Introduction
The publication in 1867 of Tiruvaruṭpā, a book of devotional poems in Tamil by the popular Shaiva mystic Ramalinga Adigal (1823–1874), was a landmark event in the history of his legacy and community. At the time of publication, Ramalinga's writings and teachings were enjoying increasing fame in the metropolis of Chennai, and also throughout the eastern regions of the Kaveri Delta, an area that had been the literary and institutional heartland of Tamil Shaivism for at least a thousand years. His students had worked for years to publish his poems on a grand scale, which they finally achieved with the 1867 edition. They presented the work as an authoritative Shaiva text that should stand alongside established Shaiva literary classics. The audacity of their publication is perhaps best indicated by the vitriolic attack on Tiruvarutpa by Arumuga Navalar, the well-known Tamil pandit and polemicist from Jaffna, and a staunch advocate of Shaiva ritual and textual orthodoxy.Footnote 1 Focusing on the choices that Ramalinga and his followers made regarding the material form, organization, and content of the 1867 publication, I will argue that they used print as a tool to garner religious and textual authority. As a technology new to religious communications in South Asia, print provided novel possibilities for canonical claims, especially for religious leaders like Ramalinga, who did not have the backing of the long-standing and powerful Shaiva institutions that dominated Tamil literary production and status until at least the end of the nineteenth century.
Scholars of the emergence of the Protestant Reformation in early modern Europe have recognized for some time the potential of print to empower religious leaders who stand outside established halls of power. Since the publication of Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change in 1979, the impact of print on Christendom has been a central concern to scholars of book history and of the early Reformation.Footnote 2 For Eisenstein, print enabled religious leaders in Europe to carry ‘democratic and patriotic’ messages to the ‘everyman’.Footnote 3 Catholics also used print to standardize priestly goals, Church theology, and oral teaching, but Eisenstein argues that the burgeoning print industry was more aligned with novel religious expression than with conservative churchmen, communicating ‘more democratic and national forms of worship’.Footnote 4 Eisenstein understandably has been criticized for not paying enough attention to the way in which the established Church employed print to its advantage.Footnote 5 Yet even if we do not accept Eisenstein's view of a natural affinity between print and heterodoxy, print remained, as Alexandra Walsham argues, a vital tool in spreading unorthodox religious messages, providing dissenters with a ‘powerful device for communicating with both their co-religionists and the wider world’.Footnote 6 Print benefited religious groups and leaders on the margins of established power by providing an efficient and inexpensive means for the wide circulation of their messages. However, in India in the latter half of the nineteenth century, print offered possibilities and meanings other than just efficiency. In Tamil Shaivism, print became the medium through which Shaiva leaders and pandits re-established their canon by producing handsome volumes of well-known Shaiva works.Footnote 7 Ramalinga and his followers exploited this use of print to make a bid for the canonicity of Ramalinga's poems, publishing them in a material form that was identical to that of Shaiva classics.
In South Asia, as in Europe, the spread of print technology transformed the religious landscape. However, in stark contrast to scholarship on early print in Europe, little attention has been paid to the impact of print on Hindu traditions in nineteenth-century India.Footnote 8 This lapse is particularly significant if we consider that a large percentage of published works in Indian languages in the nineteenth century can be classified as religious. James Long, an Irish missionary who compiled statistics on the publication of Bengali books in the 1850s, estimated that over 50 per cent of Bengali books published between 1844 and 1852 were religious, with Hindu works accounting for 36 per cent of all titles published.Footnote 9 Tamil publishing was similar, with many—perhaps most—of the printed books available in Tamil in the 1860s being religious in character. John Murdoch, inspired by Long's surveys of Bengali books, produced a similar volume for works in Tamil, published in 1865 as a Classified Catalogue of Tamil Printed Books. Murdoch compiled a list of 1,755 publications in Tamil that were available to him, classifying about 69 per cent as religious works, and including 29 per cent of all works under the heading ‘Hinduism’.Footnote 10 A decade later, in his report to the director of public instruction, V. Kristnama Charri, registrar of books for Madras Presidency, noted that nearly 48 per cent of the works printed in the presidency in 1875 were religious, including 46 per cent of books in the ‘Vernacular languages’. The majority of these books were Hindu, including ‘reprints of old standard works. . . [that] have an interest of their own’ as well as ‘an abundance of humble efforts and very little of marked excellence’.Footnote 11
The ‘standard works’ Kristnama Charri mentions are canonical texts, and the ‘humble efforts’ probably refer to popular publications. Murdoch's catalogue has many entries for classical Shaiva literary texts, as well as for popular literature. Most of the works that comprise the Shaiva literary canon—the ‘Tirumuṟai’—appear in the catalogue. For example, there is an entry for the Periya Purāṇam, a twelfth-century hagiography of Shaiva saints. About half of the entire work, with commentary, was published in two volumes which were together 802 pages long, in 8vo size, and available for three and a quarter rupees, a high price that would put the publication out of reach of all but the keenest readers.Footnote 12 Murdoch's catalogue unfortunately does not include publication dates or editors’ names. I saw a copy of the first volume of a multi-volume publication of the Periya Purāṇam at the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Chennai, which is almost certainly the one in Murdoch's catalogue. This copy was published in 1859 ‘for everyone's easy reading’.Footnote 13 It was edited by Kanchipuram Sabhapati Mudaliyar, Tamil pandit at Pacchaiyappa School in Chennai.Footnote 14 The first of several benedictory compositions in praise of the work was written by Dandavaraya Swamigal, a pandit of the Tiruvavadudurai monastery, indicating that this edition had the endorsement of this powerful Shaiva institution.Footnote 15
If Tamils, and Indians more generally, were printing canonical religious literature in order to widen the readership of classical works, they were also publishing inexpensive printed books for devotional purposes and to address the daily needs of their clientele. Murdoch's catalogue lists many such works, such as Vākkuvātam, ‘a very popular work in which the wives of Vishnu and Shiva rake up stories against each other's husband’. The pamphlet was only seven pages long, 18mo size, anonymous, and cost just three pie.Footnote 16 Canonical editions differed from popular works in content, price, size, durability, and (presumably) prestige. The popular works in the catalogue were in pamphlet form, 18mo, a few pages long, and inexpensive, while canonical works were invariably larger 8vo printings, with lengths running into hundreds of pages, and were relatively expensive, usually costing at least one rupee. Their audiences would likewise have varied, with the classics appealing to an educated public with the means to purchase these volumes.
By the mid to late 1860s, then, print had become the favoured medium for the production and dissemination in Tamil of cheap, popular religious literature and also of prestigious Shaiva classics. Religious actors used print not only to spread their messages more widely, but print itself became an avenue for advancing claims for authority. Stuart Blackburn notes that from the time of the publication of the Tamil classic Tirukkuṟaḷ in 1812 at the College of Fort St George, ‘textual authenticity would not rely solely on the reputation of the pundit. After 1812, printing would also be used by pundits as an “instrument” to ensure authenticity.’Footnote 17 Ulrike Stark, speaking of commercial publishers in northern India in the second half of the nineteenth century, argues that ‘the successful publisher's choices not only responded to readership tastes and reflected processes of canonization as well as current trends in literary activity, they also shaped these processes’.Footnote 18 What is true for literary canons was equally true for religious canons, and here I argue that by the 1860s, publication in printed form was becoming a sine qua non for a work to be considered a Tamil Shaiva classic. That is, for an authoritative text to maintain its prestige, it was imperative that it made its way into print, as editors, patrons, and publishers of Shaiva literature were re-establishing the Shaiva canon. Likewise, the publication of a new work displaying the specific features of the canonical works being published at the time might signal a claim for canonicity.Footnote 19 Print thereby enabled someone like Ramalinga, on the margins of Shaiva institutional power, to make a bid for the canonicity of his writings.
The pre-publication history of Tiruvarutpa
Ramalinga Adigal, also known as Ramalinga Swamigal or, more commonly, as simply Vallalar, was born Ramalinga Pillai in 1823 in Marudur, near Chidambaram.Footnote 20 His father was a village accountant, from the Karuniga caste, a Tamil community of scribes and bookkeepers.Footnote 21 After his father died, his family relocated to Chennai, where he spent his formative years. It was in Chennai that Ramalinga began to gather a following, and he maintained close connections with disciples in the city throughout his life. He left Chennai in 1857, migrating south to the region of his birth in his search for a quiet village life and presumably to be closer to the shrinal centre of Tamil Shaivism. He remained in this area for the rest of his life. Ramalinga had a traditional Tamil education, but he was not educated in English and had little apparent contact with colonial institutions or networks. He worshipped at major Murugan and Shiva temples, such as Tiruttani and Chidambaram, as well as at local temples such as Kandar Kottam and Tiruvottriyur in Chennai. He also won the devotion of people from a range of castes, including a priest at the famous Chidambaram Shiva temple.Footnote 22 However, his connections to established temples were informal, and his relationships with non-Brahman Tamil monasteries were strained at best. This tension arose from distinctive visions of Shaivism, and was most dramatically displayed in the famous and prolonged conflict between Ramalinga's followers and residents of the nearby Tiruvavadudurai monastery. Ramalinga therefore established a number of his own institutions, including a temple and a hall for feeding the poor, which would serve the needs and aspirations of his community.
Over his lifetime, Ramalinga composed a number of prose works as well as thousands of verses in Tamil. His students collected these verses and eventually published them in the monumental volume Tiruvarutpa [Poems of Divine Grace], which records his reflections on Shiva, devotion, contemporary religious practices, and social reform.Footnote 23 At this time Ramalinga had a devoted following in and around his local village of Karunguli, as well as in Chennai. The publication of his verses was an important event in the history of this community, facilitating the establishment of a ‘textual community’ in the sense that Brian Stock uses the term. That is, Ramalinga's followers came to use Tiruvarutpa ‘as a reference system both for everyday activities and for giving shape to many larger vehicles of explanation’.Footnote 24 Stock argues that heretical groups in early medieval Europe used texts ‘to structure the internal behaviour of the groups’ members and to provide solidarity against the outside world’.Footnote 25 This is precisely how Tiruvarutpa came to serve the people who had gathered around Ramalinga. The status of the community would depend on the prestige of the text, so it was vital that the work be produced in such a way that it invoked authority. As we will see, Ramalinga's followers ensured that its material form was identical to other canonical Shaiva works being published at the time.
One of Ramalinga's primary devotees was Irakkam Irattina Mudaliyar, who spent several years collecting Ramalinga's verses. We find details of these efforts in letters that Ramalinga wrote to Irattina Mudaliyar, which also provide a fascinating picture of the relationship between Ramalinga and one of his closest devotees.Footnote 26 The dates of the letters range from 1858, just one year after Ramalinga's departure from Chennai, to 1869, a period when Ramalinga was in Karunguli and Irattina Mudaliyar was in Chennai. In the letters, Ramalinga gives advice to the young Mudaliyar on marriage and health, thanks him for posting books and gifts, reports on people close to him and asks about friends in Chennai, makes financial requests, and reminds Mudaliyar to think often of Shiva. There are also several references to the collection of verses for eventual publication, and to Ramalinga's ongoing composition of verses, which give important details of the efforts leading up to the publication of Tiruvarutpa.
A. Balakrishna Pillai had access to these letters and made them public for the first time in his edition of Tiruvarutpa, published between 1931 and 1958. The first letter of particular interest to the publication effort is one that Ramalinga wrote to Irattina Mudaliyar on the seventh day of the Tamil month of Tai (mid-January to mid-February). Unfortunately he did not indicate the year—I will follow Balakrishna Pillai in dating it to either 1859 or 1860.Footnote 27 In the letter, Ramalinga instructs Irattina Mudaliyar to constantly meditate on the five syllables of Shiva (‘nama Shivaya’) with a clear mind, citing verses from Auvaiyar's Nalvaḻi and Manikkavacakar's Tiruvācakam that encourage this practice. He also includes one of his own verses to support his advice: ‘What merit have I done, that I have been blessed with a fleshy tongue that recites “civāya nama” (praise to Shiva)?’ Ramalinga does not distinguish his verse in any way from those earlier, eminent works, quoting the three in succession as if they each reflect equal authority. Indeed, he does not even acknowledge that this verse is his own, giving all three without citing author or text, presumably confident that Irattina Mudaliyar would know the provenance of each. The verse would appear later in the Tiruvarutpa, indicating that by this time Ramalinga was composing and keeping verses which he used to instruct his followers.Footnote 28
Ramalinga wrote down poems throughout his life. He wrote on palm leaves, paper, and in notebooks, as his life bridged the period of transition from manuscript to print. For the most part, he wrote on palm leaves when he was in Chennai, and on paper after he left Chennai in 1857.Footnote 29 Many of his verses ended up in the possession of his followers. One long, palm-leaf manuscript of 202 leaves, with verses of devotion to Shiva at Tiruvottriyur, was kept by his student Selvaraya Mudaliyar.Footnote 30 Later editions of Tiruvarutpa reproduced images of Ramalinga's handwritten verses. These verses show few signs of editing, indicating either that they were clean, final copies that Ramalinga had written out after working through earlier versions, or that he was particularly skilful in composing verses orally before writing them down.Footnote 31 Despite writing down his verses, Ramalinga, as is common in Tamil literary traditions, generally wrote that he ‘sang’ (pāṭu) these verses. This suggests that he considered his poems to be oral compositions, sung directly to Shiva. Indeed, in his verses he usually addresses Shiva using vocative forms. Ramalinga did not clearly distinguish between the written and spoken word, between literacy and orality.
In a letter written on 30 December 1860, Ramalinga writes that he had ‘sung’ (pāṭiya) many songs since arriving back in his home at Karunguli from Chennai, where it is likely he met with Irattina Mudaliyar. He continues: ‘I didn't intend to write them down and collect them all together, so they lie scattered around.’ He promises to collect the poems and to deliver them personally to Mudaliyar in Chennai.Footnote 32 Ramalinga expresses a certain disregard for collecting and looking after his writings, a sentiment that he repeats in later letters. Why did he write them down at all? Perhaps it was to share the verses with his followers, since his poems were dispersed among his closest students. For example, in this same letter Ramalinga tells Irattina Mudaliyar that Kumarasami Pillai and Shanmuga Pillai Reddiyar have about 50 of his poems.Footnote 33 Ramalinga's willingness to acquiesce to Mudaliyar's request to send verses seems to have been sparked by Mudaliyar's vow to eat only once a day until he received some poems. Ramalinga continues in the same letter:
You who are so dear to me, I pray that you do what I ask. Earlier, you wrote, ‘Until I get a parcel containing these verses, I’ll only eat once a day.’ Since seeing those words, rice isn't agreeable to me. I’m like one who is fasting. To give me peace of mind, please leave aside this vow to eat just once a day, and let me know immediately by post, or else I won't get rid of my weariness. I’m only eating once a day. This is true. It's my vow. You should let me know as soon as you abandon this vow. Two months from now the verses will definitely reach you.Footnote 34
It may be that Ramalinga's indifference to prior requests for verses drove Mudaliyar to fast in order to cajole poems from his reluctant guru.
In the same letter, Ramalinga notes that many of his poems had already been published, and he asks Mudaliyar not to be angry about this.Footnote 35 Ramalinga's reference to earlier publication of his work is important, as it indicates that some of his verses were already in print. His request that Irattina Mudaliyar tolerate these earlier publications hints at tensions and competition over the publication of his poems. From this letter it is not clear whether Ramalinga contributed in any way to the publication of these earlier compilations, but his reluctance to assist Mudaliyar, a close devotee, in the publication of his verses, indicates that these early publications were pursued independently of Ramalinga's input. It is also not clear from the letter which poems were published, or in what form. I have not found any extant publications of Ramalinga's verses prior to the 1867 edition of Tiruvarutpa.
Velayuda Mudaliyar's ‘History of Tiruvarutpa’, included at the end of the 1867 edition of Tiruvarutpa, gives more details of these earlier publications. Mudaliyar wrote that one of Ramalinga's followers by the name of Muttusami sang some of Ramalinga's verses in front of the image of Shiva at Tiruvottriyur, a temple just north of Chennai. Other devotees, overhearing these ‘verses of grace’ (aruṭpā), spoke about their desire to have them in written form. Some ‘people who shall remain unnamed’ searched out Muttusami and copied those verses. With the intention to make a profit, they ‘foolishly’ ignored propriety and printed them in ‘small publications’.Footnote 36 A few of Ramalinga's followers, including Velayuda Mudaliyar, Irattina Mudaliyar, and Selvaraya Mudaliyar, approached them and asked them to stop publishing these verses and even offered them a little money. However, those ‘unnamed’ people continued to publish verses, and even stole some poems for publication. It was then that Ramalinga's disciples approached Ramalinga himself to ask if they might publish his poems ‘in the proper way’. Ramalinga initially denied their request, but Irattina Mudaliyar persisted and eventually won his guru's approval.Footnote 37
We find a few more details of this encounter in a later biographical work on Ramalinga by S. M. Kandasami Pillai, ‘Biographical Details of Ramalinga Swami’, which Pillai included in his 1924 edition of Tiruvarutpa. According to Kandasami Pillai's version of events, a few people were publishing Ramalinga's verses, but in ‘individual pamphlets [literally “small books”] and with printing errors’. Learning of these inferior publications, some members of Ramalinga's ‘Society of The True Path of Unity and the Vedas’, including Puduvai Velu Mudaliyar, Selvaraya Mudaliyar, and Irattina Mudaliyar, approached Ramalinga and made known their desire to publish his verses. Ramalinga did not agree at first, but eventually gave in to their request.Footnote 38
Balakrishna Pillai, in his edition of Tiruvarutpa published between 1931 and 1958, mentions that two of Ramalinga's poems to Murugan—‘Teyva Maṇimālai’ and ‘Kantar Caraṇa Pattu’—were printed in a single volume, perhaps prior to 1851.Footnote 39 These two poems comprise 41 verses of eight lines each, so it is likely they would have been published as a pamphlet. However, the poems’ focus on Murugan and the pre-1851 date do not accord with Velayuda Mudaliyar's narrative, which suggests that the illicitly published verses were addressed to Shiva at Tiruvottriyur and were published later than 1851. It may be that prior to the publication of Tiruvarutpa in 1867, there were a number of editions of Ramalinga's verses in circulation in inexpensive formats. In any case, none of these copies of earlier works seems to be extant, and their existence is largely forgotten except in the scattered references noted above.
One concern of Ramalinga's followers was that these works contained mistakes, which Kandasami Pillai calls ‘accup piḻaikaḷ’ (printing errors), clarifying that these errors should not be attributed to Ramalinga himself. Just as importantly, they worried about the publication of his verses in small and, more than likely, cheap pamphlets. Such pamphlets would not have had a long life span, and probably would have circulated at the bazaars and markets alongside other cheap publications. Murdoch notes that such cheap publications were widely available in bazaars: ‘Books published by natives are sold in the Madras Book Bazar, and to some extent, in every town of any size in the Tamil country. . . The more expensive books are not kept on sale at the Bazar; but the hawkers can readily procure them.’Footnote 40 Throughout India, popular works were often held in low esteem by elite authors, editors, and publishers, as well as by British administrators. For example, in his 1872 history of Bengali literature, Ramgati Nyayaratna laments the proliferation of Bengali books: ‘Books which are being churned out in this manner will not be read by ordinary people nor will they last long; they will cease to exist after a few days. There are some among these which, in fact, smell of the gutter.’Footnote 41
These are precisely the sorts of works from which Ramalinga's followers wanted to distinguish their publication. His students seemed concerned that the ephemeral quality of these cheap publications, to be read and then disposed of, would detract from the prestige of Ramalinga's poetry. In creating a volume that would establish the authority of his words, they needed to ensure that the volume would last. Their collection of verses, when published years later, would contrast sharply with any earlier publications of Ramalinga's verses, benefiting as it did from the careful editing of a Chennai pandit, and published in a handsome, hefty, and expensive volume boasting a price out of reach of most readers. Ramalinga's disciples sought to give the physical publication the quality of timelessness that characterizes a literary classic, manufacturing a volume that would last for decades or, indeed, centuries.Footnote 42 Time has justified their approach: earlier, shorter collections have been lost and forgotten, while Tiruvarutpa continues to be held in high esteem and is widely available.
After his letter of 30 December 1860, Ramalinga did not explicitly mention the publication of his verses for nearly five years. In a letter that arrived in Chennai on 19 November 1865, he refers to a registered letter from Irattina Mudaliyar that he received on 13 November. ‘The matter that you refer to in your letter is not of much importance to me. However, as is your wish, you and Selvaraya Mudaliyar may use only those verses which speak of Shiva in my heart. . .’Footnote 43 It seems that Ramalinga did not warm much to the idea of publishing his verses in the intervening years, or perhaps he wished to appear indifferent to a project that might be seen as vain, which would be contrary to the persona of modesty and simplicity that he usually projected. In later biographies, his indifference to the publication is generally viewed as evidence of his humility, and it shielded him to some degree from the controversies that were to follow.Footnote 44
By 1866, preparations for publication were in full swing. In a letter mailed from Chidambaram on 14 February 1866, Ramalinga appears to be more committed to the project, asking Irattina Mudaliyar to hold off on the publication of poems to Shiva at Tiruvottriyur, since he had composed a few additional poems that he would like to add. Similarly, in a letter written on 28 March 1866, Ramalinga tells Irattina Mudaliyar that since returning home to Karunguli, he had composed about 200 verses in praise of Shiva at Chidambaram. He also promises to send a verse preface in a few days. Ramalinga ends his letter by responding to a prior request that Irattina Mudaliyar had apparently made: ‘I don't give my permission that the work be brought out under the name “Ramalingasami” [as author]. Why? Because it seems that this name is controversial, so it shouldn't be used.’Footnote 45 There appears to have been some controversy at this time in referring to Ramalinga as ‘Ramalinga Sami’, as ‘Sami’ or ‘Swami’ is an appellation that designates spiritual authority and leadership. The eventual publication of Tiruvarutpa refers to Ramalinga as ‘Tiruvaruṭpirakāca Vaḷḷalār, Citamparam Irāmaliṅka Piḷḷai’, that is, ‘Iramalinga Pillai of Chidambaram, the generous one who is radiant with holy grace’.Footnote 46 Ramalinga's desire to avoid controversy in this case is noteworthy, because his legacy today is that of a radical critic of caste society, and because the publication of Tiruvarutpa sparked a controversy that was to continue for decades.
The organization and content of Tiruvarutpa
Tiruvarutpa was published in large 8vo format in February 1867 by Asiatic Press, 292 Lingee Chetty Street, Madras.Footnote 47 Ramalinga's poems fill 406 pages of the volume. Front matter includes a table of contents, a benedictory verse, and a page with details for purchasing the publication. The back material begins with Velayuda Mudaliyar's ‘History of Tiruvarutpa’, a composition of 63 verses that eulogises Ramalinga and his verses and narrates events leading up to the publication of the work. This is followed by another benedictory verse, a list of errors and corrections, a list of Ramalinga's poems yet to be published, and finally an alphabetical list of verses ordered by the first word of each verse. The pages are bound in a hard cover, making for an impressive volume.
An advertisement at the beginning of the work informs the reader that copies of Tiruvarutpa could be purchased for three rupees directly from a few of Ramalinga's disciples, giving street addresses in Chennai; Vellore, about 105 kilometres west of Chennai; and Cuddalore, the largest town near Ramalinga's residence. Those who lived at some distance could order copies through the post.Footnote 48 The purchase of books through the post in India was not unusual; Ulrike Stark similarly notes that the distribution of books by mail was common in North India by 1870.Footnote 49 The advertisement also states that Mayilai Cikkitti Chettiyar and Somasundara Chettiyar provided financial support for the publication.Footnote 50 The printing of Tamil classics throughout the nineteenth century usually required the support of wealthy patrons and institutions, highlighting that printing books was not always a cheap way to publicize messages, as it was often an expensive enterprise.Footnote 51
The cost of publication—three rupees—was high for a published work at the time. Murdoch's 1865 catalogue includes the prices for 127 Shaiva works. Of these, only two exceed three rupees: a two-volume edition of Periya Purāṇam for three-and-a-quarter rupees, and a three-volume edition of Sambandar's Tēvāram verses for four rupees.Footnote 52 These are both part of the Shaiva devotional canon, esteemed company for Tiruvarutpa.Footnote 53 Given its high price, it is doubtful that Tiruvarutpa would have been distributed in markets or bazaars, and it would not have enjoyed the sales volumes of popular religious literature. Unfortunately, there are no distribution figures for the 1867 printing of Tiruvarutpa, but Ramalinga's followers clearly opted for a prestigious, impressive publication rather than a cheaper one that would be more widely distributed and read. Although print in this case served to widen claims to religious authority, it did so not in its capacity for efficient reproduction, but because it was the new, primary medium through which claims to textual authority were advanced.
At the bottom of the title page, in English, are the words ‘Registered Copy-right’. In 1857, James Long noted the relative pricing of books marked with copyright: ‘The new Bengali works published by Natives are generally rather high priced when they are copy-wright, as various natives now find the composing of Bengali books profitable, and some authors draw a regular income from them. . . Books for the masses, not copy-wright, are very cheap.’Footnote 54 It is unlikely that Tiruvarutpa was subject to the Press and Registration of Books Act of 1867, which presumably would have only been enforced for books published in 1868 and after.Footnote 55 However, Murdoch noted in 1865 that ‘a considerable number of native books now bear on their title pages, “Registered Copyright”. This is always printed in English, being considered much more effective in that language.’ In Tamil Shaiva publishing in this period, prestigious canonical works were marked as copyright, setting them apart from the vast range and quantity of popular religious publications of the time.Footnote 56 Murdoch wrote that publishers told him that they could register books with the government for a fee of two rupees, and suggested that claims may have been made that some were registered without being so.Footnote 57 Velayuda Mudaliyar wrote that Tiruvarutpa was being published so that ‘the government will know’, perhaps referring to some form of official registration.Footnote 58 With the competition over the publication of Ramalinga's verses, and accusation of theft and unauthorized publication, labelling the work with ‘Registered Copy-right’ may have offered some legal protection. Perhaps, just as importantly, the note of ‘Copy-right’ distinguished the 1867 work from prior publications of Ramalinga's verses, marking this as the authorized, and also as the authoritative, edition of his poems.
The work was edited and arranged by Toluvur Velayuda Mudaliyar, a Tamil scholar based in Chennai and a follower of Ramalinga since 1849. He later took up the prestigious position of Tamil pandit at Presidency College, Chennai.Footnote 59 The editing of the work by a pandit followed the publishing model of Tamil and Sanskrit classics. Since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century, Tamil pandits had played a vital role in publishing traditional Tamil works, editing texts, and also endorsing the work of other pandits through conventional prefaces in verse or prose.Footnote 60 Blackburn notes that pandits, increasingly associated with schools and colleges modelled on British institutions, had a hand in the publication of most of the approximately 200 Tamil works published in Chennai in the first half of the nineteenth century.Footnote 61 For example, Tēvāram and Periya Purāṇam, published just prior to Tiruvarutpa, were edited by Kanci Sabhapati Mudaliyar, a Tamil pandit at the Paccaiyappa School in Chennai.Footnote 62
The title page of the 1867 edition describes Velayuda Mudaliyar as ‘a student of this master [Ramalinga] and one of the scholars of the Society of The True Path of Unity and the Vedas’.Footnote 63 The link to this Society, which Ramalinga established in 1865, gave the work an institutional home. It was common for institutions, especially Shaiva monasteries, to provide financial support and residency to editors of classical literature. Arumuga Navalar, U. V. Saminatha Iyer, and Damodaram Pillai, the leading editors of Tamil literature in the nineteenth century, all received patronage from the Tiruvavadudurai monastery, probably the most powerful of the Tamil Shaiva non-Brahman monasteries. The influence that these institutions exerted on the editing and publishing of Tamil classics, and the prestige derived from their association with such powerful institutions, prompted Damodaram Pillai to call this period of Tamil literary history ‘The Age of Mutts [Monasteries]’.Footnote 64 Ramalinga, an outsider to Shaiva monastic networks, founded a number of his own institutions from the mid-1860s until his death in 1874. These included a temple, an almshouse, and a society of like-minded devotees, which served as centres for his teachings and charity work. Velayuda Mudaliyar sought to establish his scholarly credentials by invoking Ramalinga's ‘Society of the True Path’ as a source of institutional prestige, albeit one that clearly stood apart from the established centres of Shaiva institutional power.
In addition to editing the work, Velayuda Mudaliyar divided all the poems in his possession into six sections as a way of ordering the verses. He called these divisions ‘Tirumurai’, the same term used to refer to the Shaiva canonical corpus.Footnote 65 He explains the rationale for this division in his ‘History of Tiruvarutpa’:
Tiru Arutpa is divided into six distinct sections [muṟai], because [1] it is a shastra (teaching) and [2] a stottiram (praise poem), elucidating the rituals of worship; because [3] it generates the truth of the five original, ancient syllables [civāya nama] that illuminate all things; because [4] it reveals that which is understood by those of the six religious systems [aṟucamayam], and by those outside these traditions, and because [5] it reveals that which is beyond their understanding; and because [6] it removes faults and explains that which is higher than the established paths to liberation [attuvā].Footnote 66
I have translated ‘muṟai’ here as ‘section’, which is roughly consistent with its use in the Shaiva Tirumurai canon, where it refers to the canon as a whole, and also to each of its 12 individual parts (e.g. the eleventh Tirumurai). Tirumurai also has the sense of a holy path or tradition, drawing on the broader meaning of ‘muṟai’ as path or way.Footnote 67 Velayuda Mudaliyar uses the term in both senses, to refer to the way he divided the text into six parts, and also to point to aspects of Ramalinga's verses that suggest distinct paths of religious practice. He emphasizes that Tiruvarutpa illuminates the paths taught in the six established religious traditions [aṟucamayam], which include Shaivism, while it also teaches truths that are beyond the understanding of those established traditions. Despite advancing this critique of long-standing traditions, Velayuda Mudaliyar situates Tiruvarutpa within Shaivism by using the term ‘Tirumurai’ to link Tiruvarutpa to the established Shaiva corpus.
A concern surrounding the publication was what name would be used for Ramalinga. We have seen that Ramalinga objected to the use of Ramalingasami, but it is not clear that the name that did appear on the title page—‘Iramalinga Pillai of Chidambaram, the generous one who is radiant with holy grace’—was much of a gesture in the direction of humility.Footnote 68 While Ramalinga clearly had some input into such details, it was probably Velayuda Mudaliyar who gave Ramalinga this title.Footnote 69 If Ramalinga was concerned about the way he would be referred to in the publication, there is no indication that he was unhappy with the title given to the work: Tiruvarutpa, ‘Poems of Divine Grace’. It would be the title, however, that would cause the most controversy in the coming years. Velayuda Mudaliyar explains the choice of title in his ‘History of Tiruvarutpa’:
Our Ramalinga's words, full of grace, are nectar that flows in torrents of Tamil. These words melt the hearts of great people with content minds who seize that precious grace, as well as the hearts of those sinners like me who suffer with delusion. These words, cultivating grace that provides unlimited love, are crowned with the name ‘Arutpa’, songs of grace, because they cut through karma and enable one to unite with the rich, flowery feet of Shiva, whose left side has the form of a woman with laughing, fish-like eyes with golden jasmine. A few people like me, our understanding deluded with confusion, grasped the words of Arutpa as speech with divine benevolence. The words of Arutpa are imbued with grace, grace that creates auspiciousness and brings clarity to clouded minds like mine.Footnote 70
Velayuda Mudaliyar emphasizes that because Ramalinga's poems are composed with grace, and because they reveal Shiva's grace to their readers, it is appropriate to refer to them as ‘songs of grace’, and to Ramalinga himself as ‘radiant with holy grace’. As Ramalinga's staunch critic Arumuga Navalar later pointed out, the term ‘Arutpa’ sometimes referred to the most revered Shaiva literary works.Footnote 71 Navalar, and presumably others, took the title as a claim by Ramalinga that his writings were equal to those Shaiva classics.
There were two ciṟappu pāyiram, or celebratory verses, in the volume.Footnote 72 The first was written by Chidambara Swamigal, of the Madurai Tirugnanasambandaswamigal Monastery, ‘the renowned seat of religious teachers of pure Shaiva Siddhanta based on the Vedas and Agamas’. This is the book's only explicit link to the powerful Shaiva monastic network, and indicates that Ramalinga was not entirely devoid of the support of established Shaiva institutions. Chidambara Swamigal's foreword was a single verse with the title ‘The Greatness of Tiruvarutpa’:
Revere the greatness and dignity of the path [muṟai] of the fine Arutpa of our dear Ramalinga. That path creates prosperity, such that the drinking water of ordinary people abounds with power, as in the event when water had power to fuel a lamp's flame.
The verse indicates that the poems of Tiruvarutpa reveal a ‘murai’, a path or tradition. The Shaiva path was often described as the ‘Shaiva murai’, so the phrase ‘Arutpa murai’ suggests a distinct, and novel, religious path embodied in Tiruvarutpa.Footnote 73
The mention of a lamp's flame fuelled by water refers to one of the most popular legends about Ramalinga. The story is repeated in many hagiographies and is the foundational event for a popular shrine in Karunguli. Uran Adigal's extensive and knowledgeable biography, first published in 1971, gives the following narrative account.Footnote 74 Ramalinga, it seems, always had a lamp burning near him throughout the night. When he was staying at Karunguli, a follower named Muttiyalammal, the matron of a nearby household, would come into Ramalinga's room daily to clean, fill, and light the oil lamp. She would place a separate vessel of oil nearby that Ramalinga could use during the night to refill the lantern. One day the oil vessel broke and was replaced by another vessel, this one filled with water. Muttiyalammal was out of town so did not come to fill the vessel with oil. Legend has it that Ramalinga unknowingly filled the lamp with water throughout the night, and the lamp continued to burn brightly. The next day, Muttiyalammal discovered the vessel filled with water, and asked Ramalinga about it. Ramalinga confirmed that the lamp had burned throughout the night. The story of the miraculous event spread quickly among Ramalinga's followers as a sign of his divine character.Footnote 75 Ramalinga composed a verse recounting this event, which appears in the 1867 publication.Footnote 76
Such stories of miraculous events abound in literature on Ramalinga's life, and were widely recognized when he was alive.Footnote 77 His reputation as a thaumaturge caught the attention of the urban elite, with the 5 July 1871 edition of the Madras Mail reporting that ‘One Ramalinga Pillai, a Tamil Scholar of some repute, it appears [sic] has set himself up for a god and, promises his votaries the resurrection of their relatives and friends that have departed this world. Thousands throng there daily; and a Pandal is being erected at the cost of 15,000 Rs.!!! in honor of the coming day when that glorious miracle will be wrought.’Footnote 78 To his followers, Ramalinga was not only a poet whose words were filled with Shiva's grace, but also a powerful leader capable of working miracles. In combining poetic skill with claims of extraordinary power, Ramalinga resembled the great poet-saints of Shaivism, the celebrated authors of the most revered Shaiva devotional literature in Tamil. The Periya Purāṇam, for example, is replete with stories of the supernatural acts of the authors of the Tēvāram. Ramalinga himself frequently refers to the extraordinary powers of the ‘Nālvar’, the four most renowned Shaiva saints: Sambandar, Appar, Sundarar, and Manikkavasagar.Footnote 79 Stories of Ramalinga's extraordinary abilities further helped legitimate his place among the pantheon of Shaiva saints. They also fuelled heated criticism, as in an 1869 publication of Arumuga Navalar which questions the veracity of this legend.Footnote 80
The other preface, by Ponneri Sundaram Pillai, one of Ramalinga's close disciples, made a clear claim for the divinity of Ramalinga by asserting that he was an incarnation of Shiva himself.
God, with the highest grace, in order to destroy [the suffering of] our individual births and the bonds of our personal karma, took incarnation in a holy body out of compassion: is it eight shoulders or two? Three eyes, or two eyes of grace? A name of five syllables, or the miraculous name of grace, Iramalinga? The four Vedas, or the six Murais [of Tiruvarutpa]? In these ways you reapportioned yourself, ascetic [Shiva] who destroys illusion.Footnote 81
In addition to claiming the divinity of Ramalinga, Sundaram Pillai also equates Tiruvarutpa with the Vedas, asserting the canonical status of Ramalinga's writings. The two claims are related, since a bid for canonical status is usually premised on the extraordinary insight and abilities of a work's author. Ramalinga did not claim divinity for himself in his verses, but rather emphasized his sinful nature and Shiva's grace in granting him access and wisdom. However, he did give permission for the publication of these benedictory verses in a letter to Putuvai Velu Mudaliyar. ‘The pāyiram (preface) of our Sundara Pillai is good. Go ahead and publish it. The preface of our Chidambara Samigal is also good, so publish that one too.’Footnote 82 We can assume, then, that he did not object to Sundaram Pillai's identification of him with Shiva.
Ramalinga's verses that appeared in the 1867 edition of Tiruvarutpa run to over 400 pages. Most are devotional poems to Shiva in a few important temples. The verses are highly reflexive, narrating Ramalinga's encounters with god, and often stress his feelings of unworthiness. It would be impossible to give a thorough account of the content of these poems here, so instead I will cite a few verses that give the flavour of the work. First is a brief prefatory verse:Footnote 83
The happiness which destroys the defects of attachment and cruel illusion, and which rests beyond the radiant core of light—my lord, will that happiness come today, tomorrow, or another day? I don't know.Footnote 84
The first Tirumurai begins after this verse with a poem of 128 feet entitled ‘Tiruvaṭippukaḻcci’, ‘Praise of [Shiva’s] Holy Feet’. The poem, full of Shaiva theological language, starts with the line ‘The greatest wealth is the destiny to enjoy the essence of Shiva, which is full of the pure intelligence of the highest state of being.’Footnote 85 Given that the editor Velayutha Mudaliyar was a Tamil scholar, lecturer, and intellectual, it may be that he chose to begin with a highly abstract verse in order to foreground the philosophical dimension of Ramalinga's writings.
Most of the poems in the volume, however, are descriptive and devotional, extolling Shiva in various mythological manifestations drawn from Puranic sources. S. P. Annamalai notes that Ramalinga's simple style shares more with works like Tēvāram and Tiruvācakam than it does with the more technically sophisticated writing of his contemporary Minakshisundaram Pillai.Footnote 86 Many verses are highly personal, recounting specific experiences of devotion and interaction with Shiva, lauding particular temples where he worshipped, especially Tiruvottriyur and Chidambaram, and lamenting his moral lapses and unworthiness. For example, in a poem titled ‘Aruḷiyal Viṉāval’ (‘Examining the Nature of Grace’), Ramalinga begins with a verse to Shiva in his form of Masilamani of the temple at Mullaivayil, just west of Chennai:
Oh ocean of divine grace which is sweet like honey! Oh pure nectar, divine nature, oh god who is like the sky, oh Masilamani who lives at Mullaivayil! I lack discernment, dwelling in a fleshy body. Even so, when I came to your holy temple, you did not question my coming, remaining silent. Isn't this the nature of your holy grace?’Footnote 87
Ramalinga frequently recalls his encounters with Shiva throughout his life, beginning when he was a young child. In his poem ‘Tiruvaruṇmuṟaiyīṭu’ (‘Petition to Divine Grace’), Ramalinga writes:
When I was young, without any wisdom at all, playing in the streets, my little legs flapping around, at that period of my life you gave me valuable knowledge and had me sing about you, you who took form in formlessness. Who else enjoys your soothing intimacy?’Footnote 88
Ramalinga often speaks of his special relationship with Shiva, claiming that Shiva had elevated him over other devotees. In a verse of his ‘Piracāta Mālai’ (‘Sanctified Garland’), he describes how Shiva singled him out from other devotees:
Taking on a divine body of radiant beauty, you appeared in your grace before me, your servant. Smiling with grace, you put me in the middle of an assembly of devotees. You gave them all sacred ash, and then turning to me, your face blossoming with compassion, you took a beautiful red flower of light from your alms bag and gave it to me. I don't understand this sign of yours, my guru! Oh master, taking the form of brilliant light, you beautifully performed the dance of enjoyment in the public hall [of Chidambaram] set with jewels, radiant with a robe of a young elephant.Footnote 89
Ramalinga's poetry was clearly influenced by the themes and content of Shaiva bhakti literature, especially the writings of the Nalvar, the four most important poet-saints of Tamil Shaivism, and he even wrote poems addressed to these four.Footnote 90 In the 1867 verses, Ramalinga drew inspiration from the Shaiva literary past for content or genre, not from modern influences.Footnote 91 The poems are highly conventional, consisting of heartfelt praise to Shiva expressed in familiar idioms; reflections on Ramalinga's own inadequacies, especially when compared to Shiva himself and to other Shaiva saints; and celebrations of the narratives, temples, and geography of Tamil Saivism. Ramalinga uses a range of metres and forms typical of classical Tamil literature and common in the Tēvāram, such as nerisai, viruttam, and patigam.Footnote 92 All poems except those to the Nalvar focus on the worship of Shiva. We have seen that Ramalinga's letter of 19 November 1865 instructed Irattina Mudaliyar that ‘you and Selvaraya Mudaliyar may use only those verses which speak of Shiva in my heart. . .’Footnote 93 The letter suggests that Irattina Mudaliyar and Selvaraya Mudaliyar had poems that were not specifically about Shiva, poems that Ramalinga did not want to be published. Accordingly, the poems that Ramalinga wrote to Murugan do not appear in the 1867 edition, and were only published in 1880 as the fifth Tirumurai.Footnote 94 The exclusive emphasis on Shiva in the 1867 work is a quality that François Gros has noted also for the Tēvāram: ‘The majesty of Shiva dominates the Tēvāram and seems not to accommodate anecdote very comfortably. This may be why, in these decidedly Tamil hymns, Murukaṉ has so little place. . .’Footnote 95 Whatever the reason for Ramalinga's exclusion of verses to Murugan, the effect was to bring Tiruvarutpa more in line with the Tēvāram hymns. This conventional character of Tiruvarutpa made the work suited to be compared to other works of the Shaiva canon, and was indeed an essential characteristic of the work that would qualify it to be considered a Shaiva classic.
It would have been difficult to make the case for canonicity of a less conventional work, or a work with a message that diverged much from the teachings of the established Shaiva canonical works. Accordingly, also absent from the 1867 publication were the radical, confrontational verses that Ramalinga is best known for today, which denounce caste distinctions, orthodox institutions, and Sanskrit works like the Vedas and Shaiva Agamas.Footnote 96 These controversial verses only appeared in print in 1885 in the sixth Tirumurai, published in a third instalment of Tiruvarutpa without the participation of Velayuda Mudaliyar or others who had worked on the publication of the first five Tirumurai.Footnote 97 Velayuda Mudaliyar, in his ‘Tiruvaruṭpā Varalāṟu’, indicated that in 1867 he already had in his possession poems that would be included in the sixth Tirumurai, and he explicitly stated that it was not yet time to publish these.Footnote 98 Subsequent to the publication of those polemical verses, Ramalinga's oeuvre has most often been compared to the works of the Tamil siddhars, the decidedly unorthodox, anti-establishment Shaiva poets whose works are not included in the Shaiva canon.Footnote 99 In 1867, however, Ramalinga and his followers did not want to publish controversial verses, but rather aimed to produce a work that shared the content and message of the canonical Shaiva texts.
Conclusion
At the time of Tiruvarutpa's publication, print was becoming the most widespread medium for textual transmission in South Asia. Print served a wide variety of religious groups and audiences—elite, popular, orthodox, and heterodox—which used the technology to produce and distribute texts across vast distances and to diverse social groups. However, the publication of Tiruvarutpa as an expensive volume highlights that the transformative power of print lay not only in being a cheap, efficient medium of reproduction; it also carried other meanings for readers and consumers. By the 1860s in South India, print had become the primary medium of canonical publications, and any work that aspired to canonicity needed to appear in print. The printing press, accessible to any group that had the money to employ it, provided a tool for religious groups on the margins of established religious centres to make bids for that authority. In doing so, it offered the potential to transform the relationships of authority between established religious institutions and leaders, on the one hand, and those who were articulating new religious visions from the institutional margins, on the other.
If the content and literary style of the first volume of Tiruvarutpa was largely conventional, its publication was not. In contrast to contemporaneous publications of canonical Shaiva literature, Tiruvarutpa was produced by a group of individuals working outside traditional centres of Shaiva authority. By publishing the work in the style of classical Shaiva books, they claimed the revelatory authority of new, original verses attributed to a living author. While the content of the text is the work of Ramalinga himself, many of the decisions that shaped the publication as canonical resulted from the cooperation of Ramalinga and his close disciples. These included a skilful Tamil pandit who proved to be a capable editor, a few wealthy men who provided financial backing to the publication, and a group of devoted disciples who worked hard to bring the work to press. Their goal was to produce a text with prestige to rival that of the Shaiva devotional corpus, a work that would consolidate the legacy of Ramalinga. Tiruvarutpa came to occupy the centre of communities that formed around Ramalinga's teachings, so perhaps it is fitting that the publication was itself a community effort.
Nowhere in his letters did Ramalinga refer to his poems as comprising a unified whole. He never set out to write a comprehensive work, and he consistently referred only to individual poems. The longest of the 1867 poems was ‘Neñcaṟivuṟuttal’, which fills just under 50 published pages. The majority of his poems were much shorter, so they were well suited for publication in pamphlet form. However, cheap publications did not carry the authority of a larger volume published to the high standard of Shaiva canonical works. Ramalinga's followers produced the work in a form that would maximize its prestige, opting for an expensive volume made to last, presented as a unified work by a poet-saint. This choice certainly made the work less accessible, since it was beyond the purchasing power of most readers, and it is doubtful that it was on offer in market and bazaars. Despite Ramalinga's reputation today as a saint of the common people, in 1867 the prevalent aspiration of his community for his work was more for the status of established institutions than for wide readership across a range of castes and classes.
