SamnyAsin names

Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan Palaniappa at AOL.COM
Sun Apr 30 06:47:49 UTC 2000


In a message dated 4/29/2000 12:16:06 AM Central Daylight Time,
lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM writes:

> Campantar seems
>  to show up as a pious bigot.

Of course, one man's saint often is another man's bigot. Both zaiva and
vaiSNava saints belong in this category. Consider the following tirumAlai
verse by toNTaraTippoTi AzvAr.

veRuppOTu camaNar muNTar
    vitiyil cAkkiyarkaL nin2pAl
poRuppariyan2akaL pEcil
    pOvatE nOyatAki
kuRippen2ak kaTaiyumAkil
    kUTumEl talaiyai AGkE
aRuppatE karumam kaNTAy
    araGkamA nakaruLAn2E (tirumAlai 8)

AzvAr's advocacy of violence (beheading) is obvious.

>Is he perhaps making a
>  snide attack on Dharmasena (Appar) for having been a
>  Jaina?

No. tarumacEn2an2 was probably one of many popular Jain names like the other
names mentioned by him. Even cuntarar uses the same name in the following
verse.

namaNa nantiyum karumavIran2um tarumacEn2an2um en2Ru ivar
kumaNa mAmalaik kun2Ru pOl nin2Ru tagkaL kURai on2Ru in2RiyE
jnamaNam jnAjnaNam jnANam jnONam en2Ru Oti yAraiyum nAN ilA
amaNarAl pazippu uTaiyarO namakku aTikaL Akiya aTikaLE.
(tEv.7.33.9)

Here cuntarar uses 3 Jain names namaNananti, karumavIran2, and tarumacEn2an2.
(So from cuntarar gives another form of Jain  name -vIra.) Here cuntarar
ridicules the Jains as being naked and shameless and chanting "jnamaNam
jnAjnaNam jnANam jnONam". cuntarar's use of the name tarumacEn2an2 along with
his reverence towards appar revealed in other hymns shows that the use of
tarumacEn2an2 did not imply reference to appar.

The aim in these verses is to ridicule the generic Jain monk and not a
specific one, let alone appar who had been campantar's travelling companion
on several occasions. The maRaikkATu episode described by periyapurANam and
inferable from verses in the tEvAram shows that they travelled together. So
one can believe the hagiographic account that it was campantar who called
nAvukkaracar by the honorific name "appar" which has stuck to him ever since.

Regards
S. Palaniappan





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