Tamil mythology

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The Tamil people, who live mostly in the southern part of India called Tamil Nadu, possess a religious and mythological tradition that is a particularly interesting mix of ancient pre-Hindu Dravidian–Indus Valley (see Dravidians, Indus Valley Mythology) elements and Vedic (see Vedic entries) and orthodox Hindu aspects of the Sanskritic (see Sanskrit) tradition.

In the Neolithic period, the Tamils were a herding, nature-oriented culture with a nature-based mythology of deities of the land. Muragan or Murakan (see Murugan) was a major god of the hunt who battled evil forces and Ventan was a god responsible for rain and general well-being. A tradition of ecstatic worship involving sexuality and intoxication apparently existed among the early Tamils. In sacred places a liṇga-like (see Liṇga) pillar called a kantu represented the god concerned—perhaps more often than not Murugan, who, like the Greek Dionysos or Hindu Kṛṣṇa (see Kṛṣṇa), was often accompanied by a following of beautiful young women.

With the arrival in the South of Jains (see Jainism), Buddhists (see Buddhism), and Hindu brahmans (see Brahmans) in the third century BCE, the myths and religious practices of the Tamils became somewhat staid. By the eighth century the land of the Tamils had become the setting for a particularly powerful form of Hinduism marked by devotional (see Bhakti) poetry written by poet-saint followers especially of Śiva (see Śiva) called Nāyaṇārs and of Viṣṇu (see Viṣṇu) called Āḷvārs. Among the most famous of the Āḷvārs was Nammāḷvār, who lived in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, wrote especially about Viṣṇu's avatar (see Avatars of Viṣṇu) Kṛṣṇa, and espoused the beliefs of Vedānta (see Vedānta).

The most notable of the Nāyanārs was the ninth century Māṇikāvacakar, who stressed the ecstatic aspect of the worship of Śiva. The poet saints took stories from the Sanskrit texts and gave them Tamil settings and a peculiarly Tamil sense of the closeness that could be achieved between the given deity and the worshipper. The late eighth and early ninth century was also the period of Śaṇkara, who preached Advaita Vedānta (see Advaita, Advaita Vedānta) Hinduism that stresses the absoluteness of Brahman (see Brahman). Also important to the mythology and religion of the Tamils is the person of the Goddess (see Devī, Kālī), who from ancient times had been a popular deity and who by the tenth century had regained a position of equality with Śiva and Viṣṇu, a position she holds to this day.

Other popular deities who retain positions of importance with Śiva, Viṣṇu, and the Goddess are Śiva's sons Murugan and Gaṇeśa (see Gaṇeśa). The twelfth century saw a flowering of Tamil literature in the Tamil version of the epic the Rāmāyaṇa (see Rāmāyaṇa) by the poet Kampaṇ. Since the sixteenth century, a tradition of stories about the childhoods of the gods has been a significant aspect of Tamil mythology. Tamil mythology is among the richest and most complex narrative traditions in India (see Aṇṇaṇmār, Catakaṇtarāvaṇaṇ, Manimekhalaï).