Tamil Hindus 2000 Years Ago

This book is a sequel to my earlier publication Hinduism in Sangam Literature. I am continuing the topic ‘Tamil Hindu Encyclopedia’ from part 16. Hinduism was practiced in day-to-day life with great enthusiasm. It is very visible in the 2000 year old Sangam poems. According to historians, the Puranas took the current shape in the Gupta Age. But Sangam poems are earlier than that. If it is the correct dating, then the first evidence for several Puranic anecdotes come from Sangam literature. It is amazing to see that the southern most part of India had practiced Hinduism in minute detail with great enthusiasm.

Hinduism has two major roots. The more familiar is the religion brought to South Asia in the second millennium BCE by speakers of Aryan or Indo-Iranian languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family. Another, more enigmatic, root is the Indus civilization of the third millennium BCE, which left behind exquisitely carved seals and thousands of short inscriptions in a long-forgotten pictographic script. Discovered in the valley of the Indus River in the early 1920s, the Indus civilization had a population estimated at one million people, in more than 1000 settlements, several of which were cities of some 50,000 inhabitants. With an area of nearly a million square kilometers, the Indus civilization was more extensive than the contemporaneous urban cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Yet, after almost a century of excavation and research the Indus civilization remains little understood. How might we decipher the Indus inscriptions? What language did the Indus people speak? What deities did they worship? Asko Parpola has spent fifty years researching the roots of Hinduism to answer these fundamental questions, which have been debated with increasing animosity since the rise of Hindu nationalist politics in the 1980s. In this pioneering book, he traces the archaeological route of the Indo-Iranian languages from the Aryan homeland north of the Black Sea to Central, West, and South Asia. His new ideas on the formation of the Vedic literature and rites and the great Hindu epics hinge on the profound impact that the invention of the horse-drawn chariot had on Indo-Aryan religion. Parpola's comprehensive assessment of the Indus language and religion is based on all available textual, linguistic and archaeological evidence, including West Asian sources and the Indus script. The results affirm cultural and religious continuity to the present day and, among many other things, shed new light on the prehistory of the key Hindu goddess Durga and her Tantric cult.

Here in this book, I have dealt with Tamil belief in tree nymphs, water nymphs and ghost and ghouls. We must understand that we are reading about a civilization that lived 2000 years before our time. But the amazing virtues of hospitality, helping the poor, equality in delivering justice and respect for truth and honesty are seen. Like every ancient society there were brutal wars; and Tamils were the only society in the world where we see internal fights between Chera, Choza and Pandyas for over 1500 years. But they united when Rajasuya Yajnam was performed by a Choza king. That shows their respect for Hinduism. All the three parts written by me show the Hindu religion or Sanatan Dharma was practised at that time in the southernmost part of India.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems - both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

This book is a combined revised reprint of two books by the late Sanmugam Arumugam. The two books are Ancient Hindu Temples of Sri Lanka, Second Edition 1982, and More Hindu Temples of Sri Lanka, 1991. These two books have long been out of print. Ancient Hindu Temples describes 52 Temples, including the oldest Hindu Temple still existing in Sri Lanka which is Siva Devale No. 2 in Polonnaruva. More Hindu Temples goes on to describe 54 additional temples, some ancient and some relatively recent. Many of the temples are illustrated by photographs. The contents of both of the above books have been merged in this single Volume. Sanmugam Arumugam was a Chartered Civil Engineer and a graduate of Kings College, London. He worked in the Irrigation Department in Sri Lanka for 32 years, retiring as a Deputy Director in 1965. He then worked as a Director of the Water Resources Board for six years. He was President of the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka in 1966-67. He was the author of several technical papers and books including the monumental 461 page book, Water Resources of Ceylon 1969, which remains a standard reference resource on the subject to this day. After his retirement he turned his attention to writing about Hindu Temples. Apart from the two books reprinted in this volume, his published works include The Lord of Thiruketheeswaram, 1980, Koneswaram 1986, Lombok and its Temples 1990, and Stone Sculptures in Colombo Hindu Temple 1990. His final work was Dictionary of Biography of the Tamils of Ceylon 1997, which includes the profiles of over 775 Ceylon Tamils. He passed away in the year 2000, at the age of 94 years, working on his word processor right up to the very end.

Rastram, supranation, is about a golden page in the history of human civilizations. It is an opportunity to realize almost 2 millennia of dharam-dhamma values enshrined in the hearts of over 2 billion people along the nations of the Indian Ocean Rim. This is a compilation of insights, analyses and excerpts from works of by many savants and scholars about Hindu history. Rastram is a federation of peoples' republics - a supranational covenant as the true foundation of an organized Indian Ocean Community (IOC) -- a counterpoise to European Community. This IOC should remain open to all nations of Indian Ocean Rim. The states located along the rim from South Africa to Tasmania is a Community which has the attributes of Rastram. The Hindu historical traditions and the amended UN Law of the Sea help use the potential to create a 6 trillion dollar GDP and to provide for enhanced welfare of over 2 billion people. Along the 63,000 mile long rim, work can start on Trans-Asian Highway and Railway Projects and strengthen the bonds of civilizational heritage.The 1994 modified Law of the Sea extends territorial waters into 200 nautical miles from the baseline as economic zones. This historical account of Hindu history is an attempt to delineate the wealth of nations, along the Indian Ocean Rim. Together, these nations neighboring the Ocean, can chart out a path for establishing Rastram in dharma-dhamma continuum. This account provides the portraits from Hindu history on the travails of a nation caught in the throes of civilizational clashes onslaughts during mediaeval periods of barbarism and loots of 17th to 20th century periods of a British Colonial empire and the 21st century in a swarajyam Hindusthan by post-colonial marauders, suffocating the potential for forming a Rastram. This account is clearly NOT intended to be a chronologically organized Hindu history for two millennia until 2000 CE. Portraits are presented of political economy on the banks of Hindu civilization in modern epoch for the last two millennia. It is a record since the turn of the Common Era, informed by earlier five millennia of history of Sanatana Dharma in Bharata Rastram. trans. 'I am the Rastra moving people together for abhyudayam...) Hindu history is presented as a quest for the establishment of such a Rastram.IOC a supranational foundation to remove vestiges of colonial loot, to make such a loot unthinkable and materially impossible and reinforce democracy of all nations along the IOC rim as janapada (peoples' republics) for peoples' welfare (abhyudayam) governed by the inexorable, Hindu sanatana traditional ethic: dharma-dhamma.This book is a tribute to George Coedes who concluded, after a study of fourteen centuries of history of Southeast Asia: " the importance of studying the Indianized countries of Southeast Asia- which, let us repeat, were never political dependencies of India, but rather cultural colonies - lies above all in the observation of the impact of Indian civilization on the primitive civilizations... We can measure the power of penetration of this culture by the importance of that which remains of it in these countries even though all of them except Siam passed sooner or later under European domination and a great part of the area was converted to Islam...we may ask ourselves if the particular aspect assumed by Islam in Java was not due rather to the influence that Indian religions exercised over the character of the inhabitant of the island for more than ten centuries...The literary heritage from ancient India is even more apparent that the religious heritage. Throughout the entire Indian period, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the Harivamsa, and the Puranas were the principal, if not the only, sources of inspiration for local literature, to which was added the Buddhist folklore of the Jatakas, still makes up the substance of the classical theatre, of the dances, and of the shadow-plays and puppet theatre."

The gods and goddesses that populate the Tamil villages and countryside are rarely called Siva, Vishnu or Parvati and yet, they are understood to be forms or aspects of these pan-Hindu deities. Similarly, the ritual performed for the folk deities show traits antagonistic to Brahmanical values and yet, we find in them symbols and myths common to the "high" Sanscritic tradition. In the present work the author traces patterns and structures that help the reader understand the salient features of Tamil folk Hinduism and its differences to and similarities with the "high" tradition.The book has chapters on the arrangement of the folk deities in the temple, the deities' place in the ordered and wild space, their relationship with the pan-Hindu gods and goddesses and chapters on how the devotees connect to the folk deities through myths, rituals and worship. The great diversity and richness of the Indian folk religion and the ever greater assimilation of folk cults into the "high" tradition are topics that need to be explored in depth. The present book is a contribution towards this goal.

Sangam Tamil books are at least 2000-year-old; chronologically Tamil stands next to Sanskrit in India; though 6000 year old Vedas are still available and recited in all the temples and Vedic Schools, Tamils have lost many of their ancient works. But fortunately, we see the continuity of Vedic thoughts in Tamil Sangam books; they are 18 in number. There is another grammatical treatise Tolkappiam which is considered older than the 18 books. We see full-fledged Hinduism in it. The book mentioned Vedic Gods as the Gods of the Tamils. I have been writing about it from 2011. This book has some of the articles on this topic.

This book contains articles on various subjects. If you look at the contents page, you will get an idea of the range of subjects I have dealt with. But the main focus is on two books Amarakosa, the Sanskrit dictionary cum thesaurus and Brihat Samhita of Varahamihira, an encyclopaedia in Sanskrit. The commentaries on Amarakosa give us enormous information. But not all the commentaries are available in English. I have collected as much information as possible through a Sanskrit scholar.