A Short History of Punitavati.
Dear friends, before I start this series, I think it is good to get to know who Punitavati is. Below is a link where you can read up to get to know her history better so as to appreciate her icon thinking.
Introduction to the 'Icon Thinking' of Punitavati.
There is a form of metaphysical thinking that I have called icon-thinking which seems to have survived despite many opposition as an integral part of Hinduism or more specifically Agamic Hinduism and which also explains why to this day the itikasas and puranas also play a meaningful role in the religious life of Hindus and why Temple worship remains still as vital as ever despite virulent attacks on it by many forces within and without.
There is a craving for MEANING that arises in existential crises and no religion, dogma or cult can survive unless it serves somehow this craving for the Meaning of Existence. No matter how much political might is used, no matter how skillfully the propaganda machinery is set out and no matter how much threat is used in sustaining and spreading a religion, it all will vaporize as nothing as long as it does NOT serve to contribute to Existential Meaning that human beings forever seek.
We see idol worship surviving and as active as ever among the Dravidian folks despite a thousand years of philosophy that dispersed the archetypal images into chaotic flux or meaningless dream-like entities, and despite several centuries of other faiths where idol worship was decried, temples destroyed and all in the name of a Formless God. This also applies to a branch within Saivism -the anusaivas -who were iconoclasts and the recent Aryan Samajists with their racialism and Aryanism and who appear to despise idol-worship as non-Aryan etc.
Such oppositions seem to emerge from those who were not interested in uplifting of mankind into higher reaches of spirituality but rather only in what Nietzsche called the 'Will to Power' and hence with the ultimate motive of subjugating to one’s own will and thereby enslave the mind of the commoners to one’s own. The motive is political and NOT spiritual.
The activities of the Brahmanahs who promote only Brahmanahs (and Sanskrit language that comes along with it) is a good illustration of this Will to Power and remain perpetually at the top ladder of social hierarchy and by virtue of birth alone.
As opposed to this is the religious dimension that promotes Bakti, a fervent devotion to BEING and in which LOVE reigns supreme. There is NO WILL TO POWER others but only that of becoming an Adyar, a humble tool for the workings of divine grace.
Punitavati (5- 6th cent AD) who gave a definite and new shape to the ancient Bakti, as old as Sumerian times itself as the enormously beautiful Sirbiyam of En Hudu Anna would show, sang the ARputa Tiruvantati, the Tiruvantati that’s a real wonder, in which she brought back not only the individual and personal existential anguish but also the ICON-THINKING to which it is related.
When there is existential anguish of unbearable pains, the anma seeks solace in being-with-BEING and LEARNING the deep metaphysical truths that ILLUMINATE the mind and thereby provide the medicine that would cure the soul of the existential anguish.
In this series I hope to select some important verses from this text that contains 100 verses and bring out the various kinds of icon thinking it encapsulates. In this first verse, the existential anguish gets stated very forcibly setting the tone for the whole of the text.
ULLAGANAR
( editing and re-paragraphing by his student )
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