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Look, my feet measure beyond earth and sky! he said and touched the sky. I have surrendered to my lord who glanced at me with his large radiant eyes. The Tiruviruttam is an iconic poem by Namm v r (c. ninth century CE), the greatest of the v r poet-saints of the Tamil r vai ava tradition. Its hundred interlinked verses celebrate the love between an anonymous heroine and hero, who come to be identified with Namm v r and his beloved deity, Vi u. The poet masterfully weaves the erotic and esoteric to reveal both the contours of love and the never-ending cycles of separation and union, of birth and death, from which only Vi u can offer release. In A Hundred Measures of Time, Archana Venkatesan has crafted a sonorous free-verse rendering and an accompanying far-ranging essay to delight poetry lovers and scholars alike.

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Religious text

Hinduism

Poetry

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	15 mai 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789351187141
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0550€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Nammā l vār

A HUNDRED MEASURES OF TIME
Tiruviruttam
Translated from the Tamil by Archana Venkatesan
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
A Note on Transliteration
Prave am: Entering the World of the Tiruviruttam
Part I: A Hundred Measures of Time
Part II: The Measure of Time
Part III: Periyav cc n Pi ai s Commentary on the Tiruviruttam
Appendix 1: Index of Characters
Appendix 2: Index of Motifs and Typology of Verses
Appendix 3: Indices of Myths, Places and Names
Footnotes
Prave am: Entering the World of the Tiruviruttam
Appendix 2
Annotations to Namm lv r s Tiruviruttam
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
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Copyright Page
PENGUIN CLASSICS
A HUNDRED MEASURES OF TIME
ARCHANA VENKATESAN is associate professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has received numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies and Fulbright. Her research interests are in the intersection of text and performance in south India, as well as in the translation of early and medieval Tamil poetry into English. She is the author of The Secret Garland: Ā ā s Tirupp vai and N cciy r Tirumo l i (2010), and is collaborating with Francis Clooney of Harvard University on an English translation of Namm l v r s Tiruv ymo l i .
for my teachers
A Note on Transliteration
I have transliterated Tamil words according to the conventions of the Tamil Lexicon . Sanskrit-derived Tamil words are generally in their most easily recognizable form-so, M dhava n instead of M tava n . Place names that occur in the poems or in the commentary have been transliterated. In all other instances, place names adhere to their most common spelling. Names of contemporary authors and informants are rendered as they choose to spell them in English. I have transliterated the names of all historical personalities.
Tamil has twelve vowels, which are classified into five short vowels ( a , i , u , e , o ), five long vowels ( , , , , ), and two diphthongs ( ai and au ). There are eighteen consonants.
Below is a pronunciation guide.
Vowels
a
pronounced like the u in c u t

pronounced like the a in f a ther
i
pronounced like the i in i t

pronounced like the ee in f ee t
u
pronounced like the u in p u t

pronounced like the oo in r oo t
e
pronounced like the e in s e t

pronounced like the a in r a te
o
pronounced like the uo in q uo te

pronounced like the o in g o
ai
pronounced like the ie in p ie
au
pronounced like the ow in c ow
Consonants
k (guttural)
pronounced like the k in k ite . Tamil e.g. k al (stone)
c (palatal)
pronounced like the ch in ch alk . It can also be pronounced as a sibilant, like the s in s ieve . Tamil e.g. c ol (word)
(retroflex)
pronounced like the t in t oe . Tamil e.g. va u (insect)
t (dental)
pronounced like the t in th ing . Tamil e.g. van t u (having come)
p
pronounced like the p in prop . Tamil e.g. p l (milk)
(nasal paired with k )
pronounced like the nk in li nk . Tamil e.g. ma kai (girl)
(nasal paired with c )
pronounced like the gn in gn osis . Tamil e.g. ne cu (heart)
(nasal paired with )
pronounced like the n in frie n d . Tamil e.g. va u (insect)
n (nasal paired with t )
pronounced like the n in n ow . Tamil e.g. va n tu (having come)
n (alveolar nasal, occurs at the end of Tamil words)
Also pronounced like the n in n ow , but with tongue pressed closer to the tongue. Tamil e.g. ava n (he)
m (nasal paired with p )
pronounced like the m in m arriage . Tamil e.g. m ayil (peacock)
y
pronounced like the y in y our . Tamil e.g. y r (who)
r
pronounced like the r in you r . Tamil e.g. y r (who)
r
pronounced like the dr in dr ill . Tamil e.g. a n ru (then)
l
pronounced like the l in l ight . Tamil e.g. i l >ai (leaf)
(retroflex)
pronounced like the l in b l ah , but with more emphasis. It is pronounced with the tongue curled back, akin to a kind of gargling sound. Tamil e.g. ava (she)
v
pronounced like the v in v ictory . Tamil e.g. v il (bow)
l
No English equivalent. Pronounced as a gentle rolled sound similar to the North American use of the r sound as Ame r ican . Tamil e.g. e l il (beauty)
PRAVE AM
Entering the World of the Tiruviruttam
The Tiruviruttam is a compact, hundred-verse poem composed by the remarkable Tamil Vai ava mystic and poet, a hak pa n -Namm l v r (c. eighth-ninth century CE ). 1 Rendered in a series of interlinked verses, the poem maps and traverses a complex emotional terrain. It is framed as a love story that unfolds between an anonymous heroine ( talaivi ) and her beloved hero ( talaiva n ), while friends, fortune tellers, bees, birds and the poet s own heart play important supporting roles, acting as messengers, lamenters and audiences in a story everyone knows well. These stock characters are what A.K. Ramanujan referred to in his translation of Namm l v r as returning voices , pointing out the contiguity of antecedent Tamil Ca kam poetics and Tamil bhakti poetry. 2 Traditional r vai ava exegesis too recognizes this debt, identifying the Tiruviruttam s frame as the any pade rtha or other meaning. From this vantage, the any pade a is the poem s outer shell, serviceable and necessary, protecting the ripe, mature fruit of esoteric import ( sv pade rtha ) which it encases. Thus the poem can be read either as a beautiful and moving love story, which according to generations of r vai ava scholars is to miss the point entirely, or as speaking certain fundamental and essential truths about the most pressing existential questions: the nature of life, of birth, of god, of one s own self. The poet himself oscillates between these two poles: the heroine s plaintive voice expressing the corporeal and emotive textures of her love for Vi u, while a direct contemplative address reflects on Vi u s unimaginable, inexpressible grandeur.
The Tiruviruttam is a quintessential Tamil bhakti poem. The object of love, of desire, of dedication, is god, identified by the poet as Vi u-N r ya a. The expression of that love is corporeal, emotional and ecstatic, its expression poetic, abstract and symbolic. Vi u is the divine, omnipresent sovereign and also the intimate, often absent, beloved. The relationship between the poem s chief participants is one of dependence, like a bard who relies on a generous king s largesse, and a woman who trusts in the inviolable love of her beloved. The divine king is the poet s sole refuge and the largesse sought is grace. Tiruviruttam 85 is an apt illustration of the ideology of dependence and subservience that gives Tamil bhakti poetry so much of its emotive force:
Like a monkey tossing aside a ruby
evening falls
casting aside the golden sun
O precious gem who measured worlds
my beloved emerald
golden one who has no equal
you re the sole refuge of your servant s life.
Here Vi u is the world-strider, an illustration of his awesome and indisputable supremacy, and the poet assumes a suitably abject position when approaching this supreme deity as the exclusive source and site of refuge. Yet it is the unique intimacy that they share which emboldens Namm l v r to dare such a bold petition. Vi u is his, possessed by him and possessing him. He is his gem, his glittering ruby and, in other verses, his honey, his sweetness, his beloved.
Even as the Tiruviruttam is representative of the genre of Tamil bhakti poetry, it can be seen as both heir and progenitor in a long and illustrious lineage of Tamil poetry. The poem s frame, its succinct phrasing, its evocative and striking imagery and the seamless integration of the aesthetic principles of the public ( pu r am ) and private ( akam ) Ca kam genres reveal its debt to what we know today as the Tamil classical literary traditions. The manipulation of these very principles to craft a narrative of love and loss, of separation and union, places the Tiruviruttam at the forefront of literary innovations that give us later medieval Tamil genres such as the k vai , the ul and, as David Shulman suggests, the kalampakam . I discuss these streams of influence in depth in Part II (The Measure of Time) of this book, and therefore refrain from repeating them here. Below, I offer a brief overview of l v r poetry and Namm l v r s place within it.
The Poetry of the Ā l vārs
A.K. Ramanujan titled his landmark translation of selected Namm l v r verses Hymns for the Drowning . It is an allusion to the title l v r , those who are immersed , granted to the twelve pioneering saints of the r vai ava saṁprad ya s (lineages). The epithet expresses the fluid, emotional and immersive experience that characterizes the poetry of the Tamil Vai ava tradition. Yet, like Ramanujan s title, it also plays on the metaphor of the world as an ocean of sorrow in which Vi u and his heavenly Vaiku ha are the sole life-rafts. , a later contemporary of Namm l v r, says this in N cciy r Tirumo l i 5.4:
My bones melt and my eyes
long as spears
resist even blinking.
for days now, I am plunged into a sea of distress
and I ache to attain
that great boat, Vaiku ha,
but I cannot see it.
O kuyil , you too know
the anguish of separation
from a beloved.
Summon the immaculate lord
whose body is like gold
whose banner bears Garuḍa
to me 3
s verse evocatively captures the existential crisis at the centre of l v r poetry. As ecstatics, their experience of Vi u is totalizing and complete, but as human beings the caprices of human birth are inescapable. This crisis expresses itself in their poetry as a dialectic of union and separation; the poet invariably speaks from a position of loss and absence, yet remains with eyes unblinking (see, for instance, Tiruviruttam 97 and 98) ever alert for a vision of the divine beloved.
The Parip al , an abstract and fragmentary Tamil anthology f