'Mysticism' of the Alvars

Theological Studies Faculty Works Theological Studies 2010 Engendering the ‘Mysticism’ of the Alvars Tracy Tiemeier Loyola Marymount University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/theo_fac Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier, Engendering the ‘Mysticism’ of the Ālvārs, The Journal of Hindu Studies, Volume 3, Issue 3, October 2010, Pages 337–353, doi: 10.1093/jhs/hiq027 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Theological Studies at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theological Studies Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Journal of Hindu Studies 2010;3:337–353 Doi: 10.1093/jhs/hiq027 Advance Access Publication 13 September 2010 Engendering the ‘Mysticism’ of the Ālvārs Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier Abstract: This essay explores the relationship between gender, power, and mysticism through an examination of the Tamil Vaiṣṇava Ālvārs and how two scholars, Friedhelm Hardy and S.M. Srinivasa Chari, interrelate Ālvār mysticism, female voice, and the one female Ālvār, Āṇṭāḷ. Although both Hardy and Chari deﬁne Ālvār mysticism through female voice and uphold Āṇṭāḷ as mystic par excellence, they miss important nuances of Āṇṭāḷ’s poetry that radicalise female voice and frustrate gendered expectations. Āṇṭāḷ’s mysticism proves to be socially and theologically subversive, laying claim to authority even over the divine. In her gendered genealogy of Christian mysticism, Grace Jantzen shows how the definition and delimitation of mysticism is inexorably connected with power and gender. While her thesis concerns the history of Christian mysticism and its scho- larship, Jantzen raises important questions for all scholars of religions. What are the implications of characterising certain Hindu religious traditions as mystical? And what might they reveal about gender? I take up these questions here, exam- ining the Tamil Vaiṣṇava Ālvārs,1 their characterisation as mystics, and -how some gendered understandings of female voice are entangled with the construction of the one female Ālvār, Āṇṭāḷ, as mystic par excellence. Indeed, Jantzen’s argument is helpful in exposing the ways in which gender assumptions influence the definition of Ālvār mysticism; but a study of Āṇṭāḷ’s poetry can also challenge Jantzen’s own gendered assumptions, which themselves tend to essentialise female mystics. First, I briefly explain Jantzen’s argument that gender and power struggles are entangled in the production of mysticism. Next I look at how two scholars, Friedhelm Hardy and S.M. Srinivasa Chari, interrelate Ālvār mysticism, female voice, and Āṇṭāḷ.2 Although both Hardy and Chari define Ālvār mysticism through female voice – thereby leading them to uphold Āṇṭāḷ as the pinnacle of Ālvār mysticism – they miss important nuances of Āṇṭāḷ’s poetry. I therefore examine the longer of Āṇṭāḷ’s songs, the Nācciyār Tirumoli, to show the complexity of her poetry. A brief study of Āṇṭāḷ’s use of words for heart, mind, and breasts shows, not an essentialised female voice, but a radical female voice that frustrates gendered expectations. Āṇṭāḷ’s mysticism is anything but an essentialised relationship of emotional dependence, ideally portrayed through the female voice. Although her framework is that of a woman who is fulfilled in marriage to a male (divine), she subverts that very framework in her language-play. Indeed, she creatively argues © The Author 2010. Oxford University Press and The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email [email protected] 338 Engendering the ‘Mysticism’ of the Ālvārs for an authority that claims power over the divine, even as she draws on traditional categories of female virtue and devotion. Grace Jantzen’s Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism In Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism, Grace Jantzen follows Michel Foucault in connecting power and the production of knowledge, and writes a gendered genealogy of mysticism that illustrates the gendered power struggles over the delimitation of what ‘counts’ as mysticism. As she says, The fascination of the subject of mysticism is not, I suggest, simply a fascination with intense psychological experiences for their own sake, but rather because the answers to each of these questions are also ways of defining or delimiting authority. The connection of questions of power to questions of mysticism is obvious as soon as one stops to think of it: a person who has acknowledged to have direct access to God would be in a position to challenge any form of authority, whether doctrinal or political, which she saw as incompatible with the divine will.3 Moreover, ‘knowledge and power are regularly interconnected, and just as regularly gendered.’4 This can be seen in the very definition of mysticism, both historically and in contemporary studies of mysticism. Mysticism is therefore socially constructed, rather than an essential reality, experience, or knowledge. Jantzen’s genealogy of mysticism illustrates through brief historical vignettes how mysticism itself has been constructed throughout time and how this construction is often related to gendered power struggles. While the modern privatisation and subjectification of mysticism functions to allow women to be mystics, it iso- lates them in a hidden world of intense emotional experiences, far away from the world of secular privilege and authority.5 Although her main thesis has been well received, Jantzen’s presentation is not without problems. Lawrence Cunningham points out that Jantzen’s genealogy is, at times, reductionistic: Direct experience of the divine grants power, and when women were involved, a patriarchal, misogynistic, and power-greedy institution sometimes resorted to suppression. To each of these assertions one can adduce many compelling proofs, but to allow this perspective to be the exclusive lens through which to read the tradition brings its own distortions.6 This reductionism means that Jantzen’s history ‘call[s] out frequently for correc- tion.’7 Self-taught, Jantzen makes no pretensions about being a historian; yet, she does engage in a deeply historical subject. Her postmodern feminist perspective on history at times distorts the very primary materials she aims to read so closely and re-cover.8 Even so, Jantzen’s move to connect gender, power, and the construction of mysticism cannot be ignored. Elizabeth Dreyer concludes that, ‘this volume is a Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier 339 rich and provocative contribution to the philosophical discussion of mysticism. It raises historical, philosophical, theological, linguistic, and gender-related issues that will be revisited again and again, and we can only be grateful to J. [Jantzen] for entering into and furthering this conversation.’9 Jantzen may stretch her con- clusions and historical claims, but she is correct to point out what is at stake for women in the definition and delimitation of mysticism: historically, politically, phi- losophically, and theologically. If Jantzen is at all right in her gendered genealogy of Christian mysticism, the implications are great for any study of mysticism. The question must therefore be asked not only of how scholars would define a Christian or Greek mysticism, but also of any study of a so-called mysticism. No application of the category of mysticism, even if used loosely in Hindu studies, is without the question of power; and if Jantzen is right, no use is moreover without the question of gendered power. With this in mind, let us now turn to the Ālvārs. The Ālvārs serve as a good test case for Jantzen’s thesis; for not only have they been called mystics, their use of female voice can also allow us to consider the specific role of gender in the construction of their mysticism. Māyōn mysticism Friedhelm Hardy has written one of the most ambitious texts on the history of bhakti in South India.10 In six parts, Hardy traces the development of Kṛṣṇaism11 as it moves from North to South India. His concern is the development of emotional Kṛṣṇa bhakti, a distinctive brand of bhakti that coalesces in the song-poems of the Tamil Ālvārs and bears first Sanskrit fruit in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Hardy provides an important, although problematic, western construction of Ālvār mysticism. For Hardy, emotional bhakti is more specifically viraha-bhakti, a devotion that centres on one’s separation from Kṛṣṇa, or Māyōn (the Dark One).12 Hardy describes his viraha-bhakti as a kind of bridal mysticism,13 which has three levels: the perso- nal, the poetic, and the mythic.14 These levels further possess three elements: the aesthetic, the erotic, and the ecstatic.15 These conditions must all be met for a par- ticular phenomenon to qualify as emotional Kṛṣṇa bhakti. Hardy is clear that, ‘Any religious phenomenon which does not include the three planes and all three elements on each plane – however “emotional” it may be – will be excluded.’16 Part Four of Hardy’s book is exclusively on the Ālvārs and their Māyōn mysticism. The developing stories of Kṛṣṇa’s love-play with the gopīs (cowherd lovers of Kṛṣṇa) travelled South and became integrated into Tamil literature, culture, and religion. Hardy identifies the classical Tamil literary motif of the girl in separation to be uniquely significant for understanding the poetic form of Ālvār emotional Kṛṣṇa bhakti.17 Hardy therefore focuses on the Ālvār use of gopīs (in their union and separation with Kṛṣṇa) and on the girl poems in the Ālvārs, where the experience of agony in separation from one’s lover (Kṛṣṇa) is dramatised. For example, Nammālvār’s Tiruvāymoli (Ālvār from ca. late seventh century) 340 Engendering the ‘Mysticism’ of the Ālvārs includes 23 songs of a girl love-sick for Kṛṣṇa and three songs concerning the cowherd lovers of Kṛṣṇa.18 Periyālvār(Ālvār from ca.

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