The Sacred Geography of the Tamil Shaivite Hymns

Abstract

Revitalization movements, past and present, have become subjects of special interest to both historians and social scientists. Nativistic, millennarian, messianic, and other kind of revitalization movements have provided scholars with useful data for the study of political, social and religious change, as well as what might be called cultural crises 1). Hinduism has experienced many such revitalization movements, in response to the internal development of Indian society or to the external challenges of invading peoples and alien faiths. We need only remind ourselves of the many syncretic Hindu cults which have developed as a result of challenges posed to the Hindu social order by Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, in order to recognize the remarkable capacity of Hinduism for self-renewal. Among the most interesting revitalization movements to have developed within Hinduism are the various cults of bhakti devotionalism, with their simple but impassioned messages and their implied egalitarian bias. In particular, Tamil devotionalism has long been a subject of interest to students of Indian religious history. But the recent development of scholarly interest in modern Indian regionalism and its historic roots has added new urgency to the task of studying those movements which, like Tamil devotionalism, have important implications for the cultivation and dissemination of religious and literary symbols, values, and themes which are shared by the inhabitants of a particular linguistic region. One conclusion which emerges from a series