temple to the god Shiva, and as with
many southern Indian temples, the tem-
ple is located in the heart of the city and
forms a substantial part of the city itself.
Tithi
A lunar day, that is to say, one of the thirty
days occurring during a single lunar
month, from full moonto full moon.
Because these thirty lunar days take
place in about twenty-eight solar days,
each lunar day is thus slightly shorter
than a solar day. Even in contemporary
times, most Hindu religious obser-
vances are determined by the lunar cal-
endar, which makes the determination
of these lunar days an important matter.
Most people keep track of these holidays
with a panchang, an almanac that gives
all the lunar days.
Toddy Palm
Palm tree that is both the source of the
slightly fermented beverage tapped
from its sap known as toddy, and the
long, flat leaves that were traditionally
used for writing down all sorts of texts,
including religious ones. The former use
led this tree to be considered unclean,
since alcoholic beverages are proscribed
in “respectable” Hindu society; the man-
uscripts written on the leaves, however,
could be the holiest of texts. The poet-
saint Ravidasuses this palm to illustrate
how the power of the divine name can
transform something normally believed
to be base and vile. In doing so he is also
referring to himself, who as a tanner and
leather worker was believed to be
defiled because his work involves han-
dling the skins of dead animals.
Tondaradippodi
(9th c.) One of the Alvars, a group of
twelve poet-saints who lived in southern
India between the seventh and tenth
centuries. All of the Alvars were devotees
(bhakta) of the god Vishnu, and their
stress on passionate devotion (bhakti)
to a personal god, conveyed through
hymns sung in the Tamil language,
transformed and revitalized Hindu reli-
gious life. According to tradition,
Tondaradippodiwas born as a brahmin
named Vipra Narayana, and his family’s
hereditary labor was to arrange the flow-
ers for the worshipof Ranganatha, a
form of Vishnu who is the presiding
deityat the temple of Shrirangam. He
became enamored of a courtesan who
cast her spell on him, and for a time paid
attention to nothing else. In the end he
was saved by Ranganatha, to whom
Vipra Narayana devoted himself for the
rest of his life, taking as a symbol of this
his new name (“Dust of the Feet of the
Slaves [of God]”). For further informa-
tion see Kamil Zvelebil, Tamil Literature,
1975; and John Stirling Morley Hooper,
Hymns of the Alvars, 1929.Tortoise Avatar
Second avataror incarnation of the god
Vishnu. As with all of Vishnu’s avatars,
the Tortoise avatar came into being in a
time of crisis and served to restore the
cosmic balance that had been thrown
out of equilibrium. In this case the
source of trouble was the sage
Durvasas, who had cursed the gods to
become mortal and their heavenly lus-
ter to fade. To counter this, the gods
made a pact with the demonsthat they
would jointly churn the Ocean of Milk to
obtain the nectar of immortality, which
would be equally divided.
The image of churning here is based
on traditional dairy practices, in which
the person churning uses a string to
rotate a churning paddle. In this
instance, however, the churning takes
place on a cosmic scale: The churning
stick is MountMandara, the mountain
that is at the center of the earth; the
churning string is the divine serpent
Vasuki, who encircles the world; and
Vishnu himself, in the form of a tortoise,
dives to the bottom of the ocean to pro-
vide a stable base for the churning stick.
The gods and demons pull Vasuki back
and forth, spinning the mountain and
churning the Ocean of Milk. The churn-
ing separates the Ocean of Milk intoTortoise Avatar