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Singing the Body of God: The Hymns of VedantadeSika in Their South Indian Tradition

2004; American Oriental Society; Volume: 124; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/4132133

2169-2289

Anne E. Monius, Steven P. Hopkins,

Religion and Society Interactions

After an opening section that tells the story about Vedåntadeóika's encounter with Vishnu at Tiruvahândrapuram, and the saint-poet's compositions in honor of that god in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Prakrit, this introductory chapter summarizes the main themes of the book.First, a overview of Vedåntadeóika, his historical context, his works in Sanskrit, Tamil, Prakrit and maïipravåöa ("jewels" and "coral", a prose form that combines the Tamil and Sanskrit languages) and significance in his time as a kavi (poet), a "lion among poets and philosophers," as a "master of all the arts and sciences," and as a logician/debater/philosopher/ poet who synthesized local/regional Tamil with pan-regional Sanskrit.Other core issues include tensions in Vedåntadesika between the "poet" and "philosopher," between intellectual and "emotional bhakti" and divine presence and absence, along with "holy seeing" (daróan) and the "body language" used to describe the "beautiful holy bodies" of Vishnu's temple icons in three south Indian shrines.Methodological framework of the study includes a detailed consideration of Sheldon Pollock's theories on Sanskrit cosmopolitanism along with the "vernacular cosmopolitan" in South Asia after 1300, along with John B. Carman's notions of complementary and contrasting polarities and A.K. Ramanujan's theories on varieties of reflexivity in Indian literature, with help from the semiotic theories of Charles Sanders Peirce on "iconic" and "indexical" signs.Introduction concludes with a detailed discussion of textual sources of