Text and Tradition in South India , livre ebook

Text and Tradition in South India
SUNY series in Hindu Studies
WENDY DONIGER, EDITOR
VELCHERU NARAYANA RAO

Text and Tradition in South India
With an Introduction by
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM
Text and Tradition in South India by Velcheru Narayana Rao was first
published by Permanent Black D-28 Oxford Apts, 11 IP Extension, Delhi 110092 INDIA, for the territory of SOUTH ASIA.
Not for sale in South Asia
Cover design by Anuradha Roy
Images: Wall murals from the main Siva temple in Thanjavur,
by Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
Copyright 2016 Velcheru Narayana Rao
Introduction Copyright 2016 Sanjay Subrahmanyam
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Narayana Rao, Velcheru, author
Title: Text and Tradition in South India
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Series: SUNY series in Hindu Studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781438467757 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438467771 (e-book)
Further information is available at the Library of Congress.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for
Paruchuri Sreenivas
Stronger, even, than the bond that comes from having the same mother are the bonds we make by sharing words.
Maḍiki Siṅgana, Sakala-nīti-sammatamu,
fifteenth century
Contents
Sources of Publication
Preface and Acknowledgments
Sanjay Subrahmanyam: VNR—Some Introductory Remarks
1 Multiple Literary Cultures in Telugu: Court, Temple, and Public
2 Notes on Political Thought in Medieval and Early Modern South India
3 Purāṇa as Brahminic Ideology
4 Coconut and Honey: Sanskrit and Telugu in Medieval Andhra
5 Multiple Lives of a Text: The Sumati Śatakamu in Colonial Andhra
6 When Does Sīta Cease to be Sīta: Notes Toward a Cultural Grammar of Indian Narratives
7 A Rāmāyaṇa of Their Own: Women’s Oral Tradition in Telugu
8 The Politics of Telugu Ramayanas: Colonialism, Print Culture, and Literary Movements
9 Epics and Ideologies: Six Telugu Folk Epics
10 Texture and Authority: Telugu Riddles and Enigmas
11 Buddhism in Modern Andhra: Literary Representations from Telugu
12 The Indigenous Modernity of Gurajada Apparao and Fakir Mohan Senapati
13 Purāṇa
14 A Day in the Life of a Housewife: “Sita Locked Out”
15 Urmila Sleeps: A Ramayana Song that Women in Andhra Sing
Sources of First Publication
1 Multiple Literary Cultures in Telugu: Court, Temple, and Public. In Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
2 Notes on Political Thought in Medieval and Early Modern South India. In Modern Asian Studies , 2008, pp. 1–36 (coauthored with Sanjay Subrahmanyam)
3 Purāṇa as Brahminic Ideology . In Wendy Doniger, ed., Purana Perennis: Reciprocity and Transformation in Hindu and Jaina Texts (NY: SUNNY Press, 1993).
4 Coconut and Honey: Sanskrit and Telugu in Medieval Andhra . In Social Scientist , vol. 23, no. 10/12 (Oct.–Dec., 1995), pp. 24–40
5 Multiple Lives of a Text: The Sumati Śatakamu in Colonial Andhra . In Michael Bergunder, Heiko Frese, and Ulrike Schrōder, eds, Ritual, Caste and Religion in Colonial South India (Halle: Verlag der Frankeschen Stiftungen, 2010).
6 When Does Sita Cease to be Sita: Notes Toward a Cultural Grammar of Indian Narratives . In Mandrakanta Bose, ed., The Ramayana Revisited (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
7 A Ramayana of Their Own: Women’s Oral Tradition in Telugu . In Paula Richman, ed., Many Ramayanas. The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
8 The Politics of Telugu Ramayanas: Colonialism, Print Culture, and Literary Movements . In Paula Richman, ed., Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
9 Epics and Ideologies: Six Telugu Folk Epics . In A.K. Ramanujan and Stuart Blackburn, eds., Another Harmony: New Essays on the Folklore of India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
10 Texture and Authority: Telugu Riddles and Enigmas . In G. Hasan-Rokem and D. Shulman, eds., Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
11 Buddhism in Modern Andhra: Literary Representations from Telugu . In The Journal of Hindu Studies , vol. 1, 2008, pp. 93–119.
12 The Indigenous Modernity of Gurajada Apparao and Fakir Mohan Senapati . In Satya P. Mohanty, ed., Colonialism, Modernity, and Literature: A View from India (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2011).
13 Purāṇa . In Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby, ed., The Hindu World (London: Routledge, 2014).
14 A Day in the Life of a Housewife: “Sīta Locked Out” . Unpublished.
15 Urmila Sleeps: A Rāmāyaṇa Song that Women in Andhra Sing . Unpublished.
Preface and Acknowledgments
T he essays in this book were written over a long period of time. The themes common to them relate to the concepts of author, text, reader, and the historicity of text cultures that have long exercised my mind. It took a while for me to see the quiet impact of colonial modernity on Indian text practices.
Concepts do not translate easily across cultures, yet give the false impression that they do. Orality and literacy, manuscript culture and print, especially the impact of print on fragile manuscripts stored in archives, and their use or misuse in creating critical editions, have been some of my concerns in these essays, most especially in Chapter 5 , “Multiple Lives of a Text.”
A number of essays in this book relate to the Ramayana theme. In them I discuss variations of the Ramayana narrative that emerge from the social location of the creators of the text, their gender, and their caste.
Almost all the essays relate to pre-nineteenth-century texts, except two ( Chapters 11 and 12 ). Chapter 11 is about the literary representations of Buddhism in modern Andhra and Chapter 12 is about two modern writers, Gurajada Apparao in Telugu and Fakir Mohan Senapati in Oriya. They were contemporaries, and both were aware of the colonial impact on narratives—most significantly on economy and social formation in Andhra and Orissa.
Inevitably, there is some repetition and some overlap. The essays have in the main been reproduced straight, with the occasional editorial tweaking to eliminate errors and improve the odd phrase. Notes and References have been updated and corrected. As much as possible, I have tried to make the system of diacritical marks consistent through the book, but at times I found the effort impossible.
Data for almost all the essays is drawn from Telugu sources. But my hope is that the ideas transcend the language and are applicable, mutatis mutandis , to Indian cultures generally.
This book would not have taken shape without the patience and forgiving nature of Rukun Advani. He suffered unconscionable delays on my part, at countless stages. In the course of our pleasant exchanges over the several years that it took to make this book I earned from him a valuable compliment—of being “the world’s most relaxed author.” I am still mulling over the precise nature of this nice euphemism.
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Sanjay Subrahmanyam, friend and collaborator, who has written a glowing Introduction to this volume. To be bestowed with such an Introduction from a historian of his stature, one whom I have the honor of calling a friend, exceeds my wildest imagination. “Thank you” is a feeble expression of my gratitude—to both Rukun and Sanjay.
Paruchuri Sreenivas lies behind every word I have written over the past two decades. A walking bibliography, he has read the drafts of everything I wrote and constantly advised me of my shortcomings. To him I dedicate this book.
VNR
Atlanta, USA,
February 2016
VNR
Some Introductory Remarks
S ANJAY S UBRAHMANYAM
A great man once said to me
write whatever you want to, but on the condition –
it should be an improvement
on the blank white page.
—Nara, “White Paper” 1
I
T he intellectual history of pre-modern and modern India—and more largely modern South Asia—has so far been a sprawling but quite unsystematic enterprise, and has, moreover, been written in fits and starts. A certain sense of inertia dominates. Some figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have received enormous attention and, in fact, have been the objects of such devotion that there are veritable little industries around them: here one thinks of pairings in the pantheon such as Rammohun Roy and Bankimchandra Chatterjee; or Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi; or Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Iqbal; or Ra