Book Review: An Update on AIT (Part 1)

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

Sumathi Ramaswamy says,
<Prior to the neo-Shaiva revival, the cause of divine Tamil and of Shaivism 
had largely been the purview of religious specialists, temples, and 
monasteries. > (p. 32)

This is not true either. 

<The hymns of the three saints have been, and continue to be, at the center 
of the Tamil zaivas' consciousness as a religious community. Just as the 
tEvAram helped forge a new cultural and communal identity for the Tamils in 
the age of the nAyan2Ars, its veneration as "The Tamil Veda" (tamizmaRai) - 
the term used by the twelfth-century hagiographer to refer to the hymns - 
played a crucial role in helping the Tamil zaivas maintain a distinct, and 
distinctly Tamil, sectarian identity.> (Petersen, p. 52)

(Actually campantar refers to his own hymns as "maRai ilaGku Tamiz" in 
tEvAram 1.161.11)

<As the "Tamil Veda," the tirumuRai is the only formal part of Tamil temple 
worship and ritual that is of exclusive doctrinal significance to the Tamil 
zaivas as followers of the four poet-teachers. It is also the only ceremonial 
text that -- for the reasons given above-- draws from them the kind of 
emotional response that the Vedas inspire in the Tamil brahmins
The songs of 
the saints are freely accessible to all Tamil zaivas: since the content of 
the hymns, as described above, has become the center of Tamil zaiva 
experience, and since the structural contours of the language of the tEvAram 
continue to remain functionally close to the literary and spoken idioms of 
the Tamils, the hymns are intelligible to the average Tamil even after 
thirteen centuries. To this day, devotees directly consult the words of the 
saints for guidance in various situations, and sing them when they seek 
personal inspiration or comfort as well as devotional experience. In this 
way, the tirumuRai simultaneously functions as zruti and smRti, mantra and 
stotra, classical and popular song, ceremonial and personal scripture for the 
Tamil zaivas, bringing together categories usually kept separate in Great 
Traditional Hinduism.> (Petersen, p. 58-59)

Indeed, the attachment of Tamil zaivites at large to Tamil, the language of 
the hymns, is far older, and emotionally meaningful than Ramaswamy has 
realized. Tamil zaivites did not arrive at it during the nineteenth century 
colonial environment. 

Regards
S. Palaniappan