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University of California, Berkeley
5th Tamil Chair Conference
Pandi Nadu - the Land of the Pandyas: பாண்டி நாடு
25-26 April 2009
[see
U.C. Berkeley Department of South and South East Asian Studies,
Center for South Asian Studies and Berkeley Tamil Chair Web Site]
[Note by tamilnation.org
see also Pandya Dynasty]
Opening Remarks:
Raka Ray, Acting Chair, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies and
Chair, Center for South Asia Studies, 8.30 am PANEL 1 Saturday. April 25 9 - 10:30 AM Anne Monius, Harvard University
"On the Very Idea of Maturai"
This paper examines the changing position of Maturai in pre-modern Tamil
literary culture, from the high praise of the Maturaikkanci to the conflagration
of the Cilappatikaram, the stories of the ancient poetic Cankams, and the Saiva
association of the city with evil Jain kings. What themes persist in literary
accounts of Maturai, and what might account for its fluctuating literary
fortunes?
Archana Venkatesan, University of California, Davis
Beneath the Tamarind Tree: Performance and Memory at the Temple of Alvar
Tirunakari
Beneath the Tamarind Tree: Performance and Memory at the Temple of Alvar
Tirunakari This paper explores the major performance traditions of Alvar
Tirunakari in Tirunelveli district. The temple, which continues to preserve
multiple ritual-performance traditions, offers a unique opportunity to
understand the ways in which performance has been used to transmit religious
knowledge in South India. This paper will focus on three major traditions --
Araiyar Cevai, Kavip Pattuu and Nattuvanars Pattu -- that remain active at the
site.
Jennifer Clare, University of California, Berkeley
Historical Space, the King and the Lover in Akam Genres
The 7th century Pantikkovai is usually understood to represent a new phase of
the akam tradition - the "kovai" genre - that re-imagines the relationship
between the anonymous lovers found in the earlier akam poems and the
identifiable royal hero of the puram poems. What is seldom discussed is the fact
that this ambiguous royal hero of the akam tradition (or "pattutaittalaivan", as
he is called in Tamil aesthetics) appears earlier in the Sangam-era Pattuppattu,
a collection of ten long poems that blur the traditional akam and puram
distinctions. This essay looks at the representation of two royal
pattutaittalaivans, the Pandian Netunceliyan featured in the Pattuppattu, and
the Pandian Netumaran in the later Pantikkovai, along with the commentaries of
Naccinarkkiniyar and Nakkiranar respectively, to better understand the change in
the akam genre from the Sangam to the medieval period, and the triangular
relationship between the king, the lover, and the physical and historical space
of the kingdom which they both inhabit.
PANEL II Saturday 10:45 AM - Noon Crispin Branfoot, SOAS, University of London
The Madurai Nayakas and the place of the past in early modern Pandi Nadu
The material fabric of the ancient Pandyan city of Madurai seen today owes a
great deal to the presence of the Nayakas who ruled over the city for two
centuries until 1736. As outsiders to Pandi Nadu, their authority was initially
based upon their relationship with their Vijayanagara overlords at the imperial
capital in northern Karnataka. But over the course of the later sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, they consolidated their rule by shifting their attention
to their relationship with the communities of Pandi Nadu. One element of this
renegotiation was the Madurai Nayakas’ relationship with the dynastic past of
the Pandyans, the former rulers of Madurai, who had been displaced by the
sultanate incursions into the Tamil country in the fourteenth century. Were the
Nayakas simply the Pandyans’ successors, or were they considered to be
‘Pandyans’ themselves? How did the Nayakas relate to the surviving later Pandyan
dynasty in the Tenkasi region, whose rulers were similarly patronizing temples
and issuing inscriptions into the eighteenth century? In this paper I will
outline the Madurai Nayakas’ relationship with the Tamil country through an
examination of the construction, renovation and expansion of temples across the
sacred landscape of Pandi Nadu in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Layne Little, University of California, Berkeley
Bhogar’s Journey to the Tomb of Textuality
The sudden flood of printed Tamil texts in the latter half of the nineteenth
century stimulated the production of new Tamil Siddha works as wellóparticularly
in the Palani and Madurai regions. It also inspired these authors to reflect on
the nature of textuality itself. Many of the later verses that comprise Bhogarís
7000 were written in this era. Included among these verses is the largest
narrative sequence in the 7000 in which Bhogar crosses the twenty-one peaks of
Mt. Meru and visits the "Tomb of the Texts." During this journey he reflects on
the nature of secrecy, its transmission, and the ultimate import of Hindu
textual tradition.
Kalyanasundaram, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne
The Use of computers for Tamil Studies and Research
PANEL III Saturday 1:30 - 3 PM Leslie Orr, Concordia University, Montreal
Being a Pandya: Dynastic Mythos and Royal Self-Representation
The kings of the Pandya dynasty belong to several chronological phases -- the
first being the Pandya rulers of legend and those referred to in early Tamil
literature (e.g. Maturaikkanci, Cilappatikaram, Kalittokai), and the subsequent
three phases being defined primarily with reference to the extant epigraphical
evidence: the "First Empire" Pandyas (c. AD 600-1000), the "Second Empire"
Pandyas (c. 1200-1400), and the Tirunelveli/ Tenkasi Pandyas (c. AD 1400-1750).
Whether or not these kings taken together actually constitute a single dynastic
family ruling for 1500 years or more, the notion of continuity is strongly
expressed by the kings themselves, who, in the Tamil meykkirttis and Sanskrit
prasastis that preface the records of their gifts, outline their semi-divine and
royal lineages and celebrate their ancestorsí deeds. While the inscriptions
(especially the copper-plate grants) dated in the reigns of the "First Empire"
Pandyas have received a certain amount of scholarly attention, those of their
successors have been virtually ignored. Basing myself largely on these
inscriptional sources -- with attention as well to such literary works as the
8th-century (?) Pantikkovai in Tamil and the 16th-century Pandyakulodaya in
Sanskrit -- my effort in this paper will be to examine the persistence and
elaboration of Pandyan dynastic themes in the self-representation of Pandya
rulers over time. As the Pandyas are the first rulers whose court poets composed
Tamil meykkirttis, as well as Sanskrit prasastis, and as the Pandyas are in
legend so closely tied to the evolution of Tamil literary culture, this
examination will provide an opportunity to consider the "Tamilness" as well as
the "Pandyaness" of these kings.
Brenda Beck, Sophia Hilton Foundation of Canada
A Folk Epic Depicting the Saivite Kongu Vellalar Community: Why is Vishnu So
Prominent in the Story?
The Annanmar Katai is an oral epic once sung by bards in the Kongu region of
Tamilnadu. Lord Vishnu appears 122 times in this story, Lord Shiva only 10. In
this paper I will examine Vishnu's several roles (beggar, fly, soothsayer,
teasing helpmate, washer man, army leader, wild boar and hunter). Lord Vishnu is
also dicing partner to the epic's main heroes. Furthermore, I will cover several
scenes of rivalry between Shiva and Vishnu and the goddessí occasional role in
mediating between them (one Lord is her husband and the other her brother).
Gita Pai, University of California, Berkeley
Markali, Morning Rituals, and Matrimony: In Search of a Good Husband
First thing in the morning during the Tamil solar month of Margali (mid-December
to mid-January), devotees sing Tiruppavai by the Vaishnava saint Andal and
Tiruvempavai by the Shaivaite saint Manikkavasagar. Both hymns urge unmarried
girls to get up early and worship Krishna and Shiva respectively. On the
twenty-sixth day of Margali, the "Ennaikkaappu" (oil bath ceremony) is performed
at the Meenakshi-Sundareshvara temple in Madurai, where the processional
Meenakshi idol is taken to the Pudu Mandapam, a pillared hall outside the east
gopuram. Here her hair is oiled and trimmed, and she is bathed and dressed.
Mediating between the textual and performative observances is Tirumala Nayaka
(r. 1623-1659), Madurai's famous ruler, the pillared hall's builder, and the
festival's founder. The purpose of this paper is to understand the Nayaka king's
role in this ritual and to explore its underlying theme both for the girls and
the goddess: winning a perfect, god-like husband.
PANEL IV Saturday 3:15 - 5 PM Hari Krishnan, Wesleyan University
In the Name of an Absent Patron-King Textual and Choreographic Analysis of the
Svarajati "Eto Paramukamakuray"
The svarajati is an extremely complex genre of South Indian court dance. Like
the more popular varnam, it alternates between poetic interpretation (abhinaya)
and phrases of abstract rhythmic dance, but the svarajati is longer and more
complicated in its musical structure. The svarajati eto paramukamaakuraay in the
raga Khamas was transcribed from a hereditary manuscript by Hari Krishnan's
teacher, K.P. Kitappa Pillai (1913-1999) in the year 1997, and published by the
Madras Music Academy, in a book of rare compositions of the famous "Thanjavur
Quartet" and their descendents. The central hero (nayaka) of this svarajati in
the Tamil language is the local Raja of Ramnad, Bhaskara Setupati (1868-1903),
one of the last rulers of the Ramnad kingdom in the nineteenth century. In the
svarajati, he emerges as a munificent patron of the arts, in the typical style
of devadasi courtly compositions. Ironically, Bhaskara Setupati was among the
elites responsible for the alienation of dance and music from the courtly
rituals at Ramnad, and by extension, for the early disenfranchisement of
devadasi dancers from the entire Madurai region. In her study of Ramnad, Pamela
Price notes that Bhaskara Setupati was the ideal gentleman-zamindar, who sought
to "attract a new kind of attention and admiration of public life." From his
diaries and public statements in the press, it is clear that he had much disdain
for devadasi dance, even as he continued to applaud Brahmin musicians.
Integrating lecture and live performance, this presentation provides an analysis
of the svarajati, interrogating its use of the trope of the royal patron/nayaka.
The historicization of the piece highlights the dramatic irony of the
"deceitful" Nayaka, Bhaskara Setupati, and foregrounds issues of modernity,
reform, kingship, the decline of the visibility of devadasi dance in the late
nineteenth century.
PANEL V. Sunday. April 26. 9 AM Lakshmi Holmstrom, Writer, Critic and Translator
Imagined Cities
This paper will be a study of the City as it is imagined in modern Tamil
fiction. It will begin with a brief examination of the ways in which the Pandyan
royal city Madurai is imagined in Cilappatikaram, in contrast to the Chola
port-city of Pukar, exploring notions of ur, nakaram, and pattinam, and their
place within or outside the tinai scheme of the five landscapes. The main focus
will be on Pudumaippittan’s treatment of Madurai, in opposition to Chennai on
the one hand, and Tirunelveli on the other. I will end with a consideration of
the poet Cheran’s ideas of a possible sixth tinai (‘DiasporiCity’) and a seventh
tinai, the world-wide ‘virtual’ city of the internet, an idea that the short
story writer Ambai has also explored.
Round Table Discussion Sunday. April 26 10 AM -1 PM Discussants and Moderators E. Annamalai, Yale University
Leslie Orr, Concordia University
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