i: The Origins of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, their Śrauta Traditions, and Southward Migration
We know that the style of wearing one’s hair was a matter of ritual importance to the Vedic Aryans, often signifying adherence to a specific orthodoxy-orthopraxy complex. The term kapardin/kapardī, itself thought to be non-Vedic,20 occurs in the Ṛgveda, with six attestations (s.v. Lubotsky [1997] I: 420) in its different forms and seems to have signified the braided or tufted hair on a male’s otherwise shaven head, and the Vasiṣṭhas are said at ṚV 7.33.1 to wear their kapardin on the right side of the scalp. The pūrvaśikhā mode may well signify one such way of wearing one’s kapardin (indeed, just as its counterpart in this study, the aparaśikhā, another). In its extant practice, it consists in massing up the hair on top of otherwise shaven head into a knotted heap (Illustration I). Its earliest attestation occurs, as Gerhard Ehlers notes, (Response to EJVS 10.1),21 at TS 7,4,9,1 (ṣikhām anu pra vapante): “to shave (the hair) forward in order to have a pūrvaśikhā” (Ehlers’ translation). As Ehlers points out, in the Taittirīya context, the ritualists are performing the gavamāyana ritual, imitating the “session of the cows” and accordingly wear the pūrvaśikhā at the end of the year in order to look like them: “gavāṃ hi tarhy anurūpā bhavanti (JB 2, 374)”. In other words, by the time of the redaction of the Taittirīya śākhā of the Yajurveda, ca. 1000-900 BCE, we have a distinct group wearing their hair in the pūrvaśikhā mode. We will see that the Taittirīya comparison of the pūrvaśkhā with a physiognomic feature of an animal will reappear in an almost identical trope, later, in the Sangam poetry.
Their śrauta traditions are made up from the following Veda śākhās22:
- i. Ṛgveda: The Śākala Ṛgveda and its Āśvalāyana Śrauta Sūtra (AŚS) make up the lion share of their Ṛgveda affiliation. However, in addition, the Kauṣītaki tradition (allied to the Śāṅkhāyana Śrauta Sūtra [ŚŚS]) of the Ṛgveda occurs among the Pūrvaśkhās, once, it is thought, with the Bāṣkala śākhā as its Ṛgveda text.23 The Bāṣkala śākhā is no longer extant even among the Nambudiri Brahmans, the Pūrvaśikhā group with still a very robust Kauṣītaki tradition. The Śākala śākhā is the universal Ṛgveda śākhā among the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, as it is the case amongst all Brahmans now globally. All the same, the Kauṣītaki tradition seems to have been ritually the most active of all axes among the Pūrvaśikhās (see below, and note 11).
- ii. Yajurveda: Only the Taittirīya śākhā of the Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda School
occurs among the Pūrvaśikhās, in three different sūtra traditions:
- a. the Baudhāyana (both Śrauta and Gṛhya);
- b. the Vādhūla (both Śrauta and Gṛhya);
- c. the Āgniveśya, almost identical with the Vādhūla tradition, but only in its Gṛhya form.
- iii. Sāmaveda: Only the Jaiminīya śākhā of the Sāmaveda occurs among the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans.
Of the above, the Kāuṣītaki Ṛgveda, the Vādhūla-Āgniveśya Yajurveda and the Jaiminīya Sāmaveda occur only among the Pūrvaśikhās, so as to constitute positive proof of identity in epigraphic records and fieldwork: that is, if a Brahman is recorded in the grāmadeya plates or encountered in fieldwork in peninsular India as belonging to one of these Veda śākhās, he can be identified as a Pūrvaśikhā Brahman. Likewise, we have two epigraphic terms with unique Pūrvaśikhā attestations, paviḻiya and ś/jāmbavya, first a phonological corruption of bahuvṛca, the Āśvalāyana tradition, and the second, designating a branch of the Kauṣītaki sūtra of the Ṛgveda.24 From Witzel (1989; 1995), we can localize these Veda śākhās and sūtras to a broad area in the Gangā-Yamunā doab, in the Pāñcāla country, extending to the east along the Gangā (the Vādhūla tradition of the Taittirīya Samhita) to the Kosala area (the Kauṣītaki-Baudhāyana alliance), with substantial south-south-west extensions in the Jaiminīya realm (Map I). I argue in on- going work that some sort of geographical contiguity of the different schools produced specific śrauta axes in situ listed below.
A śrauta tradition, arguably the most authentic, has, as we know, survived among the Pūrvaśikhā group, among the Nambudiri Brahmans,25 with abundant epigraphic evidence of śrautism among the other branches of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans till the 11th century CE from epigraphy (see below). Again, as we know, a tri-Vedic axis is the core of a śrauta ritual, the coordinated orchestration of the ādhvaryam, hautram, and the audgātram praxises in the unfolding of the ritual. I list below the four theoretical tri- Vedic axes possible for the performance a Pūrvaśikhā Śrauta ritual:
- i. Kauṣītaki Ṛgveda-Baudhāyana Yajurveda-Jaiminīya Sāmaveda
- ii. Kauṣītaki Ṛgveda-Vādhūla Yajurveda-Jaiminīya Sāmaveda
- iii. Āśvalāyana Ṛgveda-Baudhāyana Yajurveda-Jaminīya Sāmaveda
- iv. Āśvalāyana Ṛgveda-Vādhūla Yajurveda-Jaiminīya Sāmaveda
Of the four, the śrauta axis i seems to have been historically the most active,26 with iii and iv following, respectively. The axis ii does not seem to occur in practice,27 the original geographic regions of these traditions not having been, perhaps, contiguous. I must add that the Kauṣītaki tradition adds to the 16-priest complement of the śrauta ritual personnel an additional ritualist (BŚS 2.7), the Sadasya priest, in as much as Vyāsa, the traditional redactor of the Mahābhārata epic appears as part of the sadasya assembled in the Janamejayas’s Snake Sacrifice when the epic is formally sung to the world, by the Śauti. It is not clear if Vyāsa is designated formally as the Sadasya priest or merely as a member of the learned group assembled at the sadas, the ritual hall.28 It is possible that the Kauṣītaki tradition merely formalizes an existing tradition surrounding the installation of a learned member of the śrauta community as Sadasya.29
Finally, if the Śārada text is the simplicior text, it would follow that it is traceable to the Kuru-Pāñcāla area: by general consensus, the epic took shape in the northern Kuru area, around Kurukṣetra, not far from the regions to which the Pūrvaśikhā Veda śākhās have been localized, generally the Ganga-Yamuna doab. It is possible that they had the text with them, or even that, they were part of the agency of its final redaction. We have some direct evidence supporting the second conjecture, that the original Pūrvaśikhā group may have had links to the redaction of the epic in its extant frame- narrative form. We know that in the immediate post-Vedic period, when the form of frame narratives begins to arise as a function of the emerging narrative perfect in the Vedic, it reaches, as Witzel shows (1987c: 395; passim),30 its most sophisticated 20 development, in the Jaiminīyabrāhmaṇa, part of the signature Pūrvaśikhā Sāmaveda tradition, in the retelling of the legend of Cyāvana a ṛṣi of the Bhṛgu lineage. And as we know, the form reaches its culmination in the extant Mahābhārata, framed at the innermost frame by Vyāsa’s discourse to Sumantu, Jaimini, Vaiśaṃpāyana, Śuka and Paila and at the outermost frame by the Śauti Ucchaśravas’s discourse to Śaunaka and the other ṛṣis in the sadas, with Vyāsa himself present possibly in the ritualistic role of the Sadasya priest, an office only evidenced in the Pūrvaśikhā śrauta praxis. A link to the Jaiminīyas is further seen in the development of closely related Bhṛhaddevata: Tokunaga (1997: 186) cites the Sāmaveda Brāhmaṇas, Jaiminīya and its lost proto-text, the Ṣāṭyāyana as “[of] special importance” in the development of the story of Dadhyañc (Bd. 16d-23), adding, (186, note 2): “A close relationship of our author [that of Bd] with the Sāmaveda is also attested by his frequent mention of the teachers and sources presumably associated with this school” (My parenthesis]. Parpola (1984: 463-64) adduces a similar link between the epic and the Jaiminīya tradition, noting that Jaimini was the udgātha priest of Janamejaya’s sarpa sattra and one of the five figures to whom Vyāsa committed the epic.31 We should note that this picture dove-tails with the main features of the Hiltebeitel-Witzel model of the textualizatin of the epic mentioned earlier: the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, still in the Vedic realm, would be part of Hiltebeitel’s “committee of Brahmans” who redact the epic into a Brahmanical work. Hiltebeitel (2001: 19) sees them as “out of sorts” Brahmans “who may have had some minor king’s or merchant’s patronage, but probably for personal reasons show a deep appreciation of, and indeed exalt, Brahmans who practice “the way of gleaning”: that is uñchavṛtti Brahmans reduced to poverty who live a married life and feed their guests and family by “gleaning” grain,” not unlike, as Hiltebeitel (27) notes, Patañjali’s śiṣṭha Brahmans.32 It goes without saying that such Brahmans would also be śrautins, functioning as the agents of the Vedic oral traditions, as what comes to be called in Manu the Śrotriya Brahmans.33 We must note that a serious threat does rise in the east, as I argue below, to these Vedic traditions formed in the west, in the Kuru-Pñcāla area, in the form of the Vājanseyi-centered Vedism, promoted by the Magadha imperialism, possibly rendering these western Brahmans “out of sorts”. Thus the reformist Brahmanical dynasties, who would seek to support śrauta traditions, would naturally form suitable patrons (Witzel 2006). I argue below, in Section D, that what comes to be schematized in I. Mahadevan (2003) as the Southern Brāhmī script, a *Southern Brāhmī script, served the textualization of the epic and traveled southward later with the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans with their departure, evolving later into its different attested scripts in the peninsula, the Grantha being the one most relevant to this study.
We cannot determine the exact dates of departure of the Pūrvaśikhā group from the antarvedi area, nor the motives behind the departure, but we can go farther than the vague wanderlust of the Brahman often noted in literature impelling migration—Agastya of the Ṛgveda himself seen in some fanciful historiography as the redoubtable Vedic counterpart of Friar Tuck of Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, leading Brahman migration southward.34 On the other hand, the śrauta axes that I have listed above and their survival in a live oral tradition to our times make it probable that it was an organized departure.35 Its live survival today among one of the branches of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans in a continuous and unbroken practice testifies to the continual Vedic svādhyāya institutions at work over time and space, suggesting a sizeable number of families moving in tandem, necessitating, as I argue in on-going work, a complete revision of our existing ideas about Brahman migrations. It is possible that the rise of the Śukla Yajurveda tradition as an imperial praxis under the Magadhan hegemony in the Kosala-Videha lands (5th-6th century BCE)36 may be a factor: it is useful to note here the well-attested and extreme dislike of the Māgadha Brahmans in Vedic texts as for instance the reference at Lāṭyāyana Śrauta Sūtra (8. 6. 28), “the despicable Brāhmaṇa-fellows native to Magadha” (Parpola 1968: 29; n.1).37 The rises of Buddhism and Jainism may also have played a role.
There is little doubt that an external agency impelled the movement. We may rule out impulsive or eccentric migrants, although as with Bāvari of the Buddhist texts (see below) there were such cases. As I have indicated above, a live śrauta tradition has survived among the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans (as well as among the Aparaśikhā Brahmans, the second group in migration) showing that the start-up migrant population should have met, as I argue in greater detail elsewhere, two sustainability criteria: first biological and thus linked to the Gotra distributions of the start-up population; second, in terms of the Vedic praxis, thus linked to the Sūtra affiliations. That is, from the first criterion, we can deduce, and this is confirmed by both epigraphy and field work, that the start-up population had enough affiliates to the different Gotra labels to meet the twin criteria of a Brahmanical marriage: exogamy, ruling out a spouse of one’s own Gotra label; endogamy, allowing kinship only between Gotra affiliates. Both the Pūrvaśikhā and Aparaśikhā Brahmans meet this criterion. Both groups also meet the second sustainability criterion, that of the Sūtra distribution of the start-up population to maintain live Vedic praxises, especially in its srauta form. As we know, this requires the coordination of three individual Vedic praxises, those of the hautram, ādhvaryam and audgātram: sufficient human agency in terms of numbers must be presumed to be present in the original migrant population to have enabled the sustainability of the Vedic oral traditions. Thus in both cases of the Brahmans, and we have ample epigraphic evidence for the Aparaśikhā group, the migrant population was large and varied enough along the two sustainability criteria, suggesting that the migration itself was possibly well- coordinated and planned.
We may rule out in this context the commonplace economic motive of migration in the case of Śrauta Brahman communities. A self sustaining Śrauta Brahman community is generally seen to be affluent in its traditional setting, the affluence arising entirely from patronage—indeed, the śrauta culture demanding it and royal patronage providing it, the brahma-kṣatra alliance of the Vedic age functioning at the ground level. This does not necessarily conflict with the idealized poverty of the uñchavṛtti institution, noted above, the affluence essentially funding the expenses of the annual śrauta rituals.38 It is tempting to place the departure of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans before the formation of the Āpastaṃba Śrauta Sūtra tradition, ca. 300 BCE, as it is signally absent among them. However, we can possibly mark their southward movement on the dakṣiṇāpatha from Buddhist records—in keeping with the general pattern, noted by Witzel,39 that many details of early Brahman history are often evidenced in Buddhist records. The Pāli Canon text, the Suttanipāta,40 records the performance of a śrauta ritual on the dakṣinṇāpatha, calling it a mahāyaññam (l. 979), at Assaka on the Godāvarī: Bāvari, a wanderlust-type Brahman, arrives at Assaka in the neighborhood of Aḷaka, from Mithila, Kosala and after making himself welcome at the prosperous Brahman settlements and alms from them on the banks of the river for three years performs the mahāyajña with 16 priests (l. 1006: soḷasa brāhmaṇa) from among his hosts in the Assaka Brahman community—clearly a śrauta ritual, 16 priests being the complement of a śrauta ritual. We already know that Bāvari in his native Kosala is a product of the Vedic svādhyāya system, a master of mantras (l. 977 manta pāragū). A traditional brahmodya follows at the conclusion of the śrauta ritual and with it, the danger of possible explosions of heads. The 16 priests go north to the Buddha, traversing the dakṣiṇāpatha northward to learn, as per the Buddhalogical plotting of the account, the secret of keeping their heads from exploding and thus avoid, again, from the Buddhist point of view, the occupational hazard of the Śrauta Brahmans.
The Suttanipāta text is part of the older layers of the Pāli Canon text, placed in the 3rd century BCE.41 It is quite likely that this was a Pūrvaśikhā Śrauta ritual: the Assaka settlement would seem to be too far away from the śrauta traditions surrounding the Śukla Yajurveda, relatively recently formed, some three centuries or so ago, in the Kosala-Videha area. The newer Āpastaṃba-based ritualism of the second group of Brahmans of this study, ca. 300 BCE and centering around Mathurā on the Yamunā would be too recent also to have reached this far south and east by the time of the Suttanipāta text. And the total priestly complement, the 16 that went north and became, alas, Buddhists plus Bāvari, giving us 17 ritualists in all, resonates with the Kauṣītaki Śrautism.
B. ii. The Pūrvaśikhā Presence in the Sangam Tamil Country and the Creation of the Pūrvaśikhā Text.
Their arrival and presence in the Tamil country during the Sangam period is, on the other hand, beyond dispute. Hart (1975: 149) estimates that about 10% of the Sangam poets were Brahmans, deeming it a low estimate as “not all Brahmins could have had telltale names.” It is difficult to imagine what the global numbers of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans were in the Sangam country for this period; there is little doubt as inferred from the two sustainability criteria above that it must have been substantial. The Vedic imprint on Sangam poetry is really quite vast, indicating a sizeable Brahman complement behind it. Moreover, Brahmans are equally attested in all three Sangam kingdoms, indicating an isotropic distribution along the three Sangam kingdoms. And the one Vedic item that reveals to us the Brahman presence in the Sangam period is the “experience- near” feature,42 the style of the wearing of the hair among the males of the group, namely the kuṭumi. The kuṭumi, the Sangam Tamil word for the hair tuft (from koṭi and koṭu [DEDR # 2049]43 first signifying “banner, flag, streamer” and the second, “summit of a hill, peak, a mountain”) is distinctly in the pūrvaśikhā mode, attested in poem after poem, amounting to a poetic trope44—or Ramanujan’s “poetic code” (1985: 282)–as in the two following examples:
“And all those horses of our man of the tall hills have tufts of hair like the Brahman urchins of our town” (Aiṅkurunūṛu 202; A.K.Ramanujan’s [1985: 9] translation) “[T]he tuft on his head is like the mane of a horse” 26 (Puṛanānūṛu 310:11; George Hart’s [1999: 179] translation)
The horse’s mane to which the kuṭumi is being compared above recalls the calf’s newly forming horns of the Taittirīya passage, noted earlier: the hair in both cases is massed up toward the front of the head.
Because of its excellent DEDR derivation noted above as a “flag” or “streamer,” the kuṭumi as pūrvaśikhā may be taken to signify the indigenous mode of wearing hair in the Tamil country before the arrival of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans: if so, we have here a striking coincidence between the indigenous style and immigrant style, perhaps even accounting for the wide patronage and welcome the Brahmans are seen enjoying in the Tamil country in the Sangam period. Above, the pūrvaśikhā is specifically linked to a Brahman child in the Ainkuṛunūṛu verse, the language suggestive of total acculturation— an urchin running about the streets—of the Brahman group in the host region. The elegiac subject in the second example is a young warrior, fallen in battle, having “slain painted elephants” (l.5) and thus presumably not a Brahman, but presented in the same trope as the Brahman child, suggesting that the front tuft was universal in the Tamil country at this time and that the term as such signified only this mode in the Sangam period. It is also significant that a Tamil word comes to signify a Vedic item, suggesting an exuberant acculturation between the Sangam era Brahmans and the indigenous people of the Tamil country
Could “kuṭumi” signify the aparaśikha mode as well?45 The aparaśikhā mode would signify a tuft of hair hanging down from the back of the head, like a pony tail. It would seem that either tōkai (DEDR 3532) or vāl (DEDR Appendix 17) is the more suitable word for comparison, to indicate an item hanging vertically down. The poet uses instead, kuṭumi, signifying the mane, a horizontal item on a galloping horse, thus more appropriate for the pūrvaśikhā mode. Etymologically, “kuṭumi” seems to signify the fore part of the head, as with the crown of peacock (Subrahmanian 1966: 285). The poet uses, moreover, the horse to suggest abandon and virility—especially in the case of the fallen hero. Thus it would seem that the poet had in mind a horse in gallop, an apt image of heroism of the fallen hero and the urchin running about wildly, with the top knot streaming, like the horse’s mane, from the fore part of the head. Finally, the word is sex- specific: it is never used to refer to a woman’s braids, hanging from the back of the head, not generically different from the aparaśikhā mode. Thus, it would seem this that the kuṭumi of the Sangam poetry is the fore-lock kind, wound and tied up at the top of the head, streaming out like a flag or banner or the mane of a horse when loose.
The much noted Vedic details of Sangam poetry (Sastri: [1935] 1975: 93; Parpola: 1983)46 also accord with what we know of the Pūrvaśikhā śrauta tradition: the most notable śrauta ritual described Sangam poetry is the Agnicayana, in Puṛanānūṛu 224 (ll. 6-9), still extant among the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās in a live praxis. It is true that the Agnicayana ritual occurs among the second group, the Aparaśikhā Brahmans, as well. However, the Agnicayana of the Sangam poetry is either the pāñcapatrikā (“five-tipped”) or the ṣaṭpatrikā (“six-tipped”) type, in which the altar is shaped after a bird (kite, at l. above): the Agnicayana with the bird-shaped altar is the only type known among the Pūrvaśikhās, whereas it is only one of several types of altars known among the Aparaśikhās and nor is it the most popular one.47 Thus, in conjunction with the pūrvaśikhā kuṭumi attested in Sangam poetry, we can conclude that the Sangam-era Brahmans were Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans.
The one Sattra-type ritual referred to in Sangam poetry is the Rājasūya, performed by a Cōḷa king, Vēṭṭa Perunāṛkiḷḷi, styled by the poet Pāṇṭaran Kaṇṇanār as Cōḻan Irācacūyam Vēṭṭa Perunārkiḷḷi at Puṛanānūṛu 16. The Pūrvaśikhā Vedism was developed fully enough to meet the performance of the Rājasūya ritual. We may assert this not just on ritual grounds; a considerable discursive literature exists among Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās on the Rājasūya literature, the most significant of which is Narayana Bhaṭṭatiri’s Rājasūyaprabandha (ca. 17th century; Kunjunni Raja Agni II: 309), an allegorical interpretation of the Agnicayana, in which the bricks that go into the making of the altar are related to the story of Kṛṣṇa (Staal 1983 [I]: 187). We have already seen how a 1612-verse insertion into the Sabhāparvan from the Harivaṃśa celebrates Kṛṣṇa as the worthy guest at Yudhiṣṭira’s Rājasūya in the SR Mahābhārata. The interest in Rājasūya persists to the modern times, in the writings of the foremost Nambudiri ritualist of our times, Ērkkara Raman Nambudiri.48 It should be added that the responsibility of ritually crowning the Cōḷa monarch lay with the Pūrvaśikhā Dīkṣitars of Chidambaram in historical times.49
Altogether, four Brahmanical gotras occur in Sangam literature (kaunḍiniya- vasiṣṭha, kauśika-viśvāmitra, ātreya, and gautama-aṇgirasa)50 and they also occur regularly among the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, although this could not be thought to have probative value, as the same gotras occur among the Aparaśikhās as well. It is very likely, as my on-going study shows,51 that the distribution of gotra labels is globally isotropic for the Brahman group as a whole, having formed in the period right after the redaction of the Ṛgveda and but before the formation of the Yajurveda and Sāmaveda traditions. This is seen from the fact that the gotras of the adherents of all the three Vedas, the Vedas of the rituals, go back to the ca. 50 gotra-pravara lists of the Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra appendixes, and these 50 pravaras are linked in turn to the ṛṣi composers of the Ṛgveda as indexed in the Anukramaṇī lists. In other words, when the adherence to the Yajurveda or the Sāmaveda, as the case may be, arose as a family tradition based on birth and institutionalized subsequently by a svādhyāya system, the adhering family already possessed a gotra identity originally derived from a ṛṣi of the Ṛgvedic hymns. It is useful to note, on the other hand, that the gotra profile of the adherents of the Atharvaveda—a Veda with no function in the śrauta tradition–is entirely different.52
A further link between the Sangam poetry and the Pūrvaśikhā group may be the polygamy referred to at Puṛanānūru 178, a full-dress description of an ideal Vedic Brahman of the lineage of the kauṇḍinya gotra. He is pictured with three wives. It is quite possible that polygamy existed among the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans; it was not uncommon among the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās even into the historical period,53 while it seems almost entirely unattested among the Aparaśikhā group. In the poem, the chief wife wears an ornamental head-piece called valai: however, I have not been able to trace it to either the Pūrvaśikhā or Aparaśikhhā Brahmans.
Hart (1975: 33-34; 1999:22) based on the “war sacrifice” mentioned Puṛanānūṛu 26 theorizes that the Sangam era Brahmans were “different” (1975:51) from their Northern counterparts, adding, however, a few lines later that they “retained much of their Northern outlook and way of life” (51). We do not know what exactly the “war sacrifice” entailed; the verse referring to the sacrifice reads (Hart 1999: 22): 30 “As Brahmans of the Four Vedas, calm though the breadth of their knowledge, devoted to restraint, surrounded you and kings carried out your orders, you completed the sacrifice established by tradition.” (ll. 12-14)
The Brahmans are shown to be present at the sacrifice, but it is not clear if they perform it or take part in it. It is also not clear if the ritual was Vedic, although it is referred to as kēḷvi, a term usually signifying Vedic ritual, the term itself thought to be a translation of the Sanskrit śruti (Hart 1999: 252). Could it be an indigenous ritual? As Harts notes, “the earliest Brahmans did the only thing that they could if they were to stay in Tamilnad: they associated themselves with the kings….Thus they had to participate in such unbrahminical activities as the war sacrifice and cutting the bodies of those who had died in bed” (1975: 55). In other words, there was acculturation between the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans and the indigenous people, the temple-based Bhakti movements being the most striking result of this, and as we will see, the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans are concretely linked to both temples and Bhakti movement. All the same, a śrauta core, still extant, remains intact with the group.
One other piece of evidence, albeit negative, favouring the view that the Sangam era Brahmans were all Pūrvaśikhās comes from epigraphy (see below). The first Brahman with the signature Aparaśikhā sūtra affiliation to the Āpastaṃba tradition appears in a Pallava brahmadeya Copper Plate only in the 5th century CE, and even then still in Upper South India, with the Pallava influence still far from descending into the Tamil country proper. As we will see below, the Āpastaṃba affiliates eventually constitute the principal segment of the Aparaśikhā population, upward of 70%, and we begin to see this dominance only by the 8th CE, with the 108-Brahman complement of the grāmadeya system. In other words, it is quite unlikely that they were present in the Tamil-Kerala country during the Sangam period and its immediate aftermath. Likewise, we can eliminate the Gurukkal Brahmans, indigenous to the Tamil country, but on different grounds. Their presence is attested in the Tamil country in epigraphy in the Tamil middle ages and may well date from the Sangam period and even earlier. In the modern period, they are chiefly temple priests, adhering to an Āgama praxis. However, their Vedic traditions are incomplete or improvised, thus ruling them out as the Brahmans of the Sangam poetry. They are an all-Baudhāyana group with just five gotra affiliations, confined to “Bharadvaja, Kaśyapa, Kauśikā, Gautama and Ātreya (or Agastya) (sic)” (Fuller 1984: 28), but the mastery of the Taittirīya Samhita through an oral tradition is not found amongst them. I argue elsewhere that they might be seen as acculturated into Brahmanism by Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans on the latter’s first arrival in the Tamil country. It is possible the Gurukkals were already temple priests in the Tamil country when the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans arrived there; it is their universal profession today (Fuller 1984). Several historical Pūrvaśikha groups of the Tamil country are also linked to temple priesthoods, the most famous being the Dīkṣitars of Chidambaram. However, we must note that when the two groups are priests together in temples in the Tamil country, as at Avaṭaiyār Koil in Tanjavur or Tiruvanakkavu in Tiruchirappaḷḷi, the Tamil Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhā priests follow strictly Vedic liturgies, whereas the Gurukkals follow the Āgama liturgies.
Were there other groups of Brahmans with a Vedic tradition in the Sangam country that have escaped our notice here? We can answer this question broadly in the negative thanks to the gazetteer discourse of the late 19th century, the different volumes of “Castes and Tribes” of India: the gazetteers charted out, as in the case of the Thurston- Iyer inventory, all the Brhaman groups there were attested in the peninsular India in the late 19th century CE–all, then and now, still extant.54 It is seen that every Brahman group of the Gazettes can be plausibly accounted for in my stratigraphic scheme, the Pūrvaśikhā group in the Sangam period with its later different historical branches listed in Thurston and the Aparaśikhā group, with its many branches, likewise, listed in Thurston, arriving from the beginnings of the Pallava period.
A preponderance of evidence thus suggests that the Brahmans of the Sangam poetry were Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans. We have already seen in Section A above that we have a Mahābhārata epic, almost certainly in its *Śarada form, present in the Tamil country at a “primitive” moment of the epic’s evolution, in the very beginnings of the first millennium of the CE. In other words, we see that the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans and the epic are present in the same area at the same time. Both Sanskrit epics are attested in Sangam poetry, with the Mahābhārata appearing in a Tamil translation, known in subsequent commentarial discourse as the Peruntēvanār-pāṭiya Pāratam—the Bhārata sung by Peruntēvanār. Five groups of verses said to be excerpted from this translation appear as invocations to gods–kaṭavul vāḻttu–in five collections of Sangam poetry, but they are clearly of later origins, with the verses themselves not linked to the Mahābhārata thematically or otherwise. However, these gods’ praises—two to Śiva; two to Viṣṇu, one to Murukan—are without the later sectarian tones, especially in the case of the first two sets and thus dating themselves earlier than the Bhakti poetry, starting ca. 7th century CE.55
The link between the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans and the epic is further substantiated by what may be seen as the post history of the *Pūrvaśikhā text of my chart, resulting in the eventual Malayalam version in the Malabar area of modern Kerala and what I have designated as the Σ-SR text, remaining in the Tamil country. First, the Malayalam version of the SR text: as noted above, the Poona editors found this text to be shortest, the Śārada text of the SR tradition. Being almost the archetype, it must be closest to, if not identical with, the *Pūrvaśikhā text of stemma chart (6-7 above) above. All the manuscripts of the Malayalam version, as we will see in Section B.vi below, came to Poona from the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhā homes and centers of learning in the Malabar region of Kerala. It is legitimate to assume thus that *Pūrvaśikhā text and the Malayalam version must be one and the same, taken in my scheme to the Malabar country by the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās at or after the Kaḷabhra Interregnum, ca. 5th-7th centuries CE, when the different historical identities of individual Pūrvaśikhā groups begin to emerge. In other words, in the pre-Kaḷabhra period, the Pūrvaśikhā group was one large intact group, no doubt with internal segmentations, but linked through common Veda śākhās and the pūrvaśikhā tuft. We have enough evidence to link the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās, historically attested today in Kerala—and so linked to that area as to appear autochthonous–to the Tamil country: We encounter, for instance, the uniquely Pūrvaśikhā epigraphic term, “paviḻiya” (or pakaḻiya) for the bahuvṛca- Āśvalāyana tradition, occurring in Taṇṭantoṭṭam Plates of the Pallavas, dated to 790 CE: four families (items 23 [kāśyapa gotra; Nimbēi Vaḍugaśarma-trivedi]; 97 [bhāradvāja gotra; Aṇappūr Bhavarudra-caturvedin; 128 [rathītara gotra; Mēṟṟamaṅgalam Uttarakaraṇika alias Ayyan Parameśvaran; 134 [gārga gotra; Vaṅgippāru Damodara Bhaṭṭa]; Mahalingam 1988: 289-313; see below) adhering to this sūtra are part of the brahmadeya deed, living in the Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam area of the Tamil country, in the southern parts of today’s Andhra Pradesh. Today, the term has survived only among the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās, designating the Āśvalāyana tradition, placing the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās thus in north-eastern part of the Tamil country as late as the 8th century CE (see below for a fuller discussion of the Pallava epigraphy and significance of the occurrence of the term paviḻiya this far north and northeast). We know as well that a Vedic ritualist like Hastiśarman—of Kāśyapa gotra and Jaiminīya Sūtra–of Vasiṣṭhakuṭi, thus with the historical identity of a Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhā and from the southern parts of the Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam area in the Tamil country, could arrive at Kerala and become a “Nambūdiri” Pūrvaśikhā there in roughly the same period: the impediment of the language and the alienation from long separation having not yet arisen.56 All of this would also explain the ‘anomalous’ alignment between the Śārada text and the Malayalam version, the latter being almost identical to the *Pūrvaśikhā text, rising directly from the template of the Śārada text, but leaving the Tamil country proper with the historical Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās at the Kaḷabhra Interregnum. As I elaborate elsewhere, it is possible the Pūrvaśikhā group which moves to Malabar to become the historical Nambudiri Brahmans, were already concentrated in the Karur region of the Cēra kingdom during the Sangam period, facing the Palghat gaps and arriving in the Malabar country through those gaps at the Kaḷabhra Interregnum, their settlements literally ballooning into Malabar from the Tamil country (Map II).57
It is even more significant that a *Pūrvaśikhā SR text remains in the Tamil country. This is my Σ-SR text, my choice of Greek letter hosting the ‘σ’ of Sukthankar’s σ-text, the two together giving rise to the Grantha-Telugu SR version in time. We must keep in mind that Sukthankar created the σ-text out of a theoretical need: he saw that all manuscripts from the peninsular region were familially Southern Recension texts, but the Tamil (Grantha)-Telugu texts showing greater exposure to the Northern Recension texts than the Malayalam versions. He hypothesized the σ-text, a Northern version, coming to the peninsular region, with, as we see now, the Aparaśikhā Brahmans. It is of interest as well that Sukthankar assumes a Southern Recension text to be resident in the Tamil country, although he does not designate it with a Greek letter, to host the σ-text, and transform it at the same time to the mould of the Southern Recension. In my chart above, this is the Σ-*Pūrvaśikhā text, remaining in the Tamil country with the rump Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans.
It is possible to link, in fact, the Σ-SR text to one branch of the rump, the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās, concentrated in the Cōḷa region thus acquiring the name. The evidence for this—more fully rehearsed below in Section B. v–comes from the role that the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās are seen playing in the emergence of Śrīvaiṣnavism in the post Kaḷabhra period, ca. 7th CE. All four Brahman Āḻvārs are Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans by tradition, functioning thus, as we will see below, as a conduit for the Kṛṣnaism of the emerging Śrīvaiṣṇavism from the Mahābhārata. We know that the epic, especially the Harivaṃśa, is the sole source for the Kṛṣṇa material in the Āḻvār songs, not the Purāṇas, the earliest of the latter emerging in North India, ca. 200 CE when the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans are already in the Sangam Tamil country (see below). We noted above the long Kṛṣṇaistic insertion from the Harivaṃśa into the Sabhāparvan, already done in the Sangam period, certainly before the Kaḷabhra Interregnum. It is quite likely that Kṛṣṇaism is incipient in the Tamil country even during the Sangam period: Ramanujan counts some 34 names among the Sangam poets with “kannan” in their names, the endearing diminutive for the god in Tamil.58
B. iii. The Kaḷabhra Interregnum and the Dispersal of the Pūrvaśikhā Group
Although the precise details of this famous interlude in Tamil history are still shrouded in mystery, there is wide consensus of historical opinion that, first, it occurred; second, it was caused by the invasion of the Tamil country by the Kaḷabhras from the Karnataka in the west and northwest, and third, the invasion had a religious component to it in that the Kaḷabhras were Jains. No doubt, the Kaḷabhra’a anti-Brahmanism, as evidenced in the Vēḷvikkuṭi Plates, received exaggerated play in the early historiography of the subject, the famous “long night” interlude of Tamil history according to K.A.N. Sastri (1964:19),59 but as the plates, certainly the central document of the Kaḷabhra Interregnum, show, the dispossession of Brahmans did take place and some sort of restoration under the Pāṇṭiyan rule was in place by early 7th century CE, ca. 620 CE, in Kaṭuṇkōṇ’s reign.60 It is useful to remember that the anti-Jainism of the Bhakti poetry, especially that of Appar and, with greater virulence, in that of Tirujñānasaṃbandar post- dates the Kaḷabhra Interregnum,61 perhaps, as I argue in Section C below, is even caused by it. Neither the Tamil Brāhmī cave inscriptions nor their literary counterpart, the Sangam poetry, even with, as noted above, a significant Vedic and Brahmanical content, is hostile to the Jains or their religion: in fact, as we will see below, in Section C, the Tamil Brāhmī inscriptions show that the Jain religion played a role of paramount importance in the Tamil-Kerala country from 3rd century BCE to 6th century CE. In other words, there was an interregnum in Tamil history about this time, from 5th to 7th centuries CE, with a before-and-after scenario: Sangam poetry with its heroic ethos before and the Bhakti poetry with its devotional ethos after. No doubt, there were many cross-over features from Sangam poetry to the Bhakti poetry, for example, in addition to those already noted above, the itinerary poet in both Sangam and Bhakti periods; a gradually sectarian god replacing the king of the Sangam poetry, among others.62 It is in this changed landscape that the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans’ extant historical identities seem to begin to shape. One broad division is that of language, dividing the group into two historical divisions, Tamil-speaking and Malayalam-speaking, but only from ca. 9th century CE, reaching its final shape by the 11th century CE. As noted, intercourse existed between the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās and the Tamil Pūrvaśikhās well into 8th century CE, but by the middle ages of Tamil history, the different segments had begun to acquire their historical characteristics, defining broadly four extant groups: the Malayalam-speaking Nambudiri Brahmans; the Tamil-speaking Śōḻiya Brahmans (with many sub-divisions); the Dīkṣitar Brahmans of the Chidambaram Śiva temple; and the Mukkāṇi Brahmans of the Tiruchendur Murukan temple.
In my scheme, the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās move to Kerala, to its Malabar region, through the Palghat gaps, their arrival creating a śrauta realm along both sides of the Bhāratap-puḻa river (Map II).63 The Tamil Pūrvaśikhās, still, it would seem, in the Kaḷabhra realm, fragment through most of the Kaveri area of the Cōḷa realm and the south east in the Pānṭiyan kingdom, each group carrying with it a common sthalapurāṇa of their new homes, the most well-known of which is to be found among the Pūrvaśikhā Dīkṣitars of the Chidambaram temple: a given number of families, 3000 in the case of the Dīkṣitars of Chidambaram (3700 among the Śōḻiya-Śrīvaiṣṇava Brahmans of Tiruveḷḷarai; 2000 among the Mukkāṇi Brahmans of Tiruchendur, 300 among both the Śōḻiya- Śrīvaiṣṇava Brahmans of Tintiruepparai on the Tāṃṛavaṛṇī and Śōḻiya Śaiva Brahmans of Avaṭaiyar Koil on the coast in the north in the Tanjavur District) arrive at their new homes and find one family missing; the deity of the temple in the new home—Śiva in Chidambaram or in Avaṭaiyār Koil, Viṣnu-Perumāḷ in Tiruveḷḷarai on the Kaveri or Tintirurupperai on the Tāmravarṇī, or Murukan-Subrahmaniam at Tiruchendur–taking his place. It is seen that this particular narrative occurs only among the Tamil Pūrvaśikhā groups, suggesting a common origin. It should be further noted that all three principal gods of the Tamil country appear in the trope.64
B. iv. The Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās and *Pūrvaśikhā Text in Emerging Kerala
A central point of my argument is that a *Pūrvaśikhā text leaves the Tamil country with the Pūrvaśikha Brahmans, the later historical Nambudiri Brahmans, by now almost certainly in the palm leaf manuscripts and, most likely, already in Grantha script or an early related Southern Brāhmī script, an important point to which I will come back in Section D below. When this manuscript arrived in Poona for collation purposes toward the preparation of the CE, it was found to be the shortest SR text, besides being the “best,” a universal editorial comment,65 pointing to the high order of its native scholarly ecology in terms of the manuscripts and transmission over time. They were in palm leaf manuscripts, many bearing the colophon datings of the 19th century and the script in which it was transcribed was the Ārya-eḻuttu, a script that Mahadevan see as originating from adaptation between the Grantha script and the Vaṭṭeḻuttu scripts (see below for a full discussion of this.) The earliest manuscript dates from the fist half of the 18th century, and as far as can be ascertained, the longevity of the palm leaf manuscript in the tropical weather of Kerala is somewhere between 200 to 300 years, giving us three cycles of re-copying from their probable date of coming to Kerala.
We do not know if the text developed during this phase.66 The traditional Nambudiri lore lays great stress on the śrauta tradition: dating from about precisely this period, how ca. 400 CE, it received a new orientation from Mēḻattōḷ of 99 Agniṣṭomas, a figure of the first importance in this tradition-bound community, only Indra’s intervention deterring him from the 100th—in a sort of variation of the play of numbers in general of the Pūrvaśikhā sthalapurāṇas, noted above.67 The entire extant Nambudiri śrauta tradition derives from this figure such that the eight families or gṛhaṃs which took part with Mēḻattōḷ in the original marathon series of Somayāgas form the traditional elite of the community, the well-known āḍhyān group of eight families, and the root sites of these families cluster on the Bhāratap-Puḻa banks on both banks, west of the Palghat gaps, comprising the current districts of Malappuram to the north of the river, Palghat directly to its west and Trichur south-southwest (Map III).68 The six temples to which all families with the traditional śrauta rights also cluster in the same area.69
The epic seems to have had a different history, a line of development we will see in the Tamil country as well: it becomes widely disseminated into the Kerala society at large, supplying first a fundamental set of scenes of the kūṭiyāṭṭaṃ and later the kathakaḷi dance repertoire, passing thus from the hands of the Brahmans per se, as the performing 40 and singing personnel of the dance drama were traditionally non-Brahmans. It is likely that the manuscripts themselves of the different parvans lay dormant during the process, the epic leaching out to a wider public in songs—in striking contrast with the strictly regulated śrauta tradition, with only families with the traditional right, deriving from the 99 Mēḻattōḷ agniṣṭomas, to perform the śrauta ritual undertaking it, even today. Thus it is that that the first re-telling of the Mahābhārata in Malayalam comes from Tuñjettu Eḻuttacthan, a member of the Nair community, ca. 16th century CE, in the kiḷippāṭṭu mode, one tenth in extent of the entire epic. It is of equal interest that a complete verse-to-verse translation of the epic appears also in non-Brahman circles, not Nair but princely families with links to the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās through the saṃbandham alliance system, in Kuññukkuṭṭi Tampuran’s 125,000-verse (inclusive of the Harivaṃśa) translation of the epic, reliably recorded to have been accomplished in an astonishing 874 days, (1904- 1907), with the Harivaṃśam taking another 3 1⁄2 months.70
B. v. The Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās, the *Pūrvaśikhā text, and the Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism
It is of the utmost importance to note that a *Pūrvaśikhā text remains behind in the Tamil country, my Σ-text, in the hands of the future Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās. It stands to reason that it would; it is unlikely that all traces of the epic would have left for the Malabar country with the future Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās at the Kaḷabhra Interregnum. It is also the concrete evidence that the *Pūrvaśikhā version had risen in the Sangam country before the Kaḷabhra Interregnum as a text of the entire Pūrvaśikhā group: we see the texts in the hands of its two branches, otherwise already linked by the pūrvaśikhā tuft and rare Vedic śākhās. And the Σ-SR text produces even more far-reaching aftermaths than the *Pūrvaśikhā that moved to the Malabar country with the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās: it functions as the nursery of the Śrīvaiṣṇava-Bhakti movement in the peninsular region. It also hosts the Sukthankar σ-text, a theoretical entity conceived by him to fit the patterns of textual histories and developments revealed by the manuscripts. First, the Σ-text provides the basis for the Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa-Kṛṣṇa content of the Āḻvār-Vaiṣṇavism, especially its khilā parvan, the Harivaṃśa. As we have already noted, the Harivamśa of the Mahabhārata was the principal conduit of the Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa content to the merging Āḻvār-discourse of the Śrīvaiṣnavism: All the four Brahman Āḻvārs (three male and the fourth the foundling daughter of one of them) were Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās, presumably thus with Σ-text of the SR. It is their songs, and those of other seven non- Brahman Āḻvārs, that are collected as the Nālāyiradivyaprabhandam (The Four Thousand Sacred Utterances; NDP), establishing the Kṛṣṇa-Viṣṇu of the Mahābhārata (and Rāma of the sister epic Rāmāyaṇa) as the central figure in the emerging Śrīvaiṣṇava Bhakti movement, in the post-Kaḷabhra period, 6th-9th centuries CE. We must note here, and I will come back to it, that the source for the Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism is solely and entirely the epic (Hardy 1983), the Vaiṣṇava literature of the north (2nd century CE), the Viṣṇu and Brahmapurāṇas in particular, playing no part in its formation.71 As in Kerala above, in Section A. iii, the epic seems to spread beyond the Brahmans in the Tamil country as well, in that the other seven Āḻvārs are from non-Brahman social groups, Nammāḻvār- Śaṭagōpan in particular, eventually to become the most iconic of all Āḻvārs. Also, as in Kerala, the epic comes to structure the important non-Brahman repertory of the kūtthu rituals of the non-Brahman social groups of the Tamil country. I will come back to both these problems below.
And second, the Σ-text functions as the host Mahābhārata to the in-coming Aparaśikhā Brahmans and their σ text. As noted earlier, we do not know if this group, beginning to be attested in significant numbers in the Tamil country proper well after the Kaḷabhra Interregnum, brought with them the epic, although the conclusion, based on their distinguished Vedic credentials (see below), that that they did so is irresistible. And if they did, considering that their original homes lay in the Mathurā region on the Yamunā in a time period starting with 5th to several centuries afterwards, it was a Northern Recension text, possibly part of the Vulgate (K) group, as is indeed shown by the Sukthankar phantom σ-text. Yet the Tamil and Telugu versions of the Mahābhārata that went to Poona, mostly from Tanjore’s Sarasvatī Mahāl library, subsequently, an Aparaśikhā center of learning, (first created in the 1600’s CE under Tanjore Nayakas as Sarasvatī Bhaṇḍār, re-established in 1820 in its present name by King Serfoji II of the Mahratta rule of Tanjavur; see below), are all in the mould of the SR. It was in order to solve this difficulty that Sukthankar created the σ-text. He is not linking it to Brahman migrations; he sees that the Tamil (Grantha)-Telugu manuscripts of the epic are all in the mould of the Southern Recension, vastly inflated in comparison to the Malayalam version of the epic, but familially also of the SR. Moreover, he finds this extra epic material to align itself regularly with the Northern Recension: so a NR must be present in the scene, the basis for his σ-text—the text we see coming in the scheme I am suggesting, with the Aparaśikhā Brahmans. As I noted above, that Sukthankar’s hypothetical σ-text finds a logical niche in the scheme proposed here of the migration of epics and Brahmans may well be the most probative link in its reasoning–Sukthankar’s hypothesis validated by concrete evidence from the Brahman migration of my scheme.
What is of interest, on the other hand, is that the SR text of the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās, our Σ-text, holds the stage in facing the σ-text of the Aparaśikhā Brahmans. The Aparaśikhā Brahmans, arriving in the Tamil country at the Pallava-Cōḷa patronage for more than half a millennium, become in time the dominant Brahman group of the Tamil country, outnumbering the Tamil Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans almost 25 to 1 by modern times and transforming them in the process into a minority in their own homes, and at that a thoroughly “interpellated” group.72 Yet the resident Southern Recension text, the Σ-text of the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās, holds the stage for the day. I will note that this is in keeping with another major product of interaction between the two Brahman groups, the complex tradition of the mature, historical Śrīvaiṣṇavism.
We know from their Veda śākhās (see below) that the Aparaśikhā Brahmans originate in the Mathurā region on the Yamuna River, already a major area of the Kṛṣṇa cult at their departure ca. 5th century CE and later. There can be little doubt that the early Vaiṣṇava literature (Viṣnu- and Padma-Purāṇas) was known to them, if they were not its creators in the first place. Yet we see that they re-orient their native Vaiṣṇavism to the Āḻvār texts, the resident host Vaiṣṇava tradition of the Tamil country, eventually producing with Nāthamuni and later with Rāmānuja, the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of the historical Śrīvaiṣnavism. As Dihejia (1990) shows, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, ca. 9th century CE, clearly showing the influence of Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism, is the outward manifestation of this synthesis, in some ways a counterpart in the Bhakti world to the Tamil (Grantha) and Telugu versions of the Mahābhārata in the epic world. I will come back to this problem in detail below.
It must be added here as a general point that the precise knowledge of the origin and development of Śrīvaiṣṇavism in South India is far from adequate and still clouded by zealous hagiography and sectarian ethos. We find that as late as S. Krishnaswamy Aiyangar’s Early Vaiṣṇavism (1914), Rāmānuja is thought to have preceded the Āḻvārs in the traditional Aparaśikhā historiography. Aiyangar is establishing what we know to be the broad historical sequence that characterizes the development of Śrīvaiṣṇavism in the Tamil country: first the Āḻvārs, fixed at a number, twelve in Rangachari ([1931]1986: 9), then the open-ended sequence of Ācāryas beginning with Nāthamuni, as we will see, an Aparaśikhā Brahman. We must note that the founding Āḻvār stratum of Śrīvaiṣṇavism entirely pre-dated the Aparaśikhā Brahman arrival, and it comprised several non- Brahman figures, not found to be the case with the Ācārya phase, which is an all- Brahman list. This is the reason why the entire Brahman content of Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism is found to be made up of the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās; the Aparaśikhā numbers swell through the 108-grāmadeya system only by the latter half of the Pallava reign, indeed supplying Nāthamuni the first figure in the Ācārya sequence and an Aparaśikhā Brahman, who creates the NDP from the Āḻvār compositions with the assistance of Maturakavi, a Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhā. An interesting incident in the life of this figure gives us a picture of the social dynamics between the resident Pūrvaśikhās and the immigrant Aparaśikhās, resulting in what I have characterized above as the interpellated status (see note 50 above) of the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās. Nāthamuni, already seen to be associated with the Pūrvaśikhā Maturakavi, sends his disciple Uyyakkondar, also a Pūrvaśikhā Brahman and second to Nāthamuni in the later Ācārya sequence, as his wife’s escort to one of the area Pallava era land-grant Aparaśikhā settlements, where he is fed stale food outside the host- Aparaśikhā home because of his pūrvaśikhā, the outwardly, visible and experience-near marker (an incident strikingly recalling the more famous later one, in Ramanuja’s life, [see below] involving a similar conduct by his wife toward Ramanuja’s guru, Periya Nambi). The principals in both incidents, Nāthamuni and Rāmānuja, behave with noble revulsion toward the interpellation, Rāmānuja renouncing family life and wife and Nāthamuni extolling his disciple with the name Uyyakkondar [“you elevated me”], the name by which he is known in subsequent tradition.73 Indeed, so much so, it is hardly known in the Śrīvaiṣṇava community, as I found in my fieldwork, that all four Brahman Āḻvārs were Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans,74 even though as noted already and as we will see in detail in Section C, this scenario is verified by the epigraphy of the Aparaśikhā Brahman migration and the textual history of the SR Mahābhārata beyond all uncertainty. All of this throws, it must be added, interesting light on the acculturated state of the relationship between the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans and the indigenous non-Brahman groups: together they create (as is the case with the Nāyanmār-Śaivism as well) the Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism. And we may ask what were the sources for the Kṛṣṇa myths—the three Viṣṇu steps, the various avatāras, that of dwarf Vāmana especially; the Govardhana mountain and above all, what Ramanujan (1981: 150-152) calls the “mutual cannibalism” of Kṛṣṇa and his devotee–in the poetry of Nammāḻvār, a non-Brahman Āḻvār and eventually the most iconic of all Āḻvārs? It will be recalled that Friedhelm Hardy (1983: 413 and see note 49 above) poses this question with respect to the Brahman Āḻvār, Periyāḻvār (Viṣṇucitta), answering that the source could only have been the Mahābhārata, Harivaṃśa in particular (the Σ-SR text in my scheme) and not the early Purāṇas—a conclusion broadly applicable to Nammāḻvār as well as other non-Brahman Āḻvārs. Hardy takes Periyāḻvār’s Sanskrit learning for granted: can we do so for the non-Brahman Āḻvārs as well? Perhaps not, but it is clear that the epic is no longer confined to its Sanskrit traditions. As we know, a Tamil translation already existed in the Sangam period, and as in Kerala, the material from epic begins to enter broadly into the social life of non- Brahman groups, in the kūthu repertory. As additional evidence of this, Hiltebeitel (1988; 1991a) has shown that the Draupadī cult is deeply entrenched through the length and breadth of the Tamil country.
B. vi. The *Pūrvaśikhā text and the Poona Critical Edition
Altogether 11 centers sent *Pūrvasikhā Mahābhārata to the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute at Poona from inside Kerala, 5 of them private Nambudiri homes (mana), others chiefly princely families and palace libraries, all, however, with close connections to the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās through the saṃbandam alliance system.75 The colophon dates appear only occasionally, generally in the 19th century. No single center sent an entire corpus, Cochin State Library sending a maximum of 15 (Ādi, Sabhā, Virāta, Udyoga, Drona, Śalya, Sauptika, Strī, Anuśāsana, Śānti [minus the Mokṣadharma], Aśvamedhika, Mausala, Mahāprasthānika, Svargārohaṇa) and four sending only one parvan. However, all 24 parvans of the *Purvaśikhā text existed in Kerala. Moreover, if a particular house or center did not send a parvan to Poona, it did not mean that the parvan did not exist in that house or center. Thus for example in 2005 when I visited the Poomulli Mana, which sent the largest number of parvans (12) from among the Nambudiri homes to Poona, I saw the Bhīṣmaparvan in the mana’s very dilapidated library in regrettable contrast to its traditional repute for care and up-keeping of records. But it was not one of the 12 parvans that went to Poona from this center. The literary or scholarly ecology which kept these manuscripts in transmission shows itself to have been highly viable. We have the best data available for the Ādiparvan: 26 Malayalam manuscripts of the parvan went to Poona for the collation of the CE, of which 8 made the critical apparatus.76 All the above manuscripts that went to Poona were in palm leaf, written in Malayalam script, in the Āryeḻuttu script that the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās developed in the Malabar province of the present-day Kerala state between the Grantha and Vaṭṭeḻuttu during the 13th century CE (I. Mahadevan 2003: 212). We will see in Section C below that what may be thought of as the ‘scripta franca’ of the entire region of the Kerala—along with the eastern coast of the Tamil country, the Pāṇṭiyan kingdom—was at this time the Vaṭṭeḻuttu form of the Tamil Brāhmī script, a script that cannot meet the entire range of Sanskrit phonology, thus ruling itself out, I will note, as the script in which the SR was created in the same linguistic area. We will further see, from I. Mahadevan (2003) on the scripts of South India, that the only script that offers itself for the composition of the Sangam era SR *Pūrvaśikhā text was the Grantha script, or an earlier form of it, derived from the Southern Brāhmī script. Mahadevan notes without explanation that the Nambudiris developed the Āryeḻuttu script from the Grantha and the Vaṭṭeḻuttu scripts, around 13th century CE. In fact, in the linguistic map of Kerala, the traditional Āryeḻuttu region forms something of a wake in the Palghat area, largely overlapping the area of the Nambudiri settlements on the Bhāratap-puḻa, the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script spreading to the south from the Bhāratap-puḻā and Kōleḻuttu, a form of Vaṭṭeḻuttu, to the north (Map IV). It is further seen that the area of the Āryeḻuttu script and Śrauta praxis of the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās coincide, suggesting that this script is the product of interaction in situ between the Grantha script that traveled with them to the Malabar region and the local Vaṭṭeḻuttu.
Our best estimate for the longevity of the palm leaf manuscript is 300 years, plus or minus 100 years: thus, the *Pūrvaśikhā text must have gone through two cycles of copying after its creation. We know that there developed in Malabar a social caste of scribes, used by Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās to write down non-Vedic texts, the Sanskrit epics falling in this category.77 * * * * * * *