that, like Hinduism itself, it is easier to define this corpus (if indeed this amalgam
of texts and performance practices can legitimately be called a corpus) in terms
of what it excludes – i.e., Tamil texts that are explicitly affiliated with non-Hindu
religious traditions such as Jainism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity or non-
religious texts – than on the basis of a central doctrine or a uniform world view.
Nevertheless, one can identify clusters of shared mythic motifs, ritual affilia-
tions, and attitudes that weave in and out of this corpus, providing it with a kind
of informal cohesiveness. Some of the pairings that can be identified through
this approach are fairly obvious, others less so. Anyone who is familiar with
the poems of the Tamil bhakti saints and with the myths included in the Tamil
pura ̄n.ic corpus cannot fail to notice their affinities: the saints’ poems are filled
with allusions to the myths, and the rhetoric of many of the myths promotes
a devotional attitude toward their divine protagonists. Perhaps more tenuous,
but nevertheless intriguing, would be the connection one might make between
descriptions of certain ritual practices, including spirit possession, found in some
can.kam poems and seemingly similar ritual practices that inform the Tamil
cults of Draupadı ̄ and the bow song deities. The analytic concept of “family
resemblance” has been invoked to account for the nature of the relationship
among the various beliefs and practices that commonly are identified as “Hindu”
(Ferro-Luzzi 1989), and one might do the same when speaking of “Tamil Hindu
literature.”
Let us then conclude by attempting to profile this wide-ranging corpus by
tracing connections with other dimensions of religious life and by reviewing the
various textual modalities it encompasses. To begin, some, but not all of these
texts are closely intertwined with ritual, especially as performed in the Hindu
temples of Tamilnadu. On the one hand, the canonized poems of the Tamil
bhakti saints have been incorporated into the liturgy of Brahmanic temples of
Vis.n.u and S ́iva, where recitation of the saints’ poems can be interpreted as a
reenactment of the saints’ exemplary devotion to these gods. On the other, fes-
tival ritual, that in a sense defines the cults of Draupadı ̄ and the bow song deities,
frames the bow song performances as well as recitation and enactments of
episodes from the Maha ̄bha ̄ratathat are central to these festivals. While the
saints’ poems may be viewed as verbal embodiments of their authors’ devotion,
bow song and street drama performances provide occasions for physical em-
bodiments of divine agencies through spirit possession. Other textual genres
mentioned in this essay are less directly linked to the ritual domain. We find
occasional references to ritual practices in can.kam poems, but there is no evi-
dence that these poems were themselves performed in a ritual context. Tamil
sthalapura ̄n.as are very much a literature of and about Hindu temples, and while
they document the mythological history of specific temple sites and sometimes
provide a mythological charter for certain temple rituals, these texts are not
themselves deployed as a component of temple ritual. It would take us beyond
the scope of this essay to attempt to explicate in any detail the spectrum of spe-
cific religious attitudes that are inscribed in these texts. In this regard, however,
we should note that sectarian Vais.n.avism and S ́aivism in Tamilnadu find in these
poems the foundation for sophisticated theological systems.
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