THE SCIENTIFIC SACRED TAMIL LITERATURE

IN WHAT SENSE IS SACRED TAMIL LITERATURE SCIENTIFIC AND HENCE RATIONAL?

1. We must note that the founders of the Bakti movement - the Nayanmars and Azwars were great masters of logic and were thoroughly rational in the true sense of the word. At the time Bakti was forged or recovered, there were great Buddhists and Jains who developed logic and maintained that metaphysics was impossible without logic. Thus people like Punita, Sambantar, Appar, Tirumular, Namazvar and so forth were forced to accommodate themselves to the LOGIC of the Buddhists and Jains and go beyond it.

In this they also recovered the Tamils original logic as enunciated in Tolkaappiyam and which is Hermeneutic Logic This logic was distorted by Nyaya and which again was further distorted by Buddhist and Jains.

The central insight that emerged here is that the creatures SEE only because there is a prior SHOWING and by BEING.
( kaaNpaar aar KaNNutal kaaddaakkaalee)

2. This acknowledges the presence of NATURAL PEDAGOGY, that BEING instructs and the embodied souls LEARN. Thus the religious life becomes a field of Hermeneutic Semiotics and which is Depth Psychology of a kind and which is a kind of Hermeneutic Science and hence subject to Hermeneutic Logic.

For those interested to know the essence of Hermeneutic Logic just a perusal of Meykandars Civajnaana Botham is sufficient. Each one of the sutras are established as Axiomatic Truths(piramaaNam) on the basis Etu(reasons) and edutukkaaddu ( evidences)

3. Not only the West lacks Hermeneutic Semiotics but also the whole of Brahmanism which now passes as the genuine Hinduism. Agamism that enshrines Hermeneutic Semiotics and HS has been pushed to the background. It is this dominance of Brahmanism with its attendant authoritarianism and irrational support for such evils as VarNas and so forth that gives the impression that Hinduism is irrational. The TN rationalists are RIGHT in this but wrong in generalizing this to include AGAMISM and hence also the Bakti literature.

4. Once we regain Agamism and the Depth Psychology that founds religious life, then it is clear we do not need any scripture as authoritative. Such religious books can be studied and enjoyed but need not be taken as absolutely authoritative. There is NO AUTHORITY in Agamism except that of TRUTH.

5. God is a living entity and lives on both in the cosmos as well as in the souls of all/. There is a spiritual pedagogy where BEING is the TEACHER.

The Bakti literature exemplifies the LEARNING that the gifted souls had effected and as such very useful for us also to become natural spiritual learners.

We have to become ACTIVE THINKERS and who think in terms of the science of Hermeneutic Semiotics to gain various kinds of metaphysical illuminations that would drive away the Malam and hence the metaphysical BLINDNESS within us.

This becomes the GOAL and ESSENCE of religious life as lived and articulated by the brilliant Tamil metaphysical mystics.

Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar