[INDOLOGY] Brahmin Priestesses

Fri Nov 15 08:01:23 UTC 2013

As to ā > a before a consonant cluster, as seen in tēvantikai from devāntikā, this is a normal development in Middle Indic. How certain are you that tēvantikai is “brahmin”? Okay, she was married to a brahmin, but does that automatically means that she is “brahmin”? Her subsequent career as oracle and soothsayer, all this while in trance, seems to put her into another category of people. Note in this connection that the protagonist of the Cilappatikāram, Kaṇṇaki, reveals herself as a veritable ugrā devatā, destroying Maturai by throwing her breast at it (see Kāvya in South India, pp. 202-208).

Herman Tieken
University of Leiden
The Netherlands
website: hermantieken.com<http://hermantieken.com/>
________________________________
Van: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info] namens palaniappa at aol.com [palaniappa at aol.com]
Verzonden: vrijdag 15 november 2013 5:10
To: indology at list.indology.info
Onderwerp: Re: [INDOLOGY] Brahmin Priestesses

Thanks for the responses. Here are my thoughts on the etymologies proposed.

1. devāntikā

One problem with this etymology is the long 'ā' as the first vowel while the Tamil form has short 'a'.  The second problem is the semantics. 'Rākṣasa or daitya' does not fit either as a proper name or a class name for a brahmin girl or a temple priestess.

2. cā-/cēma-nt-i> cēmantī > tēvanti
One problem with this is that it cannot explain the variant Tēvantikai. The second problem is that tēvanti is not attested in any literary or colloquial usage. In Tamil, the only forms known are cāmanti, civanti, cevanti, and cevvanti.

3. devavandyā
This is indeed the most attractive of the three. Indeed I too gave this a lot of thought before settling on devavandhyā. The reasons are these.  vanti or vantiyai or vantikai is not attested as either as a proper name of a woman or a generic name of a praiseworthy woman in Tamil usage. The Tamil compilers of the Tamil Lexicon made up an amazing brain trust of Tamil scholarship that existed at that time, but with an overwhelming majority from upper caste - Aiyars, Aiyangars, Sastris, Pillais, Mudaliars,  Chettiar, etc. While Iyodhi Doss and Abraham Pandithar were exceptions in terms of caste background, they were also highly informed with respect to Sanskritic usage. If vanti/vantiyai/vantikai had been used in the Tamil domain either as a proper noun or as a generic/class name to refer to a praiseworthy woman, they would have most probably listed it in the Tamil Lexicon with that meaning. The fact that Tamil Lexicon does not list it suggests that there is no attestation of such usage. That is my reason for rejecting it in favor of vanti/vantiyai/vantikai in the sense of 'childless woman'. All three of these usages are listed in Tamil Lexicon.

As for barren/childless woman, one may not give a newborn child that name. But if the author has a tendency to use a generic/class name, such as the name for the childless woman in the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam in some cases (possibly because he did not know the real name if the story had been already popular as possible in the case of the Cilappatikāram), then the name 'childless woman' fits very well especially if other sources such as Puṟanāṉūṟu 372 specifically mention that attribute of a priestess. (Another such usage is the case of Tarumi in the Tiruviḷaiyāṭal Purāṇam, where as an Ādiśaiva brahmin bachelor, he has to get married to be a priest but lacks the necessary money. But he is already given the name Tarumi meaning 'temple priest.)  This is like naming a girl who is going to become a nun later in life 'childless woman'. There is nothing pejorative about it. It is merely descriptive.  That is how some of these authors named their characters.

Regards,
Palaniappan

-----Original Message-----
From: Whitney Cox <wmcox at uchicago.edu>
To: Suresh Kolichala <suresh.kolichala at gmail.com>
Cc: indology <indology at list.indology.info>
Sent: Thu, Nov 14, 2013 12:45 pm
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Brahmin Priestesses

Equally, and by a set of sound changes essentially identical to those described by Palaniappan, the second element in tēvantikai could be referred to -vandyā ('praiseworthy').  Skt. Devavandyā, I find, occurs in list of 1008 names of the Gāyatrī mantra: this slightly obscure place notwithstanding, it also makes better sense semantically: "she who is to be praised by the gods" rather than "a barren woman of [?] the gods", thus "a divine barren woman".

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Suresh Kolichala <suresh.kolichala at gmail.com<mailto:suresh.kolichala at gmail.com>> wrote:

A more plausible derivation for tēvanti/tāvantikai would be from  the flower name cēmantī/sēmantī/sēmantika ʻthe Indian white rose Rosa glanduliferaʼ.

The alternation of  the radical vowel between ē- and ā- would point to a possible presence of palatal.  In Telugu, this flower is known as cāmantī, cēmantī or cēvanti. Irregular word-initial c- > t- is not uncommon in Tamil and other Dravidian languages[1][2], as evident in the transformations of the following borrowings from Indo-Aryan:

sattva ʻstrengthʼ > cattuvam, tattuvam
snānam ʻbathʼ > tānam
samtati ʻlineageʼ > tantati
āsanam ʻpostureʼ > ācanam > ātanam

Intervocalic /m/ > /v/ is well-known in South Dravidian.

Therefore, I propose:

*cā-/cēma-nt-i> cēmantī > tēvanti ʻthe Indian white rose Rosa glanduliferaʼ.

It goes well with the other flower names used for characters in the Cilappatikāram such as mātavi (related to mādhavi).

Regards,
Suresh.

[1] Emeneau, Murray, Proto-Dravidian *c-:Toda t-" BSOAS 1953
[2] Emeneau, Murray, Proto-Dravidian *c- and Its Developments JAOS1988.

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 6:43 AM, Tieken, H.J.H. <H.J.H.Tieken at hum.leidenuniv.nl<mailto:H.J.H.Tieken at hum.leidenuniv.nl>> wrote:
Instead of devavandhyā, could tēvantikai not correspond to Skt devāntikā, fem. of devānta(ka), a name of a rākṣasa and of a daitya (MW)?

Herman Tieken
University of Leiden
The Netherlands
website: hermantieken.com<http://hermantieken.com/>
________________________________
Van: INDOLOGY [indology-bounces at list.indology.info<mailto:indology-bounces at list.indology.info>] namens palaniappa at aol.com<mailto:palaniappa at aol.com> [palaniappa at aol.com<mailto:palaniappa at aol.com>]
Verzonden: donderdag 14 november 2013 12:11
To: indology at list.indology.info<mailto:indology at list.indology.info>
Onderwerp: [INDOLOGY] Brahmin Priestesses

Dear Indologists,

The Cilappatikāram, the Tamil epic, has a character named Tēvanti/Tāvantikai.  She was a brahmin and was a friend of the heroine, Kaṇṇaki. She married Cāttaṉ, a god in human form. Eight years after marriage, he revealed to her his real nature and left her asking her to come to his temple. Accordingly, she worshipped at the temple of Cāttaṉ. At the end of the epic, when  the temple to Kaṇṇaki is inaugurated, Tēvantikai, under possession by Cāttaṉ, Tēvantikai entered a trance and danced and Cāttaṉ spoke through her. Later, the Cēra king Ceṅkuṭṭuvaṉ established a grant for worship and daily celebration at the Kaṇṇaki temple and appointed her to offer flowers, incense, and fragrances at the temple. After worshipping Kaṇṇaki, the king and others including a brahmin named Māṭalaṉ entered a separate sacrificial hall where Tēvantikai again spoke as an oracle.

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--
Whitney Cox
Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
South Asian Languages and Civilizations
University of Chicago

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