Vedic Brahmin practices in ancient South India

[N. Ganesan]

Dr. Roebuck,

In the first puRam poem that I quote, the 'cooking of blood'
can be metaphorical, and as I quoted, Hart uses the word
*symbolically*. But in the original Tamil poem, one can never be
sure that it's metaphorical.

Let me tell one aspect of sangam texts:
they are extremely brief, (in fact, technique of suggestion called
uLLuRai and uTanuRai/iRaicci in ancient Tol. grammar is full
in sangam texts.dhvani idea to Skt. via gAthA saptasatI is likely).
The whole corpus is small in volume. In sangam poems, most are akam
(interior, love)  poems where no names are mentioned. It looks as
though love marriage is common and majority way in sangam poetry.
But arranged marriages are extremely old: cousin marriages, a main
cause for Dravidian kinship,  and spread all across the
South including Maharashtra, parts of Gujarat. The poetic convention
of love marriages arose because it's rare and arranged marriages
are boring as far as poetry making is concerned. Take another
example: the bards and dancers often describe their poverty,
but still many instances where kings donate hordes of elephants
and chariots to the bards. Here the poetic convention when
was a highly polished so that kings keep on donating elephants
and chariots which are symbols of royalty. Yet, archaeologically,
no sangam-times buildings or art as monumental as those found in
the North is not available from the South. It's not clear whether
the kings were in a real position in sangam times for these kinds of
donations.

The second puRam poem in original tamil is clear: brahmins,
experts of 4 vedas, cut asunder the dead men. I do not think
this cutting was done for a common man by Brahmins. The poem
mentions kings. However, the common populace would have had
its regular cremation rites specialists.

Dr. Hodge asked whether the decapitation involves "willing
victim". I do not know about human sacrifcies, but in animal
sacrifices, the answer is yes. Turmeric water (symbol of
auspiciousness) is sprinkled on horses, goats, buffaloes, ...
There is an eerie silence among the devotees and the butchering
priest (little possessed by now) waits until the sacrificial
animal's nod (which I think is due to pouring of cold water) for
his action. On rare occasions, the animal never shakes its head, then
it is not killed (goddess is angry).

Regards,
N. Ganesan


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com