Kultur- und Religionsgeschichte Südasiens
Cultural and Religious History of South Asia
SÜDASIEN-INSTITUT
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SOUTH ASIA INSTITUTE
CENTRE FOR ASIAN AND TRANSCULTURAL STUDIES
▍ Temple Networks in Early Modern South India: Narratives, Rituals, and Material Culture
Abgeschlossen | Concluded
▍ Principal Investigators:
▍ Ph.D. Projects:
Ominous Signs and Salvation: The House-Lizard in South-Indian Temples and in its Textual Sources in Religious Sanskrit Literature
▍ Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
▍ Project Duration: 2019 - 2022
The project “Temple Networks in Early Modern South India: Narratives, Rituals, and Material Culture” explores how the sacred space of the ancient South Indian temple town of Kanchipuram is represented, negotiated, and shaped through mythological texts in Sanskrit and Tamil in interaction with ritual practice and material culture.
Kanchipuram is a city of prime importance to South Indian religious, political, and cultural history and a place in which three major traditions of Hinduism – Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism, and Śāktism – have for centuries not only co-existed, but interacted and competed. The project employs the concept of temple networks to describe the relations between the city’s numerous temples as well as their position vis à vis other temples outside Kanchipuram. Several intersecting temple networks exist in parallel in Kanchipuram, and their hierarchies have been constantly renegotiated by the different religious traditions that share the city’s space. Such processes find expression in local mythological texts (Māhātmyas / Sthalapurāṇas that deal with Kanchipuram as a sacred place. These texts), composed in both Sanskrit and Tamil, praise specific places, local deities, and specific ritual activities, often contrasting them with other places, deities, and ritual activities, which are then presented as inferior. The project investigates how the temple networks of Kanchipuram are reflected and produced in the mythological texts. Many narratives that are found in the mythological texts are also ritually enacted during temple festivals and are materially represented in the temples’ iconography, keeping these episodes alive in collective memory. Similar to the different interpretations of the basic narratives in the diverse texts, the ritual performances and sculptures also tell stories differently, and are moreover often at odds with the textual narratives. The project therefore pays close attention to the relevant ritual performances and the iconographic program of the temples in order to assess how rituals and material relate to the texts.
The team of this project works on two interconnected case studies across sectarian affiliations, Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava. In close collaboration the investigators assess how the texts, the temples, and the ritual practices of the diverse religious communities interact, representing, yet continuously reconfiguring, networks within an ancient South Indian temple town.
▍ Varadarāja in the Kāñcimāhātmya: Vaiṣṇava Temple Networks
Within the ancient temple town of Kanchipuram, with its many religious traditions and places, the Varadarāja temple is the city’s most important Vaiṣṇava temple. Many texts in Sanskrit and Tamil deal with the history and mythology of this temple, positioning it within the diverse sacred sites in Kanchipuram, but also within the larger sacred landscapes of the Kanchipuram region, and within the network of 108 Vaiṣṇava “divine places” (divyadeśa) in (South) India. The relative position of this temple within the networks of sacred places is reflected and produced in the narratives regarding the temple’s foundation in conjunction with this specific deity’s first appearance in Kanchipuram. These narratives are central to most mythological and ritual texts, are enacted during temple festivals, and are materially represented in diverse parts of the temple. This subproject’s focus is on the myth(s) of origin of the temple’s main deity, Varadarāja, which is represented in a variety of ways in the diverse texts, in ritual performances, and in the iconographic program of the temples.
▍ Sanskrit and Tamil Narratives on the Śaiva Temple Networks of Kāñcipuram
Śaivism, the most dominant religious tradition in the Tamil country, is firmly entrenched in Kanchipuram. The city’s largest temple is the Ekāmranātha temple, where Śiva is worshipped as the “lord of the single mango tree”. Moreover, numerous other shrines dedicated to Śiva dot Kanchipuram’s cityscape. The dynamics of the temple networks that these temples form part of are reflected in the Śaiva Sthalapurāṇas of Kanchipuram that were composed in both Sanskrit and Tamil. These texts give emphasis to the Śaiva temples of Kanchipuram and often try to assert their primacy by including narratives that establish Śiva’s superiority over other deities. This subproject looks into these narratives in order to understand how temple networks are demarcated and reinforced in Śaiva mythological texts. At the same time, the subproject investigates the relationship of the Sanskrit and Tamil Sthalapurāṇas of Kanchipuram. While these texts are closely connected on a narrative level, their radically different literary agendas raise questions about the literary cultures that they formed part of. The Śaiva Sthalapurāṇas of Kanchipuram provide an opportunity to investigate the relationship of Sanskrit and Tamil Sthalapurāṇas at large, thus illuminating an important aspect of the interaction of Sanskrit and Tamil literary cultures in early modern South India.
▍ Activities
January 20-26, 2020
Pondicherry / Kanchipuram
Funded by
German Research Foundation (DFG)
Co-organized by École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), Pondicherry
▍ Networks of Temples and Networks of Texts in South India
Conveners: Ute Hüsken, Jonas Buchholz (South Asia Institute, Heidelberg)
▍ Publications
Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken (eds.). 2022. Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives. Heidelberg: HASP.
Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken. 2022. “Introduction.” In Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives, ed. by Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken. Heidelberg: HASP, pp. 1-10.
Malini Ambach. 2022. ““Reading” a Sacred Place Differently: Sarvatīrtha in Kanchipuram’s Sanskrit Māhātmyas.” In Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives, ed. by Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken. Heidelberg: HASP, pp. 215-239.
Jonas Buchholz. 2022. “Sthalamāhātmyas and Talapurāṇams of Kanchipuram: A Network of Texts.” In Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives, ed. by Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken. Heidelberg: HASP, pp. 11-40.
Jonas Buchholz. 2020. “Construing a Corpus: The Mnemonic Stanza on the Kīḻkkaṇakku Works.” In Colophons, Prefaces, Satellite Stanzas. Paratextual Elements and Their Role in the Transmission of Indian Texts, ed. by Eva Wilden and Suganya Anandakichenin. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, pp. 19-62.
Jonas Buchholz. 2020. “Commentaries on the Kīḻkkaṇakku Akam Works.” In The Commentary Idioms of the Tamil Learned Traditions. Ed. by Suganya Anandakichenin & Victor B. D’Avella . Pondicherry: École française d’Extrême-Orient, Institut Français de Pondichéry, pp. 335-383.
Ute Hüsken. 2022. “Two Lizards in Kanchipuram’s Varadarāja Temple.” In Temples, Texts, and Networks: South Indian Perspectives, ed. by Malini Ambach, Jonas Buchholz, and Ute Hüsken. Heidelberg: HASP, pp. 159-214.
Ute Hüsken. 2022. “Ritual remedies: overcoming murder in a South Indian temple.” In Beyond Courtrooms and Street Violence: Rethinking Religious Offence and its Containment, ed. by Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad. London: Routledge, pp. (in production).
Ute Hüsken. 2022. „Navarattiri: Die Neun Nächte der Göttin.“ In Von Liebe und Krieg (akam paRum): Tamilische Geschichte(n) in Indien und der Diaspora. M. D. Muthukumaraswamy, Georg Noack, Lisa Priester-Lasch and Inés de Castro (eds.), (Linden-Museum Stuttgart). Sandstein Verlag: Stuttgart (in production).
Ute Hüsken. 2022. “Navarāttiri: Nine nights of the Goddess.” In Of Love and War (akam paRum): Tamil (Hi)Stories from India and the Diaspora. M. D. Muthukumaraswamy, Georg Noack, Lisa Priester-Lasch and Inés de Castro (eds.), (Linden-Museum Stuttgart). Sandstein Verlag: Stuttgart (in production).
Ute Hüsken, “Containing Murder in a South Indian Temple.” South Asia 44/3 (Special Issue: Containing Religious Offence beyond the Courts, ed. by Vera Lazzaretti and Kathinka Frøystad), DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2021.1924310 (12pp.)
Ute Hüsken. 2021. “Limits of Creativity: Kolu in Vaiṣṇava houses in Kāñcipuram.” In Nine Nights of Power: Durgā, Dolls and Darbars, ed. by Ute Hüsken, Vasudha Narayanan & Astrid Zotter, New York: SUNY, pp. 93-112.
Ute Hüsken. 2020. “South Asian Festival Culture.” In Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions, ed. by Knut A. Jacobsen, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 384-398.
Ute Hüsken. 2020. “Navarātri.” In Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online, ed. by Knut A. Jacobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, and Vasudha Narayanan. First published online: 2020.
Ute Hüsken. 2019. “Eine Viṣṇu-Statue aus Indien.” In The Scholar’s Choice. Lieblingsstücke Heidelberger Wissenschaftler aus dem Völkerkundemuseum der J. und E. von Portheim-Stiftung (Katalog zur Ausstellung Völkerkundemuseum Portheim-Stiftung Heidelberg), ed. by Axel Michaels und Margareta Pavaloi, Heidelberg University Publishing, pp. 57-61.
Ute Hüsken. 2019. “Afterword: On the efficacy of ‘blasphemy’.” In Outrage. The Rise of Religious Offence in Contemporary South Asia, ed. by Paul Rollier, Kathinka Frøystad & Arild Engelsen Ruud, London: UCL Press, pp. 236-248.
Ute Hüsken. 2019. „Der nackte Gott.“ Rhein-Neckar Zeitung Magazin, 22.6.2019; online: https://www.rnz.de/panorama/magazin_artikel,-100-jahre-voelkerkundemuseum-heidelberg-darum-wird-der-indische-gott-vishnu-nackt-gezeigt-_arid,447823.html.
Ute Hüsken, “The Urban Life of South Indian Gods”. In Prayer and the Ancient City: Influences of Urban Space, ed. by Maik Patzelt, Jörg Rüpke, Annette Weissenrieder. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021 (forthc.).
Ute Hüsken, “Vaiṣṇava Temple Traditions: Vaikhānasa and Pāñcarātra.” In: Vaiṣṇavisms: Histories of the Worship of Viṣṇu, Archana Venkatesan (ed.). (History of Hinduism Series). New York: Oxford University Press, forthc.
Ute Hüsken, “Ritual Complementarity and Difference: Navarātri and Vijayadaśamī in Kāñcipuram.” In Nights of the Goddess. The Navarātri Festival in South Asia, Caleb Simmons, Moumita Sen, and Hillary Rodrigues (eds.). New York: SUNY, 2018, pp. 179-194.
Ute Hüsken, “Gods and goddesses in the ritual landscape of seventeenth and eighteenths-century Kāñcipuram”. In Layered Landscapes: Early Modern Religious Space Across Faiths and Cultures, ed. by Eric Nelson and Jonathan Wright, New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 63-81
Ute Hüsken, "Contested Ritual Mediation: Brahmin Temple Priests in South India." In Religion across media: from early antiquity to late modernity, ed. by Knut Lundby, New York: Peter Lang, 2013, pp. 71-86.
Ute Hüsken, "Flag and Drum: Managing Conflicts in a South Indian Temple." In South Asian Festivals on the Move, ed. by Ute Hüsken and Axel Michaels, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2013, pp. 99-135.
Ute Hüsken, “Challenges to a Vaiṣṇava Initiation?” In Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in India and Nepal, ed. by Astrid Zotter & Christof Zotter, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010, pp. 299-306.
Ute Hüsken, “Contested Ritual Property. Conflicts over Correct Ritual Procedures in a South Indian Vishnu Temple.” In When Rituals Go Wrong. Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual, ed. by Ute Hüsken, Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp. 273-290.
Hüsken, “Pavitrotsava: Rectifying Ritual Lapses.” In Jaina-Itihāsa-Ratna. Festschrift für Gustav Roth zum 90. Geburtstag, ed. by U. Hüsken & Petra Kieffer-Pülz & Anne Peters (Indica et Tibetica 47), Marburg: Indica et Tibetica, 2006, pp. 265-281.
Hüsken, “Die Vaikhānasas: Tempelpriester im südindischen Viṣṇuismus” [The Vaikhānasas: Temple Priests in South Indian Viṣṇuism]. In Akten des 27. Deutschen Orientalistentages. Norm und Abweichung, ed. by S. Wild & H. Schild (Kultur, Recht und Politik in muslimischen Gesellschaften, 1), Würzburg: Ergon, 2001, pp. 169-179.
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