Disappearance of Kāveripattinam or Puhar
The poem relates that the town Kāveripattinam or
Puhār was swallowed up by the sea (i.e. destroyed by a
tsunami or flood) due to the Cholan King not holding the annual Indra festival, causing the wrath of the sea goddess Manimekhalai. This event is supported by archeological finds of submerged ruins off the coast of modern Poompuhar. Ancient ruins of a 4th-5th century Buddhist monastery, a Buddha statue, and a Buddhapada (footprint of the Buddha) were also found in another section of the ancient city, now at Pallavanesvaram.The town of Kāveripattinam is believed to have disappeared in between the 3d and the 6th century.
Although there is some controversy about the exact date of this work, it is likely to have been composed in the 6th century CE.
The Manimekhalai is the only extant Tamil Buddhist literary work of what once was an extensive literature. The reason for it survival is probably its status as the sequel to the Silapathikaram . Tamil Nadu produced many Buddhist teachers who made valuable contributions to Tamil, Pali and Sanskrit literature. Reference to their works is found in Tamil literature and other historical records. Lost Tamil Buddhist works are the poem Kuṇḍalakesī by Nāgaguttanār, the grammar Vīrasoliyam, the Abhidhamma work Siddhāntattokai, the panegyric Tiruppadigam, and the biography Bimbisāra Kadai. Buddhist School Affiliation
The work contains no direct references to
Mahayana as propagated by
Nagarjuna, etc, and appears to be a work of an early
early Buddhist,
Sravakayana school such as the
Sthavira or
Sautrantika school. According to Aiyangar, the emphasis on "the path of the Pitakas of the Great One" (i.e.
Tipitaka) and the exposition of Dependent Origination, etc, in Chapter 30, could suggest that it is work of the Sautrantika school. An early
Sravakayana Buddhist school affiliation with the emphasis on liberation from the defilements (
kilesa), ending the cycle of birth, old age and death (
samsara), and becoming an
arahant is indicated by the conclusion of the poem, where Aravaṇa Aḍigal encourages full liberation from the three roots of evil—greed, hatred (
rāga, dosa, moha). The final sentence of the poem states that Maṇimekhalai strove to rid herself of the bondage of birth.
Aiyangar suggests that the
Buddhist logic as expounded by Aravaṇa Aḍigal in Chapter 29 of the
Maṇimekhalai antedates the logic of
Dignāga and his school.
The first translation of Manimekalai by R. B. K. Aiyangar, was published in Maṇimekhalai in its Historical Setting. Extracts of this were republished in Hisselle Dhammaratana's Buddhism in South India A more recent translation of the poem was done by Alain Daniélou with the collaboration of T.V. Gopala Iyer There is also a Japanese translation by Shuzo Matsunaga, published in 1991.
The literate period in South Asia dawned with the innovation of Brahmi script during the early Christian era. Derived from Aramaic, Brahmi revolutionized communication in South Asia and introduced literature of a high caliber simultaneous in Tamil and Pali Sanskrit. To be human is to have language, but literature in Tamil and Sanskrit is singular in that literature in both languages appears suddenly for the first time. The early texts, like the unprecedented visual arts of the time, are considered Buddhist but they present anthropologists and art historian with formidable problems of interpretation. Literature in particular is part of superstructure of a culture and when one starts suddenly from a clean slate, with no history or evolutionary process to refer to, contextual reading throws up questions more keenly about society, gender and race. Part of the interpretive struggle is to re-introduce history into cultural studies. In the new historicism, the narrative in the Tamil epic Manimekalai begins with the premise that art is not secured to a stable background and context is open to interpretation. Detailing, and the aesthetic engagement of feeling that arise from the narrative, are obviously from an encounter that is existential in experience. The possible date of Manimekalai is the 2nd century AD and one of the questions is naturally, how does this work seem so contemporaneous to the Roman civilization? Yet, we are dealing here with analogies and synonyms, or as Lévi-Strauss would say, that ‘similar’ does not mean ‘the same’. The epic addresses relationship between literature and philosophy, art production and social production and the present narrative figures out, where the centers of interest might be.
The merchant Prince Shattan wrote the epic Manimekalai (The Girdle) in 30 long poems, which he presented to the Chera Prince Ilango Adigal, the author of the Tamil epic Shilapdikaram (The Anklet) of which this narrative is a sequel. The original manuscripts in Tamil were written on palm leaf in Brahmi.The date of Manimekalai is close to 171 AD the date proposed by Ramachandra Dikshitar forShilapadikaram. Svaminatharya culled Manimekalai from about a dozen manuscripts only in 1898 and a recent translation by Alain Danielou is the source for the analysis of the narrative.
Imagination and language are part of the apparatus but a special set of circumstances and a unique blend of qualities were needed to bring Manimekalaiinto existence. The seemingly archaic tale of Manimekalaiis a ‘Romance’, and we are dealing with the end-results of a long process of selection and ordering of what were in the first place oral narratives, artfully combined with life experience. The narrative contains a variety of other meanings, perhaps equally or more important, due to its obvious reference to Buddhist culture of the Kushana period synchronous with the Roman Empire. The reference to Buddhist culture brings into sharp focus ambiguities afloat in the narrative: Tamil Nadu in the South curiously lacks a Buddhist material culture while the narrative in Tamil relates it vividly to art and architecture in the North and Northwest of India. First it implies that the Tamils of the Dravidian race once occupied the northern regions, rich in Buddhist art, bearing Brahmi inscriptions, and much later migrated to South India, which at the time of the Buddhist period might have been shunned generally as the "nether region". Secondly, the writer seems to have set down the story for another group of people and to suit a new audience, with obvious variations and allusions to a culture alien to the southern peninsula, which he describes so minutely. However, no matter how distant or foreign the culture from which it emanates, myth and folktale, when combined with history, lends itself to the making of legends.
Legend of Manimekalai
Manimekalai is a figure from the past reinvented, given a personality, mythologized and placed in a story that is supposed to elicit awe and reverence. Manimekalai, the ‘Dancer with the Magic Bowl’, is a legend that has elements of ‘myth’ that shade into ‘folktale’ in complicated ways. The poet Shattan asserts his ego centrifugally so that the world that surrounded him has been absorbed into the riveting story of Manimekalai, the beautiful daughter of courtesan Madhavi who took a vow of chastity and amid untold tribulations gained knowledge and power through the intervention of the goddess Manimekala and other divinities. She also received the gift of a magic bowl that produced perennial quantities of food to feed the destitute. Besides salvation to mankind, Manimekalai was destined to bring retribution for her parents Madhavi and Kovalan, whose love and betrayal with tragic consequences is dealt by Ilango Adigal in the epic Shilapdikaram. Manimekalai too had her share of grief. In a previous life Manimekalai was Lakshmi, wife of Rahul, now Prince Udayakumara who was infatuated with her. Despite coming under the shadow of bondage brought by knowledge, Manimekalai could neither reciprocate Udayakumara’s love nor save his life due to a fate controlled by her past deeds. Instead Manimekalai chose to serve humanity as a Buddhist nun and practiced severe self-denial to escape the chain of rebirth and thus reach the sublime state of selflessness. The story with the central motif of chastity and charity is interwoven with supernatural events, oracles and astral travel.
Oppositions and Contradictions
The ‘questions’ posed by Manimekalai are taken up from Shilapadikaram: betrayal and retribution connected to karma or past deeds as opposed to human nature; heroic sacrifice and chastity in an unending process that ceaselessly crosses and re-crosses geographical and tribal boundaries. According to Lévi-Strauss mythmakers seek to resolve all manner of contradictions or try to relate, one aspect of life to its opposite in a chain of ‘binary oppositions’- for example, youth and age, human and animal, culture and nature, life and death. These may be immediate and sensory, such as the Magic Bowl, central to the conflict between life and death, hunger and satiation, or extremely abstract, such as philosophical speculations. Ultimately Manimekalai overcomes the contradictions inherent in her corporeal self and reaches the void or sunya, the ‘absolute nothingness’.
The question of the narrative structure, the way in which episodes are put together to make a ‘story’ is a matter of importance for understanding the meaning of the narrative. The Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp identified a total of thirty-one episodes or ‘functions’ constituting the basic building-blocks of all Russian folktales that holds true in other cultures as well: these include Interdiction, Violation of Interdiction, Villainy, Departure from Home on Quest, Dialogue with Magical Helpers, Appearance of Villain, Flight, Pursuit, and Deliverance from Pursuit. Moreover, although few of the one hundred traditional stories analyzed by Popp contain all thirty-one of these ‘functions’, these episodes that appear in any particular tale always do so in the same order. The narrative in Manimekalai suggests that here too, although colored by the supernatural and digressions on religious discourse, the list of basic episodes is structured in a well-defined sequence.
Miraculous Interventions
When perused by Prince Udayakumara Manimekhalai enclosed herself in the crystal pavilion in Upavanam, ‘the garden’. At first the Prince thought that Manimekalai was one among a number of portrait statues in the pavilion, but when he perceived her through the transparent walls, ‘Eros, a crocodile on his pennon, let fly his five flower darts, filling him with irresistible desire’. Goddess Manimekala, endowed with immense wisdom and knowledge of all things past and future, freed Manimekalai from imminent danger and conveyed Manimekalai by air to the isle of Manipallavam guarded by Tivatilakai. In another instance, as Manimeklai slept behind the tall gate of the Champapati Sanctuary to the east of the Pillar Statue, she heard as in a dream the oracular statue reveal the tragic demise of Prince Udayakumara under the sword of Kayashandikai’s husband, a furious Vidhyadhra who was endowed with power to travel by air at will.
The Magic Cup
Manimekalai is one of the earliest literary masterpieces replete with mythical motifs interwoven with folktale, which at the same time seeks to explain the meaning of life, with vivid descriptions of human society and culture. On her flight from home, Manimekalai was separated from her faithful companion Sutamati, who was from Bengal. On the island of Manipallavam the goddess Manimekhala taught Manimekhalai a magic formula, while Tivatilakai, the divine protector of the land presented Manimekhalai with a bowl, a marvelous vessel of perennial life. Manimekhalai later heard from Aravana Adigal how Aputra first received the divine bowl, known as ‘Cow of Abundance’ from the hands of Chinta, the goddess of knowledge. In the hands of Manimekhalai life pours from the inexhaustible cup, to alleviate hunger in all directions. That is the wisdom for which Manimekalai meditated in great austerity and realized that – beside desire and fear, the supreme sacrifice is life; that loss of life is actually to gain life eternal. Central to sacrifice is the cup of life, a symbol of faith and immortality. Buddhist art actually depicts couples and individuals holding this cup of life. The recurrent theme is one of drinking from the magic cup, and a great level of unity is found in this type. The common themes fit together better if they are taken as variant elements in a similar category in the Golden Age of Buddhism during the Kushana period, which itself is just one structural feature of a larger design, which Worthen calls the ‘Myth of Replacement’. In the grand structural scheme of the early Buddhist art, the motif of the magic vessel, like the cornucopia in the hands of the goddess in Gandhara, is the consecrated vessel, the joyous ‘begging bowl’ that transforms itself into a wish-fulfilling vessel in the hands of Manimekalai. The groups of recurrent ‘bundles’ of ideas constitute the complete paradigm of symbols and substitutes. These groups include the etymological importance of words significant to eternity and immortality, and the proper names of mythological characters, a feature from which all comparative mythology takes its departure in order to explain better the complexities of human destiny.
Dream and Reality
Veneration of footprints was a symbol of apotheosis and certain sites such as Padma-pankaja-malai also known as Gridhra-kuta or Vulture Peak was a place of pilgrimage. Aravana Adigal is reported to have worshipped footprints of the Buddha in Rajghat (Varanasi or Benaras). In the epic, dream revelations and predictions, oracles and miraculous signs are part of everyday life. When Manimekalai came upon the ‘miraculous footprints of the wonder working Buddha’ on the lotus pedestal within a pavilion made of crystal panels in the Upavanam, she walked round the pedestal, keeping it on her right then prostrated as a mark of reverence. Then she suddenly remembered her past life as Lakshmi.
Manimekalai also learnt from Aravana Adigal why she was named after Manimekala, goddess of the Ocean with powerful waves. The narrative is a folktale in which the story is put together from mythic elements with the dual purpose of entertaining and pointing out some moral value: Manimekalai’s ancestor, a namesake of her grandfather and her father Kovalan, was shipwrecked in a shark-infested Ocean. He struggled for seven days in the waves of the bottomless sea and was lost like a ‘needle in a woolen rug’. However, he had unfailingly practiced the five virtues and recognized the four truths, so when the moment approached for him to lose his life, a shudder ran through the carpet that bears Indra’s throne: Indra at once summoned goddess Manimekala and said ‘This Kovalan struggling in the sea for seven days has the same virtues as the Bodhisattva, the master of us all who, in the shade of the papal, practiced ascetic life. He must be delivered from danger, so that the ten rule of conduct (paramita) is observed in the world and the wheel of dharma goes on turning smoothly’. Immediately goddess Manimekala guided him to the shore and saved Kovalan from certain death.
The Charanas or the sages who travel through the air, recounted this tale to his descendent Kovalan. Kovalan in gratitude wished his daughter to bear the name of the goddess, and the goddess on the night of her birth revealed to Madhavi that Manimekalai would lead a life of renunciation. Further, Manimekalai learnt from Aravana Adigal that when, by the will of the goddess and the curse of Indra, the city of Puhar was devoured by the sea, Kovalan and Madhavi fled to Kanchi for the love of Manimekalai. The reason why the sea goddess devoured Puhar forms a narrative within narrative: Pilivalai, daughter of the Naga (of the serpent race), who on pilgrimage to the isle of Manuipallavam, entrusted her infant son by the Chola king Neduvel Killi, to Kamabala Chetty, a merchant in woolen blankets, whose vessel was the only one en-route to India to stop at the isle. Taking the child Chetty sailed for his homeland, but in the darkness of the night was shipwrecked near the shore. The king was distraught by the loss of his son and neglected the annual festival of Indra. Indra ordered Manimekala, the sea goddess to swallow up Puhar as it was predicted.
Manimekalai or ‘The Dancer with the Magic Bowl’ was destined by birth for art and pleasure and lived in a street where women of pleasure resided in a house of several floors with gilded balconies. She was accomplished like her mother Madhavi, who knew both kinds of dance, dances suitable for the royal palace and those for the common public, poems set to music, the art of dramatic posture (tukku) to empahsise the rhythm of the poetic meter, the various musical rhythms (tala), and how to play the harp (yal) tuned according to the various moods. She knew by heart the poems chanted during the dances and had mastered the language of gesture (mudra), by which love (akam), virtue and glory (puram) are expressed. She knew how to play the great drum and how to adjust the tightness of its skin to regulate the sound. She knew how to play the melodious flute, as also the art of playing ball, of preparing dishes according to recipes of the best cuisine as well as the preparation of scented powders of diverse colors, the manner of bathing in various seasons, the body’s sixty four positions in making love, the art of anticipating men’s desires, of speaking charmingly, of writing elegantly with the cut reed, of arranging magnificent bouquets of flowers according to their form and color, the choice of dress and jewels according to circumstances and the art of fashioning necklaces of precious pearls or precious stones. She had also studied astrology and the art of measuring time, and other similar sciences, the art of drawing and painting all of which, according to the books forms part of the métier of an accomplished courtesan. Although accomplished in the arts and endowed with great beauty Manimekalai, to the amazement and distress of her mother and companions, left home to dedicate her life to charity and to attain the ‘bright light of knowledge’.
Samkhya Cosmology
In the astrological religion the transmigration of souls is connected to karma, according to acquired merits and demerits, which to a large extent is controlled by the manner in which the soul descends at the time of birth through the various spheres or planets disposed in space. The ascent of the soul is likewise influenced by the music of the spheres that is controlled by the acquired merits and demerits. The soul ascends through a series of celestial spheres to reach the paradise of bliss or ‘world of light’ known asDutita /Tushita loka. In Tushita loka perfect souls become deified immortals or reincarnate according to their acquired merit.Thus, incapable of attaining truth without the aid of that which is material, the soul will be guided by the ‘true’, though merely perceptible ‘lights’ (lumina vera) of the resplendent soul to the man made image, which reveals the ‘True Light’ (verum lumen) that is Buddha prior to Christ; and it will thus be raised, or rather ‘resurrected’ (surgi, resurgit), from terrestrial bondage even as Christ like Buddha is seen rising with flaming shoulders and a halo in ‘resurrectio vel Ascensio’ on a Gandhara sculpture. The luminous Buddha with flaming shoulders ascending in radiant clouds depicted on the stele is a visual demonstration of the nature of the immortal in Samkhya Cosmology.
Yet this splendid but subtle piece of poetry is nothing as compared to the orgy of Neo-Platonic light metaphysics to which Buddhist theology abandons itself during the Kushana period (AD 1 st – 3 rd Century), when India was a confederation of states ruled by Scythic-Greeks. It is particularly evidenced in Buddhist art and literature where the whole material universe becomes ‘light’ composed of countless small ones as of so many suns so that man-made pillar, (throne) or natural (tree), including man dissolve in light, and become a symbol of that which is not physically perceptible. As a stepping ladder on the ascent to Heaven; the human mind, abandons itself to the radiance indicated by the spiraling discs of the planets or the sun disc that glows as a halo, long before it is adopted as Christian iconography.
Neo Platonic Doctrine
Both the celestial lights in the heavens and those that are produced by human artifice on earth are ‘images of the intelligible lights, and above all of True Light Itself’. The epic speaks of the Bodhi Tree radiant with jewels, which is the symbol of knowledge attained by innumerable Buddhas, the ‘enlightened beings’. ‘Within the crystal pavilion, the miraculous footprints of the wonder-working Buddha on a lotus shaped pedestal shining with bright rubies’ are in reality verses that amount to a condensed statement of the whole theory of ‘anagogical’ illumination: On the sacred pedestal the jeweled footprints of the ‘wonder-working Buddha’ indicate that the physical ‘brightness’ of the work of art will ‘brighten’ the minds of the beholders by a spiritual illumination. The divine pedestal in the crystal pavilion is identified as the work of Maya, the heavenly carpenter, ‘to remind men that only those actions accomplished for love’s sake with severe self-denial will succeed’. Maya is also the maker of the oracular ‘Pillar Statue’ in the Upavanam the garden, where ‘by the will of the Buddha, the Merciful and the Compassionate, …who dedicated his life to the protection of all living beings, the trees are always aglow in bloom’.
When Manimekalai embarks upon the study of religious dogmas with teachers of various sects, the recurring engagement with philosophy and religion is meant to clarify, inform and educate. The purpose of dissecting diverse creeds in detail is to finally proclaim the validity of Buddhist dogma. The digressions on philosophy and religion make the epic a specialized tool of communication that tries to cut through the syncretism in religion and the eclecticism in the philosophy characteristic of this period. An interlude in Canto 27 is recognizably Hellenistic, a system with ethics supported by physics and epistemology. The treatment is a curious replay of the famous encounter between Epicureanism and Stoicism, translated as the persuasive argument of a drunkard with a naked Jain ascetic familiar in Syrian accounts. Although the kernel of wisdom is intact much has been understandably transformed in translation: An emaciated Jain monk, with a vessel of water hung from a loop of cord and ceaselessly waving a flywhisk to avoid hurting an insect walked naked. A drunkard hailed him, ‘Holy man! Come here so that I may bow before your lotus-like feet! Good monk, hear my words! Your life dwells in your body, which is but filth, but you do not suffer like those who live encased in hot clothes, which make them sweat. Come and share this sweet wine, there are no tiny beasts in the liquor secreted by the palm tree. My guru taught me that only those who get drunk on wine know ecstasy in this world, happiness in their next life, and eternal beatitude. You will see that drunkenness clears your mind. But if you find it more to your liking to fast rather than drink an honest cup of wine, then go your way!’
In order to propound the Jain doctrine of Nirgrantha Manimekalai asks questions about Jainism. The answers given by a naked ascetic is a complex discourse that begs comparison with the Pythagorean theories and belief system. Regarding religious belief, the Pillar Statue’s conversation with Manmekalai is of interest: "There are some who affirm that creator of all forms of life is a personal God who reigns over the world. Others think that the supreme being, himself without form, created all forms, Yet others affirm that only through the practice of self-denial and mortification, inflicting cruel suffering on our body, can we free ourselves of our bonds, and tread he path that leads to a world of everlasting delight. There are also others who say that the world is merely the result of the questionable celebrations of the practitioners of these various creeds. You will also hear the statement of those who affirm with authority that there are no gods, that the dead are not reborn, and that it is doubtful our virtuous deeds can acquire us merit. With your experience of transmigration and of retribution of our sins, you can tell them the story of your own life…" Such speculations are well-known in Greek literature. The advent of Alexander marked the beginning of a new internationalism that paved the road to the Roman Empire. By uniting the Greek Mediterranean with Egypt and Syria, the accomplished Hellenistic tradition was transformed by alien skills and ideas that eventually produced a logically restructured art and literature in the Indian sub-continent. To understand Roman art and culture within and beyond the borders of the empire, the essential aspects of Hellenic tradition, the Hellenistic mutation and the Hellenistic-Egyptian and Syrian tradition have to be separately viewed.
Landscape with Gardens of Delight
The narrative fixes the geography, while the landscape of the sacred domain bristles with extraordinary events. The river Kaveri rises from a sacred spring in Karnataka State that swells into a mighty river. The river maiden Kaveri flowed into the lap of the protective goddess Champu and her consort Champapati or Puhar, which was a famous city known popularly as Kaveripumpatinam. According to mythology the Chola king Kantan (Skanda) entreated the sage Agastya for perennial water, upon which the sage overturned his pitcher from which River Kaveri flowed towards the sea in the east, close to where goddess Champu stood. The Goddess Champu abides in the shade of a thousand branched rose-apple tree and is conceived as divine protector of the ‘rose-apple’ continent called Navalan Tevu. The epic describes cities surrounded by many gardens, one of which is called Lavanika-vanam, the Garden of Delights. It is reserved for the amusement of those belonging to the royal family and their companions. Within, there is a small lake, which can be filled and empties by machinery. The guards arrest trespassers. Another pleasure garden, known as Oyyana-vanam, is set apart during the festival of Indra for celestial visitors, who alone have the right to enter. In the heavenly enclosure dwells Sampati, the noble vulture that lost its wings when it flew up to the sun. None of these gardens were accessible to the general population. However, the monasteries in Kanchi, surrounded by gardens were the permanent residences of monks who preached the holy doctrine of the Buddha. The ascetics who travel through the air sometimes stop there for a few moments of agreeable repose.
Qualities Admired in the External World
The Tamil literature of the Sangam or Academy of the early Christian era may be divided broadly intoAkam, or that which pertains to emotions connected to human experience, and Puram or that which involves courage and action. Manimekalai is Sangam literature that deals with skill both with Akam andPuram. We glean from the epic that a man’s ankle bracelet was a sign of noble deeds and that the king honored successful merchants with insignia of a golden flower and bestowed the title ‘Etthy’ as a mark of respect. Prince Udayakumara, surrounded by his guard and chariots, rode majestically along the main avenue wearing a garland of tamarisk flowers, holding the reins of his splendid chariot gathered into his fist in the form of a flower bud. He had just managed to master the menacing elephant Kalavega with admirable courage. Without a trace of fear he had jumped onto his charger as fleet as air and reached the place where the maddened elephant rushed blindly through the city, heavy as a mountain, sowing panic in the streets of the bazaar and on the royal road blocked with wagons, drummers, beggars, and banners. The supervisor of the elephants did not know what to do. Like a ship in distress, the royal elephant had ejected his mahout in madness, his trunk rubbing the wound left by the goad to control him.
The simile of a ship gives a rare insight to the dangers of navigation so real that one can taste the spray of salt water as the sailor battles to regain control. The storm-tossed ship is presented in a way that is enduringly experiential and clearly the emotional response generated by the author gives the epic its cognitive value: ‘When a ship finds itself caught in a storm, its helmsman, perched on the raised bridge in the poop, trembles with fear lest the main mast fixed at the vessel’s center break off at the base, tearing away the ropes holding the sail, which, breaking loose and losing its tightness, begins to lash about with a furious flapping, finally tearing itself to shreds, so that the ship breaks adrift without any means of control, on an Ocean whose waves splash and drive in all directions.’
Reflected in the story of Manimekalai or the ‘Dancer with the Magic Bowl’ is the idea that literature is part of the superstructure and economics its base. The epic is rich and complex, dense and bursting with life, intellectual and cultural energy. A variety of crafts people practice their craft in their respective locality. The street of weavers made cloth so fine that it is difficult to distinguish the cross threads and dyed it in bright colors. The street of jewelers made mother-of-pearl bracelets; the street of those who made necklaces of precious stones, the street of the controllers who checked the gold content on the touchstone and owned houses of many floors. There are varied details of religious and everyday life, the arts and customs. In the ancient city of Puhar the visitors admired the stucco sculptures made by skilled craftsmen, representing all living beings, as well as the immaculate statues of the gods, similar to those that adorn the walls of the many storied buildings. On the streets transvestites with pretty little upraised breasts, a slim figure and protuberant sex performed the Pedi dance. Brightly colored designs decorated their shoulders and breasts. They wore mother-of-pearl earrings and their short-skirt might be a girdled chiton of Greco-Roman derivation. Their mouth was painted bright coral red and they showed their beautiful white teeth. Their large shining eyes were slightly underlined and their black eyebrows were arched like the crescent moon in their curved brows. Their hands with red-dyed palms were like water lilies of Malabar.
Narrative as a Network of Signs
The poet has interpreted the historical reality of his time so well that the epic is striking in its visual equivalent in the contemporary art of Gandhara, which is comparable only to Rome in its style, realism and innovative spatial organization and pictorial techniques. The visual force of street scenes, the interior of courtesans’ quarters, palatial architecture, the complex drama, funeral practices, costumes, manners and customs are integrated to create a fusion of realism and immediacy as was done on the Imperial Columns of Rome.
Canto 28 is a topographical painting in words that give a panoramic view of the city. However, the material culture, which is archaeologically untenable in the Indian subcontinent, is inexplicably Roman in its attributes. The landscape and suburbs spreading outside the walls protecting many princely dwellings provide the backdrop as Manimekalai progressed on her way to the great city of Kanchi on her quest to seek Aravana Adigals to learn Buddhist dharma.If we treat the narrative as a network of signs, some significant cultural markers clamor for close scrutiny: Groups of soldiers with their officers kept watch over the inner city, which was surrounded by a moat.
Into the moat flowed, by means of underground pipes, the scented waste waters used to wash the tresses, or impregnated with perfumed oils that dissolve when bathing in luxurious dwellings, in which the baths mechanically filled and emptied as desired. Into the moat also flowed the perfumed waters used to spray the crowd during celebrations for the king’s birthday; the waters discharged when the basins of the public fountains were cleansed, impregnated with smoke from aloe wood and other aromatic woods used in rites; and the waters mixed with various perfumes, sprinkled for freshness on the floors of rich dwellings, the water used by heads of family who practice five virtues, to wash the sublime feet of ascetics. Only water spreading a delightful fragrance flowed into the moat, so that the crocodiles and fish that disported there lost the usual nauseating smell. On the surface of the water floated large lotus, white water lilies and blue iris, turning the moat into the likeness of the multicolored bow of Indra.
At the center of the fortification was a high gate surrounded by a tower of several floors, on which many flags were flying. Painted white and covered with frescoes, from afar it looked like a mountain of marble. It was through this high gate that Manimekalai entered Kanchi. The street of painters and musicians (panda), experts in vocal music and playing various instruments, who know the major and minor modes, as well as elocution and poetic meters and people who sound the conch, whose spiral winds to the right. The street of dancers, expert in the two kind of dances, classical dance for the palace and dancing suitable for the public at large, that of experts who calculate time and announce it every natika(24 minutes). Further on was the street of the panegyrists, who composed eulogies of the king, which they declaimed standing or seated. There was also a quarter where the elephant drivers lived, who tamed recently captured animals and trained them with skill, and also a quarter for horsemen who teach the golden-collared horses to amble. Manimekalai admired the artificial hills from which cascades fell by mechanical means; the parks whose trees laden with flowers inspired all with an overwhelming desire to go and relax there. There were pools with limpid water, hospices to welcome travelers, and monasteries for ascetics as well as vast palaces with golden domes, which in their splendor rivaled the seven temples built by Indra at Puhar.
The preparations for the festival of Indra provide a rare glimpse of royal protocol. In the presence of the kings of all the neighboring countries, the state officials were summoned to the palace for the proclamation of the opening of the festival of the thousand-eyed Indra. Around the sovereign stood, as was the custom, the five groups of high dignitaries who formed the royal council: the high priest, the captains of the army, the spies, and the ambassadors, followed according to rank, by the eight corps of officials, the tax collectors, the provincial governors, the treasury accountants, the palace servants, the representatives of the people and the officers of the various regiments. It was asserted that if the festival of Indra were not celebrated, the enraged Tyche would molest all the inhabitants. The account has parallels in the political and structural organization as well as the concept of cities protected by Tyche familiar in Asia under Rome.
This comparison is possible because of a coincidence of meaning derived from an approximate understanding of the other. It is in this sense that a mutual recognition is possible through cognition.
One of the common traits in the mythic narrative is a philosophic or moral purpose. The narrative of Manimekalai preaches moral values of right conduct, self-sacrifice and salvation through self-realization. Allegoric interpretation, which began with Plato or certainly with the Neo-Platonists, insists that ‘myth is a didactic parable that adumbrates current metaphysical or moral concepts and that its personae are symbols of natural phenomena or moral categories’.On another level of interpretation, the myth is invested with human motives, and its movements are diachronic. Hence, Manimekalai is an elaboration of history and the Buddha in its central focus is the apotheosis of idealized human beings. Just as myth may reinforce history, history may conversely become the raw material of the mythic imagination. If the historical time, unity of purpose and background are important, then fantasy and creative invention add to the narrative force of Manimekalai, which can be compared to the legendary stories found worldwide in cultures with ancient literary traditions, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. Often probability is stretched to fabulous limits as when goddess Manimekhala, the goddess of Ocean, transports Manimekkhalai to safety by air. Myths of glorification have commonly been used in similar ways, in a variety of cultures, to assert a sense of communal prestige. One famous example of deliberately fabricated historical myth is the Roman poet Virgil’s epic elaboration in the Aeneas, in which Venus shares her identity with goddess Manimekala. This must be viewed against the fact that there is no record of either literature or comparable arts in India prior to the Christian era. At the dawn of a new era the sub-continent was apparently a pristine paradise perched at the very end of the then known world. Innovations in Tamil and Sanskrit literature datable to the early Christian era are thus probably unsurpassed in history. They contain a landscape constructed by received knowledge, of travelers’ tale and of ‘family resemblance’, which serve to locate zones of identity and zones of discrepancy. Description of a crystal or glass pavilion, murals in stucco, wall painting and life-like sculpture inManimekalai are proof of Mediterranean influence in India. This is confirmed by literary allusion to numerous Greeks in India identified as Yavana from Yavanapura or Alexandria. The Greek connection apparently included Pompeii, where an ivory statuette in early Buddhist style was recovered from a merchant’s house on the "via dell’ Abbondanza".
Pompeii was buried under the ashes of Versuvious in 79 AD that set off tidal waves cutting off escape route. The Greek geographer Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD mentions key ports, including Kaveri Emporium, the Kaveripumpattinam or Puhar, identified by Tamil texts as port city of South India. However, to identify Puhar as Pompeii might be far fetched except for their common fate and tantalizingly similar material culture.
Often myths and legends are connected to the idea that one can claim to own the land and human beings who lived therein through superiority of race, language and the performance of certain words. Native pride enacted through speeches, declarations and announcements are compelling. For instance, when the city Puhar was built, a vast plot of land was set apart for the dead. Four posterns at cardinal points gave access to it, the entrance with bright colored standard was reserved for the heavenly beings that draw nigh in their flying chariots, suspended in the air, immobile as a painting. The walls of the next gate are decorated with frescoes, the work of skilled artists, representing rice paddies, sugarcane plantations, lakes and groves. Another entrance, with an upper floor appears naked and empty except for the spotless wash of white lime. In front of the fourth entrance stands a great statue of stucco and clay, representing the guardian of the cemetery with red lips and furious stare, holding a pointed spear and a long rope. If the subjectmatter is presented in ways that are of enduring cognitive and social interest, the historical time and background are as important as the fantasy and creative invention, which add to the narrative force.
New History and Literary Narrative
The representational and expressive content of the epic are of enduring cognitive, moral, historical, and social interest. In the final analysis the critical role of story telling in New Historicism ought to move towards trust in mobility, not only in travel narratives but in the idea that culture itself is always moving from one place to another. And it is that extraordinary mobility of which India is a sublime example, which holds challenges in the years ahead in the reading of the narrative. It is impossible to discover the place of origin of a widely distributed mythical motif. Mythical narratives, like folk stories, generally travel easily from one group of people to another. Of course, the myths may change in the process, and even within the same group changes may occur as myths are told and retold. There is certainty where zones of identity from literate tradition and the zones of discrepancies, which suggest incorporation of oral or a local body of myth. This happened for example in India, where cultural configuration of the Buddhist period displayed pronounced elements from Roman Asia.
The Transcultura International Institute, a group promoting strategies for acquiring mutual knowledge, met recently in Pondicherry. The Institute’s key concern is to analyze the encounter between European and non-European cultures. Moussa Sow, from the Institut des Sciences Humaines, (Mali), who was one of the earliest members of the Transcultura team, speaking at Jawaharlal University, New Delhi, said that there had been interest in Mali and Senegal in Dravidian languages, particularly Tamil, and Tamil scholars went to these countries, and in exchange Africans came to India, probably without suspecting Senegal and Mali might be the bridge to a lost links with Carthage and Alexandria. Just as we have translations in the linguistic sense, we have translations in the cultural sense. The desire to interpret is a desire to explain meanings anew, which serve to locate the zones of identity and the zones of discrepancies. It is this zone of identity and discrepancy that makes cultural studies so exciting. Umberto Eco, a member of the Transcultura, argues that that all colonization results in guilt, and anthropology is the symbol of that guilt. The investigation of this narrative is an attempt to propitiate this guilt, the unstated yearning for a previously known topography that urges us to search for the shadow of memory in the landscape of myth, symbols, dream, perception and cognition, experience, facts and fantasy, being and becoming, the natural vision of the Northern Lights, the hidden order of the ideal and maps in the seas of changes and shifting dunes of context. As Susan Visvanathan rightly observed, semioticians work with any index.
The narrative in the Tamil epic Manimekalai was chosen for the Conference for its striking qualities of innovation and reproduction. When Manimekalai took decisions on her life, cognition and positive force set her on the path of knowledge. Born to be a courtesan, her decision to take the vow of chastity and charity is a daring innovation, which utilized creative power in the service of spiritual and social goals. By writing the epic Merchant Prince Shattan reproduced the narrative in a form that could be retained and retrieved. The Tamil epic Manimekalai has endured for nearly two millennia because of the innovation of Brahmi script derived from Aramaic, which enabled reproduction of knowledge through writing for the benefit of society. The written reproduction provides the possibility of a broader reception and, more importantly, also of history, society and religion, and the opportunity for critical observation, since only a fixed text makes any kind of criticism possible.
The heterogeneous nature of style and content of the Buddhist epic Manimekalai and the Buddhist art of India, datable between 1st to the end of 2nd century AD, is frankly a puzzle. Under what circumstances were so many choice and variegated narratives produced for the first time in the subcontinent? The answer will take us to the very foundation of India, where magnificent obsessions of human beings deposited wisdom and skills received from ancient civilizations. The transcultural path leading to these conclusions is embedded in the rich narratives of Buddhist art and literature of the new age that miraculously dawned simultaneously in the east and the west.
Fate and supernaturalism pervade throughout the narrative in MaNimEkalai. There are goddesses for various geographic units and specific functions who intervene in or govern certain people's actions. Since the author of the epic is a Buddhist, the concept of karma manifests throughout the work with a special flavor. According to the Buddhist faith, karma is a natural law that attaches to the soul of its perpetrator without the help of a mediating entity. It appears that the "die is cast" for certain individuals, sometimes for many births to follow. It is definitely so in the case of MaNimEkalai.