Material in text, text in material: a tamil christian lullaby

Abstract

In this article, I present a material-centered analysis of a Tamil Christian song titled Tiruchabai Tarattu, which was composed in 1813 by Vedanayaka Sastriar. Through this focused case study, I address the question of what is—or what ought to be—the relationship between material and textual analysis in the discipline of religious studies. Rather than positioning material religion as a discrete approach to the study of religion, one that is often contrasted with textual studies, I propose that textual studies finds in material religion an invitation for significant growth since texts are mediated through the material. I am especially interested in sensory experiences and objects, the mainstays of material analysis, as they are found embedded in texts. By focusing on the sensuous and material elements highlighted by the poet, a study otherwise focused within the bounds of textual sources can pivot and expand to include non-textual sources. My assembly, description, and analysis of sources and experiences that span across media in and outside of texts allows me to build what I call a sensory corpus by which we understand the meaning—better, meanings—of South Asian Christianity.

Keywords: :

• material religion
• Christianity
• South Asia
• Tamil
• Hinduism
• children
• sensory corpus
• textual studies

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to those who contributed to my fieldwork in 2010–11 and 2019, especially Sastriar Mrs. Sarah Martin, Noah Sastri and family, and for the institutional support of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship and the École française d’Extrême-Orient, Pondicherry. I thank Dr. M.S. Gandhimary, Dr. Indira Peterson, and Dr. Indra Manuel for their scholarly guidance and notes on earlier iterations of this research. Finally, this article was significantly improved by rich and insightful comments made by an anonymous reviewer.

Notes

1 The name Sastriar is a honorific scholarly title.

2 Kur-avañci is a genre of dance-drama. This particular drama takes place in the revered birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem.

3 Sastriar’s second wife died in 1829. Later Sastriar married a third woman with whom he produced three more children.

4 Working across and between religious communities for socio-political, economic, and evangelical gain was and is a common practice. For example, during the Hindu renaissance among Tamils, famed Tamil Hindu revivalist Arumuga Pillai was hired by British Wesleyan Methodist missionary Peter Percival to translate the Christian Bible into Tamil. The new vernacular Bible produced by Pillai’s literary labor was distributed by missionaries to Sri Lankan and South Indian converts (Hudson 1992, 29).

5 The transliteration for the four parts follows the spelling used on the Perinbakadal title page (Sastriar 1935).

6 All translations of Tiruchabai Tarattu are mine and are based on Sastriar (1935).

7 Clooney has done a comparative analysis of songs to Hindu goddesses and Christianity’s Mary that includes a close study of Mary’s ornaments, comparison to nature, and meditations on her feet (Clooney 2005, 88–108).

8 I met with Noah Sastriar in his ancestral home in Tanjavur in 2011.

9 See Verse 9 in Nin-aittakar-i collun taru.

10 See http://www.sastriars.org for biographies of living Sastriars as well as the ancestral family tree.

11 See for example, https://www.clementvedanayagam.com and DK Music channel on YouTube. Sastriar Mrs. Sarah Martin regularly shares event performances on YouTube, as well as new compositions and holiday songs. For example, she posted a Christmas song, “Vaanam Bhoomiyoo” on YouTube on December 20, 2019.

12 This is a song of gratitude and not related to the American holiday “Thanksgiving”. See D K Music (2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

leah elizabeth comeau

Leah Elizabeth Comeau is Associate Professor in the Theology and Religious Studies Department at Saint Joseph’s University. Her areas of expertise are South Asia, material religion, and Tamil studies. Comeau’s first book Material Devotion in a South Indian Poetic World (2020) contributes new methods for the study and interpretation of material religion found within Tamil literary landscapes. [email protected]