Syllables of Sky: Studies in South Indian civilization

249 Pages·1995·49.294 MB·English

by  David Shulman, Velcheru Narayana Rao

Studies in South Indian Civilization
in Honour of Velchoru Narayana Rao
■i
This collection of essays by outstanding
scholars of south India introduces the
work of Velcheru Narayana Rao, who has
revolutionized our understanding of the
classical literary culture of that region. The
Syllables of Sky
essays span a wide range of fields —
Telugu literature and religion, south Studies in South Indian Civilization
Indian history, Indian folklore and mythol¬
ogy, classical literary theory, Dravidian
linguistics, and temple architecture.
Most of the essays offer an overview of
recent innovative research in these areas of
cultural history, following this up with
original, exploratory ideas and hypoth¬
eses. The opening essay describes
Narayana Rao's intellectual development
and the nature of his impact on the world
of south Indian scholarship. The essays
which follow focus on the Andhra and
Tamil regions. Indeed this is the first work
which has Telugu culture as its primary
concern, with a secondary concern being
the boundary and interface between
Telugu and Tamil.
The volume includes a posthumous
interpretive study of a Kannada folktale by
A.K. Ramanujan.
In brief, this is a book which reflects
the importance of south Indian civilization
as one of the great frontiers of contempo¬
rary south Indian studies.
\
Syllables of Sky
Studies in South Indian Civilization
In honour ofVelcheru Narayana Rao
edited by
DAVID SHULMAN
DELHI
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS
— i
Oxford University Pressy Walton Street, Oxford 0X2 6DP
Oxford New York Contents
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bombay
Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi
Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne
Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore List of Figures vu
Taipei Tokyo Toronto
Note on Contributors 'x
and associates in
Berlin Ibadan 1 Toward a New Indian Poetics: Velcheru
Narayana Rao and the Structure of
Literary Revolutions . 1
DAVID SHULMAN
South Indian Folklore and Literary Theory
2 A Flowering Tree: A Woman’s Tale 20
© Oxford University Press 1995
A.K. RAMANUJAN
ISBN 0 19 563549 3 3 Coming Out of His Shell: Animal-Husband
Tales from India 43
STUART BLACKBURN
4 Shift of Authority in Written and Oral Texts:
The Case of Telugu 76
BH. KRISHNAMURTI
Classical Literature
5 The Criteria of Identity in a Telugu Myth of
Sexual Masquerade 103
WENDY DONIGER
6 First Man, Forest Mother: Telugu Humanism
in the Age of Krsnadevaraya 133
DAVID SHULMAN
Typeset by Rastrixi, New Delhi 110070
7 Archetypes in Classical Indian Literature
Printed in India at Pauls Press, New Delhi 110020
and published by Neil O'Brien, Oxford University Press and Beyond 1^5
YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi 110001 GEORGE L. HART
VI Contents
8 Moon Poetry in the Pillaittamilj
Shared Poetic Conventions among
Tamil Religious Communities 183
PAULA RICHMAN
List of Figures
Anthropology/Religion
9 Softening the Cruelty of God: Folklore,
Ritual and the Planet Sani (Saturn) in
Chapter 10
Southeast India 206
DAVID M. KNIPE Figs. 1- ■2: Amma preparing faviz
Courtesy: Joyce B. Flueckiger 250
10 ‘The Vision was of Written Words':
Negotiating Authority as a Female Muslim Chapter 11
Healer in South India 249
Fig. 1: Golla guise emerging from the Kaikala house
JOYCE BURKHALTER FLUECKIGER
Courtesy: Don Handelman 306
11 The Guises of the Goddess and the Fig. 2: Sunnapukundalu (lime-pots) receiving worship
Transformation of the Male: Gangamma’s Courtesy: Don Handelman 306
Visit to Tirupati and the Continuum of Gender 283
Ftg. 3: The Big Goddess at Tallapaka (before dawn)
DON HANDELMAN
Courtesy: David Shulman 307
South Indian History and History of Art Fig. 4: Perantalu
12 An Eastern El Dorado: The Tirumala-Tirupati Courtesy: Joyce B. Flueckiger 307
Temple Complex in Early European Views
Chapter 14
and Ambitions, 1540-1660 338
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM Fig. 1: Palampet (Warangal Dt.), Ramappa Temple,
vimana wall, Vesara mode (Author photo) 446
13 Rudrama-devi, the Female King: Gender
,
Fig. 2: Palampet (Warangal Dt.), Ramappa Temple
and Political Authority in Medieval India 391
vimana and attached mandapa, Vesara mode
CYNTHIA TALBOT
(Author photo) 446
14 Modal Marking of Temple Types in Kakatiya
Fig. 3: Nidikonda (Warangal Dt.), Kummari-gudi,
Andhra: Towards a Theory of Decorum for
vimana wall, Bhumija mode (Author photo) 447
Indian Temple Architecture 431
Fig. 4: Ghanpur (Warangal Dt.), Kota-gudi, vimana
PHILLIP B. WAGONER
wall, Bhumija mode (Photo courtesy Andhra
Index ofSujects 473 Pradesh State Department of Archaeology and

Museums) 447
viii List of Figures
Fig. 5: Pillalamarri (Nalgonda Dt.), Erakeshvara temple,
general view, Bhumija mode (Authorphoto) 448
Fig. 6: Pillalamarri (Nalgonda Dt.), Erakeshvara temple,
superstructure, Bhumija mode (Authorphoto) 448 Note on Contributors
Fig. 7: Godishala (Karimnagar Dt.), North temple,
vimana wall detail, Phamsana mode
(Author photo) 449
Stuart Blackburn is Lecturer in Tamil and Folklore Studies at the
Fig. 8: Vaddeman (Mahbubnagar Dt.), Triple shrine,
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,
vimana, Phamsana mode (Photo courtesy American
and the author of Singing of Birth and Death: Texts in Performance
Institute of Indian Studies) 449
(1987). Together with Peter J. Claus, Joyce B. Flueckiger, and
Fig. 9: Kondaparti (Warangal Dt.), Triple shrine,
Susan S. Wadley, he has edited Oral Epics in India (1989). A
vimana. Composite Bhumija-Phamsana mode
monograph on the Rama story performed as shadow puppetry in
(Author photo) 450
Kerala is forthcoming.
Fig 10: Nagunur (Karimnagar Dt.) Temple 5,
Composite Bhumija-Phamsana mode Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Professor of History of Religions
at the University of Chicago and the author of Asceticism and
(Photo courtesy American Institute of Indian
Studies) 450 Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva (1973), The Origins of Evil in
Indian Mythology (1976), Other People’s Myths (1987), Dreamsy
Illusion, and other Realities (1984) and an almost unimaginable
number of other works.
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger is author of Play of Genres (1995),
an analysis of the genre ecology of Chattisgarh, and editor of Oral
Epics of India and Boundaries of the Text. She is Professor of
Religion at Emory University. At present she is engaged in study¬
ing the anthropology of healing in Hyderabad.
Don Handelman is Professor of Anthropology at the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem. Among his publications: Models and Mir¬
rors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (1990). Together
with David Shulman, he has completed a monograph on Siva's
game of dice.
George Hart is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University
of California, Berkeley. His books include: The Poems of Ancient
Tamil (1975), The Relation between Tamil and Classical Sanskrit
X Syllables of Sky Note on Contributors xi
Literature (1976), Poetsofthe Tamil Anthologies (1979), The Forest publications: The Political Economy of Commerce: Southern India.,
Book of the Rdmayana of Kampan (1988, together with Hank 1500-1650 (1990), Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and
Heifetz). He is presently preparing a complete translation of Settlement in the Bay of Bengal' 1500—1700 (1990), Merchants,
Purananuru and Patirruppattu. Markets, and the State in Early Modem India (1990), Symbols of
Substance: Court and State in Nayaka Period Tamil Nadu (with
David M. Knipe is Professor of South Asian Religions in the
Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, 1992). He is cur¬
Department of South Asian Studies at the University of Wiscon¬
rently exploring Maratha-period Tanjavur and the exploits of the
sin, Madison, where he has been Chair as well as Director of the
heroic Raja Tej Singh in early 18th-century Senji.
South Asian Area Center. His research interests include Vedic
traditions and traditional medicine as well as contemporary Hindu Cynthia Talbot arrived at the University of Wisconsin fully in¬
ritualism and folklore. Among his publications: In the Image of tending to do her doctoral research on some aspect of North
Fire: Vedic Experiences of Heat (1975), Hinduism: Experiments in Indian history but ended up focusing on medieval Andhra instead.
the Sacred(1991). She is still uncertain quite how this metamorphosis occurred but
strongly suspects that the catalyst was Velcheru Narayana Rao’s
Bh. Krishnamurti, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of
magnetism and powers of persuasion. She has published widely
Hyderabad and one of the world’s foremost Dravidian linguists,
on the social and cultural history of middle-period Andhra and is
is the author of Telugu Verbal Roots (1961, reprinted 1972), and
currently Professor of History at Northern Arizona University; she
(withJ.P.L. Gwynn), A Grammar of Modern Telugu (1985).
is completing a book on Kakatlya-period history.
A.K. Ramanujan was, until his untimely death in 1993, Professor
Phillip B. Wagoner is Curator at the Mansfield Freeman Center
in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
for East Asian Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art
and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of
History at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. He studied
Chicago, an outstanding poet in Kannada and English, and the
Telugu with V. Narayana Rao, and is the author of Tidings of the
finest translator from classical Tamil in this generation.
King: A Translation and Ethnohistorical Analysis of the
Paula Richman, Professor of South Asian Religions at Oberlin Rayavdcakamu (1993) and of several articles on the architecture
College, is author of Women, Branch Stories, and Religious Rhetoric and urban history of Vijayanagara. He is currently preparing a
in a Tamil Buddhist Text (1988), editor of Many Ramayanas monograph on the transformation of the Vijayanagara site from
(1993), and co-editor of Gender and Religion: On the Complexity a local pilgrimage centre into an imperial capital.
of Symbols (1986). Currently, she is completing a volume of
translations and essays on the pillaittamil genre.
David Shulman is Professor of Indian Studies and Comparative
Religion at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Director of the
Institute for Advanced Studies there. He specializes in the study
of South Indian literatures and religions and Dravidian philology.
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Professor in the Department of Eco¬
nomics in the Delhi School of Economics. Among his many
Chapter One
Toward a New Indian Poedcs:
Velcheru Narayana Rao and the
Structure of Literary Revolutions
DAVID SHULMAN
S
ura-vithl-likhitaksarambulu—‘syllables inscribed on the sky’
—form part of an eloquent series, which the sixteenth-
century Telugu poet, Dhurjati, cites in order to illustrate
the mesmerizing yet evanescent qualities of wealth and happiness.
Each of the items in this list is precious, beckoning, alive with
movement: the ocean’s waves, leaves of the fig-tree quivering in
the wind, burnished mirrors, the flickering flame of a village lamp,
congealed wisps of moonlight, the subtle flashes of the firefly, life
itself. . .
siruf and’ ela madandhul' auduru janul
srikalahastisvara
Why, lord of Kalahasti,
do people go blind with longing
for ephemeral brilliance?1
But as is often the case with Dhurjati, the real energy of this verse
seems to lie in a celebration of the impermanent, the subjective,
sensory and personal that, on the surface, seem targeted for tran¬
scendence. In this sense, nothing could be more compelling than
1 Dhurjati, Srikalahasfisvarasatakamu, 23.
2 Syllables of Sky Toward a New Indian Poetics 3
the transient syllables of sky—language in all its elusive, creative paradigm, with revolutionary implications for its field of applica¬
power—and this vision of the word would appear well suited to tion? In the case of Narayana Rao, part of the answer to this
a master of spoken wisdom, a craftsman of spontaneous, poetic, Kuhnian question would seem to lie in the initial depth of em¬
continuously disappearing speech. beddedness, the organic internalization of pre-existing contexts.
‘Anything regarded as fact exists in many variants; fictions, on Born in Pithapuram in his maternal grandfather’s home, he grew
the other hand, are definitive/ These words of Narayana Rao’s, up in the remote village of Ambakhandi in Srikakulam District,
which I heard him utter in the overwhelming heat of a Tirupati in the northernmost reaches of coastal Andhra. This, too—the
street in May as the goddess Gangamma passed before our eyes, strangely peripheral situation in a traditionally centred milieu—is
surely apply equally to his own story.2 He has several birthdates, an integral part of the story, which expands slowly through wider
all of them possible and expressive, perhaps all correct in some sense and wider circles, each endowed with its own peripheral centrality
(one reflects a change engineered by his uncle so that the young (Eluru, Madras, Waltair, Wisconsin, Jerusalem). Something of the
scholar could be a proper sixteen years of age at the time of his integrity of the initial point of departure, when it is energized by
highschool graduation); there are, however, certain reasons to pre¬ u-c iirrent marginality, may well be conducive to the formation of
fer 1 February 1932. But the unremitting fluidity in narrative only an extraordinary sensibility.
begins at this point. Clearly, a life of such fullness, and so many Born into a family of Golconda Vyaparis, established for some
personae—poet, critic, cultural historian, translator, pauranika,, generations in Ambakhandi, he was educated first in the village,
journalist, encyclopedist, folklorist, filmmaker, inspired teacher, at home and outside. His mother, Venkubayamma, suffered from
iconoclast and enfant terrible (the latter informing all these guises), a severe eye disease and spent long hours in darkened rooms. From
to name but a few—lends itself to multiple tellings and manifold his father, Velceru Buccinarasinga Rao, he heard Telugu and
visions. It is, above all, a life of vital insights of an originality and Sanskrit verses, orally sung. His father, not a scholar, had a taste
power entirely rare; and it is safe to say that these insights have for poetry; Mahabhdrata, Ramdyana,, Dhurjati, and other texts
restructured many of the regnant frameworks of understanding for resonated through the family space. A non-Brahmin farmer taught
Telugu literature, first, and then for Indian literature generally. I him Amarakosa. From three Brahmin widows he learned songs,
want to trace here something of the path that produced them in proverbs, the rich texture of story and taste that sustains any great
the context of an individual biography that beautifully combines literary tradition. If one asks him today who influenced him first
the idiosyncratic with the emblematic—and which in this way also of all, he speaks of these figures from Ambakhandi—villagers,
highlights certain of the central intellectual and artistic currents peasants, widows, family presences—whose vision of the world he
and conflicts of mid-twentieth-century Andhra, in a generation of internalized. By the age of eleven, taught by his father, he was
radical change and, at times, surpassing richness. performing as a pauranika, reciting classical texts publicly in the
What is it that lifts a thinking person out of context, out of village.
the conventionalized perceptions of habit, even out of the all-too- At this same age of eleven, he travelled (his first train journey)
predictable and paradoxically normative patterns of rebellion and to the town of Eluru in West Godavari District, where, secretly
rejection, and allows him or her to articulate a new perceptual subsidized by his maternal aunt, he enrolled in Eluru High School.
For five years, until his graduation in 1947, he would see neither
2 See the paper by Don Handelman in this volume. For a different formula¬ of his parents, since he lacked the train fare back to Ambakhandi.
tion of this maxim, see Narayana Rao (1986: 131-3). It is worth noting that during this period the language of instruc-
4 Syllables of Sky Toward a New Indian Poetics 5
tion in Eluru High School shifted from English to Telugu. These including the famous 'Sri Sri, the outstanding figure among Telugu
were heady days in Eluru, as in so many of the little towns in modernists, would cluster in the Marxist bookshop across from
south India; by the time Narayana Rao received his Secondary Narayana Rao’s house; more traditionalist poets came to the home
School Leaving Certificate (the first in his family to do so), he of the Bommakanti brothers, Singaracarya and Srlnivasacaryulu.
was already a self-proclaimed Marxist, deeply engaged in literary Among them was the great Visvanatha Satyanarayana, whose work
movements and radical politics. A Marxist bookstore in front of was both recognizably continuous with the medieval tradition and
his house became a centre for friendships, passionate arguments, experimentally open to newer forms such as novels and novellas.
dreams. (Andhra is, in fact, unusual among Indian literatures in having
Apart from a few important intervals, Eluru was to be home produced one of its finest classical figures in the early part of the
to Narayana Rao for a lengthy, critical period of inner maturation. twentieth century.) Although Narayana Rao’s ideological sym¬
After his graduation, the same kind aunt made the downpayment pathies were with the Marxists, he had great admiration for
(some 200 rupees) for his first semester's tuition at Sir C. Ramalin- Satyanarayana’s achievement. These were also the years when
ga Reddy College (Eluru College), where he would eventually Vcmparala Suryanarayana Sastri was working in Eluru on his
receive both his Intermediate and B.A. degrees. He supported exhaustive commentary to Peddana’s Manucaritramu, and when
himself by a range of odd jobs—tutoring in Telugu and English Vedala Tiruvengalacaryulu was producing his Andhra Dhvanya-
(he would bicycle to the home of the Eluru Superintendent of loka there. At the same time, young intellectuals like Narayana
Police, whose daughters were his pupils), reading proof and de¬ Rao were reading Sartre, Hemingway, James Baldwin and the City
signing books at local printing presses, running a weekly news¬ Lights with a passion unequalled anywhere in the world.4 They
paper for the Congress Party during elections and serving as followed with intense interest—as if this were the most important
grocery clerk for the college hostel. Gradually, his areas of study thing in the world for us’—the court proceedings in England
changed from mathematics, chemistry and physics to history and between Penguin Books and the Queen over the publication of
advanced Telugu; his B.A. was in Politics and Economics. He an unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley's
certainly never intended to become a Telugu pandit. Though he Lover. When Sartre refused to accept the Nobel Prize in 1964,
stood first in his B.A. examinations—after the Principal of the they sent him a congratulatory letter from Eluru. Existentialism
College, D.S. Subrahmanyam, personally paid the examination was their proclaimed taste; Unamuno and Camus nourished their
fees, since Narayana Rao could not afford to—his energies were nights. The commitment to ideas was all-embracing, and these
primarily directed elsewhere, toward a domain where literature ideas percolated and fermented in an atmosphere dense with the
was politics, and politics meant revolution. Telugu poetry has formative presence of a great classical tradition, still generative and
never lost its public immediacy and active implication in the alive, rapidly expanding into modern forms. The resulting mix
world. was intoxicating, and unique to that moment and place. Only
It is a little difficult, today, to convey a sense of the amazing many years later, on arriving in Wisconsin, would Narayana Rao
volatility and intellectual elan that marked Eluru (like Mysore and develop a new perspective on the Eluru Existentialists, discovering
Madras) in the middle of this century. It would hardly be an through yet another movement of radical self-extrication from
exaggeration to speak of an Eluru Renaissance. ‘Marxist’3 poets,
^ Among other friends, mention should be made of Ponangi Ramakrsna
3 Note inverted commas. Rao, Penmetsa Suryanarayana Raju and Veluri Venkatesvara Rao.