(pp.116-17 of the Abstracts of Research Papers for the Conference)
Are Tamil Temple Myths Really Tamil? Brahmanical Sacrifice, Tamil Bhakti and Transgressive Sacrality (1987)
Prof. Shulman has demonstrated how the variety of founding myths behind local Tamil temples betray an underlying pattern modeled on the violent and bloody self-sacrifice of the deity to the Mother-Goddess in a marriage that is simultaneously a rebirth from her virgin-womb. However, the need to purify the God and to affirm his transcendence before his devotees (bhaktas) introduces the egoistic demon-devotee as the surrogate-victim whose inevitable but fatal salvation retains all the ambivalence of a sacrificial punishment. Though outline how the �original� agonistic pattern corresponds to Heesterman�s pre-classical Vedic sacrifice, Shulman nevertheless derives the violent and transgressive elements�like the impure sacred power of blood, woman and untouchable priests�from early Tamil religious culture and tends to attribute the purificatory role to the imposition of brahmanical ritual norms, whose interdictory sacrality is only reinforced by the moralizing ethos of Shaiva Siddh�nta Bhakti. The widespread popularity of the earth-bound demon-devotee in village-religion would then testify to the inability of Tamil Bhakti and Hindu Tradition in general to reconcile the conflicting goals of power and purity.[1]
Prof. Fran�ois Gros[2] has already objected that Shulman fails to isolate and define in this corpus of temple-myths a specifically Tamil core, that would distinguish it from pan-Indian Hindu mythology. By comparing the parallel mythico-ritual role of Bhairava as a criminal god in North-Indian pilgrimage shrines, like Vaishno-Devi and especially K�sh� (Benares), with the transgressive embryogony shaping the Tamil cults of K�ttavar�yan and Ank�lamman,[3] it is suggested that the specifically Tamil elements of not only the nuclear temple myths but even of the so-called �folk� religion have been rigorously integrated into a pan-Indian sacrificial model. Abhinavagupta�s �Northern� (Trika) Shaivism rather reveals the primarily complementary nature of power and purity. Questioning the appropriateness of studying the purified Agamic religion of the Tamil temples without considering the transgressive ideology of the founding-myths, which still asserts itself through the paradoxical anpu of some of the N�yan�rs,[4] it is implied that the brahmanical sacrifice has so successfully assimilated its Other through a constituting dialectic of �Transgressive Sacrality� that to disown this heritage would be tantamount to a futile self-negation of Tamil identity.
[Much material to be inserted here]
[1] David Dean Shulman's Tamil
Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South Indian Saiva Tradition (1980). This thesis is further elaborated in D.D. Shulman, The
King and the Clown in South Indian Myth and Poetry (1985), both published
in Princeton, New Jersey, by �Princeton University Press
[2] See Fran�ois Gros, "Tradition Tamoule et Mythologie
Hindoue" in Revue de l�Histoire des Religions, CIC-1/1982, pp.67-83.
[3] Elizabeth Chalier-Visuvalingam, �Bhairava�s Royal
Brahmanicide and the Problem of the Mah�br�hmana,� and the contributions of
D.D. Shulman, E, Meyer and M. Biardeau on K�ttavar�yan in Alf Hiltebeitel, ed.
Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees, Proceedings of the 1985 Conference on
Religion in South India, Washington D.C. (Albany: SUNY, 1988). See also E.
Meyer, Ank�laparamecuvar�: a Goddess of Tamil Nadu, Her Myths and Cult
(Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner� Verlag, 1986).
[4] See Dennis Hudson, �Violent and Fanatical Devotion
among the N�yan�rs: A Study in the Periya Pur�nam of Chekkil�r,� in Criminal
Gods and Demon Devotees. The present paper is a reworking of Sunthar
Visuvalingam�s concluding paper on �The Transgressive Sacrality of the
D�kshita� to Hiltebeitel�s volume. The first seminar on �Transgressive
Sacrality in the Hindu Tradition� was held during the 15th Annual
Conference on South Asia of the University of Wisconsin, on 8th
November, 1986.