Similarly, each day, in fully brahmanized temples, the deity embodied in
its icon would be awakened, brought to full empowerment, whence it would
give out its energies to devotees, then would be retired at night. The rituals
addressed to the icon in a given day could include:
- anointing (abhis.eka) with water, milk, fragrances, etc;
- dressing (vastra) the icon;
- adornment (alan.ka ̄ram; Skt: alam.ka ̄ra) with jewelry, garlands, etc. At this
point in the ritual, the icon was thought to be fully sacralized. The rituals
that followed may include praising with the deity’s 1,000 names
(laks.a ̄ rcana); offerings and gift-giving (arccan
̄
ai; Skt: arcana); and the
showing of lights in adoration of the deity (ara ̄tan
̄ai).The Co ̄l
̄
as
The Co ̄l
̄
a period was one of intensive Sanskritization in the south. Brahmans
who lived in brahmadeyasand radiated their culture outward were the primary
bearers of the Sanskritic stream of culture and religion. Many geographic
places were given Sanskrit names and considerable Sanskritic literature
appeared during this period. This literature included the continuation of
the Pura ̄n.ic corpus, started during the Gupta period. During the eighth to
tenth centuries stories were collected in the south and made part of the
otherPura ̄n.aseven up to the seventeenth century. Another product of
the southern priesthood was the collecting and writing of the a ̄ gamas
(ritual handbooks). These “texts” started as material passed on orally from
father to son, which was then written post facto, first in the vernacular, then
finally in Sanskrit, usually under the aegis of a king or patron who preferred
the ritual system of one temple over that of another. This process of
collecting and writing such handbooks continued from the eighth to the
seventeenth centuries. They were generally collected into three sets: the
S ́aiva ̄gamas, some twenty-eight in number, represented the ritual possibilities
used in temples to S ́iva. Rituals in temples to Vis.n.u were represented in two
separate ritual traditions: the Pa ̄ñcara ̄tra ̄gamas(literally, “five nights”) and
theVaika ̄nasa ̄gamas, a more conservative set of ritual formulations.
Another collection of materials making their way into written form,
more commonly in Tamil, were the ta ̄ lapura ̄n.as, the story of sacred places.
Starting as oral accounts of the history and mythology of a temple or pilgrim-
age site, these narrations purported to tell the exploits of a deity at a
particular spot and of wondrous deeds done by worshipers and pilgrims
to that place. These stories were eventually recorded at least until the
fifteenth century.^11
96 The Post-classical Period