru

This study focuses on Temple art and Architecture of Avudayarkovil. The temple of Tamil Nadu has a long history and Archaeology among the temples in South India. The temple in South India context has always drawn the attention of students, when we trace the origin of the temple; there is clear mention of the Kottam and Kovil that mentioned in the Sangam literature. There is an appealing theory about the history of the temple in Tamil Nadu. The study has taken a challenge to understand the art and Architecture of Avudayar Kovil temple. It also attempts to collate all the existing research that has been under taken in the field of architecture, and potential contribution to the existing body of knowledge through a structural and sculpture analysis of Avudayar Kovil temple Architecture. The study comprises the details of Architecture plans of the temple, Iconography, and Iconometry of sculpture in the Avudayar Kovil temple. It includes the structure of pillars, ceiling, and painting of the Avudayar Kovil temple. Hence, the paper focuses on the art and architectural evidences in the Avudayarkovil Temple.

Kalyana Mitra (festschrift to Prof. Chenna Reddy), 2023

Starting from agricultural labours to learned artists left their footsteps in the development of various socio-cultural aspects. Tracing the individual contribution of these subaltern folks is not difficult if we see the sources of history with an open mind. Particularly the inscriptions studded on the walls of the temples speak not only about the royal orders, donations and grants given by the kings but also about the role of common folk. For example, the Chola inscriptions found on the walls of the Brahadeeswarar temple in Thanjavur issued by the Chola king Rajaraja I is highly valuable in the context of their numbers and information. They speak about the social, political, economic and cultural life of the Tamil country. Likewise, the Tamil literatures also has its antiquity from the early centuries of common era. Sangam literary works, epics like Silapadikaram and Manimekalai, Bakthi literatures like Devaram, Tiruvasakam and Nalayiradivyaprabandam and post-Bakthi literatures throw valuable light on the socio cultural life of the Tamil country. In this paper an attempt was made to highlight the role of artists and artisans who always be themselves behind the screens. The terms related to artists, artisans and other professional classes found in the inscriptions are culled out and interpreted with the help of Tamil literary sources for a better understanding.

The classical phase of Tamil literature, which lasted from the second century BCE to the fifth century CE, includes a vast corpus that is divided into the Pattuppāṭṭu and Eṭṭuttokai, including the Tolkāppiyam. The Kalittokai is similar to the Paripāṭal, the 150 poems deal with the different landscapes and phases of love poems, it may be understood that the mythologies of the pan-Indian order and the typical Tamil idioms have gone a long way in the making of a cosmopolitan picture. The Tamils had no inhibition in taking from others and shared their ideas with others. In certain cases, the pan-Indian myths were altered to suit the Tamil taste, e.g., 'Dharma' is a pan-Indian remoulded to suit Tamil culture. Thus, the Tamil and Sanskritic mythological and legendary ideas have moved like the warp and woof in ancient Tamil literature. References to the Sanskritic sources of events are ample, and at the same time, no events in the Indian Epics are discernible. The semblance between the narratives of Kalittokai and Cilappatikāram may suggest a date of proximity to the epic. It all depends on where we fix the Cilappatikāram and Maṇimēkalai. Several layers of poems may be found in the Kalittokai, as is the case with Puṟam 400 and Akam 400. The earlier stratum may return to the BCEs and the later stratum around 400 CE. In an ocean of love poems, sources relating to the pan-Indian purāṇas are scattered sporadically. The Sanskritic sources and ideas had been systematically merged into the Tamil cultural heritage, and influence had an enormous upshot on the ancient Tamil literature. These show how the Āryan ideas had intermingled with the thought of the Tamils. Besides, it shows how Indian culture is an admixture of Tamil and Sanskrit ideas from very early times, starting with Tolkāppiyam.

Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation: Sanskrit and Tamil in Medieval India, 2013

Artha - Journal of Social Sciences, 2018

Art and literature are part as well as a reflection of life. Literature and arts help to observe and interpret the world. They can also change the world. Visual arts stand in the forefront of knowledge dissemination. However the significance accorded to literature has never been given to painting. The paper traces how literature has always preceded and given more priority against painting and other visual arts form in the region of Kerala. This also goes with the fact that in discussing the history of arts, rural arts and artists are never discussed sufficiently. This is despite the fact that there is always a closer relationship between alphabets, scripts and paintings of various forms. The paper traces this close relationship to the earlier times when the scripts and written forms essentially evolved from hand drawings and stone carvings in the context of the south Indian language Malayalam. That the scripts and alphabets essentially evolved from those early pictographs should be ...

2023

Besides excavations, evidence of Tamil antiquity is preserved in written records, such as literature, inscriptions, and palm leaf manuscripts in one form or the other. Efforts were made constantly to alter the perceptions of the past into new forms while contesting to foreign influences of many kinds. To synthesize the indigenous past from these textual sources, however, one must first have a deep understanding of them and apply appropriate inter-textual research methods. This often involves sifting through many pieces of evidence and distinguishing between foreign and native Tamil elements. In most cases, one can find a trajectory from one point in history to the other through changes that might have taken place gradually to change the indigenous perceptions to foreign. Without a sense of historiography and efforts to record history in the past, one is obligated to read in between lines and make connections where necessary. To cite an example, indigenous Tamil rituals have always been one of the significant pieces of evidence to trace Tamils' history and we find many forms of them through various means, including archeological, inscriptional, and literary. The term tiruppatiyam viṇṇappañceytal (cf. SII2 No. 65), is recorded in many Tamil inscriptions to denote Tamil's indigenous form of ritual in parallel to Sanskrit rituals during the medieval period. Subsequently, this term leads one to other related terms such as kaḻañcu poṉ, taḷiccērip peṇṭir, ōtuvār, paṇṭāram, pūcāri and so on and so forth to attribute to the dialogues of Tamils' antiquity. In Sangam literary texts we attest evidence of Tamil's rituals in the form of folk deities with special connotations of vēlan veṟiyayar, veṟiyāṭṭam (cf. Kuruntokai 53, 360), vēlan ēttum veṟi (Paripāṭal 5-15) and others. Thus, one is tempted to trace the trajectory and analyze the dialogues over the change of perceptions belonging to the ancient past to a newly introduced form of tiruppatiyam viṇṇappañceytal or tiruppatiyam pāṭutal. (see Renganathan 2021 for a detailed account of these terms and the later development of the concept of Tamil Arccanai). Thus, these terms and the cultural nuances associated with them become the cultural clue to trace the history of the Tamils. What is significant to note is that such terms form the consolidated pieces of evidence to be correlated with other evidence from literary and archeological evidence. Along these lines, this paper aims at capturing both cultural and literary evidence that can be treated as the base for tracing the history of the Tamils through change in perceptions. As for literary sources, it will be attempted how the imageries and artifacts as employed in Sangam period transitioned through the medieval and modern periods. Specifically, it examines the literary sources from the Sangam and medieval periods to explore how the use of the objects such as Āḷi and ñāḻaṛ pū reflect a shift from a secular to a religious perspective. By using these inscriptional and literary evidence to track historical trajectories and the change in perceptions that occurred throughout, one can contribute to parallel research in the fields of archeology, numismatics, and other relevant fields by shedding light on the historical changes of the ancient past.

New Delhi: Sharada Publishing House., 2017

The book is in two parts dealing with the sacred hymnss of the Āḻvārs and Nāyaṉmār; rooted in the Vedas, the Itihāsas, the Gīta and the sahasranāmas of Viṣṇu and Śiva. The first part presents the Roman transcription and English translation of the holiest of the hymns, the Tiruppāvai and Tiruvempāvai. The second part is on “Morphological Riddles and Mythological Setting” of the Āḻvārs hymns, and historical reflections on the ‘Divyadeśas” (Sacred Geography) of Viṣṇuism in the Kāviri delta. We have presented a transcription and transliteration in Roman script, word-to-word English version and a digest. This may help any not-Tamil knowing audience to have an understanding of the hymns. The aim is to bring alive the hymns at the lips of the readers. The book includes an historical introduction on the bhakti cult. Rooted in the ‘Bhāgavata’ or Vṛṣṇī-vīra worship, the bhakti adumbrated by the Āḻvārs and the Nāyaṉmār (6th-9th century CE) had a tremendous impact over the course liturgical literature, temple building and the temple arts, sculpture and painting through the ages in South and Southeast Asia. Chapter IV and V elaborately deal with the Tamil Veda, the ‘Nālāyiram’ in the context of the ideas aired in Chapters II and III. The annexure-s on Viṣṇusahasranāma and Śivasahasranāma pinpoint their art historical relevance.