Extraordinary Child: Poems from a South Indian Devotional Genre

Chapter Six A Pillaittamil to Muhammad

130 c h a p t e r s i x A P I L L A I T T A M I L T O M U H A M M A D By choosing to write in the pillaittamil genre, Tamil poets within the Muslim tradition located themselves in relation to the Islamic culture of southeastern India, while simultaneously broadening the scope of the pillaittamil tradition. Seyyitu Anapiyyâ Pulavar (henceforth Anapiyyâ), deployed the pillaittamil genre in his nineteenth -century poem, Napika∏ Nâyakam Pi∏∏aittamil (A Pillaittamil on the Foremost of the Prophets) in order to praise the Prophet Muhammad. The requirements of the paruvam structure shaped the way he portrayed the Prophet. Conversely, the influence of Islamic theology, which prohibited regarding God as a baby or addressing the Prophet Muhammad as a divine being, subtly transformed the emphases within particular paruvams in distinctively non-Hindu ways. This poem, and others like it, thus helped the pillaittamil genre to develop in new directions.1 Muslim Poets and Tamil Poetic Genres Islamic literature in Tamilnadu has a long and diverse history .2 While some Muslim writers chose to express themselves in Arabic and Persian,3 others wrote in Tamil. Among the latter, some composed in Middle Eastern genres, but others chose to compose in Tamil literary genres. Among those who chose Tamil genres, some adopted primarily narrative poetic genres, while others were attracted to poetry composed of discrete verses.4 The pillaittamil genre offered Islamic poets who wanted to use a Tamil literary genre composed of a pillaittamil to muhammad 131 discrete verses a distinctive framework within which to express praise and veneration. When Islamic poets used the genre, they did not compose pillaittamils to the divine. The Hindu pillaittamil involves envisioning the poem’s subject in a particular form, an enterprise contrary to the spirit of the Qur’anic verse, “No vision can grasp Him” (Sura 6). More specifically, Sura 112 of the Qur’an says, “He did not beget, nor was he begotten,” which excludes representation of the divine in the form of a baby. Given orthodox Muslim repugnance to anthropomorphizing the divine, the absence of pillaittamils to God is not unexpected. Islamic poets did use the genre, however, to praise a number of those venerated within the faith, most notably the Prophet Muhammad , but also members of his family and various walis (“friends of God”) whose tombs are revered in Tamilnadu.5 The earliest four Islamic pillaittamils date from the eighteenth century, and Islamic pillaittamils continue to be written today. At least twenty extant Islamic pillaittamils are known to scholars at present; two were written to females (one to Fatima and another to Ayisha),6 while the rest were addressed to males. Six are addressed to the Prophet Muhammad . Scholars of Islamic Tamil literature recognize Napika∏ Nâyakam Pi∏∏aittamil (NNPT) as an excellent example of a pillaittamil to the Prophet Muhammad. Adherents of Islam have long considered Muhammad’s birth a momentous occasion; at least since the thirteenth century Muslims have celebrated the birthday of the Prophet. For example, among the genres for praising the Prophet in Sindhi, a language used in the Sindh province of modern-day Pakistan, one finds the genre maulud, which celebrates the Prophet Muhammad as a “newborn child.” One such verse, for instance, tells of how Lady Amina smiled when she gave birth to the Prophet. Ali Asani comments that poetry celebrating the Prophet’s birth is widespread throughout the Islamic world but notes that in such poetry emphasis “tends to be on the event itself and/or extolling the noble qualities of the newborn child,” rather than celebrating events throughout early childhood.7 In addition to genres celebrating the Prophet’s birth, there exists a long tradition of venerating the life of the Prophet as extraordinary, pillaittamils for reading 132 as reflected in the devotional poetry of Islam. Among other scholars, Annemarie Schimmel has called attention both to the scholarly neglect of this tradition of veneration and to its central role in Islamic piety.8 Its centrality led to the composition of myriad poems venerating the Prophet, composed in many genres, in languages ranging from Arabic and Persian to the regional languages of Asia and Africa. In these poems we find not the austere, “stripped down” figure of Muhammad portrayed both by certain Muslim reformers and by some Western scholars, but the “mystical” Muhammad of popular piety...