Sandhya
(“union”) Morning and evening twilight,
the two transitional times between day
and night and thus, metaphorically, the
times when day and night are united.
The word also often denotes certain
rites performed daily at morning, noon,
and evening, the three times when dif-
ferent parts of the day are in union.
These rites are prescribed in the dhar-
ma literature as mandatory for all
twice-bornmen, that is, all men from
the brahmin, kshatriya, or vaishya
groups who have undergone the adoles-
cent religious initiationknown as the
“second birth.” At present time these
rites are performed only by the most
orthodox brahmins.
Sangam
(“coming together”) Meeting-place for
two rivers and the point at which their
capacity for purification is believed to
be heightened. The most famous such
site is the confluence of the Ganges
and the Yamuna rivers at the city of
Allahabad, but numerous other such
sites exist throughout the Indian sub-
continent.
Sangama Dynasty
See Vijayanagar dynasty.
Sangam Literature
Collection of classical literature from the
Tamil culture, composed during the
early centuries of the common era;
Sangam (also spelled Cankam) means
“academy.” The most famous texts in
Sangam literature are eight collections
of short poems. Three of these collec-
tions fall into the genre called puram
(“the outer part”); the other five are in
the genre called akam (“the inner part”).
Puram poetry was “public” verse,
describing the deeds of kings, war,
death, and other heroic actions. Akam
poetry was about an individual’s inner
experience, especially cultured love, of
which the Sangam poets distinguished
five developed moods: union, patient
waiting, unfaithfulness, separation, and
hardship. Each of these moods had well-
developed symbolic associations,
including associations with a specific
type of landscape, time of dayand year,
flora, fauna, and types of people; such
richly developed symbolism gives these
poems incredible symbolic depth. The
akam poems are arguably the literary
antecedents to devotional (bhakti)
poetry, which first developed in Tamil
Nadu. For further information see A.K.
Ramanujan (trans.), The Interior
Landscape, 1994; and Glenn Yocum,
“Shrines, Shamanism, and Love Poetry:
Elements in the Emergence of Popular
Tamil Bhakti,” in the Journal of the
American Academy of Religion,Vol. 41,
No. 1, 1973. See also Tamil epicsand
Tamil language.Sanjaya
Minister of the blind king Dhrtarashtra,
an important older figure in the Hindu
epic the Mahabharata. Sanjaya tries
valiantly to avert the war that is the epic’s
climax by counseling the king to better
control his son Duryodhana, and to deal
more equitably with his nephews the
Pandavas, the five brothers who are the
epic’s protagonists. In the end, the king
ignores Sanjaya’s advice. Sanjaya is most
famous for his ability to see anything he
thinks about (“tele-vision”). This power is
given to him as a gift from the sage Vyasa
so he can describe the progress of the war
to Dhrtarashtra without actually having to
be there. After the war, Sanjaya goes to live
in the forest with Dhrtarashtra, and it is he
who informs the Pandavas about the blind
king’s death in a forest fire.Sanjaya Belatthiputa
Agnostic thinker in early Indian philos-
ophywhose views are alluded to in
the Buddhist scriptures. The scriptures
portray Sanjaya as an advocate of
profound agnosticism with regard to
another world, the effects of good and
evil deeds, and just about every facet of
religious life.Sandhya