The word “text” has been used as an umbrella term for all of the verbal cre-
ations discussed in this essay, but the uniformity of this signifier masks a variety
of textual forms. The genres we have considered cover a wide range on the scales
of orality and writing, on the one hand, and textual fluidity and fixity, on the
other. Until relatively recently, inscribed palm leaves were the predominant
medium for recording, preserving, and disseminating texts in South India. But
more often than not, even if texts were recorded on palm leaves, they generally
were taught, performed and “consumed” in an oral context, with manuscripts
serving primarily as an aid to memory. The only evidence we have regarding the
original context for the composition and performance of can.kam poems is found
in the legend of an ancient literary academy patronized by early Tamil kings,
and in the representation of poets and patrons in some of the poems themselves.
This enables us to generalize that this body of poetry originally flourished in
a courtly context, but otherwise we know little about the poems’ authors and
audience and the specific contexts for their performance. The hagiographies
of the Tamil bhakti saints would have us believe that the saints composed their
poems as acts of service to Vis.n.u and S ́iva often in the course of visiting locales
associated with specific forms of these gods. The hagiographical literature also
accounts for the miraculous events that resulted in the redaction of the saints’
poems. Both palm leaf manuscripts and oral transmission – the latter sometimes
being of a miraculous nature – are factors in these stories.
The court and the temple continued to serve as the primary loci for learned
Tamil literary culture until modern times, and from about the sixteenth century
monastic institutions were also an important component of this mix. We are for-
tunate to have in the autobiography of the great textual scholar and editor U. V.
Ca ̄mina ̄taiyar a vivid description of the literary culture that flourished in the
monasteries and small towns of nineteenth-century Tamilnadu, and it is likely
that the practices he describes were well established for many generations prior
to his lifetime. For Ca ̄mina ̄taiyar and many of this contemporaries, pirapantam
and pura ̄n.ic texts on S ́aiva themes were the staple diet of a literary education,
and Ca ̄mina ̄taiyar’s teacher, Mı ̄n
̄
a ̄t.cicuntaram Pil.l.ai was also renowned for
composing texts in these genres. Pil..lai received many commissions from temples,
monasteries, and wealthy individuals to compose pirapantam and pura ̄n.am
works, and Ca ̄mina ̄taiyar describes how Pil.l.ai would orally compose verse after
verse while one of his pupils inscribed them on palm leaves. The formal debut of
a text, once completed, was always an oral recitation before an audience, though
the palm leaf manuscript on which it had been inscribed was also given a place
of honor on these occasions.
Though orality is a prominent feature of all of these pre-modern textual vari-
eties, at the same time, there was a strong sense of a fixed text which must be
respected in performance. Turning our attention to the texts associated with
village temple festivals, the situation is rather different. Within this realm the
recitation of the pa ̄ratiya ̄r, who often follows the Tamil Maha ̄bha ̄ratatext of
Villipputtu ̄r A ̄l
̄
va ̄r fairly closely, is based on a textual model not very different
from the one mentioned above. But in street drama and bow song performances
156 norman cutler