Pilgrimage and Poetr

Indira Viswanathan Peterson LIVES OF THE WANDERING SINGERS: PILGRIMAGE AND POETRY IN TAMIL SAIVITE HAGIOGRAPHY

The Tamil Saivite sect, a Hindu sect which centers on the worship of Siva, has a large following in the Tamil-speaking area of South India.' Since its beginnings (sixth to ninth centuries A.D.) as an early expression of vernacular devotional religion (bhakti) in Hinduism, Tamil Saivism has been closely associated with the culture and ethos of Tamil civilization and the agrarian population of the Kaveri delta region.2 The distinctive and seminal themes of Tamil Saivite devo- tionalism, especially as practiced and spread by the early saint-leaders (ndyanar, "leader"; pl. ndyanmar) of the tradition, are eloquently expressed in the twelve primary canonical texts, compiled between

Wherever the names of major figures in pan-Hindu mythology occur I have used the standard Sanskrit transliteration, e.g., giva. The names of places, figures, and concepts occurring exclusively in Tamil literature and civilization, including many place names in the Tevaram songs and the Periya Puranam, have been transliterated according to standard conventions in romanizing Tamil, e.g., Campantar, akam, Pukalir. On occasion, when referring to place names in the modern state of Tamil Nadu in a general context, I have adopted the common, nonscholarly transliteration, e.g., Kan- chipuram, Chidambaram. All translations from Tamil texts in this article are mine.

' On the rise and development of the Tamil Saivite sect, see M. A. Dorai Rangaswamy, The Religion and Philosophy of Tevaram: With Special Reference to Nampi Arirar (Sundarar) (Madras: University of Madras Press, 1958), 1:1-35; and Kamil V. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murukan: On Tamil Literature of South India (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), pp. 184-99.

2 On the cultural history of the Tamil Saivite sect, see my (unpublished) article: Indira V. Peterson, "The Songs of the Tamil Saivite Saints and Tamil Saivite Sectarian Identity," 1981. ? 1983 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0018-2710/83/2204-0004$01.00

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History of Religions

the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.3 One such theme, pilgrimage to the holy shrines of Siva in Tamil country, emerges as an important metaphor for Tamil Saivite religious experience, both in the first seven books of the canon, a collection of the hymns or songs of the three most important ndyanmdr (sixth to eighth centuries A.D.), and in the account of their lives as given by the twelfth-century Periya Puranam (abbreviated Periya Pur.) or Tirut tontar Puranam,4 the poetic hagiography which forms the twelfth and last book of the canon. I have developed in detail elsewhere5 the centrality of pilgrimage in the hymns of the three principal saints, the corpus of sacred texts collectively known as the Tevaram.6 I shall here outline in brief those points in that study which will be of use in appreciating the later hagiographer's treatment of the pilgrimage theme.

Appar (Tirunavukkaracar, sixth to seventh centuries A.D.), Cam- pantar (Tiruianacampantar, seventh century), and Cuntarar (Cun- taramiirtti, eighth century)7 together sang 796 Tamil devotional songs (patikam, "decad, song in ten verses"). In Tamil Saivite tradition, each song is said to have been spontaneously composed by the saint when he visited a particular shrine of Siva in Tamil country. In each song the ndyanar identifies Siva as belonging to a particular place- even to a specific temple in a place-and exuberantly sings of the virtues of the god in his unique persona at that shrine. Love of Tamil places pervades these songs as much as love of Siva. The exact

3 On the compilation of the Tamil Saivite canonical texts, see Dorai Rangaswamy, pp. 19-21; Kamil V. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, in A History of Indian Literature, vol. 10, fasc. 1 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1974), pp. 91-92, and Tamil Literature, in Handbuch der Orientalistik, Indien, ed. Jan Gonda (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1975), vol. 2, pt. 1:131-35.

4 Periya Puranam = "the great epic history." The hagiography is also known as

Tiruttontar Puranam, "the history of the holy servants (devotees of Siva)." This work is not available in complete English translation. The German account of the text, published under the title Sivaitische Heiligenlegenden by H. W. Schomerus (Jena, 1925), is based on the Tamil prose summary of the work by Arumuka Navalar of Jaffna (1881). For my translations from the Periya Puranam I have used the South Indian Saiva Siddhfnta Works Publishing Society edition: Tirruttontar Makkatai (Madras: South Indian Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society [abbreviation, Kalakam], 1970). Verse numbers refer to the sequence in individual subsections of the epic as given in this edition; e.g., Tirufinnacampantamurtti Nayanar Puranam (abbreviated Cam. Pur.) within the Periya Puranam (abbreviated Periya Pur.). 5 Indira V. Peterson, "Singing of a Place: Pilgrimage as Metaphor and Motif in the Tevaram Songs of the Tamil Saivite Saints," Journal of the American Oriental Society 102, no. 1 (January-March 1982): 69-90.

6 Dorai Rangaswamy, p. 33, suggests that, in early Tamil Saivism, the term "tevaram" must have meant "private worship." The use of the word "tevaram" as the collective designation for the first seven canonical texts (tirumurai) is rather late (eighteenth century?). See Dorai Rangaswamy, pp. 27-35.

7 shall henceforth refer to these three saints by the abbreviated (and most commonly used) forms of their names: Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar.

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Lives of the Wandering Singers

physical, geographical location and environs of the shrine are lovingly described and precisely identified.

The Tevaram hymns evoke the motif of pilgrimage in various ways. The actual journeys of the ndyanmdr are commemorated in their songs. In some hymns the saints urge other devotees to "join" them in their travels.8 Finally, through these hymns, pilgrimage acquires an influential, metaphoric character and significance in Tamil Saivism. According to the three saints, what is important is that all devotees participate in the attitude of pilgrimage, which is the ndyanmar's chief mode of devotion to Siva; this they can do by singing of the god and his shrines, as have the ndyanmdr themselves. Thus, for the Tamil Saivite, singing the saint's pilgrimage songs becomes a fundamental means for experiencing Siva.9

In emphasizing pilgrimage and poetry, the Tevaram saints drew upon two ideas which are characteristic of Tamil culture: (1) the presence and apprehension of the sacred in particular places and (2) the intrinsic relatedness of poetry, landscape, and love, as exemplified in the early classical love poetry of the Tamils.10 Through their travels, the pilgrim-singers unified the isolated Siva shrines of Tamil country in a sacred geographical map; through the metaphor of pilgrimage-related with love, landscape, and song-they unified the Tamils as a single religiocultural community.

PILGRIMAGE IN SACRED BIOGRAPHY: THE CONTRIBUTION OF

CEKKILAR'S PERIYA PURANAM

While the Tevaram songs represent the primary textual expression of Tamil Saivite religiosity, the Periya Puranam hagiography is the culmination of the Tamil Saivite tradition of sacred poetry. As the final book of the canon, Cekkilar's "Great History" truly completes

8 E.g., "Let us go to Corrutturai by the sounding Kaveri, the place of the chanter-of- the-Veda (giva)" (Cam. 1.28.5); Cam. = the Tevaram hymns of Campantar, consisting of the first three books of the Tirumurai: Tirundnacampanta Cuvamikal arulic ceyta Tevarap patikankal, ed. Kayappakkam Cataciva Cettiyar (Madras: Kalakam, 1973). References to the hymns of Appar and Cuntarar (Tirumurai 4-7) are from Tirundvukkaracar: Cuntaramurtti Cuvdmikal arulic ceyta Tevarap patikankal, ed. Kayappakkam Cataciva Cettiyar (Madras: Kalakam, 1973); Cun. = the hymns of Cuntarar.

9 "Before your tongue begins to falter, and your body, tremble, sing the place of the white-bull-rider; Sing Nallam, adore the place . . ." (Appar 5.157.5).

'0 On landscape and love in Tamil poetry, see A. K. Ramanujan, The Interior Landscape (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967; Midland ed., 1975), pp. 103- 8; and Xavier S. Thani Nayagam, Landscape and Poetry: A Study of Nature in Classical Tamil Poetry (Bombay: Asia, 1965). On the presence of the sacred in particular places as envisioned in Tamil culture, see Glenn E. Yocum, "Shrines, Shamanism and Love Poetry: Elements in the Emergence of Popular Bhakti," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41 (March 1973): 3-17.

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the textual tradition: it represents the tradition as self-consciously reflecting upon itself, affirming its values, interpreting them for itself. In theme and mode, Cekkilar's narrative has a highly selective, interpretive character, a characteristic of sacred biography as a genre: "The sacred biographer is not primarily concerned to provide a narrative portrait or 'likeness' of the subject. Establishing the myth- ical ideal, or what might better be called the biographic image, takes precedence over a simple chronicling of biographical facts.""l

According to Tamil Saivite tradition Cekkilar, minister to a Cola king, was deeply pained by the king's admiration of the Tamil Buddhist and Jaina epics (e.g., CTvakacintdmani) and composed the Periya Purinam in order to provide the monarch with a great and edifying Tamil classic with Hindu, particularly Saivite, themes.'2 Since Cekkilar chose the lives of the Tamil Saivite saints for his subject, he obviously intended to provide Tamil Saivite hagiographical images and patterns against the ones expressed in Buddhist and Jaina hagiographical texts. Within the Periya Puranam itself the hagiographer provides several types of the Tamil Saivite "biographical image." The Tamil Saivite canon honors sixty-three ndyanmdr in all (fifth to eighth centuries A.D.).13 In narrating the lives of all sixty- three saints, Cekkilar aims at elucidating the essential significance of the life of each saint as a model of devotion to Siva. In the case of the "First Three" saints, Cekkilar locates this significance in the unique combination of pilgrimage and poetic composition which was their principal activity; in the hagiographer's view, it is this which distin- guishes the pattern of their lives from that of the lives of their fellow saints.14 My concern in this essay is with the image of the pilgrim- singer-saint as exemplified in Cekkilar's lives of Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar, the authors of the Tevdram hymns.

" Frank E. Reynolds and Donald Capps, eds., The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion, Religion and Reason 11, ed. Jacques Waardenburg (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), p. 4.

12 On the legend surrounding Cekkilar's composition of the Periya Pur., see Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, in Handbuch der Orientalistik (n. 3 above), pp. 178-80, and Tamil Literature, in A History of Indian Literature (n. 3 above), p. 173. 13

Manikkavacakar, the fourth great saint-preceptor (camayakuru) of the Tamil Saivite tradition and author of the canonical text the Tiruvacakam, is omitted from this list of sixty-three nayanmar, presumably because the list provided by Cuntarar (see n. 15 below) is considered to be the final and official one, and Mgnikkavacakar lived after the time of Cuntarar.

14 The Tamil Saivite tradition itself made distinctions among various "types" of saints, e.g., vanrontar, "hard/strong devotees," and menrontar, "soft/tender devotees." On the typology and classification of the saints according to their lives and deeds as given in the Periya Pur., see M. Racamanikkam (Ma. Racamanikkanar), Periya Purdna Araycci (in Tamil) (Madras: Pari Nilayam, 1948; 3d ed., 1978), app. 2, pp. 318-25.

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References in the Tevaram hymns themselves and oral traditional accounts of the lives of the first three saints together confirm the idea that pilgrimage is the context of composition for almost all the hymns in this corpus. However, there is little specific information in these sources about the sequence or ordering, both of the saints' journeys themselves and of the events which took place during these travels. The eighth-century Tirruttontattokai of Cuntarar-chronologically the last of sixty-three saints, but honored as one of the "First," that is, "chief" three saints-is just what it indicates: a "list or catalogue of the (63) holy devotees." As the first literary source for Tamil Saivite hagiography, it identifies the sixty-three saints of the canon and sums up their individual virtues or achievements (the "biographical image") in a brief epithet or phrase each.15 More detailed accounts of the lives of the saints must surely have existed in the oral tradition of Cuntarar's time and developed further in subsequent centuries. Nampi Antar Nampi, the eleventh-century scholar who "rediscovered" the Tevaram songs in manuscript form and compiled them as the first seven books of the canon, himself composed a "catalogue" of the saints in antati poetic form, repeatedly weaving in the name and deeds of Cuntarar in his praise of "the sixty-three" (arupattumuvar = "the sixty-three"). Nampi also wrote six short but highly informative

poems-in various Tamil poetic forms-on the life and deeds of

Campantar and one poem on Appar.'6 The difference in emphasis between Nampi's "lives" and the Periya Pur.'s account of the lives of these same two saints is remarkable. Nampi is mainly interested in

cataloging and praising the spectacular, "miraculous" events spun out in the saints' lives by popular tradition, often by interpreting specific lines in the Tevaram hymns. In contrast to Nampi, Cekkilar, in his lives of Campantar, Appar, and Cuntarar, devotes the major portion of his narrative to a systematic and detailed description of the

pilgrimages of these saints. This hagiographer aims at sequentially ordering the saints' visits to Siva's shrines, and chronological order is one aspect of the sequence. As a result of this method, the saint's lives unfold primarily as travelogues, the record and description of a series of pilgrimages.

The bits of autobiographical information in the saints' songs themselves cannot account for the sequential detail of Cekkilar's

15 Tiruttontattokai hymn = Cun. Tevaram 7.39. All the later biographical works of the Tamil Saivites draw on this list.

16 The poems of Nampi Antar Nampi are contained in the eleventh book of the Tirumurai: Patinoran Tirumurai (Madras: Kalakam, 1971), pp. 317-98. His works on the saints are: Tirut tontar Tiruvantati, Alutaiya Pillaiydr (A.P.) Tiruvantati, A.P. Tiruccanpai Viruttam, A. P. Tiruvuldmdlai, A. P. Tirumummanikkovai, A. P. Tiruttokai, and Tirundvukkaracu tevar Tiruvekdtacamalai.

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narrative. Oral tradition usually limits itself to local legends surrounding a particular saint's visit to a particular shrine. Cekkilar no doubt made use of all these sources; however, in its comprehensive nature and encompassing order, the narrative of the lives goes far beyond its probable sources: it bears the stamp of the creative selectivity of the poet-hagiographer. It is easy to attribute the agglu- tinative method of the earlier accounts of Nampi, their disregard for chronological order, to biographical selectivity: "In this kind of sacred biography slight attention may be given to chronological rendering of the life. More typically, the narrative is organized to emphasize the virtues or attainments manifested in the subject's life."'7 For Nampi, the three saints' "attainments" are epitomized by the "miracles" (arputam) in their lives.'8 If in the final, full-fledged, definitive Tamil Saivite hagiography the emphasis has shifted from the cataloging of miracles and "events" to the sequential description of the saints' journeys, then this new focus is equally intimately connected with the "virtues or attainments" paradigmatically "manifested in the subject's life." It has been suggested that Cekkilar's attention to chronology and geographical accuracy is the reflection of a royal minister's desire for historical accuracy.19 This could certainly be an element in Cekkilar's pursuit of order in the lives. Nevertheless, in the final analysis, his selection and arrangement of detail answers the sacred biographer's ultimate need: the discernment and elucida- tion of an archetypal pattern, the central religious structure, in the life; and the pattern that Cekkilar finds in the lives of the three saints is deeply rooted in the Tamil correspondence of religion, emotion, and physical landscapes. I shall now provide a short sample passage from Nampi Antar Nampi's works on Campantar, so that the contrast between his narrative and that of Cekkilar might be made clear. In the sections that follow I shall discuss the role of pilgrimage in Cekkilar's depiction of the biographical image of the "First Three" Ndyanmdr in the Periya Pur.

Nampi Antar Nampi: Alutaiya Pillaiydr Tiruvulamdlai, verses 77-82, Tirumurai 11, p. 381.

With song he surpassed the limits of

17 Reynolds and Capps, pp. 4-5.

18 Nampi's poems are not full-fledged biography but, rather, praise poems, couched in various genres and meters of Tamil poetry. However, some of these works have a strong biographical focus.

'9 See M. Racamanikkam, esp. pp. 179-249. Racamanikkam suggests that Cekkilar is, above all, a historian and "researcher" (araycciyalar) of the past.

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[the yal]

[VTilimilalai]

[Tiruvavatuturai]

the lute's strings, and commanded the temple doors shut;

his song floated as a boat in floodwaters. In Konku-land of thick

wooded groves he relieved the frost-fever which befell his

companions. In high-walled Milalai, he received gold coin from the Dancing God,

in Nelvayil, a pearl palanquin. And when he visited Avatuturai,

glory of the world, once more he received a thousand gold pieces. In

Ottir, dwelling of our Lord whose greatness none may measure,

he turned male trees into fruit-bearing females.

After keeping time with his priceless hands, he received golden cymbals

in Kolakka . . .

FROM THE POETRY OF PLACES TO THE MOVEMENT OF THE JOURNEY

I have indicated above that the Tevaram poets described the location of the Tamil shrines of Siva with remarkable attention to geographical, topographical detail and accuracy.20 Cekkilar gives the same attention to the relative location of the shrines, that is, to mapping the path of the saints' pilgrimages. According to Cekkilar, the pattern of each of the three saints' lives is as follows: (1) birth and early life; (2) "conversion" or miraculous event, leading to the saint's spontaneous composition of his first hymn; (3) a series of pilgrimages to shrines, involving the composition of a song at almost every sacred place visited, until the saint's death or ascent to heaven (the world of Siva). The Tirunanacampantamurttindyanar Puranam ([The life/ history of the holy saint Ranacampantar (Campantar)], abbreviated Cam. Pur.), in Cekkilar's Periya Pur. divides the above themes in the following manner: out of 1,236 verses, verses 1-100 are devoted to Campantar's birth, early life, and the composition of his first hymn when, as a child, he received divine knowledge from the Goddess, Siva's consort (themes 1 and 2); verses 101-1148 describe Campantar's pilgrimages and 1148-1236 narrate his union with Siva in a miraculous manner, at the saint's "Wedding in Nalluirpperumanam" (theme

20 E.g., ". .. just say, 'Our Lord's town is Neyttanam where chaste women gather on

the northern bank of Kaviri's sounding stream . . ."' (Cam. 1.15.2).

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3). All the spectacular and miraculous events of the saint's life- excluding his "conversion" and union-are embedded in the long narrative of pilgrimage, in this longest of the lives of the saints in the Periya Pur. According to Cekkilar, Campantar made four great, extended tours of Siva shrines in Tamil country during his lifetime, visiting 230 out of the 260-odd places (talam, pati, "sacred place") held sacred to Siva by the Tamil Saivites. The "tours" are divided or punctuated by the nayanar's return to and departure from Cirkali (Clkali),21 his birthplace on the coast, near the mouth of the river Kaveri. Four sequences of Periya Pur. verses narrate the four tours: verses 101-43 (CTrkali to Kolakka); verses 144-284 (CTrkali to Chidambaram/Tillai); verses 285-961 (journeys in the Konku country and the Kaveri delta) and verses 962-1148 (CTrkali to Kafici and Nallurpperumanam). Consider a short section from the longest sequence of verses (285-961), recording Campantar's longest pilgrimage: following the verses in order, we may literally trace the saint's course along the pilgrimage route he devised for himself on a physical map of the Kaveri delta region. This section gives a picture typical of all three saints' pilgrimage routes. Since most of the Tamil Saivite shrines are situated on or near the bank of a sacred river- preeminently the Kaveri, but also others such as the Pennai, Niva, and Ketilam-the tours involved journeys along the riverbank and frequent crossings of the river.22 Again, as illustrated by the verse sequence under consideration, the saints traveled most intensively and frequently in the Kaveri delta region, the region of their birth, and the area where the shrines are most densely clustered together.23 The correspondence of hymn composition and the visit to a sacred place is also clearly revealed in this group of verses. To illustrate the above features of Cekkilar's narrative, I give below a synopsis of the topical content of verses 454-520, a passage which describes Campantar's journey from Nallaru to Pukaluir. To give a sense of the style and "feeling" of the references to travel and poetry, I have provided translations of some of the verses and phrases which describe the

21 The town of CTrkali has twelve names, all of which are used in Campantar's hymns and in the later literature of Tamil Saivism. The most commonly used names, besides Cirkali/K Kli, are Kalumalam, Pukali, Canpai, and Tonipuram.

22 Reinforcing the pan-Hindu idea that a sacred place is a tTrtha, literally "a crossing." On the idea of tJrtha and its connection with rivers, see Diana L. Eck, "India's TTrthas: 'Crossings' in Sacred Geography," History of Religions 20, no. 4 (May 1981): 323-44.

23 For a description of the distribution of the 260 sites sung in the Tevaram hymns and the clustering of shrines in the Kaveri delta regions, see George W. Spencer, "The Sacred Geography of the Tamil Shaivite Hymns," Numen 17 (1970): 232-44, esp. 236- 39.

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saint's arrival in or departure from a shrine, and his composition of hymns at that place.

Synopsis of verses 454-520 of the Tirundnacampantamurttinayadar Purdnam (Cam. Pur.).24

Nallaru: 454-58 454. Campantar arrives in Nallaru

He travelled to many great sacred places in that land rich in fields of green-leaved

water-lilies; there he worshipped and sang praise-songs at many a temple

in which the Lord who is half woman loves to dwell;

Having stopped at those places for a while, the chief

[Campantar] among brahmins set forth with the great musician of

[the saint Tirunila- the ydl, and kanta yalppanar] reached holy Nallaru, where

lives the god who rides on the virile bull, and bears the fawn and axe in his hands.

456. He composes the hymn, "In the company of the lady with the rich, swelling breasts . . ." (Cam. 1.49).

458. At the composer's bidding, his musician-companion plays the new hymn on his yad, a lute-like instrument.

Cattamankai: 459-64 459-60. Campantar and his companions travel to Cattamankai. The saint

NTlanakkar welcomes the pilgrims. 462-64. Campantar sings two hymns. 464: He who composes sweet sacred

song in precious Tamil instinct with the sense of the

[the Veda] First Scripture praising in adoration his flawless, dear

[Siva and the ambrosia along with the tender vine, Goddess] spoke of the great glory of

the just NTlanakkar, and created a sacred decad of praise

in words and music, to be sung by the devout.

24 M. Racamanikkam provides a complete synopsis of the pilgrimage routes of the saints as recorded in the Periya Pur. Racamanikkam, app. 7, pp. 344-81.

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Nakaikkaronam: 465-66 466. "... there the prodigy of T6nipuram (CTrkali) sang garlands of Tamil

verse with varied syllables, dwelt for a few days, worshipping the Lord, and then departed."

KTlvelur: 467 Campantar arrives here and sings "a garland of Tamil verse which

expressed his love of that tongue."

Cenkattankuti: 468-70 468. At the invitation of Ciruttontar (Saivite minister of the Pallava king),

Campantar goes to Ceinkttankuti. 469. He approaches Siva in the KanapatTccaram shrine in this town. 470. He falls at the feet of his Lord. Then, ".. in swelling melody (he) sang a praise-song, honoring the devotion of Ciruttontar to their great Lord."

Marukal: 472-83 472. The saint goes to Marukal and adorns giva with "a garland of

exuberant Tamil verse set in clear-toned melody." 473-80. He hears of the plight of a young woman whose fiance has, just then, died of snake-bite. 481- 82. Begging Siva to revive the young man, he composes the hymn, "She cries, 'O Lord with the matted locks .. .'" (Cam. 2.154). 483. Moved by the plea, Siva revives the dead man.

Marukal-Cenkattankuti: 484-87 484. At Ciruttontar's invitation, Campantar returns to Cenkattankuti,

stopping first at the temple in Marukal to compose a hymn: "The Vedas and the sacred texts ..." (Cam. 1.6).

Pukaluhr: 487-96 487-91. The saint travels to Pukalur, stopping at minor shrines on the way.

He stays at a resthouse run by the Saivite saint Murukanar. He composes a hymn. 493-96. He meets with the nayanar Appar, who also sings a hymn.

Virkuti: 497 Campantar visits Virkuti, thinking of Siva at Arur (Tiruvaruir), and sings

the song, "The four melodious Vedas."

Arur: 498 "Singing, 'we shall go to Arur of fertile fields,' the saint reached the limits

of golden-walled Arur town."

Arur-Pukalur: 499-520 Campantar composes several hymns at Arur, including one dedicated to

nearby Panaiyiir. 520. He returns to Pukaluir.

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A NEW ARRANGEMENT FOR THE TEVARAM HYMNS

The passage from Tirunandacampantamurttinayanar Purdnam (Cam. Pur.) in the Periya Pur. outlined above clearly reveals the essential dynamics of Cekkilar's lives of Campantar, Appar, and Cuntarar. In the Periya Pur. the movement of the narrative is the dual movement of song and journey in an almost literal, concrete way. The Periya Pur. verse sequence 454-520 itself mirrors, or corresponds to, the actual route map of Campantar's pilgrimage to Tamil Siva shrines around the Tamil Saivite center, PukalOr, and the great temple town of Tiruvarur, in the Kaveri delta.25 Simultaneously it corresponds to a "map" or sequential arrangement of several Tevdram hymns composed by Campantar. In the map in figure 1, I have marked Cam- pantar's route by indicating the name of the sacred place and the number of the Periya Pur. verses which refer to his activities there. While tracing Campantar's route along this map, the reader must at all times keep in mind the other movement, that of Campantar's composition of hymns in these shrines.

Cekkilar's sequential map of songs and pilgrimage provides a new dimension to the apprehension of the saint's songs by Tamil Saivites. The ndyanmar composed their songs in ancient Tamil musical modes (pan), numbering twenty-three in all,26 and when Nampi Antar Nampi compiled the hymns he followed the oral traditional principle of grouping them according to the. musical mode in which they were meant to be sung. This was considered to be the most useful and convenient method for systematizing the permutation-combinations of melody and meter in the songs for all who wished to sing them-both for professional Tevaram singers (otuvdr) at temples27 and for all devotees who used the hymns in their worship. This arrangement, called "pan-varicai" (arrangement according to musical mode) is the one adopted by most editions of the Tevaram.

An alternative arrangement, less frequently used than the modal one, also exists. This arrangement groups the hymns according to the place of Siva to which they are dedicated. Devotees use this "tala- varicai" (arrangement according to sacred place) when they wish to learn a number of songs dedicated to Siva at a particular shrine.

25 Modern editions of the Periya Pur. provide such pilgrimage maps, tracing the saint's individual pilgrimages in detail in the geography of Tamil country. E.g., C. K. Subraminiya Mudaliyar, ed., Tiruttontar Purdnam ennum Periya Puranam, 2d ed., 6 vols. (Koyamuttuir: K6yamuttfir Tamil Sangam, 1971), 1:293, for the travels of Appar in C6lanatu (the Cola political region).

26 The ancient Tamils had a system of 103 modes (pan). 27 On the role of the otuvars in preserving and interpreting the Tevdram hymns, as

well as on their performance style, see Peterson, "The Songs of the Tamil Saivite Saints.. ."

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FIG. 1.-This map was prepared by Dr. Mary Jacob, Geography Depart- ment, Mount Holyoke College. It is based partially on the map entitled

"Thanjavur District: Places Having Important Temples," in Census of India, 1961, vol. 9, Tamil Nadu, pt. 11-D, Temples of Tamil Nadu, vol. 7 (1), Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, 1971).

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Cekkilar's Periya Pur. narrative contributes a third arrangement for the songs of the saints. The placing of particular hymns at specific points in space and time on the saint's pilgrimage route gives them a new and continuous frame of reference: the life of the saint as it unfolds through the journey. In the Cam. Pur. excerpt above, we see that Cekkilar tirelessly records the composition of Campantar's hymn or hymns at each shrine. The hagiographer definitively connects the composition of a particular song not only to a particular place, but also to a particular occasion in the saint's life. Thus, out of the six songs Campantar dedicated to Siva of Na!llru in his lifetime, the hymn "In the company of the lady with rich, swelling breasts ..." (cf. Cam. Pur., Periya Pur., 456, above) is placed in the context of this particular pilgrimage. Campantar visits Pukaluir, Cefikattanikuti, and Tiruvarir twice within this short segment of his pilgrimages. This nonlinear pattern of his travels explains the setting for, and the pattern of, his hymns in their relation to one another. At specific points during his two visits to Tiruvarur he composes all of the five hymns he dedicated to the Lord at Tiruvarir.28

The hagiographer also attributes certain references in each song to particular events which took place during one of the nayanar's pilgrimages. In one of his hymns to Siva of Ceikattafikuti, the saint refers to the great devotion of the ndyandr Ciruttontar. In Cekkilar's interpretation, this particular journey, involving a meeting with Ciruttontar in Ceikattafikuti, becomes Campantar's motivation for that reference in the hymn. Equally interesting is Cekkilar's interpretation of the double reference to Siva as deity of both Marukal and Cefikattaikuti in Campantar's hymn 1.6, implicit in the refrain of this hymn: "O young man who dwell in Marukal, you love Kanapatic- caram shrine!" Cekkilar places this reference in the context of Ciruttontar's invitation to Campantar to return to Ceikattafikuti (Cam. Pur., Periya Pur., 484). Campantar visits the temple in Marukal to worship the Lord of that shrine for the last time before he leaves for Kanapatlccaram temple in Ceikattafkuti. There, in

28 According to the pan-varicai or "model arrangement" adopted by most editions of

the Tevaram, these five songs are distributed (according to the musical mode [pan] in which they are sung) over the three books in which Campantar's hymns were compiled. Again, in the Periya Pur. the saint's two hymns dedicated to Marukal shrine are connected with two separate experiences he had there during his visit (Cam. Pur., Periya Pur. 472-86): he sang the hymn, "She cries, 'O Lord . ..'" in order to appeal to Siva to revive a man who had died of snakebite. It is worth noting that Campantar's text itself (Cam. 2.154) contains no reference to the snakebite incident and that the reference to the "lovely woman" is Campantar's way of referring to himself or his soul as the female lover longing for her Lord, in the conventions of the classical poetry of akam.

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Marukal shrine, Siva miraculously reveals himself to Campantar, in his persona or manifestation of Cefikattafikuti. Blessed with this "double" vision, the saint composes a hymn, addressing the god as "Siva of both places."29

Cekkilar's sequential "arrangement" of Tevaram hymns, as exemplified in the above passage, may be called "ydttirai-varicai" (arrangement according to Pilgrimage). This new ordering offers a dynamic perspective on the songs, expressing and encapsulating within its pilgrimage framework both the life and the poetry of the saint.

MIRACLE, EVENT, AND SONG

The Tamil Saivite preoccupation with sacred places and hymnsinging is certainly present in the hagiographical accounts of Nampi Antar Nampi; however, the focus of the narrative is on the enumeration of the events which took place at various shrines. Consider Alutaiya Pillaiydr Tiruvuldmalai (verses 77-82), wherein nine events are recorded: how Campantar won a contest with a panar (lutanist), commanded the temple doors (at Maraikkatu) shut with a hymn, floated the text of a song in a flooded river, cured his companions of fever, received gold coin from Siva in Milalai and Avatuturai, was given a pearl palanquin by Siva in Nelvayil, converted male trees into female, and received golden cymbals from Siva in Kolakka. In the Periya Pur., these events are distributed sequentially in Campantar's four great pilgrimages: the miracle of the cymbals occurs in the first pilgrimage (Cam. Pur., Periya Pur., 101-5), while that of the temple doors is found in the third pilgrimage (Cam. Pur., Periya Pur., 586- 87). The miracles are thus ordered in the overarching context of pilgrimage. Cekkilar certainly gives elaborate accounts of the miracles themselves (in our passage, the snake-bite miracle at Marukal occupies ten verses); at the same time, these "events" are subordinated to the dominant pattern of the repeated description of journey, arrival, composition of songs at a shrine-all these (latter) activities are obviously considered to be, in themselves, "events" worthy of narra- tion. In the final analysis, each "miracle" is described with a focus on the commemorative act of hymn composition. The case of the

29 I do not wish to give the impression that Cekkilar is an entirely independent agent in thus providing contexts for the composition of the saints' hymns. He is, no doubt, reworking and rearranging the legendary material extant in the Tamil gaivite oral tradition in his time. Nevertheless, the final selection and interpretation of the material is clearly the product of Cekkilar's poetic-biographical imagination. The later Tamil Saivite tradition acknowledges this fact by accepting Cekkilar's presentation of the "events" in the saints' lives as the final, authoritative statement on the subject. Modern editions of the Tevdram always refer to the Periya Pur. when giving the legend or "history" of a particular hymn in connection with the life of the composer.

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"Miracle at Marukal" is a good illustration of this phenomenon. Cekkilar's elaborate description of the lament of the young woman culminates in two highly emotional and dramatic verses which describe Campantar composing the hymn "She cries, 'O Lord with the matted locks,'" pleading with Siva to revive the dead man, for "... O my Master, is it right that you should make this lovely woman suffer so?" (Cam. Pur., Periya Pur., 481-82). In the next verse comes a succinct description of Siva raising the man from the dead, the couple's joy, and the glory of the saint's act (483). Even a "miracle" expresses its extraordinariness only in the context of a journey and only through the medium of song.

HISTORY AND COMMUNITY IN THE SAINTS' PILGRIMAGES

In contrast to Nampi's accounts, the Periya Pur. narrative of Cam- pantar's life depicts him as meeting several of his contemporary Saivite saints in the course of his travels. Within the short excerpt which we have been examining, the saint not only encounters Appar, his older contemporary and great poet-saint, but also the saints NTlakanta Yalppanar, musician on the ydl; Murukanar, keeper of the rest house in Pukaluir; Ciruttontar, minister of the Pallava king and builder of the shrine at Cefikattafikuti; and the devout Nilanakkar of Cattamafikai. The contemporaneity of Appar and Ciruttontar with Campantar can be historically confirmed; the others may or may not have lived in Campantar's time. Cekkilar must have gleaned the stories of NTlakanta Yalppanar, NTlanakkar, and Murukanar from local tradition and from the rather obscure references in Campantar's hymns. In any case, once again Cekkilar's main interest lies not in simply "reconstructing" historical events but in recreating the idea of a saintly community consisting of most of the sixty-three nayanmar. And, it is the first three pilgrim-saints who unite this community by means of their meetings with the other saints during their extensive travels all over Tamil country. Cekkilar's sacred map of journey and hymns thus takes on the unifying dimension of community.

PILGRIMAGE AND POETRY: THE EXPERIENCE AND EXPRESSION OF

THE LOVE OF gIVA

The grand design of pilgrimage and poetry which we observe in Cekkilar's lives of the first three saints contains within itself a cluster of motifs which together constitute the Tamil Saivite archetype for the life of the wandering poet-saint. The principal motifs are: (1) The "call" to Siva; the motivation for pilgrimage. (2) The journey: setting out, travel, arrival at a sacred place, departure. (3) Activities at the shrine: The saint's experience of Siva-of-the-place in various ways-

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encounter with the Lord in or outside the temple, extraordinary experience or act; invariably, the composition of songs. In elucidating CekkilSr's focus on the combination of poetry and pilgrimage as exemplified in the life of Campantar, I have discussed the motifs of the journey and the activities of the nayanar at the sacred place. I shall now consider (a) the motif of the motivation for the saints' pilgrimages and (b) the essential nature of all of the saints' "acts" at the shrine, thus completing my analysis of the pilgrimage-poetry theme in Tamil Saivite hagiography.

THE "CALL" TO 9IVA

One of Cekkilar's concerns in his accounts of the ndyanmar's travels is their motivation for going to a particular sacred place. Very often, this is simply explained as the saint's desire to "see the shrines of Siva."30 At other times, the saint experiences a very specific urge to see Siva of a particular shrine and to sing of him.3' It may be the glory of a specific manifestation or activity of Siva in a place which draws the saint to that shrine: when "the thought of adoring the sacred dance of the Dancer of Golden Puliyuir" comes to Cuntarar, "tormented by love's passionate longing," he resolves to "set forth on the pilgrim's path" (Tatuttdtkonta Puranam [TP], Periya Pur., 81). Puliyir (modern Chidambaram) is held by Tamil Saivites to be the most sacred location for witnessing Siva's dance as Nataraja, "Lord of the Dance."

Each saint has one shrine which is dear to him above all others: for Appar, this is Atikai Virattanam (Atikai, place of Siva's heroic deed), site of the saint's conversion. While traveling abroad, Appar often feels a "call" to Atikai: ". . . Then, deep within him stirred the memory of the feet of the Lord at the Virattanam shrine, who rides on his strong, victorious bull. Full of love's longing, he set off right then,.. . and reached the holy shrine of Atikai" (TP, Periya Pur., 135). The saint's favorite shrine becomes irresistible when the time for a special festival at the temple approaches. With the advent of spring, Cuntarar, dwelling in Orriyur, is powerfully drawn to Siva in Tiruvarur, for this is the time for the great spring festival (vacan- torcavam) at Arur's temple.32 So insistent is the call that Cuntarar

30. . . Desiring to seek the other abodes of the Lord, that there he might worship the god who is half woman, and sing him, he [Cuntarar] set forth ..." (Eyarkon Kalikkdma Ndyanar Puranam, Periya Pur., 32).

31 "His [Appar's] heart was filled with the desire to bow at and praise the dear feet of Lord Civan [Siva] as he graciously dwells in holy Pukalur . ." (Tirunavukkaracu Nayanar Puranam [TP], Periya Pur., 230).

2"When the soft breeze, born on the tall Tamil hill of Potiyal and grown strong on its cool slopes, embracing the scent of sweet sandal, blew in [to Orriyur], he thought of

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manages to return to Aruir in time for the event, flouting the promise that he had made to his second wife, Caikili, that he would never leave Orriyur.33

The call might come directly from Siva himself, usually in a vision or dream, bidding the saint visit him in a shrine which, for some reason, he has omitted from his travels. Such is Cekkilar's description -based on autobiographical comments in one of Appar's hymns- of Appar's dream in Maraikkatu. As Appar sleeps in the town of Maraikkatu, Siva, "resplendent with his golden body covered with silver ash, came to him and said: 'We are in Vaymfir. Come follow us"' (TP, Periya Pur., 286). Cekkilar then describes Appar's pilgrimage to Vaymiir (TP, Periya Pur., 287ff.).34 When, for some worthy reason, the saint omits visiting a temple which is obviously on his

pilgrimage route, Siva manifests himself in his persona as Lord of that shrine, in a dream or in actuality, thus miraculously "com-

35 pleting" the saint's pilgrimage experience.3

The saints wish to travel to all the sacred abodes of Siva in Tamil

country because they, as Tamil Saivites, believe that he dwells in each of these places in a different persona, and they have an intense desire to experience him in all these manifestations. Within the framework of the repeated acts of journey, worship, and hymn composition, the sheer variety and particularity of the experience of Siva is emphasized by the description of each new place, landscape, persona of the god, the entire complex of phenomena which prompt the composition of

yet another song and urge the saint to go on to yet another sacred

place. To Cekkilar, each one of Campantar's visits to Tiruvaruir is worth recording in detail, for each visit has its own nuances, and each

experience of the Lord of Tiruvariir is slightly different from every other, uniquely bound to Campantar's presence in Tiruvarur at that point in space and time in the pilgrimage of his life. At the same time, the call to Siva's places is, above all, the call of love; the saints

the glory with which the Festival day of the Lord VTtivitankar in Tiruvarur would greet the spring" (Eyarkon Kalikkdma Ndyanar Purdnam, Periya Pur., 270.)

33 He is punished with blindness for breaking his oath. However, upon his singing plaintive hymns to Siva, the god restores his sight.

34 Cuntarar has a dream of giva of Malapati (Ceramdn Perumdl Nayanar Purdnam, Periya Pur., 112-13). All three saints have such dreams at various points in their lives.

35 A good example occurs in the life of Cuntarar. Cuntarar refrains from entering the town of Atikai Virattanam for fear of insulting its ground, sanctified earlier by the presence of the ndyanar Appar. Therefore, Cuntarar stops at a traveler's rest house just outside Atikai. There, Siva of Atikai, in the guise of a rude old man, disturbs the sleeping saint and then reveals himself in all his divine splendor, granting Cuntarar the experience for which he traveled to Atikai. Note that the motif of not treading on hallowed ground is an important one in Tamil Saivite tradition. An extreme example of this is the legend which describes Karaikkal Ammaiyar, an early ndyandr, as walking on her head when approaching the abodes of Siva in Kailasa and Tiruvalankatu.

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are drawn to Siva in all his manifestations by "love's passionate longing." The underlying theme of the motif of the "call" is this blend of the power of the saint's love of Siva and the richness and attraction of his unique manifestations in Tamil country.

THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE

In the course of my discussion of the design of pilgrimage and poetry, I have touched upon the activities of the saints in the places which they visit. These activities vary in detail. Appar always carried with him a hoe with which he cleared the temple courtyards of weeds.36 Cuntarar and Campantar were much concerned with the welfare of their fellow-devotees, who were often their traveling companions. Both Campantar and Cuntarar were engaged in aiding the monarchs of their time to realize fully the love of Siva-Campantar defeated his Jaina opponents in debate and converted the Pandya king; Cuntarar was a close friend of the devout Cera king, Ceraman Perumal Nayanar, and visited his kingdom as part of his pilgrimages. All the saints performed "miracles": even as Campantar raised a man from the dead, Cuntarar saved a boy from a crocodile and made the floodwaters of the Kaveri part when he wished to cross the river. However, these events are deeply embedded in the grand design of pilgrimage and poetry.

The encounter with Siva-which is, after all, the pilgrim-saint's ultimate goal-takes myriad forms; miracles and visions are but spectacular manifestations of the core experience of deity. Miracles and visions do not occur at every place the saint visits. Yet, to the saint, and to the hagiographer, all these visits are equally miraculous, for each visit to a shrine entails a highly emotional experience of god on the part of the saint. Indeed all his acts at a shrine are expressions of this love. Among the expressive modes exemplified by the saints in their acts, their physical reactions to the visit, as well as the verbal expression of experience through song, are greatly valued by Tamil Saivites. Cekkilar's repeated descriptions of these two modes expressive of love indicate that he considers them to be paradigmatic.

In the Cam. Pur. passage we considered above, at each shrine the hagiographer first describes Campantar's physical reaction, then his composition of hymns. The following description of Appar's acts upon arriving in Vilimilalai is typical, and it underscores the impor- tance given to the intensity with which the saint-first physically and then verbally-expresses his love of Siva:

36 In Tamil Saivite iconography, Appar is represented as carrying the hoe, while Campantar is often depicted as holding his golden cymbals.

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He approached and entered the temple wherein the Lord who

[The weapon with has the golden mountain for his which Siva de- bow dwells in delight. He stroyed the triple circumambulated it, city of the demons] prostrated himself at the sacred courtyard,

entered the presence of the three-eyed god, bull-rider crowned

with matted red hair; then he fell at his feet,

rose, sobbed out, . . . He folded his hands in adoration, and praised the Lord's feet, his

deep love melted into a liquid stream, the flood from

his eyes gushed out and spread over his body.

Standing thus he sang a garland of words of praise,

"Those who do not belong to the red-haired god are caught in the path of Evil,"

[a verse form] this Tantakam poem which shows us the way to our salvation. When he had sung, his ceaseless love welling up stronger .

. . He still praised, in VTlimilalai of beautiful streams,

[Siva] that jewel-mountain of golden form.

[TP, Periya Pur., 252-54]

In the imagery of this sequence of verses-and others similar to it-the overpowering desire to see, to experience, the Lord, which draws the saint to a particular shrine, itself becomes an overflowing love which physically manifests itself in torrential tears and, verbally, in a flood of poetry.

So we find that all the motifs in the Periya Pur. lives of the first three saints work together; all the signs on the pilgrim's road point to the same Tamil Saivite idea: the nature of the love of Siva as an intensely emotional experience rooted in a particular place and, as a necessary corollary to this experience, its expression in intensely emotional poetry, in song. Appar, Campantar, and Cuntarar stand apart from the other Tamil Saivite saints in embodying this idea. They, above all, represent the intrinsic relationship between emotional experience and its poetic expression in the Tamil Saivite view

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of the love of god. Therein lies the paradigmatic quality of the lives of these saints: so powerful and vital is the link between their experience and expression of love of Siva, that all Tamil Saivites may participate in the original experience simply by adopting the expressive mode, by singing the Tevaram songs:

Moved by intense love (for Siva) the Tamil, 5anacampantan

of pure-streamed Pukali, in song adores

him who resides in Ariur of paddy fields

where beautiful water-lillies blow; Who knows to recite

and listen to these ten verses shall wipe his life clean

of sorrow. [Cam. 1.105.11]

Tirukkataikkdppu "Sacred Closure"37

So it is that, having lived out the Tamil Saivite religious ideal through pilgrimage and poetry, these three saints, though separated in historical time,38 became the "first three" saints of the Tamil Saivites. It is also inevitable, then, that the final poet-commentator and official biographer of the tradition should find the essential design of the lives of these three saints in the union of pilgrimage and poetry.

THE PERIYA PURANAM AND THE MODEL OF THE WANDERING SINGER-SAINT

Religious pilgrimage is an ancient, pan-Hindu phenomenon in India. However, the Periya Puranam model of the pilgrim-singer-saint is predominantly Tamil in conception. Recent studies on Tamil devotional (bhakti) movements have brought out the idea that these movements have much in common with the ideals and institutions of the ancient civilization which produced the classical Tamil poetry of akam (interior, love) and puram (exterior, war, public life).39 The

37 Campantar's hymns have an eleventh verse, a coda or signature verse called Tirukkataikkappu, the verse of "sacred closure" or "sacred talisman."

3Campantar and Appar lived in the sixth to seventh centuries, Cuntarar in the eighth.

39 See Yocum; and Katherine Young, "Beloved Places: Ukantarulinanilaikal: The Correlation of Topography and Theology in the SrTvaisnava Tradition of South India" (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 1978); Peterson, "Singing of a Place" (n. 5 above); and George L. Hart III, "The Nature of Tamil Devotion," in Aryan and Non-Aryan in India, ed. Madhav M. Deshpande and Peter E. Hook, Michigan Papers on South and

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connection between poetry and wandering and that between poetry, emotion (especially love), and particular landscapes, are a uniquely Tamil heritage, as illustrated by the ancient Tamil institutions of wandering bards and panan musicians40 and by the elaborate scheme of landscape-emotion correspondences in the classical love poetry.

In many respects, the Tamil Saivite pilgrim-saints resemble-and may have consciously been the rivals of-the wandering ascetics of the Buddhist, Jaina, and pan-Hindu traditions who were common in Tamil country in and before the age of the nayanmar.41 The Tamil Saivite saints (in general, with a few exceptions like Cuntarar) led an austere life and congregated with other devotees at rest houses of a monastic nature, very much in the manner of ascetics. However, in their passionate love of their god and of the landscapes of their country, the nayanmdr were closer to the panan's and poets (pulavan) of ancient Tamil. Indeed, through their emphasis on Siva as the lover, and on the expression of love in song, these saints presented a formidable challenge to the ascetic model of the leader found among the Buddhists and Jainas. The power of this new devotional model, not only for Tamil Saivism, but for Hinduism as a whole, is evident in its acceptance as the model par excellence for the bhakti saint all over India in later centuries, for example, MYra in Rajasthan. On the whole, the expressive, poetic aspect of the Tamil bhakti model was most influential in the development of pan-Indian bhakti. On the other hand, extensive pilgrimages to a large number of shrines are a distinctive feature of the Tamil saints; further, what still remains uniquely Tamil about their pilgrimages and songs is their precise and specific commemoration of particular places as the overarching metaphor for their experience of their god. In this respect the Tamil bhakti pilgrim-poets' uniqueness is even more remarkable when they are compared with pan-Hindu saint-leaders such as Samkara (ninth century?) and Ramanuja. Samkara, also a native of South India, traveled all over India, not just in the region of his birth; as a challenge to the Buddhists, he established a Hindu monastic order; though he wrote devotional poetry, it is in Sanskrit and not rooted in the love of a god who dwells in particular places.

Southeast Asia, no. 14 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1979), pp. 11-33, esp. p. 14.

40 On bards, poets, and panan musicians in ancient Tamil civilization, see George L. Hart III, The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 138-58.

41 The great literary epics-considered to be secular works-in Tamil prior to Cekkilar's Periya Pur. were written by Buddhist and Jaina authors, e.g., Cilappatikaram, Manimekalai, Cirakacintamani. The author of the Cilappatikaram is said to have been a Jaina monk (Ilank6vatikal).

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Finally, in the context of early Tamil devotional movements, an internal comparison should be made between the nature and significance of pilgrimage and poetry-in relation to one another-in the Tamil Vaisnavite and Tamil Saivite traditions, which developed contemporaneously. The hymns of the Ndldyira Divya Prabandham of the Vaisnavite dlvars are strongly oriented to Tamil places, and there is a Tamil Vaisnavite tradition of the "108 Divya Desams," the "108 abodes of Visnu," most of them situated in Tamil country. Yet, on first reading, I have not found an emphasis on pilgrimage com- parable to that in the Periya Pur. in the "lives" of the dlvars, particularly as found in the Sanskrit hagiographical work Divya- suricaritam.42 However, the Ardyirattuppati and other Manipravala and Tamil works of the Tamil Vaisnavite tradition, which are ex- traordinarily rich sources for hagiographical material, should be carefully investigated before final conclusions can be drawn on the similarities and differences between the Tamil Saivite and Vaisnavite models of the wandering singer-saint.

CONCLUSION: Kataikkdppu In the vision of the Periya Puranam, pilgrimage is not merely the framework of the lives of the saints, but the living core of their religious experience. In this vision, experience and expression are essentially related, and the rootedness of the saint's expression of their devotion to Siva in pilgrimage speaks for the central religious experience shared by all Tamil Saivites: the love of Siva as the god who dwells in a particular place.

In a tradition which venerates the poetry of emotion, the Periya Puranam is praised as a sublime poetic composition, reflecting the spirit of the poetry of the first saints themselves. I have shown above that the Periya Puranam accurately preserves and transmits the themes and emphasis of the lives and hymns of the ndyanmar. It is appropriate that Cekkilar's "grand epic" should form the last book of a canon headed by the Tevaram hymns.43 In the metaphor of the final

42 Divyasuri Caritam by Garuda Vahana Pandita, with Hindi rendering by Pandita

Madhavacharya, ed. T. A. Sampath Kumaracharya and K. K. A. Venkatachari, Anantacharya Research Insitute Series no. 2 (Bombay: Anatacharya Research Insti- tute, 1978).

43 There is a tradition, in Tamil temple ritual, of otuvars singing five selections from the Tamil Saivite canonical texts at the conclusion of the paja ritual. This singing, called pancapurdnam (the five great poems), begins with selections from the Tevaram and Manikkavacakar's Tiruvdcakam, continues with hymns from the ninth book (Tiruvicaippd, Tiruppalldntu), and concludes with a selection from Cekkilar's Periya Puranam.

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360 Lives of the Wandering Singers

coda-verses of Campantar's songs, the Periya Puranam is a fitting "sacred closure" (Tirukkataikkappu) for a tradition whose religious experience centers on pilgrimage and poetry.

Mount Holyoke College



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