1
Sukthankar, V.S., et al., eds. 1933-70. Mahābhārata: Critical Edition. 24 volumes with Harivaṃśa. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Almost every editor of the Critical Edition comments on the general differences between the two recensions; the sustained exposition of these is to be found in V.S.Sukthankar’s Prolegomena, i-cx, in his edition of the Ādiparvan (1933).
2
The picture as it relates to the Critical Edition of the sister epic, the Rāmāyaṇa is altogether a different matter for want of a Sukthankar-like figure in the editorial team. The Rāmāyaṇa project began in 1952, when a substantial part of the CE of the Mahābhārata was already available in published form. That is, the “anomalous” status of the Malayalam version of the Mahābhārata was already well established in 100 Sukthankar’s Prolegomena (1933) to the Ādiparvan and in the introductions by the other editors of the Mahābhārata CE. It would seem that the Baroda Editors of the Rām. would have shown special interest in the Malayalam version of the Rām., especially after their decision to settle on its Southern Recension for their primary text, (itself a problematic decision), but such does not seem to have been the case. There is no discussion , nor reference, to the problem in G. H. Bhatt’s edition of the Bālakāṇḍa (1960), the first volume of the CE; the other editors Divanji, Āraṇyakakāṇḍa (1963); Mankad, Kiṣkindakāṇḍa (1965); Jhala, Sundarakāṇḍa (1966) seem to have followed the example of Bhatt. It is left to P. L. Vaidya, already with editorial experience in the Mahābhārata project (having edited the Karṇa-, Bhīṣma-, Mokṣa-parvans and all of Harivamśa) to raise the question, when he joins the Ram. project to edit the Ayodhyakāṇḍa (1962) and Yuddhakāṇḍa (1971): he raises the issue of “special alignments” between some Malayalam versions and the Northern Recension Ram. texts. Subsequent to this there seems to have been some effort made to procure more Malayalam manuscripts under the direction of U. P. Shah, the second and last Chief Editor of the Ram. project. Several more Malayalam manuscripts are actually collected, confirming Vaidya’s discovery of close alignments between some Malayalam mss. and some NR texts. For good measure, as if in some penitence for the earlier oversight, Shah reproduces in the last volume of the Ram. CE no less than ten facsimile pictures of the new Malayalam manuscripts freshly collected from various Nambudiri homes in Kerala. But it was too late, as Shah himself acknowledges, astonishingly, in what amounts to a retraction of the entire Ram. CE in a note well after the completion of the entire Ram. project (1980:102): “So far as the Ramāyaṇa Critical Edition is concerned, I believe that further search of M[alayalam] version MSS, representing earlier tradition, and agreeing with N[orthern] for the different kāṇḍas would be necessary and fruitful. We could not do this as we came to know of this at a very late stage, i.e., while editing the Uttarakāṇḍa.” Shah further notes that M4, the Malayalam manuscript used for the Bālakāṇḍa and Ayodhyakāṇḍa “could have suggested this possibility” (102)–rather disingenuously, as it had been done by Vaidya while using the M4 ms. in his introduction to the Ayodhyakāṇḍa. See Pollock, “The Rāmāyaṇa text and the critical edition.” In Princeton Ramāyaṇa, Volume I: 82-93.
3
A sea-borne arrival of the epic along the western sea with the Nambudiri Brahmans is to be rejected for several reasons. I believe that the legend of a sea-borne arrival of the Nambudiris on the Malabar coast is itself not viable: it results from confusing two Brahman groups of Kerala with one another; the Sāgara or Samudra Nambudiris and the Nambudiris properly so called, with a śrauta tradition, profiled in Thurston (1909) and Iyer (1912). The former group does seem to have arrived by sea well into the middle ages, as the name suggests, but just from the Tulu coast, probably bringing with it the Paraśurāma myth from the Maharashtra-Goa coast. An all-Baudhāyana group and known in Kerala as “pōṟṟis” in yester-years, these Brahmans do not have an extant śrauta praxis. On the other hand, as we will see below, there is strong epigraphic evidence for the presence of the second group, the Pūrvaśikhā Nambudiris with Śrauta traditions in the Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam and Cōḷa areas of the Tamil country as late as the 9th century CE. We will also see that the Nambudiri Brahmans share many rare Veda śākhās with their fellow Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, found historically in Tamil Nadu. It is easier to imagine, as is argued here, that the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās moved to the Malabar area of Kerala through the Palghat gaps from the Tamil country than that the Tamil Pūrvaśikhās moved from Kerala to the Tamil country, as the scenario of the sea-born arrival for Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans would have us imagine. Besides there is something overdetermined in the thesis that the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās set sail from the Gujarat coast and traveled south till they arrived in Kerala (Veluthath 1978). I develop in the body of my paper the thesis that the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans as a whole group, were the first group of Brahmans to bring Vedism to South India, and that they formed in the first few centuries of the Common Era a single group, fragmenting into their historical groups and identities after the Kaḷabhra Interregnum, ca. 4th to 7th centuries. Thus the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās can be dated to their Kerala home only from the Sangam-Kaḷabhra period South Indian history.
4
Thennilapuram P. Mahadevan. The Arrival of Vedism in the Tamil-Kerala country: the Pūrvaśikhā and Aparaśikhā Brahmans.
5
It is in Thurston (1909 [I]:393; [V]; 152-241) that we see this distinction formally acknowledged and discoursed, although distinctly from an Aparaśikhā perspective: for instance, we see that the Thurston informants mention the pūrvaśikhā as worthy of note. All the Thurston ‘native informants’ see the pūrvaśikhā mode as exceptional. K. Rangachari is listed in title page as Thurston’s assistant, and he was almost certainly the compiler of the information on the Brahmans of the Tamil and Telugu country. One M.N.Subramania Aiyar (154) is mentioned as the informant for the Nambudiri section for the Thurston volumes. L.K.Anantha Krishna Iyer ([II] 1912: 171-188) is strong on the Nambudiris. All these are, anecdotally, Aparaśikhā Brahmans, in particular from the “vaṭama” and “bṛhatcaraṇam” sections of the Aparaśikhā group, what I characterize (see below; note 6) as the Burton Stein Brahmans, the Brahmans of the Tamil country (including the vaṭakalai section of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava Brahmans) to take to Western education earliest, beginning indeed their lives earlier in the Tamil country under the Pallava-Cōḻa patronage from ca. 5th century CE onward. The distinction between the two types of kuṭumis has been further elaborated by Raghavan (1958); Staal (1960); Parpola (1973; 1984).
6
This is the Peruntēvanār of the invocatory verses to the Sangam anthologies. Peruntēvanār addresses different deities, one each for an anthology, without the sectarian affiliation of the Bhakti period to a single god-head, plausibly thus datable to the period after the Sangam age and before the Bhakti period, 5th to 6th centuries CE. The three invocatory deities are Murukan (Kuṛuntokai); Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa (Naṟṟinai); Śiva (Ainkurunūṛu; Neṭuntokai, Puṛanānūṛu). J. R. Marr (1985: 71) shows convincingly that these verses are decidedly post-Sangam in that their “terms of praise” are similar to those in Tēvāram and NDP, and thus cannot be dated before 7th century CE. They must date thus to the period between the Sangam period and before the Bhakti poetry and its sectarian celebrations of their respective gods.
7
The route is of great interest in contemporary archeology: “Perhaps the most interesting region for an examination of issues related to cultural transformation is the stretch extending from the Palghat gap and Coimbatore to the Kaveri delta. One site especially significant… is … Kudumanal on the northern bank of the river Noyyal, a tributary of the Kaveri. The site saddles the ancient route from the Palghat gap eastward from Karur and Uraiyūr along the Kaveri and dates from the late Megalithic to Early Historical periods (3rd BCE to 3rd CE.)” (Ray 2006: 118).
8
Stein argues (1966: 236) that throughout the Pallava area of Toṇṭaimanṭalam, “large-scale tank-irrigation projects were carried out to convert the central Tamil plain from a region of forest and hazardous dry crop agriculture to a reliable wet cultivation capable of supporting dense population.” Although Stein’s over- emphases on the local autonomy of the nāṭu system, with the Cōḷa state machinery playing no role in its administration, has been questioned and corrected by Karashima (1984:xxv-xxvi) and on the role played by the Brahmans by Champakalakshmi (2001: 60), his thesis that the Cōḷa state undergoes a fundamental transformation by large scale arrival of Brahmans, a process already begun in the Pallava period, remains a historiographical breakthrough for South Indian history. The immigrant Aparaśikhā Brahmans, first attested in the Pallava land grant deeds, form the backbone of this population, the Cōḷas, succeeding the Pallavas and continuing their grāmadeya system seamlessly—the entire process developing a “southern variant of the Āryan civilization,” and “a large population of peasants lent their support to the maintenance of this culture” (237). Stein’s Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (1980) is a fuller treatment of this thesis that the Coromandal Brahmadeya village was a keystone of Coromandal culture: “[D]uring the Chola age, we are afforded the first view…of how wealthy and powerful peasants, Brahmans, great chiefs and kings…shaped a highly variegated landscape to their distinctive purposes. And the arrangements established… during the the Chola period persisted into the modern age notwithstanding political, social and cultural developments which transformed many crucial aspects of South Indian life” (4). It is these Aparaśikhā Brahmans “who had come from North India in the medieval times…went after the English educations (sic) in a big way. These Brahmans had been given special villages or brahmadeyas by the medieval landlords and kings, and they had continued with the study of Sanskrit texts, but they had weak economic roots in South India because they preferred not to do priestly work in the temples and did not work in the land. With their English educations (sic), these Brahmans quickly got the best positions in the civil service and educational institutions, but their success led to resentment on the part of others in South Indian society” (Younger, 1994: 148). Paul Younger is drawing a contrast between the Aparaśikhā Brahmans and one section of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans of my study, the Chidambaram Dīkṣitars.
9
Obviously we do not know what this script was, my asterisks indicating this. From Iravatam Mahadevan (2003), we know that two families of Brāhmī scripts came to the peninsular region; see below Section D for full details and discussion. The first of these seems to have been the prototype of the Tamil Brāhmī script, developed in the Tamil country by the Jains to meet the needs of Tamil phonology, by 250 BCE, with almost a hundred years or so presence there to develop the script to meet the Dravidian phonology. We have no information in Mahadevan about who brought the second Brāhmī script to the peninsular region, giving rise to the Telugu-Kannada scripts on the one hand and the Grantha script, on the other hand, and all meeting the needs of Sanskrit phonology. I raise the question in the text that if the Jains brought a script to South India, the Brahmans could have, too. Thus I would predicate my argument here to the thesis that that the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans were literate when they left the Vedic realm, naturally in a script able to meet the Sanskrit phonology, and that the Sanskrit epics were conveyed in this script to the south, most likely in palm leaf manuscripts.
10
Birchbark was in use in the northwest, palm leaf in the north of India (Witzel 2008). We do not know where exactly the first textualization of the epic took place, (possibly in the western Pāñcāla land). The physical manuscript may have been one of the two.
11
Based on the prosodic study of the meters of the verses that appear in the Gṛhyasūtras, Oldenberg (1892: xiv) shows that these verses, mostly in anuṣṭhubh meters, dating from the late Vedic period, are “later than the time of the oldest Vedic poetry, and coincides rather with the transition period in the development of the Anuṣṭhubh metre, a period which lies between the old Vedic and the later Buddhistic and epic form.”
12
The verse in KGS is a pitṛ-tarpaṇa oblation: sumantujaiminīyavaiśampāyana pailasūtrabhāṣyamahābhāratadharmācāryaāstrupyantu. The epic seems to appear here along with Sūtras and Bhāṣhyas, all three linked to Sumantu, Jaimini, Vaiśampāyana, and Paila. It is not clear why Śuka is missing in the list. It is not clear who the “dharmācārya” is? I have used the Malayalam Kauṣītaki caḍaṅgu. Kunnamkulam: Panjangam Press, 2001: 118. In Oldenberg’s (1886:122) translation of the ŚGS (SBE 29), Mahābhārata is missing, but in his translation (1886:220) of the ĀGS, Bhārata appears in addition to the Mahābhārata. 13Witzel (2005:66): “If the Śuṅga, as Brahmans, took an active interest in the traditional Kuru tales and therefore actually ordered some (’committee’ of) Brahmins to come up with a unified, pro-western and anti-eastern MBh, it would not surprise us to see such Brahmanical patterns in the text.” Kulke and Rothermund (1986: 71) note that the Śuṅgas were not exactly anti-Buddhist. Of Puṣyamitra’s Vedism, there is little doubt, even the puruṣamedha is attributed to him (Kulke-Rothermund: 71)..
14
J. F Staal (1987:371): “The most remarkable feature of the Indian scripts is not their shapes but their scientific arrangement which is basically the same in all the many forms with which we are familiar. Instead of the haphazard ABC’s of the West, the Indian scripts begin with a series of vowels—basically a, e, i , o, u, ai, au—followed by the consistently ordered consonants, beginning with ka, kha, ga, gha, nga etc.” In other words, the phonological analysis of the language preceded the syllabic notations in the Indian example. The significance of this is entirely lost on Western scholars who do not believe that an oral tradition engineered the transmission of large texts in a tape-recording-like fidelity. Goody (1985) is the prime mover of this literacist (mis-)understanding of the workings of the oral tradition, and although refuted and corrected more than once (Staal [1986; 1989], Falk [1988]) but it has continuing vocal proponents in the likes of Rosalind Thomas (1992) and Barry Powell (2002).
15
The Foreword is oddly situated in the CE Ādiparvan, with separate numeration (i-viii) after the lengthy Prolegomena (i-cix) and is easy to miss. It purports to be “cursory remarks “to guide the reader through the labyrinth of the very complicated apparatus criticus.
16
Belvalkar (1947: lxiv): “[T]he urge for variation which is one of the dominant factors resulting in what we now designate as the Southern Recension, was already in operation in the North some ten centuries ago.” I should add here that the only other scholar who really came to grips with this problem was P.L. Vaidya, with a breadth of exposure to the manuscripts of the epic equalling that of Sukthankar and Belvalkar. See note 2 above.
17
We see this best with the African oral epics, and it is very probable that such an inflation probably took place with the Homeric epics as well, with the Parry-Lord systematics of oral poetry suggesting intuitively that an oral song conceived in these systematics and transmitted orally from generation to generation would grow in length over time. For example, there is persuasive evidence that the Malian epic, Sundiata, began its career as a lay in the life-time of its hero of the same name and has remained in oral tradition till mid- 20th century, inflating from the 12th century CE, Sundiata’s times in Mali and incorporating into the body of the song many features anachronistic with respect to the original first song. It would be safe to say the Mahābhārata was in such a phase only in its formative stages, during the “Vyāsa’s Bhārata” phase in Sukthankar’s master chart of recensions and version of the epic. Its further local inflation was more likely along the lines and modes suggested by Sukthankar (1933). Oral dynamics in the text as we have it may be entirely ruled out; see Hiltebeitel (2005).
18
Hiltebeitel (2006:227-253) focuses on the Nārāyaṇīya unit of the epic, and its recent study by the German Nārāyaṇīya Studien group (Schreiner 1997a; Oberlies 1998; and Gruendahl 2002.) Calling for a “full study” of the M-manuscripts—that is, what I have called the *Pūrvaśikhā SR Mbh—Hiltebeitel (252) shows that the M-manuscript redactors were “concerned to make the epic as comprehensible as possible for a new and linguistically different milieu.”
19
One plausible chain of events may be, considering the consensus of a 300 CE for the Harivamśa section, that the *Sārada text first arrives at the peninsula plausibly with the Pūrvaśikhās by the Sangam period; the Harivamśa follows it to the peninsula after a gap of two or three centuries, by late Sangam period inspiring an entire revision of the *Śārada text, the first SR version. This would also explain the prominence of the Harivamśa-based Kraiṣṇaism in the Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism; see below.
20
“Kapardin/kapardī” is one of the para-Munda words in Witzel (1999: 7). It is accepted that it refers to a “hair knot”; Kuiper (1955) qted. in Witzel (1999:7). We do not know yet how a para-Munda word comes to describe such a striking Indo-Aryan trope.
21
Gerhard Ehlers (gerhard.ehlers@sbb.spk-berlin.de) to “Mi. Witzel” witzel@fas.harvard.edu Subject: Re: EJVS 10-1a. Wed, 24 Sep 2003 11:38:50 +0200
22
See Frits Staal, The Nambudiri Veda Recitation (1960) for information on the Pūrvaśikhā Veda affiliations. This has been supplemented by my two field trips, 2000 and 2004. For instance, the occurrence of the Kauṣītaki Sūtra among the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās (found in Parali village, west of Palghat with Tamil Nadu adjuncts in Ālangudi agraharam in Tanjavur area) came to light in my 2000 field trip, a trip I undertook, if I may add, in part at Michael Witzel’s (1999) Mao-like “back to villages” call in the Indology list; cf. “Vaidics and Vedic religion” Indology@Listserv.LIV.AC.UK, Thu, 13 May 1999: “Work needs to be done on the last remnants of these [kaṭha (Kashmir), Caraka (Maharastra), Vāḍhūla (Kerala), Āgniveśya (Tanjore area), Vārāha (border of Maharashtra/Gujarat), Kapisthala-Kaṭha ([may be] in Gujarat)]. Why not on your next trip to India? They may be just next door, outside of Nagpur, Tanjore or Ahmedabad. Not to forget some of the reciters who may have settled in Benares….”
23
Kunjunni Raja, “Introduction” (1995 [VIII]:710) to O.M.C. Narayanan Nambudirippad, 1966-85. Ṛgvēdam: Bhāṣābhāṣyam. 8 Vols.
24
The Malayalam title for the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhā’s Āśvalāyana-Bahuvṛca Gṛhya Sūtra text is Pakaḻiya Caḍaṅgu. Ed. and collected by Kāṇippayyūr Sankaran Nambudirippad (Kunnamkulam: Pañjāṅgam Press, [1986] 2001). Paviḻiya [pavaḻiya, pakaḻiya] is authoritatively explicated by K.V. Subramania Ayyar ([Epigraphia Indica XXI]: 223). He quotes from his earlier article in South- Indian Inscriptions (n.d.VI: 312): “One of the epigraphs of Uttaramallur belonging to the reign of the Cōḷa King Rajendra Cōḷa I (A.D. 1031-1045) registers a gift of land as paviḻiya-kiḍaippuṛam and stipulates that the men who enjoyed the income from it should live in the village and teach the Veda.” He adds in note 3 (223):”kiḍai [sic for kiṭai] in Tamil means teacher and paviḻiya, a term that is not explained in dictionaries is connected phonetically with bahuvṛca . As such provision must be made for teaching the Ṛgveda.” It is almost certain that its extant use in the Tamil middle ages was among the Śōḷiya Pūrvśikhās, the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās having already left the Tamil country for the Malabar region through the Palghat gaps. Oldenberg (1886: 6-7) notes the link between Śambavya and the Kauṣītaki tradition; he uses a Grantha ms. to reconstruct the “correct text of the Śānkhāyana-Gṛhya” bearing the title Kauṣītaka-Gṛhya at the end of each chapter, with a metrical commentary following the text, declaring the link between Śambavya and Kauṣītaki in the opening verse: “Having bowed to the most excellent author of Sūtras, to Śambavya, the Ācārya belonging to the Kauṣītaka school, I shall compose a short commentary on his Gṛhya, which has been forgotten by many” (Oldenberg’s translation). Gonda, Ritual Sūtras (1977: 606-607) expatiates further on the link between the J[Ś]āmbviya Sūtra and Kauśitaki Sutra: “A southern text, designated at the end of the single chapters as Kauṣītaka-Gṛhya and therefore professing to follow the same ṛgvedic tradition, is in a metrical commentary attributed to Śāmbavya. This work—which contains nothing of the last two chapters and only parts of the rites described in ŚGS. III and IV—differs in certain details from Śānkhāyana and includes inter alia the piercing of the lobes of a child’a ear (karṇavedha) (1, 20-1-8) which is wanting in the other gṛhyasūtras of the Ṛgveda and (in Chapter V) rites concerning the pretas (the departed spirits for whom the obsequial rites have not been performed)” (Parenthesis in the original). It is significant that Gonda notes that it is a “southern text”. Most likely, it belongs to the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās. This needs further investigation.
25
See Frits Staal (1983), Agni. 2 Volumes.
26
See C.V. Somayajippad, M. Itti Ravi Nambudiri, and Erkkara Raman Nambudiri (1983), “Recent Nambudiri performances of Agniṣṭoma and Agnicayana” in Agni II: 252-255. Eighty families are listed, from 1837 to 1965, with hautram being that of the Kauṣītaki tradition in all. This has been supplemented in Namboothiri.com website, “Recent Namboothiri Performances of Agniṣṭoma and Agnicayana.” The total dominance of the Kauṣītaki tradition in the extant Pūrvaśikhā Śrautism resembles that of the Āpastaṃba tradition in the extant Aparaśikhā Śrautism (see below), although unlike the Āpastaṃba adherents, the Kauṣītakis constitute a distinct minority among the Pūrvaśikhā Ṛgvedis.
27
At a draft stage of this paper, Michael Witzel (2008) raised a question if this assertion was true. I corresponded with Vinod Bhattatirippad, the convenor of the Namboothiri.com and a person with easy access to Nambudiri śrauta experts at all levels, on the question and am able to report here that no Śrauta praxis aligning these Vedic canons is extant even anecdotally or in memory and nor does it seem to have ever existed. Interestingly in Witzel’s (1987; 1989) localization scheme, the Vādhūla home is in the farthest east, on the Gangā, not far from the home of the Kauṣītaki Ṛgveda: it is possible that the special alignment between the Kauṣītaki and Baudhāyana traditions—the BŚS stipulating a Kauṣītaki sadasya— perhaps excluded a tie up with the Vādhūla tradition. It must be noted too that in the recent past, the Kauṣītaki Ṛgvedis routinely mastered the Baudhāyana ādhvaryam (over and above their own hautram), showing that Kauṣītaki and Vādhūla traditions never really aligned in śrauta praxis in the first place in their original homes.
28
“Sadasya” occurs thrice in the Ādiparvan (48.5-10) in the context of the Snake Sacrifice, first to mark in general the king’s sadasya. i.e., assembled guests; second referring specifically to Vyāsa, after enumerating the four chief śrauta priests (hotar, udgātar, brahman, adhvaryu), and third, as in first, signifying the collective audience at the ritual, first Vyāsa’s sons and pupils, followed by an honor roll call that lists Uddālaka, Śamanṭhaka, Śvetaketu, Pañcama, Asita Devala, Nārada, Parvata, Ātreya, Kuṇḍajaṭhara, , Kuṭighaṭa, Vātsya, the old Śrutaśravas, Kahoḍa, Devaśarman, Maudgalya, Śamasaubhara. van Buitenan (1973: 445) glosses the term as “cocelebrants”
29
Ērkkara Raman Nambudiri provides an instance of it. He was the Sadasya priest of the 1975 Agnicayana, studied by Frits Staal, and is generally acknowledged to be the foremost Nambudiri Srauti of the 20th century; see Mahadevan and Staal (2005: 377). See note 26 below.
30
See now Witzel 2005:65; note 153: “The first elaborate frame story, with several hierarchical levels, additionally distinguished by narrative tenses, is found in JB 3.120-128 (italics in the original).
31
Parpola notes further that the migration of the Jaiminīyas to South India was somehow “intimately related to the composition of the Mahābhārata.” (1984: 463). The Pūrvaśikhā link to the epic may also be seen in the name Śukapuram, the most active Śrauta village of the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās, derived from Śuka (Parpola 1984: 463), one of the five redactors of the epic under Vyāsa.
32
For a concise discussion of the term siṣṭa in Patañjali, see Cardona (1990); see See Madhav Deshpande (1993) for the evolution of the idea of the śiṣṭa Brahmans.
33
Apte (1958: 1177): “ [B]y birth he is known as a brāhmaṇa; on account of sacraments he is called twice- born; through knowledge he becomes vipra; on account of all three he is called śrotriya.”
34
Friar Tuck is P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar’s (1928) choice of figures, as quoted in K.A.N. Sastri (1976: 72-73), but a mythology centering around Agastya as the figure bringing Brahmans southward is commonplace in South Indian historiography. Paradoxically, my on-going study of the gotra distribution among South Indian Brahmans shows that the Agastya gotra is a rare occurrence, one in a thousand, in their gotra samples.
35
This is especially the case with the audgatram cadre as it is the royal road to the śrauta phase of the Soma ritual. The priestly axis between the ādhvaryam and hautram axis seems to have been looser, historically. We have the kāṭhaka-bahuvṛcas of Kashmir, (Renou 1950: 215; n. 1), Yajurvedis (of the Kāṭhaka school) by lineage and svādhyāya, but acquiring the needed proficiency in the praxis of the hautram to function as its personnel–the hota, maitrāvaruṇa, acchāvāka, grāvastut–in the ritual. Kashikar and Parpola (1983 [II]: 249) note that in early 20th century, when the traditional Baudhāyana and Āpastamba ādhvaryams were not available in Poona, an Āśvalāyana sacrificer chose a Satyāṣāḍha school of ādhvaryam causing a “stir among the priests for sometime”. Deshpande (2007) reports a similar case from the 19th century Maharashtra of the Vājanaseyi (-Mādhyandina) Yajurvedis mastering the necessary Āśvalāyana-hautram, even staking a claim to the practice in view of the lucrative fees of a śrauta ritual. We see an opposite example among the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās, the Kauṣītaki-Ṛgvedis appropriating the praxis of the Baudhāyana-ādhvaryam for a śrauta ritual. However, on the other hand, it would seem that the praxis of the audgatram had become specialized altogether, with the adherence becoming family-specific from early times. No cross-Vedic training is evident with the Sāmavedis: whereas Ṛgvedis (the Nambudiri Kauṣītakis) acquire the necessary ādhvaryam expertise to function as adhvaryus in śrauta rituals in Kerala and Yajurvedis (the Kāṭhakas of Kashmir) acquire enough bahuvṛca (Āśvalāyana) hautram to meet the demands of hautram praxis of the śrauta ritual, the Sāmavedis are an independent śrauta cohort. Indeed the Sāmavedis rehearse on their own during the preparation for a śrauta ritual (Staal [I] 1983: 175-183). Thus the Jaiminiya-audgatram families of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans must have constituted an independent cohort of the migration. It is scarcely possible that they showed up sometime later in a Pūrvaśikhā settlement and picked up with the parent body all over again. As we will see below, such a link-up does not take place even when adjacent to one another physically.
36
Schwatzberg Atlas (1992:15) shows the Magadhan hegemony to be total all the way from 76th parallel to the 88th, with the Matsysas, Pāñcālas and Kurus forming an arc on its western borders. This would cover the entire present-day states of Uttar Prdesh and Bihar.
37
Parpola adds, “Dislike of Māgadhas is …common to most Vedic texts from the AS [AV]….Prof Aalto has suggested [to] me, this contempt of the Māghadans in the Veda may have contributed to the growth of Buddhism there” (1968: 30. n.1).
38
As is well known, Brahmans are a secular community today and perhaps do not accord to this ideal. However, Brahmans still linked to a Śrauta tradition and its svādhyāya institutions generally accord to this picture, especially, as literature and fieldwork show, the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās. See Staal (1961; 1983 [I]: 167-189).
39
Witzel (1987: 381): “As often, it is early Buddhist texts which provide more detailed and very useful information [on Brahmans]. The Pali texts, which have been composed only shortly after the end of the late Vedic period, frequently describe in lively and graphic detail what is only alluded to in the Vedic texts, which were, after all, composed by Brahmins for Brahmins…” (My parenthesis).
40
I have used the Dines Anderson-Helmer Smith text (1913) of the Sutta-Nipāta and the K.R.Norman (1995) translation.
41
The dating of the Buddhist canonical texts is problematic. It is generally accepted that an oral tradition worked initially behind the recording and transmission of the Buddhist canonical texts (Gombrich 1988: 29). The “four nikāyas and the early verse collections” are “transmitted as instructions of the Buddha himself” (Schmitthausen 1990:1). However, “in view of the discrepancies between the versions of the different schools as well as other reasons, modern scholars will hardly assert that all (emphasis in the original) materials are literal (emphasis in original) transmissions of Buddha’s sermons” (Schmitthausen 1990: 1). “The inconsistencies in the earliest materials show/imply (sic) a chronological development of the teachings: this development may well have taken place within Buddha’s own life time and preaching career” (Gombrich 1990:5). Bailey and Mabbit (2003:1) note that “the Pali Canon took shape between 5th to 3rd centuries (BCE) and to another 200 years.” The revision of Buddha’s date, now accepted ca. 400 BCE, after Bechert (See Cousins [The dating of the historical Buddha: a review article,” JRAS Series 3,6.1] 1996:57-63), makes the Assaka śrauta scenario even more probable.
42
The phrase is of course Geertz’s (1986: 377-78).
43
S. Palaniappan (2008) has raised questions if this DEDR derivation is acceptable, as the word koṭi also refers to a laundry cord from which clothes are hung for drying. However, as I argue in the text, the DEDR etymology is fairly persuasive that the item referred to, in our example, the fronted tuft, is on the top of the head, as for that of the peacock. The poet uses the horse, rather than the peacock, in his simile to suggest the “streaming” aspect of the hair during flight or gallop.
44
Hart (1999:370, extensive entry: s.v. “hair”) thinks it necessary to provide a subject category under “hair”. Lehman and Malten, A Word Index for Cankam Literature (1993: 159) has 31 entries for kuṭumi in its different forms, spread through virtually the entire Sangam canon.
45
Palaniappan (2008) raises this point. N.Subrahmanian is inclined in both directions in his different publications:. In ([1972] 1978: 333) “The Brahman lad wore a tuft in a knot which resembles a horse’s tail done into a knot;” in (1989: 16) “the Brahmin youth wore his tuft and it resembled the knot of hair on horse’s head.”
46
Varier and Gurukkal (1991) and Narayanan Kutti (2003), both in Malayalam, are welcome additions in this regard.
47
Personal Communication. Sri Narayana Sōmayāji, Ṛgveda adhyāpaka, Rajaveda Pāṭaśāla, Kumbakonam. July 2005. The most popular and frequently performed vikṛti-śrauta ritual in the Tanjavur-Kumbakonam area is the Vājapeya, perhaps the backbone of the Aparaśikhā Śrautism.
48
See his Śrautkaramavivekam (1983). There is universal agreement about his pre-eminence as the śrauta ritualist of the 20th century. See Mahadevan and Staal (2005: 377).
49
See Younger (1994: 120. n. 21.) In a fuller study of the emergence of Chidambaram as a “sacred dynastic center,” Hall (2001) notes Kulōttuṅga (1070-1118 CE) as instrumental in the emergence of the Naṭarāja temple of Chidambaram as the sacred center of the Cōḷa polity, and thus naturally the Pūrvaśikhā Dīkṣitars as the ritual arbiters of the king’s legitimacy, the reciprocity between the monarch and the Dīkṣitars beginning with Vijayālaya Cōḷa in the second half of the ninth century when the Dīkṣitars “ invest him with the diadem and thus confer on him the royal status in recognition of his extensive conquests” (88). Was there a śrauta component to this ritual as with the Rājasūya? We do not know. Perhaps the first question we should raise is about the Dīkṣitar’s śrautism. The audgatram necessary to sustain a śrauta tradition is not extant among them, as a Sāmaveda tradition is not attested among the Chidambaram Dīkṣitars: they are a bi-Vedic group, only the Āśvalāyana Ṛgveda and the Baudhāyana Yajurveda, having survived among them: Ṛgveda-Āśvalāyana makes up ca, 20% of the group, with the rest made up of the Baudhāyana Yajurvedis. In this they resemble the other solely temple-based Pūrvaśikhā group, the Mukkāṇi- Tirucutantiram Brahmans of the Trruchendur temple on the eastern coast in the Pāṇṭiya realm: neither group possesses a Sāmaveda adjunct, suggesting a lapse or absence of the śrauta tradition. The ritually hyper-active Kauṣītaki Ṛgveda tradition is absent in both of these Pūrvaśikhā groups. Thus it would seem that the Nambudiri and the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās formed a closer group—they are both tri-vedis and they share several signature Pūrvaśikhā Veda śākhās. It is of interest too that when the Śōḷiya Pūrvaśikhās are found linked to temple liturgies, as for instance at Avataiyār Koil or Tiruvaṇakkāvu, the liturgy is Vedic, the Āgniveśya Gṛhya Sūtra with the first and the Baudhāyana Gṛhya Sūtra with the second. Neither the Dīkṣitars nor the Tirucutantirars employ Vedic liturgies in their respective temples. It is also not clear if the mastery of the Ṛgveda or the Taittirīya Saṃhita was extant among them, but is avidly pursued today by both, as I found in fieldwork.
50
The Sangam gotras belong both to poets and subjects of poems: “kauśikan” (Aka. 66) and “gautamanār” (Patiṟṟu 3), “ātreya” (Puṛa. 175) being poets and “kauniyan,” the subject of Puṛa. 166.
51
Thennilapuram P. Mahadevan, “The Institution of Gotra, the Ṛgveda, and the Brahmans.” The Fourth International Vedic Workshop, Austin, 2007.
52
We have two epigraphic attestations of this: at Epigraphia Indica XXII (1933-34:167-176); Item 27, (“Tirodi Plates of Pravara Sena II,” “hārkari” is listed as the gotra affiliation of a donee, Varunācārya, by name, located Bālāghāt District in Central Privinces [Madhya Pradesh]. This gotra is not attested in BŚS, the canonical list of gotras linked to the śrauta praxis. Epigraphia Indica (XIV (:163-168), Item 11, “Saṅgōḷi Plates of Harivarman, 8th year” records a grāmadeya to 23 Brahmans of 8 gotras, all well versed in AV, dated to 6th century CE from Vaijayanti, the modern Banavāsi in Śirśi Tālūk in North Kanara District. Harivarman of the Kadamba dynasty is the king. The Brahmans bear the following gotras: Kaimbala (5 donees), Kālāśa (4), Cauliya (1), Valandata (2)—none attested in the BŚS list. The village is apparently extant as Saṅgōḷi on the Malaprabhā in Belgaum.
53
Vinod Bhattatirippad, Personal Communication, June 26 2007; O. N. Damodaran Nambudirippad, Personal Communication, June 23 2007.
54
Indeed, the importance of the gazetteer literature to our understanding of the British India, and one may add the pre-modern period, cannot be over-emphasized. As Ian Jack (2001: xviii) remarks, in a different context, “… as an inventory of India and its great variety the Imperial Gazetteer has never been bettered.” The pervasive ethos of political correctness will not now allow a continuation.
55
J.R.Marr (1985)
56
See Parpola (1984: 442-448): Hastiśarman is the paternal grandfather of the famous Bhavatrāta, the author of a commentary of the Jaiminīya Śrauta Sūtra; he married Brahmadatta’s daughter (of Viśvāmitra gotra) in Malabar and Mātṛdatta was their son. Mātṛdatta was apparently a Vedic prodigy and much in demand both among Brahmans and kings to find enough time to impart to Bhavatrāta, his son, the traditional svādhyāya and thus the latter was taught by his maternal grandfather, Brahmadatta. In due course, Bhavatrāta himself becomes a famous Śrautin, performing the office of the Subrahmaṇia priest of the praxis of the audgatram for the famous Mēḻattōḷ, the figure credited with the revival of śrautism among the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās through his 99 Agniṣṭomas. See also Parpola (Agni [II] 1983: 700-36). Professor Paropla’s edition of the Jaiminīya Śrauta Sūtra—that is, representing the Pūrvaśikhā praxis of the audgatram—is still eagerly anticipated.
57
The geographical pattern of the settlements further questions the notion of the sea-borne arrival of the Nambudiris: the estuary of the river at Ponnani is a wide swathe. But if one follows the course of the Bhāratap-Puḻa from the Palghat mountains, in the Silent Valley region, toward the Arabian sea, one is actually traversing through the sites of the traditionally most important families of the community. There can be little doubt that the movement of the Brahmans was east-west, not west-east.
58
Ramanujan (1985: 323): “34 poets’ names include Kaṇṇan in them. Later, of course, Kaṇṇan was the Tamil form of Kṛṣṇa.”
59
K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Culture and History of Tamils (Calcutta: Firma K.L.Mukhopodhyaya, 1984: 19): “[I]n the Tamil country…we have a historical night after the Sangam period, the curtain rising again only toward the latter part of the 6th century AD. Then we hear of the mysterious and ubiquitous enemy of civilization, the evil rulers called the Kaḷabhras, had come and upset the established political order which was restored only by the more or less simultaneous emergence of the Pāṇdyas and the Pallavas of the Siṃhaviṣṇu line in the Tamil land and of the Chālūkyas of Badāmi across the Tuṅgabhadra in western Deccan.”
60
The text of the Vēlvikkuṭi Plates was published in EI [XVII] 1923-24: 291, but Krishna Sastri’s 1923 translation was found inadequate and was amended by S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar (1941:473). Interpreting Ta. vēlvi in the name of the village to signify “ritual” or “sacrifice” (DEDR #5544 [506]), Aiyangar showed that the text refers to Vēlvikkuṭi as a brahmadeya grant to Korkai Kilan Narkoṟṟan for holding śrauta rituals from the Pāṇṭiyan King Paliyāka Muṭukuṭumi, himself a fabled ritualist as the name indicates and as we know from Puṛanānūṛu 15; see Section D.iii below. Indeed, Korkaikilan Narkoṟṟan’s name resembles in both its phonology and construction those of Sangam poets. In other words, we have here an historical Pūrvaśikhā Brahman, shown as a śrauta ritualist, justifying the name of the village. It is this village that the Kaḷabhras dispossess from his descendants and is being restored to a later, descendant branch, ca. 620-30 CE, in Aiyangar’s estimate (473), by Kaṭuṅkōn, the whole act being memorialized and reaffirmed by Neṭucaṭayan Parāntaka, the sixth descendant from Kaṭuṅkōn, on his third Regnal Year, 769-70, to a present descendant of the original donee family, Kāmakkāṇi Naṛ-Cingar, a name recognizable as a form of Viṣṇu, namely Narasiṃha, illustrating by this date the rise of Vaiṣṇava sectarianist tendencies. As Aiyangar notes (473-4), we have to give a considerable interval from the date of Kuṭumi who originally made the grant, which gave the name Vēlvikkuṭi to the village to the date of its dispossession by the Kaḷabhras; similarly, we have to make allowance for a comparatively long occupation of the Pāṇṭiya country by the Kaḷabhras for Kaṭuṅkōn’s restoration in ca. 620-30 CE. However, by far the most interesting aspect of the Vēlvikkuṭi plates, unremarked by Aiyangar and other historians, is the extreme durability of the family of the donee: it is first recorded in the era of the Paliyāka Kuṭumi of the Sangam era; it then appears as a family dispossessed by the invading Kaḷabhras; the land is restored to the family in the beginning of 7th century, several centuries later; the grant is being ratified, to the continuing line of Narkoṟṟan, late 8th century. We cannot help but think that other Narkoṟṟan-like families were similarly dispossessed, some fleeing. N. Subrahmanian (1996:111) notes that “it is also known that a number of Brahmins migrated to the western parts of the Cērar country particularly when the Kalappirar [Kaḷabhra] were upsetting the social order of Tamil Nadu (my parenthesis).” We know that the Nambudiri tradition orients its śrauta tradition, roughly from this period, in the figure of Mēḻattōḷ.
61
The anti-Jain sentiments of the Śaiva poetry are to be found in the Tevāram songs of both Appar (6.3) and Sambandar (3.108), generally on grounds of want of ritual purity. The Jain practice of plucking hair of the body seems to have attracted particular bile from the Saivite poets. See M. Arunachalam (1979: 49-50) for a composite picture culled from Sambandar’s Tēvāram songs.
62
Hart (1975: 29) likens the Bhakti poets—the Āḻvārs and Nāyanmārs–to the Sangam bards going about the Tamil country “singing ecstatic songs about Śiva and Vishnu.” The loyalty of the Sangam bard to his king transforms into the devotional loyalty of the Bhakti poets to a sectarian god. Ramanujan (1981: 98-99): “[T]he conventional phrases of praise offered to kings in classical Tamil heroic poems” are transferred to God in Bhakti poetry. “In bhakti, all the insignia of a king become the Lord’s, as in South Indian temples—white umbrellas, elephants, yak tails, etc. In Tamil, kō means both “king” and “god”; koyil means both “palace” and “temple” (98).
63
The seven temples to which the historical śrauta segment of the Nambudiri community is affiliated are to be found on both sides of the river: Perincullūr, Karikkar, and Ālathiyūr north from the right bank of the river and Panniyūr, Śukapuram, Peruvanam, and Irinjalakkuda, south from the left bank of the river. Except for Perincellūr, the other six temples dot both sides of the Nīlā [Bhāratapuḻa] River. Perincellūr is situated in the far north, in Cannanore district, and does not fall within the live śrauta core of Nambudiri community, the latter is clustered on the banks of the Nīlā River. Perincellūr is often taken to be (Veluthath 1978) the “Cellūr” of Sangam poetry (Aka. 90), dating from before the Kaḷabhra Interregnum.
64
See Chapter III of my forthcoming “Arrival of Vedism in South India: the Pūrvaśikhā and the Aparaśikhā Brahmans.”
65
“Best” is Sukthankar’s (1933:lxxviii) phrase. Other editors echo this: De (1958:XXX) notes that the Malayalam version is “the most important and representative Southern version;” Belvalkar (1947: CXI): “The Malayalam is the primary Southern version.”
66
It is difficult to decide this as we do not have an extant Σ-SR version, the text we know remained behind with the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās: we have only the Grantha-Telugu version, a result of interaction between the Σ-text and the σ-text, a northern text that Sukthankar constructs theoretically from the evidence of the manuscripts.
67
See Namboothiri.com website for information on the legends of Mēḷattōḷ.
68
These are: Kalakanḍathūr; Mēḻattōḷ, Māthūr, Kulukkallūr, Cemmaṅgād, Pālūr, Muriṅgoth, and Veḷḷa.
69
See note 42 above for a list of these temples.
70
See Ramavarma, Kuññikkuttan Tamburan (1998: 241-273): “Although Koduṅgallūr Kuññikkuttan Tampuran served Kerala in many great ways, there cannot be two opinions that the metrical and pāda translation, in single-handed labour of 2 and 3⁄4 years, of a lakh and quarter verses of the Mahābhārata (including Harivaṃśa), stands out as his single greatest service” (My translation). The prince began work on the translation on the Vernal Equinox of 1904 and brought the project to a completion in 874 days in October 1907 at the rate of 143 granthas a day although the original plan was to attempt 50 (with the Harivaṃsa taking another three months). Ramavarma shows the literary culture behind the entire project to have been of a high order: the original plan, ca. end of 1892, was apparently to translate the epic into a kiḷippāṭṭu mode as a team effort of 10 or 12 poets and scholars, with the Āraṇya-, Śalya-, and Śānti (minus Mokṣa)-parvans being the prince’s share of the project. Apparently the prince met his target, but the project came to nothing as others failed to meet their quota. Early in 1904 the prince was involved in another team project, the translation of the Kṣemendra’s Bhāratamañjari, with the prince taking up its Droṇaparvan and his translation appearing serially in magazines in five issues, but this project too came to nothing. Thus when he embarked on the project of the full translation of the epic including Harivaṃśa, all by himself, on the day of the spring equinox of that year, on the first day of the uttarāyana of the sun, he was sufficiently ready. I have gone into such length here to show the ease with which the entire epic functioned in the literary life of Kerala and was handled by poets and scholars.
71
Friedhelm Hardy (1983) shows beyond doubt that this is the case: as he notes (413), “I would strongly doubt that the Āḻvārs were familiar with the versions [of Kṛṣṇa story] found in Br/ViP [Brahma and Viṣṇupuraṇas]….[I]t seems fairly certain [Periyāḻvār] cannot have known the BhP [Bhāgvatapurāṇa] either” (Parenthetical glosses mine). Posing the question (413), “Where does Periyāḻvār take his mythical themes 110 [bālacarita; gopi metier]?” Hardy answers, “We know that the Harivaṃśa most probably was one of his sources.” As we have already seen, Mahabhārata (II Appendix I: Item #21): 386-422 is substantively derived from adhyāyas 38, 41, 42 of Harivaṃśa.
72
I use the term ‘interpellation’ after Louis Althusser (1971: 127-186), how a people are reduced in status on racial, religious, cultural or economic grounds: the Tamil Pūrvaśikhās as a whole faced such an interpellation, after being reduced to a minority population by the immigrant Aparaśikhā Brahmans, the latter arriving, it should be added, at royal favour so much so that the marginalization of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans in the Tamil country—among Brahmans groups as intra-group phenomenon–is an obvious feature of its ethno-history. I begin with N. Subrahmanian’s (1989: 178; n.5) anecdote about placing social status of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans in the Tamil country in general: “[A] wise person once said that among the Brahmins the Brihatcharanas and Ashtasahasras were brahmins, Vadamas were kshatriyas, the Vathimas were vaisyas and Śoliyas chaturthas [i.e. the Śūdras].” The first three groups make up the main body of the Aparaśikhā Brahmans; the near autochthonous Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās are seen as outside the pale. It must be added that the Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās show themselves as an interpellated group in their first attestation in ethnological literature, appearing in Abbe Du Bois (ca. 1790’s; 1897:110): “There are also Brahmans known as Cholias, who are more or less looked down upon by the rest. They appear to be conscious of their own inferiority, for they hold themselves aloof from the other Brahmans.” Whether their aloofness originated from a consciousness of inferiority is an open question, but Dubois points to the historical distinctness between the Aparaśikha and the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans well into the early 19th century CE. Dubois adds that the Śōḻiya association with the non-Brahman groups of the Tamil country, involving rituals in which blood is shed, is the basis for the low status. This confirms the main point of my argument, that the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans were the first to arrive in the Tamil country and as seen in the Sangam poetry already accultured to the indigenous Tamil population—indeed, to such an extant that Hart (1973: 51) thinks that the Sangam era Brahmans were “unlike” their northern counterparts. If we accept that śrautism is the main, original Brahman profession, then we see that these Pūrvaśkhā Brahmans were and are not different from their northern brethren. In fact, as noted, śrautism is a central feature of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans. It must be noted that the devotion to śrautism did not prevent the rise of Bhakti ethos in the same Brahman group: we see this in the fact that the entire the Brahman component of the Nālāyiradivyaprabhandam were Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, and the Vaiṣṇava Bhakti movement (and the same can be said for its Śaivite branch) with its seven non-Brahman Āḻvārs of the twelve represents fundamental acculturation by the Pūrvśikhā Brahmans into the Tamil world. The Aparaśikhā Brahmans must certainly have been aware of this at their first arrival from the 5th century CE onward. Yet, ironically, both in religion and epic, they accept the Pūrvaśikhā precedent.
73
Swamy Deśikan, Yatirāja Saptati. Ed. Varadachari Sadagopan and tr. C.G.Balaji. 2007: 46-47. Web publication: yatiraja_saptati_part 1 (PDF).
74
The first three Āḻvārs are sometimes classified as Brahmans as well, originating in the Tonṭaimanṭalam area (Gopinatha Rao 1917:2), but clearly mythological figures, all three represented as having been born within a flower on successive days from the same parent. On the other hand, Periyāḻvār (and Āṇṭāḷ), Toṇṭaraṭippoṭi, and Maturakavi seem “historical” figures: I met the 224th descendant of Pariyāḻvār, Vētappirān paṭṭi Govindaraja Iyengar, at his home in Āṇṭāḷ Sannidhi Street, Srivillipputhrur on 24, July, 2006 and was able to confirm that he was a Baudhāyana by sūtra and Aghamarṣaṇa-Kauśika-Vaiśvāmitra (aka Śālāvata) by gotra. Toṇṭaraṭippoṭi Āḻvār was Baudhāyana by sūtra and Maturakavi, a Jaiminīya (gotras unknown for both).
75
Kuññikkuṭṭan Tampuran’s (of note 46 above) father was the famous Veṇmaṇi Atcchan Nambudiri, part of a literary movement named after the Veṇmaṇi family.
76
Sukthankar (1933: v-ix): A total of 235 Ādiparvan manuscripts came to Poona with the following breakdown and script-based distributions: 108 in Devanāgarī; 32 in Bengāḷi; 31 in Grantha; 28 in Telugu; 26 in Malayalam; 5 Nepāli; 3 in Śārada; 1 in Maithilī; 1 in Nandanāgarī. 60 were actually used.
77
We have a fascinating account of the now lost craft of writing—the preparation of the writing medium from the black palm leaves, the utensils and implements of its technology—in Kānippayyūr Sankaran Nambudirippad Ente Smaraṇakaḷ (1964 [II]: 187-195). The social group of ‘kuruppu’ formed apparently the scribal caste. Nambudirippad notes that the Pūrvaśikhā Nambudiris still relied on oral tradition for the Vedic texts and only reluctantly reduced anything Vedic into writing—well into the 20th century. The kuruppus being non-Brahmans may not read anything Vedic: this square was circled by the strict injunction to the kuruppus that they may not read jointly more than four letters at a time. See K.Gough (1968).
78
The Aparaśikhā Vedic texts: Staal’s Nambudiri Veda Recitation (1961) although focusing on the Nambudiris, is fully informative about the Aparaśikhā texts: see Chapter 2 (21-30), “The Veda Recitation of Tamil Brahmans.” His ‘Tamil Brahmans’ are my Aparaśikhā Brahmans—as indeed universally so, as I note in the text below. Kashikar and Parpola (1983:199-251) “Śrauta Traditions of Recent Times” note on their section for, again, the Tamil Brahmans: “The schools followed in the Śrauta rituals Āpastamba of the Yajurveda, Āśvalāyana of the Ṛgveda, and Drāhyāyana and Kauthuma of the Sāmaveda (233).” I have corroborated this over two field trips, 2001 and 2004, to the extent of finding that the Śōḷiya Pūrvaśikhā Vaidikas in urban centers today train themselves in the Āpastamba tradition, as the Aparaśikhās predominate in numbers—and thus prospective clients. Also, the Tamil Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās perform the śrauta rituals using the existing Āpastaṃba cadre of the Aparaśikhā Brahmans, available in the Tanjavur- Kumbakona area.
79
Śukla Yajurveda is attested today in Kerala, around Palghat area, in the both Kāṇva and Mādhyandina traditions, but this is the result of a fairly recent migration from the Tamil country of Brahmans, both Aparaśikha and Pūrvaśikhā, from along the Kaveri delta, to the Palghat area ca. 16th-17th century CE and afterward.
80
Kashikar & Parpola, “Recent Śrauta Traditions” (Agni [II] 1983: 199-251): 233: “The schools followed in the śrauta rituals of Tamil Nadu are Āpastamba of the Yajurveda, Āśvalāyana of the Ṛgveda, and Drāhyāyana and Kauthuma of the Sāmaveda.”
81
The Āpastaṃba tradition forms the backbone of the Aparaśikhā Śrauta tradition, localized by Witzel (1997: 229) on the Yamunā River, around Mathurā, and the two closely related Aparaśikhā Taittirīya traditions, Hiraṇyakēśi [Satyāṣāḍa] and Bhāradvāja, located on the banks of the Ganga, to the east. Together, they constitute a late development in Vedic tradition, ca. 300 CE, with the Āśvalāyana and Kauthuma praxises for its hautram and audgātram adjuncts, respectively. The formation of this Taittirīya school must be seen as a major counter-development to the Vedism of the Kosala-Videha area, with the royal patronage of the Magadha kingdom, the latter derived from the Śukla Yajurveda, its Vājanaseyi Saṃhita. I have alreday indicated above that the Pūrvaśikhā departure from the antarvedi area may be seen as a reaction to the reformed Vedism of the Śukla Yajurveda. The Āpastamba tradition must be seen as covering the entire Mālva territory, extending into the eastern Panjab-Hariyana in the west and the old Kuru area in the north. Its departure from the area, starting with the arrival of the Hūnas in 6th century CE and the Muslims in the later centuries, casts the death knell of śrauta Vedism in the area and the erstwhile heartland of Vedism. However, it survived with the migration of the Aparaśikhā Brahmans from the Mālva plateau to the Tamil country, 6th century CE onward. See below for the Copper Plate epigraphy of the Pallavas and Cōḻas that tells this story.
82
Carman (1974: 32) errs in identifying Periya Nambi (aka Mahā Pūrṇa) as a Pūrvaśikhā Brahman; he was like Rāmānuja himself an Aparaśikhā Brahman, belonging to the Bṛhatcaraṇam group.
83
The ‘Tamil Brahman’ population is generally estimated to be 2 to 3% of the Tamil Nadu population, giving us almost 5 million for the entire state, a high number, I believe. The “vaṭama” group seems to be the largest (Subrahmanian 1972: 334). My estimate of their relative numbers comes from tracking the matrimonial columns of the Hindu newspaper. The once strictly endogamous sub-sect is named in these advertisements, along with the gotra of the prospective groom or bride, the exogamous consideration, the other criterion in Brahman marriages. I must add here that the recent trend, from these advertisements, is greater endogamy between the vaṭama and the bṛhatcaraṇam groups, easily the two largest segments of the Aparaśikhā population. For the Hindu newspaper issues of May 26, 2002 and June 23, 2002, I found the following ratio: Vaṭama:209::Bṛhatcaraṇam:71::Vāthima:12:Aṣṭasahasram 25. The scientific validity of these numbers and ratio is open to question. It is possible that the numbers of the vaṭama group are overrepresented in the sample because they, being most and first open to Western education, use the newspaper for matrimonial purposes. However, I believe that it is generally trustworthy for the two biggest groups, the vaṭamas (66%) and bṛhatcaraṇam (22%): the appearance in an English newspaper is a measure of modernity, and as Burton Stein-Brahmans, the Aparaśikhā group was well-favoured., especially its two largest segments.
84
Mahalingam (1988) has brought together (xxvii) “the texts of all Copper Plates and stone inscriptions of the Pallavas in Prākṛt, Sanskrit, and Tamil” from ca. 350 to 875 CE. The data for the Aparaśikhā migration come all from the Copper Plates, mainly from 19 plates, deeding land to Brahmans belonging to the Aparaśikhā Vedic traditions. The earlier deeds are in Prākṛt and Sanskrit written in different Southern Brāhmī scripts, and later the Pallava Grantha script and Tamil. The earlier deeds are all located in the southern reaches of Andhra Pradesh, the Guntūr and Nellore Districts, historically forming with the northern parts of the Tamil country, the Arcot and Kāñcipuram areas, the Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam. It is only with Simhavarman, ca. 540 CE that the Pallavas reach the Kaveri river (xxix).
85
Mahalingam (1988: 31-34)
86
Richard A. Frasca (1990) shows that the Toṇṭaimaṇṭalam region is traditionally the core area of the kūthu rituals and performances, the Mahābhārata supplying through the Tamil pāratam its sole repertory. See Map VI.
87
This is a mind boggling detail for a modern investigator. Here is a migration story that casts the Mayflower story into shade, in the proper contexts of both, yet its original Copper Plate land grant deeds occasionally turn up when a tiller turns a clod of soil in the field. One might add that this throws interesting light on the issue whether Indians are historical or not. Epigraphy shows clearly that Indian history was written with zeal in these epigraphic records; it does not seem to have been preserved in equal zeal. Witzel (1990) has anticipated me on this question considers the whole question in some detail concluding
88
Stein (1980: 150) notes with reference to the 300 Brahman villages of Cōḻa period for which we have epigraphic record, “It cannot be claimed to be a complete representation of Brahman villages of the period for new ones come to light … and all of them may never be known.”
89
See note 34 above.
90
Āgniveśya adhrerents are #212 and 213 of the Taṇṭantoṭṭam Plates of Nandivarman II RY 58[=789 CE]; Jaiminīya adherent is #19 in Chitrur Plates of Nṛpatuṅgavarman RY 6 [875 CE]; the Paviḻiyas are #s: 23; 97; 128; and 134 of the Tanṭantoṭṭam plates.
91
See Thennilapuram P. Mahadevan, “The Institution of Gotra, the Ṛgveda, and the Brahmans.” The Fourth International Vedic Workshop, Austin, 2007.
92
Louis Renou (1950:215; n.1): “In reality one never belongs to more than one school, either through family tradition or initiation….The innumerable dvivedis and particularly trivedins and caturvedins that we find in epigraphy are merely honorific titles[.]” However, it follows as well that these title holders constituted an elite group among their peers.
93
We have accounts of two Nāyaka period brahmadeyas from the living memory of two illustrious Tamil Brahmans of the modern period, one by U.V.Swaminatha Ayyar (1860-1925) and the other by Śākkōṭṭai Krishnasvami Aiyangar (1871-1947). Aiyar (1950: 1-3) tells the story of the foundation of his natal village Uttamadānapuram, how a Tanjavur nāyaka king breaks the rule of ekādaśi observance and in expiation founds the village with 24 wells for 48 Brahmans from far and near. Aiyangar’s (1941: [II] 297-98) village is the grāmadeya of Vijayarāghava Nāyaka, the son of Raghunātha Nāyaka in latter’s memory and carrying the name Raghunāthapura, near Kumbakonam. Fortified by the Mahratta kings, when Tanjavur passes into the Mahratta control, the village acquires the name Shahjikkōṭṭe after Shahji, the Viceroy of Bijapur and father of Śivaji, and becoming later the modern Śākkōṭṭe.
94
As Champakalakshmi (2001) notes, “the studies of Burton Stein, Kenneth Hall, and Noburu Karashima are historiographically significant in recognizing that there is no homogeneity in the brahmadeyas of the Tamil region”(61). However, as I show here, there was some homogeneity in the Brahman immigrants sponsored by these post-Kaḷabhra kingdoms, a homogeneity that was to continue into the Pāṇṭiyan and Nāyaka periods to follow.
95
We have a meticulous edition of the text of the Karandai Plates in K. G. Krishnan (1984). However, Krishnan treats the Brahmans of the Karandai Plates as a monolith. Tracking them through their Veda Śākhās as is done in this investigation shows them to be made up at their broadest the two groups of this study.
96
Gonda 1977: 489, note 6: “According to a later text, Ānanda Samhita [see Gonda, Medieval Religious Literature in Sanskrit, in Volume II of this History, p.144] there were fifteen sūtras of the Yajurveda” (parenthesis in the original). Agastya Sūtra is one of the fifteen named. My field work among the smaller Pūrvaśikhā group being more complete, I would say that this sūtra occurs among the Aparaśikhās rather than the Pūrvaśikhās although I have not established a positive affiliation. Gonda (1977[II]:105) mentions an unpublished Agastya Saṃhita, related to the Pañcarātra tradition: it is not clear if the Agastya Sūtra of the Karandai Plates is linked to this text.
97
For Oldenberg, the J/Śāmbavya Gṛhya Sūtra functions as a control text for the Gṛhya Sūtra traditions of the Ṛgveda.
98
I plan to include the search for this in my next field trip.
99
See K. G. Krishnan (1985: 55-56) about the Andhra Pradesh domiciles of most of the Brahmans.
100
Indeed, Nāthamuni’s natal village, Vīranārāyaṇapuram features in the Cōḻa era epigraphy: The village lies in South Arcot, still in the northern reaches of the Tamil country, founded by Parāntaka II (906-946 CE) in 906 CE. See Ramanujachari (n.d.:272), “Nathamuni and His Times”
101
As I show in my on-going work on Brahman migration, Nāthamuni’s gotra is ṣaṭamarṣaṇa: his father is known as ṣaṭamarṣaṇa Īśvaramuni. Although ṣaṭamarṣaṇa gotra occurs among the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans also, it is never referred to by that rubric, but either as Āṅgirasa or Viṣṇuvṛddha, the pravara formula for the gotra being Āṅgirasa-Paurukutsa-Trāsadasyava. In other words, “ṣaṭamarṣaṇa" is an Aparaśikhā term, like pravacana for the Baudhāyana tradition (or pakaḻiya a Pūrvaśikhā term for the Āśvalāyana tradition). Ramānuja’s family gotra, on the other hand, is hārita: we know that it cannot be Nāthamuni’s ṣaṭamarṣaṇa gotra because the matrilineal descent forbids it in that all male descendants of Nāthamani will be necessarily of the ṣaṭamarṣaṇa gotra
102
Dihejia (1990) adduces support for the Friedhelm Hardy thesis (1983) that the Āḻvār Vaiṣṇavism was independent of the Viṣṇu- and Brahmapurāṇas and that it influenced the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, for example, in the trope of pāvai vow (16-18), girls bathing in the river in mid-winter and praying for fine husbands and children, but represented in the BhP in a ‘restrained way’” (18). Dihejia (22) further shows that the pavai and ciṟṟtil tropes (girls pleading to Kṛṣṇa not to break up their sand castles), the latter absent in the BhP, belong to the Sangam poetry.
103
Jagadeesan (1977: 323) notes the tradition, confirmed for me by Puthur S. Krishnaswami Iyengar Swāmi (2000; 2004), that among Āḻvārs, Periyāḻḷvār (and thus his daughter Āṇḍāḷ also), Tonṭaraṭippoṭī Āḻvār, and Maturakavi Āḻvār and among Ācāryas Uyyakkōṇdār, Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Naṃbi, Eṅgaḷ Āḷvār, Periyavācchan Piḷḷai are Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans. We must note first that all the 3+1 Āḻvārs are Pūrvaśikhā Śoḻiyas and, second, that these are the only Brahmans among the 12 canonical Āḻvārs. The situation alters in the Ācārya phase of Vaiṣṇavism. To begin with, the first Ācārya, Nāthamuni, is an Aparaśikhā Brahman. The fact that all the Brahman Āḷvārs are Pūrvaśikhās might well be the most probative evidence in support of the theses of this work. However, although the Pūrvaśikhā Śōḻiyas supply all the Brahman Āḻvārs and a significant number of the Ācāryas, including Rāmānuja’s most important of the five preceptors, the mantra-preceptor (Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Naṃbi), their new and interpellated status in the Tamil country as a minority leads to such statements as these: “Śōḻiyārs…because of their ‘inferior’ social status and a natural willingness to move upward towards a higher status by religious conversion, an opportunity provided by Śrīvaiṣṇavism, converted in large numbers into Śrīvaiṣṇavism” (Jagadeesan 1977: 322; the author’s quote marks). Yet the same author is our printed source for the data that all founding Āḻvārs and a number of Ācāryas were Śōḻiya Pūrvaśikhās. It is difficult to see how “founders” can be at the same time “converts.”
104
See Vai Mu Gopalakriṣṇāciriyar, ed. The Villiputhur Mahābhārata (Ādiparvan). Chennai: Kuvai Publications, 1976: vi. His father’s name was Vīrarāghavācārya, and the poet apparently styled himself as “Villiputhūrāḻvār” after Pariyāḻvār, who we know was a Pūrvaśikhā Brahman, raising the possibility that the poet might have also been a Pūrvaśikhā Brahman.
105
Richard A. Fresca (1990) is the fullest treatment of the use of the Mahābhārata in terukkūttu performances. See also Alf Hilterbeitel (1991b).
106
P.P.S Sastri (1933:iii), quoted in Sukthankar 1942[III]: xxix): Sastri is writing about the differences between the Malayalam—our *Pūrvaśikhā text of the Southern Recension—and the Tamil (Grantha)- Telugu version of the Southern Recension: “Not having been subject to Nāyak influence in any manner whatsoever, the tradition handed down by the Malayalam manuscripts preserved the Grantha text, in a purer and more unmixed form than even some early Grantha manuscripts, as the Malayalam Mss. do not seem to have come into contact with the Northern Recension till very recent times.”
107
See Velcheru Narayana Rao et al. Symbols of Substance: Court and State in Nāyaka Period Tamil Nadu. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992: 1-12.
108
Dirks (1987: 55-107) shows that a distinct “discourse of kingship” exercised this ethos.
109
As S. Krishnasvami Aiyangar (1941 [II]: 286) writes: “He became a great expert with the sword and the shield. He was a past master in the training of elephants. He had mastered both the theory and practice of music. He was a good poet both in Sanskrit and Telugu and was a great scholar in the art of literature.” Aiyangar notes that he composed the Pāñjātaharaṇam in two yāmas (six hours) and scribes had difficulty keeping pace with his composition. At his death, the leading woman poet of his court, Rāmabhadrāmba, composed a Sanskrit epic on his life.
110
Indeed, the role of the Sarasvatī Mahāḷ Library as a supplier of manuscripts to the CE project is worth a study in itself, the Sourthern Recension texts of the Tamil (Grantha)-Telugu script being only one of the areas of interest.
111
I. Mahadevan (1994) “From Orality to Literacy: the Case of the Tamil Society” notes (180-181) that Tamil literacy had an “earlier commencement;” the ruling agencies depended on the “use of local language for all purposes from the beginning”; and literacy had a “popular democratic character.”
112
Hart (1975: 147) draws a radical distinction between the orality of the Pāṇans and literacy of the Pulavans of higher social standing. “Even though the Pulavans did not belong to the low castes, and did
not have the ritual status to play the instruments of those, they did compose songs modeled on those of the oral bards” (148), suggesting the Tamil Brāhmī script as the alphabet of these literate songs.
113
I. Mahadevan (135) translates the relevant Aka. verse thus: “[L]ike the (jaina) monks whose bodies are emaciated by fasting and not bathed (Mahadevan’s parenthesis).”
114
Hart (69-72) has only rather general and vague remarks on the aspects of Jainism (and Buddhism) in Sangam poetry: “There are many poems on the ephemeral nature of life that seem certainly have been influenced by Buddhist and Jaina ideas” (69).
115
We have the famous instance in the third Ten of Patiṟṟuppattu of the Cēra King Palaiyānaccel Keḻukkuṭṭavan hosting the heavenly ascent of his poet Gautamanār and his wife, at the performance of the 10th Śrauta ritual, with echoes to the 100 agniṣṭomas of Mēḻattōḷ Palaiyanār Gautamanar was the King’s poet; Melangath Narayanankutti (2003: 378-79). J.R.Marr (1985:299-300).
116
This is the Ehret model (1988) which Michael Witzel has used in his writings (1999, 2003) to characterize the mutual acculturation between the immigrant Vedic Aryans and the indigenous peoples of South Asia in the Vedic period. The Vedic oral traditions would constitute in this model a sort of prestige or status kit, with the host populations adapting themselves into these oral traditions, transforming them in the process. A similar accultuluration is evident in the early Tamil history, between immigrant Brahmans with the Pūrvaśikhā Śrauta traditions and the indigenous chieftains and kings. As in the Vedic context, the acculturation was certainly mutual so much so that Hart (1975: 55) considers the “earliest Brahmans” of the Tamil country to resemble their northern counterparts very little—however, rather incorrectly in terms of their śrauta Vedism. Hart’s discussion of the “different types” of Brahmans of the Tamil country is rather in the abstract. The Vedic traditions of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans allow us to trace them to the Yamunā- Gangā doab. On the other hand, it is quite true that the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans did acculturate themselves completely with their host Tamil society, their roles, first in the production of the poems of the Sangam anthologies and second, in the development of the Bhakti traditions being an illustration. And as I have noted above, the Aparaśikhā Brahmans did consider their host Purvaśikhā Brahmans “different” and interpellate them to a lower status.
117
Thus in recent scholarship, the anti-Jain sentiments in the Śaiva-Bhakti poetry of Appar and Tirujñānasaṃbandar is seen as the Hindu “othering” (Petersen 1998: 163-186) the Jain, a view supported by Richard H Davis (1998: 213-224): indeed, the Bhakti poetry does contain anti-Jain sentiments; see note 40 above. However, the hostility to Jainism is entirely new: it is not encountered in the Sangam poetry with a significant Brahman-Śrauta content, nor in the Tamil-Brāhmī inscriptions. Indeed as I. Mahadevan notes, Jainism was the paramount attested religion in the Tamil-Kerala country from 3rd century BCE to about 2nd century CE. It is with the arrival of the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans that we begin to see the decline of the royal patronage toward Jains and Jainism. However, the Jains are still far from the “other” all through this period. The anti-Jain sentiments begin to appear in the Tamil country only after the Kaḷabhra Interregnum (see below), and I would be arguing, caused by it in as much as the Kaḷabhras were Jains. Even so, it is hardly obvious that the Śaivite Nayanmārs “other” the Jains, as fashionable as the notion may be. The main grounds of the Śaivite criticism of Jains seem to be based, as noted above, on matters of ritual purity.
118
K.A.N Sastri (1955) 1976: 144: “A long historical night ensues after the close of the Sangam period. When curtain raises again afterward, the close of the 6th century AD, we find that a mysterious and ubiquitous enemy of civilization, the evil rulers called the kaḷabhras have come and upset the established political order which was restored only by their defeat at the hands of Pāṇtiyas as well as Cālūkyas of Bādāmi.”
119
Raghavan (1962: 7): “The Cōḷiyas who wear their tuft on the front of their heads and are to be found both in Tanjore and Tirunelveli villages are followers of the Ṛgveda. Ālaṅgudi, Rādhāmaṅgalam, Kunniyūr, Tiruvayāru are villages in Tanjore having Ṛgvedins. In Tirunelveli district, Ṛgvedins are to be found in Vallanādu, in Śrivaikunṭam Taluq; they are also to be found in Vembattūr near Sivagaṅga. Among the
Cōḷiyas or Mukkāṇis of Tiruchendūr temple and of Maṇakkarai and Trivandrum, the prevalent Veda is the Ṛk (Śākhala Śākhā). Further, “[i]n Palghat…Koḍunthirappaḷḷi [and] Añjumūrtimangalam near Alattur are noted for their Jaiminīya Sāmagas. They belong to the Cōḷiya class of Brahmans” (13). The three Ṛgveda adhyāpakas in the Kumbakonam Veda Pāṭaśāla were from this group, in 2006.
120
See E.R.Sree Krishna Sarma, Kauṣītakibrāhmaṇa. 3 Volumes. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1968-76. Neḍḍuṃ Bhavadrātan Nambudiri, the Hota of the Trichur Agniṣṭoma (2003) was an eye witness, as a boy, of this transaction, the entire proceeding staying in his mind because it was his first sight of a tape recorder.
121
The grant occurs in the Tanṭantottam Plates (789 CE); see Mahalingam (1988: 303, line 198)
122
The Hindu newspaper of August 12, 2007 carried the following caption: Chennai today: RELIGION Ramayanam: A.R. Chandrasekar, 5, Postal Colony, 2nd St., West Mambalam, 5.30 p.m.; Gagan Chaitanya, R.S. Kalyana Mandapam, 26A, Oragadam Road, 6.45 p.m.; Keeranoor Ramamurthi, Desikan Pravachana Mandapam, 26, St., Thillai Ganga Nagar, Nanganallur, 7 p.m. Mahabharatham: Dhamodhara Deekshithar, Vallaba Ganapathy Veera Anjaneyar Temple, Muthulakshmi Nagar, Chitlapakkam, 7 p.m. Bhagavatham: Gomatam Madhavachariar, Aasthika Samajam, 124, 3rd St., Venkateswara Nagar, Pozhichalur, 5 p.m. Gita: K.R. Neelakantan, Sri Aurobindo Society Centre, J Block, 8th St., Anna Nagar, 6 p.m. Vishnu Sahasranamam: P. Badrinath, Sri Manavaala Mamunigal Sannithi, 57, Bhimanan St., Alwarpet, 4 p.m. Meeravum Andalum: M.K. Ramanan, Asthika Samajam, Venus Colony, Alwarpet, 6.30 p.m. Valli Kalyanam: R. Mohandoss, Vidya Akadamy, Hariharan Hospital Road, Nanganallur, 6 p.m. Thayumanavar: P. Venkatesan, Kothandaramar Temple, Old Washermanpet, 4 p.m.
123
See Gregory Nagy (2002: 36-69) for a discussion of the Panathenian festival and the roles of the rhapsodes in singing the Homeric epics to the Greek public.
124
Sastri seems to have been influenced by the Parvasaṃgraha of the Northern Recension: as Sukthankar (1933[I]: xxxiii) notes that Sastri’s edition follows the 18-parvan convention of the Northern Recension, although his manuscripts follow the 24-parvan division of the Southern Recension.
125
Hiltebeitel (2001): “[T]he Mahābhārata was written by ‘out of sorts Brahmans’ who may have had some minor king’s or merchant’s paronage, but, for personal reasons, show a deep appreciation of, indeed exalt, Brahmans who practice the ‘way of gleaning’: that is uñcavṛtti Brahmans reduced to poverty who live a married life and feed their guests and family by ‘gleaning” grain’” (The author’s quote marks).
126
I owe this coinage to Carrie Cowherd of the Classics Department of Howard University, Washington D.C. August 9th 2007.
127
George Hart (“Use of Devanāgarī”: 9.4.2007 Indology list): “I would be interested in getting some feedback on this matter–when and where did Devanagarī become standard for Sanskrit? I would guess that it begins fairly early in the North and only reaches South India in the 20th century.” Ashok Aklujkar responded (9.4.2007): “I suspect that Devanagarī gradually became “Sanskrit script” for South India in the late 19th and the early 20th century mainly because relatively inexpensive editions of Skt texts were produced in Devanagarī by presses such as the Nirnayasagar Press, the Venkateshwar Press, and the Sarasvati-yantra or Saraswati Press (of Jibananda Vidyasagara). The Vani-vilasa Press in South India might also have played a significant role in this process.” Both scholars ignore the Brahman migration to the south from areas where Devanāgarī had become prevalent. As I have noted above, some of the oldest Mahābhārata ms. from the Sarasvatī Mahāl Library were in Devanāgarī; the class of ms. D1-D14 of the Ādiparvan (I: XVIII-XX). D2, for instance, is dated 1598, CE, written at Benares by Govinda. There is little doubt that the Devanāgarī script arrived in the Tamil country with the Aparaśikhā Brahmans, during 14th CE and later. The Devanāgarī script was part of the educational curriculum of the (Aparaśikhā) Tamil Brahmans, and it never became part of the education of the Nambudiri Pūrvaśikhās, although with significant activity in Sanskrit writing and composition.
128
All the information on the transmission of the Sophocles MSS is from R. Jebb, Sophocles (1906: vii- xliv), “Introduction.”
129
Būrjapatra appears as an item of trade in the Ramayaṇa at 2.1905*. See Brockington (1984: 66).
130
I. Mahadevan makes a sharp distinction between Upper South India and the Tamil area: the former was not politically independent, being part of the Nanda-Maurya imperial system, with the Prākṛt language and script imposed upon the population whereas with its political independence from northern empires, the Tamil area was able become literate in a democratic and popular way in its own language and script: “As a direct result of political independence, Tamil remained the language of administration, of learning and instruction, and of public discourse throughout the Tamil country. When writing became known to the Tamils, the Brāhmī script was adapted and modified to suit the Tamil phonetic system. That is, while the Brahmi script was borrowed, the Prakrit language was not allowed to be imposed along with it from outside. When the Jaina and Buddhist monks entered the Tamil country, they found it expedient to learn Tamil in order to carry on their missionary activities effectively. An apt parallel is the case of the European Christian missionaries in India during the colonial period, who mastered the local languages to preach the gospel to the masses.” We must certainly add to the Jains and the Buddhists, the Pūrvaśikhā Brahmans, first attested in Sangam poetry.
131
The ōla or the palm leaf was a widely used article of literacy well into the 20th century so that in its early decades it functioned in Kuññikkuṭṭi Tamburān’s correspondence very much like a post card, when the use of paper had become widespread, with newspapers, some like the Malayala Manorama, playing influential roles in the literary life of the public. The first best seller of Malayalam literature appears about this time, in the 1890’s, that of Koṭṭārattil Śaṅkuṇṇi׳s Aitihyamāla, first appearing in the Manōrama newspaper serially.
132
Personal Communication, at the AOS annual conference at Chicago, March 15-17, 2008. Could the entire epic, practically its present extent in the Poona CE, have formed in an oral tradition? And transmitted in an oral tradition? In the text of my paper, I note the extra-ordinary feats of the oral tradition in South Asia, but always in the Vedic context, with an elaborate system of the svādhyāya institutions. It is sometimes envisaged as for instance by Biardeau that there may be actual Indians, not far from the earlier Blavatski fantasies of the Secret Masters hiding in the Himalayas, who could master the entire Mahābhārata into memory and recite it.
133
Staal [I]1983: 193-273. “[T]he priests were engaged in rehearsals from December 1974 until April 1975. Nellikkat Nīlakaṇṭhan Akkititippad and Iṭṭi Ravi Nambudiri supervised the Sāmaveda rehearsals in Panjal, while Cherumukku Vaidikan and Erkkara supervised all other rehearsals, which took place in Shoranur” (273). As the Dramatis Personae (I: 266-67) of the 1975 Agnicayana show, the ṛtviks were veterans and brought years of training and practice in erstwhile śrauta rituals to their work as the priests.
See Mahadevan and Staal (2003) for the ground-level workings of the Nambudiri śrauta system: the 1975 Hota functioned as the ācārya for the hautram praxis of the 2003 Agniṣṭoma at Trichur; the yajamāna of this Agniṣṭoma was the son of the yajamāna of the Kundoor Agnicayana (2001).
134
No modern student of the śrauta traditions saw this more clearly than Frits Staal, who envisaged the Nambudiri Śtrautins to be “professionals,” very much like scholars and scientists, engaged in a self- sustaining activity.
135
Ikari (1998:2) notes that the last Somayaga in the Vādhūla tradition took place in the 1920’s. I have not been able to confirm this. It does not appear in the Agni II list (252-255) of the “Recent Nambudiri Performances of Agniṣṭoma and Agnicayana” nor in the revised list in the Namboothiri.com website.
136
I have come across individual Pūrvaśikhā Śōḻiya Brahmans who have performed the Agniṣṭoma in Kumbakonam area, but following the Aparaśikhā praxis available in the area. Interestingly, they show surprise when told of an ancient Pūrvaśikhā Śrauta tradition outside the Āpastaṃba-Drāhyāyana axis of the Aparaśikhā Śrauta tradition.
137
The problem of Bhṛguization is discounted in the epic traditions: C. Minkowski (1989). But as I argue elsewhere a case for it can be made in the period of the formation of the Ṛgveda (“The Institution of the Gotra, the Ṛgveda, and the Brahmans [2007]); the Bhrgus do appear first in all Pravara lists, although their output in the Ṛgveda is relatively little for their great prominence in the subsequent periods.