SAS Sarma

Vēṭṭaykkorumakan is considered to be the son of Śiva and Pārvatī, born when they had assumed the form of a hunter and huntress. Although Vēṭṭaykkorumakan is considered as an incarnation, according to the narratives that are written in the local vernacular Malayalam, and known in the Malabar area of Kerala, he is considered to be only a hero too. Beside the tantric rituals that are usually performed for the deities, Vēṭṭaykkorumakan is venerated through two distinct rituals in Kerala, namely the Kaḷameḻuttuṃ Pāṭṭuṃ ritual in the southern part of Kerala, and the Teyyam ritual in northern Kerala. This article will discuss these two rituals in detail to examine how they are closely linked with theatre. Traces of the story of Śiva and Pārvatī assuming the form of a hunter and huntress in the Mahābhārata, and its influence in Sanskrit Literature and on other art forms, are briefly discussed also.

The "Digital Tevaram" is a multi-feature CD-Rom edition of a collection of 800 Tamil hymns to Siva, possibly dating back to the 7th and 8th centuries, attributed to three authors (Sambandar, Appar and Sundarar), traditionally called Tevaram, and constituting the initial part of the Tamil Saiva Scriptures. This electronic edition of the Tamil text, furnished with many maps, MP3 audio files anda complete English rendering by the late V.M. Subrahmanya Ayyar (1906-1981) combines the features of the two traditional book-forms of Tevaram : 1. Arrangement according to musical modes (pan-s), as in panmurai editions of Tevaram, and 2. arrangement according to sites (stalam-s), as in talamurai editions. It incorporates a concordance, and can be used as a dictionary of Tevaram.

Āgniveśyagṛhyaprayogamālā is a ritual manual of the Āgniveśyagṛhyasūtra by Abhirāma, a brahmin belonging to the Avudaiyar Kovil area, Tamil Nadu. It is rather difficult to date this manual since the author has not dated his work, but through the inscriptions of the Avudaiyar Kovil it is possible to determine the existence of brahmins in the Avudaiyar Kovil area from the 12th ce onwards. It is also known that the followers of Āgniveśyagṛhyasūtra are to be found only in the Avudaiyar Kovil area and there are in fact only eleven such families at present.

It was generally believed that apart from the Gṛhyasūtra of Āgniveśya no other texts were known to belong to the Āgniveśya school. But two years ago, while I was engaged in the study of the brahmin settlement in the Avudaiyar Kovil area, I discovered two ritual manuals of the Āgniveśyagṛhyasūtra, one by Abhirāma and the other by Bhāskara. In this paper I will discuss the ritual manual of Abhirāma.

The Āgniveśyagṛhyaprayogamālā written entirely in prose, follows the same order as that of the Āgniveśyagṛhyasūtra, but many rituals that are either missing in the Gṛhyasūtra or just indicated in the Gṛhyasūtra, are dealt with in detail. Apart from discussing the general features of this ritual manual and its manuscript sources, the paper will also focus on some of the customs described in the ritual manual, customs that are not mentioned in the Gṛhyasūtra.

It has already been established by scholars that there are several common features shared by the Vādhūlagṛhyasūtra and Āgniveśyagṛhyasūtra and it is observed that the Vādhūlas and Āgniveśyas are derived from one and the same school. There are some known ritual manuals of the Vādhūlagṛhyasūtra too, and this paper will also compare these manuals with the Āgniveśyagṛhyaprayogamālā.

The ritual manuals produced in Kerala are unique in their nature since most of them do not make a precise difference between the systems of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava but rather adopt a synthesized approach. The authors of these ritual manuals were ready to introduce or omit rituals that were described in the early texts, according to need. The manuals that were written in the early period included initiation rituals and gave importance to the theological aspect; the later ones completely omitted these elements, being written as guides for temple rituals. They are not, however, uniform in their ritual prescriptions. While these manuals were intended as guides for the performance of rituals, in practice some of the rituals prescribed in the manuals are left out, altered or localized. In this article, ‘paḷḷiveṭṭa' a ritual that is presently performed during the annual festival in Kerala temples, is examined to show how this ritual is described in the manuals and how it is practised today.