Extraordinary Child: Poems from a South Indian Devotional Genre

Chapter Nine The Fruits of Reading Pillaittamils

207 c h a p t e r n i n e T H E F R U I T S O F R E A D I N G P I L L A I T T A M I L S Over the centuries the pillaittamil genre has attracted many writers and literary connoisseurs. When I asked practicing pillaittamil poets why they found the genre compelling, they recounted the pleasures of composing poems about children while maneuvering within particular paruvams. Their answers corroborate evidence about poetic practices in earlier centuries. Both suggest that the pillaittamil presents poets with a clearly circumscribed subject (the extraordinary child) and a well-articulated poetic structure (the paruvam framework ), within which they find challenging opportunities to compose inventively. The paruvam structure offers multiple ways to express devotion to the winsome child, to invoke the aid of particular guardians in the protection paruvam, to plot the defeat of an opponent within the moon paruvam, to excel at sophisticated word play within the kiss paruvam, and much more. The subject matter and paruvams provide a capacious framework for poetic creativity. In seeking to translate selections from the pillaittamil genre into English, the translator finds that providing an overview of the conventional ten-part structure aids in the process of helping the English reader cross over into the poetic world of the pillaittamil. The paruvam structure can function as a blueprint for both those who have not previously encountered Tamil literature and those familiar with aspects of Tamil literature but unfamiliar with the pillaittamil genre. Nonetheless many challenges remain for translator and reader, because the pillaittamil genre has produced such nuanced and varied poetry. The sampler of pillaittamil translations presented in this reflections on pillaittamils 208 volume broadens our understanding of South Indian religiosity in several ways. First, pillaittamil translations reveal how poets have incorporated the language of domesticity, traditionally identified with women’s sphere, into religious poetry. Other genres of devotional poetry have used the language of eroticism to express love for the extraordinary being, imagining the deity as beloved and devotee as lover. In contrast , the poets represented in this book use, for the most part, the language of domesticity, envisioning the extraordinary being as child and the devotee as mother. In the pillaittamil, the imagery of domesticity is not denigrated or marginalized; instead poets deploy it to express a most elevated sentiment—devotional love for a god, goddess , saint, prophet, hero, or heroine. Because male poets express this devotional love by assuming a maternal voice, the genre promotes the phenomenon of cross-speaking, thus raising intriguing questions about the nature of gendered voice within the pillaittamil. The genre also demonstrates how dramatically poetic structures can influence expressions of praise from different religious traditions. Poets from one community after another adopt the same pillaittamil literary conventions: the Chola court, Ùaivas, Vai∂»avas, Muslims, Christians, and Tamil ideologues. Praise plays a major role in the cultural life of Tamil literature, and the ten paruvams provide poets with a structure to shape their praise. Thus, exploring pillaittamils prompts some reflections on the cultural construction of praise across community boundaries. Finally, the translations show how different religious traditions inflect the genre in their own ways. That Hindus, Muslims, and Christians—with differing concepts of divinity, notions of virtuous behavior, and ideas of religious community—avail themselves of the same literary genre suggests the adaptability of a seemingly restrictive format. Viewing the pillaittamil as a multireligious genre suggests we should understand Indian religion as encompassing different traditions, many of which share certain literary modes of expression. Nonetheless, we must note how pillaittamil poets from different communities simultaneously affiliate themselves with other pillaittamil poets and differentiate themselves from other religious communities. the fruits of reading pillaittamils 209 The Pleasures of Capacious Convention Within Tamil literary circles, two terms appear often in discussions of the history of poetic works: pulavar and marapu. The pulavar, or “traditional erudite Tamil poet,” creates new poetry after immersing himself in the great works of the past. Through initial immersion in older poetry, a poet harnesses the power of marapu, “custom, convention, established usage, or practice,” in order to create his own literary works. The two terms have been ubiquitous in the discourse of Tamil writers and connoisseurs over the centuries.1 Marapu guides the subject matter, the form, and the “arithmetic” of pillaittamil poetry. The subject matter of the poem encompasses both...