Poetics of Place in Early Tamil Literature by Vangal N Muthukumar
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Poetics of place in early Tamil literature by Vangal N Muthukumar A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor George L. Hart, Chair Professor Munis D. Faruqui Professor Robert P. Goldman Professor Bonnie C. Wade Fall 2011 Poetics of place in early Tamil literature Copyright 2011 by Vangal N Muthukumar 1 Abstract Poetics of place in early Tamil literature by Vangal N Muthukumar Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor George L. Hart, Chair In this dissertation, I discuss some representations of place in early (ca. 100 CE - 300 CE) Tamil poetry collectively called caṅkam literature. While previous research has emphasized the im- portance of place as landscape imagery in these poems, it has seldom gone beyond treating landscape / place as symbolic of human emotionality. I argue that this approach does not ad- dress the variety in the representation of place seen in this literature. To address this the- oretical deficiency, I study place in caṅkam poetry as having definite ontological value and something which is immediately cognized by the senses of human perception. Drawing from a range of texts, I will argue that in these poems, the experience of place emerges in a di- alogic between the human self and place - a dialogic which brings together sensory experi- ence, perception, memory, and various socio-cultural patterns; place, in these poems, is not as much an objective geographical entity as it is the process of perception itself. i िभ दयिथद यिमिनत तः| जगौ परावर शात त वातीथमा|| ii Contents Acknowledgments iii A note on abbreviations, translation and transliteration iv 1 Introduction 1 2 Senses, Place, and Senses of Place in early Tamil literature 20 3 Sensuous Landscapes in the Paripāṭal 44 4 Soundscapes 68 5 Foodscapes 89 6 Some concluding remarks 108 A List of primary sources 116 Bibliography 117 iii Acknowledgments This work would not have been possible but for the help and support offered by many. I am thankful to the following people. Tiru. Sampath and Tiru. Jayaraman, my Tamil teachers at Madras Christian College School; Prof. K. N. Balasubramanian, who taught me Tamil at A. M. Jain College, Madras; my father S. Natarajan, uncles S. Thiagarajan and S. Pasupathy, and my brother N. Sivakumar, who fostered my interest in Tamil literature and literary history. Profs. A. A. Manavalan, S. Raghuraman and S. Venkataraman with whom I studied during the last couple of years. I thank them for their time and support. Prof. George L. Hart, my thesis supervisor for his support during my stay at UC, Berkeley. Profs. Munis Faruqui, Robert Goldman, George Hart and Bonnie Wade who served on my Ph. D qualifying exam and dissertation committees. I thank them for reading my dissertation carefully and suggesting several improvements. Dr. Sally Sutherland Goldman and Brahmaśrī. Vijayaraghava Sastri - my Sanskrit teach- ers; Tmt. Kausalya Hart whose Tamil courses at UC Berkeley gave me the time to read a va- riety of Tamil texts; Prof. Alexander von Rospatt, Chair, Department of the South and South- east Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, Prof. Y. V. Subbarayulu and Tiru. M. Kannan at the French In- stitute of Pondicherry for their support and encouragement. The staff at the South and Southeast Asia Library at UC, Berkeley: Rebecca Darby- Williams, Hudaya Kandahjaya, Adnan Malik, Virginia Shih, and Vanessa Tait for all their help during my stay at Berkeley and for providing one of UC's best resources. My fellow students at Berkeley: Sumitra Ranganathan and Ayon Roy who recognized the phenomenologist in me and directed me to the literature on the phenomenology of percep- tion; Robbie Beahrs who provided several useful references on the anthropology of senses; Elizabeth Segran for conversations on caṅkam literature and for collaborating with me in translating some of the poems; Isaac Murchie and Michael Slouber whom I bothered not in- frequently with questions on Sanskrit grammar, literature and XeTeX. My old friend and TeXpert S. Venkataraman who has seen me go through all this once before - a long time ago and in a different country. Finally, my mother Smt. Kameswari, aunt Smt. Annapurani, cousins Mahesh and Mouli who held the fort while I was awol - not that my presence makes much difference as they were quick to realize during the last two years. iv List of abbreviations and a note on translation and transliteration Aiṅ. Aiṇkuṟunūṟu Aka. Akanāṉūṟu Cilap. Cilappatikāram Ciṟu. Ciṟupāṇāṟṟuppaṭāi Kali. Kalittokai Kuṟi. Kuṟiñcippāṭṭu Kuṟu. Kuṟuntokai Matu. Maturaikkāñci Mal. Malaipaṭukaṭām Naṟṟ. Naṟṟiṇai Pari. Paripāṭāl Pari. C. Comacuntaranar's commentary on the Paripāṭal Parimel. Parimelalakar's commentary on the Paripāṭal Pari. Ti. Paripātaṟṟiraṭṭu Perum. Perumpāṇāṟṟuppaṭai Poru. Porunarāṟṟuppaṭai Puṟa. Puṟanāṉūṟu Tiru. Tirumurukāṟṟuppaṭai Tol. Tolkāppiyam In transliterating Indic words, I follow the scheme suggested by the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html). For ease of reading, I have chosen not to transliterate names of people (except when they occur in poetry I quote). Nor have I translit- erated more common words ("Sanskrit", "Tamil", "Madurai", etc.). Some of the translations were adapted from earlier work done in collaboration with Elizabeth Segran. These are indi- cated by an asterix. All other translations, unless otherwise specified, are mine. 1 Chapter 1 Introduction "ச柍க ꏂ쯍களா垿ய ꯁ鎿ய உலக鏍鎿 கா翍殿க쿍 பꞿ믂羿ய மைல ேபா쯍 எ க迍迁埍埁鏍 ேதா쟍றலா뾿ன. பꞿꯍபடல믍 பட쏍ꏍ鎿쏁ꏍதா쯁믍 மைல뾿ன鏁 உயர믁믍 ப쏁ைம뿁믍 க迍迁埍埁ꯍ ꯁலꯍப翁த쯍 ேபால鏍 ெத쾿வாக ힿள柍காힿ翍டா쯁믍 அꏍத母 ச柍கꏂ쟍ெச뿍뿁쿍க쿍 ெபா쏁ளைம鎿뾿னா쯍 'ꎿல鏍鎿ꟁ믍 ெப쎿யனவாகퟁ믍 வாꞿ쯁믍 உய쏍ꏍதனவாகퟁ믍 கட쯍 ꏀ쎿ꟁ믍 ஆழ믁ைடயனவாகퟁ믍' ேதா쟍잿ன." - உ. ேவ. சா뮿நாத ஐய쏍, "எ ச쎿鏍鎿ர믍", ப. 764 "To my eyes, the vistas of the new world of caṅkam texts looked like a mountain shrouded in mist. But just as one is able to perceive a mountain's loftiness and vastness despite it being covered by mist, by virtue of their connotation and con- text, the poems from the caṅkam texts - although I was unable to understand them clearly - appeared to me as 'wider than the earth, higher than the skies, and deeper than the seas'." - U. V. Swaminatha Aiyar, eṉ carittiram, p. 764 This dissertation concerns the representation of place in the literature of the early Tamils - a literature which has come to be known collectively, as caṅkam literature. Of this literature, approximately 2300 poems are available to us today, constituting a wealth of primary source material. It should be obvious that not all of it was written at the same time, and the history of this literature, its chronology, etc. have been topics of considerable debate. For an excellent summary of the vexatious dimensions these questions can acquire, I refer the reader to a recent essay by François Gros (Gros 2009). Fortunately, much of this debate is irrelevant for the purposes of my discussion which will be largely ahistorical. Here, I will merely note the widely held view that a large fraction of the caṅkam poems were composed between the first and fourth centuries of the common era, with outliers on either side of this time period. Why the specific interest in place and in what way can a study of place in these poems con- tribute to the existing body of knowledge on caṅkam literature? It is generally well known in the field of early Indian literature that landscape / place is an important ingredient in caṅkam poetry. So much so, representations of landscape in this corpus of literature are often ad- duced as evidence for a unique and distinct literary tradition (distinct from the other classi- cal Indian language, Sanskrit). However, while previous research has emphasized the impor- tance of place as landscape imagery in these poems, it has seldom gone beyond treating land- scape / place as symbolic of human emotionality. In this dissertation, I will argue that this ap- proach does not address the variety in the representation of place employed in caṅkam litera- ture. To address this theoretical deficiency, I propose a new approach in analyzing the poet- ics of place based on a variety of poems drawn from the caṅkam corpus. The approach I pro- 2 pose is built on predicating place as something which is immediately cognized by the senses of human perception. Even a cursory reading of the caṅkam texts reveals that the protago- nists in the poems experience place in the most direct and immediate way - by being in that place. Based on this, I will argue that the experience of place in these poems, emerges in a di- alogic between the human self and place - a dialogic which brings together sensory experi- ence, perception, memory, and various socio-cultural patterns. In these poems, place is not as much an objective geographical entity, as it is the process of perception itself. I will begin this discussion by summarizing some basic features of caṅkam literature and the ways in which previous researchers have engaged with it.1 This will also give me an op- portunity to introduce a few terms and concepts that I shall use repeatedly in this dissertation. The first of these concerns a broad classification of caṅkam literature: the poems in this cor- pus are conveniently classified under two categories called "akam" and "puṟam". Manavalan notes that "... this classification is neither compilatory