தரிசனமும் சமூக உள்ளடக்கமும்: திருப்பாணாழ்வாரின் அமலனாதிபிரானும் வைணவக் குருபரம்பரை மரபும்: Darshan and Social Inclusion: Tiruppan Alvar's Amalanadipiran and the Vaishnava Guruparampara Tradition

Abstract

Tiruppan Alvar's Amalanadipiran consists of ten pasurams that experience the divine form of the Lord. The hagiographical traditions that grew around these songs describe the social barriers to attaining that experience and the recognition that comes through divine grace. This article undertakes a close reading of the pasurams together with a comparison of the taniyans and selected guruparampara accounts. The parts of the divine form, the act of seeing, the transformation of the heart, spatial boundaries, mediation and recognition serve as the elements of analysis. The aim is to distinguish the experiential worthiness found in the pasurams from the access to worship shaped in the traditional narratives. Neither a bar on temple entry nor the act of Lokasaranga is recorded directly in the songs; these belong to later traditional accounts. Moreover, the episode of the stone-throwing does not appear in every version of the tradition. It is therefore inappropriate to interpret the songs by assuming a single fixed biography. The study reads the experience of darshan as transforming the devotee's heart, and the traditional narrative as transforming the judgement of the society that looks at him. It also stresses that the sacred recognition granted to one individual is not historical evidence that general social equality was established.

Keywords

• Tiruppan Alvar
• Amalanadipiran
• darshan
• guruparampara
• social inclusion
• access to worship
• Panar