Prof. T. Jayaraman
11 December, 2015
The
subject of a history of the Cauvery Delta in Tamil Nadu may be the agrarian
radicalism of the recent past, the feudalism that it quickly ended or the
spiritualism of the pre-modern days or the revivalist Bhakti movement and the accompanying literary compositions of
the mediaeval period or the identity
politics of the Dravidian movement or the contemporary Dalit assertion or the Tamil
linguistic purism and the preceding period of profound Tamil scholarship or the
modernizing and modernized fictional and prose literary works of the 20th
century or even the now increasingly questioned Green Revolution in the farm
front or the occasionally bloody rivalries between Sivaites and Vishnuites in
the 11th and 12th centuries and between both together and the Jains and
Buddhists whom they overwhelmed in the 8th and 9th
centuries or music or drama either in Tamil or Telugu or the all-encompassing
culture of the Cauvery Delta – in all these fields of inquiry, movements and
trends, historians are certain to mention Thiruvarur and its neighbourhood as
an initiator, a pioneer, active participant or as an activist node.
Tucked
away amidst the paddy fields of the lower Cauvery Delta, the modest but ancient town of Thiruvarur lies
on the left bank of river Odambokki, one of the distributaries of Cauvery. Some
five km to its north, another branch of Cauvery, river Vettar, flows in its
straight course to the east to empty into the Bay of Bengal where, close to its estuary, is situated the famous Nagoor Durgha, the
shrine of a Muslim saint. The Central University of Tamil Nadu, which was
started in 2009, sits straddling this river course to the north-west of
Thiruvarur, in the quiet paddy tract that is part of the 13.25 lakh acre delta
of the lower Cauvery Basin. The town lies 120 km east of Tiruchirapalli and 26
km west of Nagapattinam, the once flourishing seaport on the Bay of Bengal in East
Central Tamil Nadu and now a relic of the maritime glory of the ancient and
later day imperial Chola kingdoms. Some 45 km to its south is the Gulf of
Mannar, its shore here made ecologically rich by a small evergreen tropical
forest serving as sanctuary for migratory birds during winter and for blackbucks,
a lagoon lined with mangrove forests and a vast stretch of Ramsar wetland.
Organized
around the great Thiyagaraja temple of “immeasurable antiquity” which houses
“the lord of eternal fame,” Thiruvarur is cited by historians as typical of
Dravidian town planning. Thiruvarur was one of the capitals of the ancient
Cholas and the temple, occupying together with its tank, an area of more or
less 66 acres, was patronized by the Pallava dynasty, the imperial Cholas who
succeeded them, the Nayaks of Vijayanagar and the Maratas of Thanjavur. Since
the beginning of the 17th century the littoral towns near
Thiruvarur, lying 25 to 30 km to its east, successively came under the control
of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and, finally, the English. Karaikal,
which is 30 km north-east of Thiruvarur and is now a part of the Union
Territory of Pondicherry, was a French settlement and a busy mart for European
goods till the 1950s. Thiruvarur has a colony of 500 Sourashtra-speaking silk
weavers 5 km on the west and another colony of 200 Kannada-speaking families 3 km
on the east, besides Telugu-speaking people making up nearly one tenth of its
population.
A Shiva linga known as
“PuRRitamkontaar” (the one in anthill, ‘Vanmeekanaathar’ ) is the principal
deity of Thiruvarur temple, though it is popularly and officially referred to
as Thiyagaraja temple. Thiygaraja is the idol of Siva as Somaaskandar and is meant
for festivals. A particular form of dancing (Ajabaa natanam) accompanied by ‘Panchamuga
vaadyam’ (five-faced drum) is associated with Thiyagaraja in Thiruvarur. Six other temples housing similar
Thiyagarajas in the neighbourhood, together with Thiruvarur, make up a chain of
seven Thiyagaraja temples, each having a
dance form specific to it. The other six places are ThirunallaaRu, Thirunaagai
(Nagapttinam), ThirukkaaRavaasal, ThirukkuvaLai, Thiruvaaymoor and
ThirumaRaikkaadu (Vedaaranyam).
Thiruvarur and towns and villages
close to it in the eastern part of the Cauvery Delta is dotted with temples,
big and small, Sivaite and Vishnuite, almost all reputed for their sculptures,
architecture, temple traditions, idols of deities and festivals and legends of
religious and spiritual significance. A temple on the north-west, Srivanchiyam,
also could boast of a theatre tradition that is now extinct. To the north of
Thiruvarur we have Chidambaram at a distance of 80 km and as we travel down
south we cross Sirkazhi, another immense Sivaite temple, then Vaideeswaran Koil
and then Mayiladuthurai, all housing Siva temples of immense size. On the
north-east we have Thirukadaiyur and ThirunallaRu, and on the east there is
Thirunaagai, in the south and the south-east there are Thiruthuraipoondi and
Vedaaranyam respectively, each having an ancient Siva temple.
The
towns and villages near Thiruvarur have Vishnuite temples known as
“Divyadesas”, the place and deity celebrated in the famous verses of Vishnuite
saint poets beginning 8th or 9th century. Thus
Thirukkannamangai is 5 km to the west of Thiruvarur, Thirukannapuram on the
north-east, about 12 km from Thiruvarur, Thirunagai and Thirukannangudi on the
east. A well-known Vishnuite temple which does not find mention in the
canonical verses is the one in Mannargudi, 27 km from Thiruvarur to its
south-west. The roadway between Thiruvarur and Kumbakonam, spanning a distance
of 40 km. has three Vishnuite temples of repute, Thirukkannamangai, Thirucherai
and Naachiyarkoil. All
around Thiruvarur one can find Sivaite temples of much religious significance
though in size lesser than that of Thiruvarur but invariably the subject of
songs of one or two or of all the three early saint-composers of the Sivaite
canon. Thirumeeyachur, significant for its variant architecture, Kilyanoor,
Thirukkottaram, Thiruppukalur, Thirumarukal, Thiruchenkattangudi,
Thiruppayathankudi, Virkudi, Keelvelur, Thevur, Sikkal, Valivalam, Thirkkuvalai,
Kachanam, ThirukkaLar, Kottur, ThiruvanduthurRai, Pamani, Poovanur, Koilvenni,
Alangudi, ThirukkoLLampoothur, Kodavasal, Nannilam are some of them that belong
to this class of temples.
There
is Thiruppanaiyur, another Siva temple, 10 km to the north-east of Thiruvarur,
where, the great emperor of the ancient Chola dynasty, Karikalan, it is said,
was brought up by his uncle when he was a boy taking asylum from the usurpers
pursuing him. This emperor is reputed to have built the ‘Kallanai’, an immense
regulator across Cauvery at the lower end of Srirangam and at the head of the
Cauvery Delta proper, to stabilize the course of the river and to regulate the
flow in it, and thereby he had earned the credit of establishing this vast
Delta known as the Old Cauvery Delta about 1700 years ago.
A place of much significance in the
history of the Tamils is KoilveNNi,
about 25 km to the west of Thiruvarur and within Thiruvarur District. It was
here that the ancient Chola emperor, Karikalan, fought and won a decisive
victory over the Chera and Pandiya kings and the nine Velir chieftains who were
supporting them, a victory that was to ensure the pre-eminent place of the
Cholas in South Indian history. Karikalan
shifted his capital from Urayur in Thiruchirapalli to Kaviripoompattinam on the
coast of Bay of Bengal, around 65 km to the north-east of Thiruvarur, which was
soon to develop into a busy port town, as did Nagapattinam, the port town to
the east of Thiruvarur, in later
centuries, doing maritime trade with countries like Greece and Rome and with
those to the south-east of India.
This Kaviripoompattinam, which was for
long the capital of the Chola kingdom, was later to be the city where the protagonist
of the great Tamil epic, Silappathikaram that was to attain lasting celebrity
as a Tamil classic of the Sangam period, had lived with his wife Kannagi and
his ever charming paramour, Madhavi. The author of this epic, IlangovatikaL, is
found to be an adherent of Jainism. An epic that was to soon follow this is
Manimekalai, the protagonist, Manimekalai being the eponymous character of the
epic. This is a Buddhist epic. Archeology has found relics of Buddhist
monasteries in Kaviripoompattinam, then known as Poompuhar. There are also
evidences in Tamil literature for Kaviripoompattinam having been a centre for
Jains and Buddhists and a city constantly doing scholarly inquiries into tenets
of diverse religions. Nagapattinam, the port town to the east of Thiruvarur, had
Buddhist monasteries and there were Buddhist settlements on the banks of Vettar
midway between Thiruvarur and Nagapattinam. Buddhists and Jains had no doubt
been patronized by the Chola kings, in spite of their clearly professed
religion being Sivaism and though the Sivaite saints of the 8th century,
who were close to the morachs, did their best to suppress Buddhism and Jainism and
also to systematically cause the persecution of the monks professing these
faiths. A Vishnuite saint, Thirumangai Azhvar, Thirumangai being his village 60
km to the north-east of Thiruvarur, sacked a Buddhist monastery in Nagapattinam
and used the loot to make additions to the Srirangam temple. To this day
builders around Thiruvarur come across granite statues of the Buddha and also
of Jain Thirthankaras while excavating to lay foundations. Several villages around this town bear names
that signify their having once been settlements of Buddhists or Jains. To the
west of Thiruvarur, at a distance of 10 km, there is Dheepankudi that has a
Jain temple and some Jain families as even the town of Mannargudi, to the south-west of Thiruvarur, has a Jain
temple and some Jain families.
About 45 km to the north-east of
Thiruvarur is Tharangampaadi (Tranquebar), a small port town which was settled
by the Danish Protestant missionaries at the beginning of the 17th
century. There still is a Danish fort here. In this port town of Tranquebar, in
1719-1720, was printed a Tamil translation of the first part of the Old Testament, a translation
made by the Protestant clergy, Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg. This was later to prove
to be the “ first such translation into any Indian language to be printed ” (
James, Gregory.(2000). Colporul – A history of Tamil Dictionaries. Chennai: Cre-A.).
One can travel 35 km by road,
south-east of Thiruvarur, and reach the Catholic Basilica at Velankanni that
was established by the Portuguese in the 17th/18th century on the
sea coast. It is a pilgrim centre drawing devotees in millions from all over
India.
Nagoor Durgha, flanked on the north by
Vettar estuary, is in the coatal town of Nagoor, some 26 km to the east of
Thiruvarur. This Islamic shrine houses the mausoleum of a Sufi saint and was
built in the 16th century on land gifted by the then Nayak king of
Thanjavur. Like the Catholic shrine at Velankanni this Durgha also attracts
pilgrims from all parts of India and also people settled abroad and the
pilgrims to both shrines include a large number of Hindus.
To the south of Thiruvarur and at a
distance 28 km there is Ettukkudi Subrahmanyar temple celebrated in the
devotional verses of Saint Arunagirinaathar and on the east, on the way to
Nagapattinam, there is another Subrahmanyar temple known as the Sikkal Singaravelar
temple and a third popular Subrahmanyar temple is Enkan on the west, at about
10 km. Each village here is marked by an Ayyanar temple and a Pidariyar temple,
supposedly the later forms of the ancient Tamil deities, and in this respect,
similar to the deities in the big temples here some of whom, such as Vishnu and
Subrahmanyar, are said to be in forms given to them after their assimilation
into the Vedic pantheon. It is to be mentioned here that the festivals of
Thiyagaraja temple as well as the festivals of other big temples in this area
are conducted only after conducting the festivals of these village deities,
this precedence being their right as native deities and more ancient than those
in the big temples built by the royalty.
Thiruvarur has an Ayyanar temple on the south-east and a Pidariyar
temple on the north.
Thiruvarur
has often been mentioned in inscriptional texts as a centre for the dancing
tradition sustained and developed by temple dancers (Devadasis) and the musical
tradition called nagaswaram similarly sustained by widwans attached to these
temples. These temple dancers and musicians have both been the only learning
resource for the early dancers and especially vocalists when these art traditions
began to attract learners and performers from the elite segments of the society
from the first quarter of the 20th Century in the developing
metropolis of the State. In the early part of the 11th Century, when
Raja Raja the Great built and established worship at the Brihadeeswara Temple
in Thanjavur he took 51 dancers from Thiruvarur and its neighbouring villages
and settled them in Thanjavur with gifts of revenue from farm lands to ensure their continuous service in the temple (Balasubramanian,
Kudavayil. (2010). Thiruvarur Thirkkoil,
Thanjavur: Agaram. P. 136.). In the recent past, places around Thiruvarur have
had legendary performers of dance and nagaswaram coming in the lineage of the
traditional temple artistes, of whom Thiruvavaduthurai Rajaratnam Pillai,
Mannargudi Chinnapakkiri, Thiruvizhimilai brothers and Thiruvenkadu Subramaniya
Pillai enjoyed a well earned fame for nagaswaram playing as did Needamangalam
Meenakshisundaram Pillai for playing the accompanying thavil instrument. This
tradition of dance and music and musical drama associated with the temples and
the deities in them continued till the days of the Marata kings of Thanjavur.
Several musical dramas written in Telugu by the rulers themselves, the prolific
among them being king Vijayaraghava Nayak who had written musical dramas on
Rajagopalaswami of the nearby Mannargudi, were staged in the Mannargudi temple
(Srinivasan, R. (2002) “ Mannaru Dasa Vilasam”, Srividya Rajagopalan Vaibhavam, Srirangam: Srivaishnavasri. P.41). Thiruvarur
can also boast of eminent vocalists from the elite section of the society in
its neighbourhood, the much celebrated among them being Semmangudi Srinivasa
Iyer and Mudikondan Venkatarama Iyer, both hailing from villages within 10 km
of Thiruvarur.
The saint-composers
of Thiruvarur of the 18th Century, Thiyagraja, Shyama Sastri and
Muthuswami Dhikshithar made their compositions in Sanskrit and Telugu, the
latter language enjoying patronage of the Thanjavur royalty. There was also a strong
Tamil composition tradition, prior to these three composers, nourished by
Arunachala Kaviraayar, Muthuthaandavar and Marimutha Pillai of Sirkazhi, a
place to the north of Thiruvarur, the
first of whom is said to have inspired Thiyagaraja through his immensely
popular Ramanataka Keerthanas. Two
composers who came later, Uthukkadu Venkatasubbaiyar and Mayuram Gopalakrishna
Bharathi were born on the banks of River Vettar flanking Thiruvarur on the
north and made compositions that are charmingly expounded in dancing
performances before discerning audiences here and abroad now. Of the numerous
teachers of dance, some of whom were also composers, the four Nattuvanars of
Thanjavur, Chinnayya, Ponnaiya, Vadivelu and Sivanandam, had great influence on
learners, subsequent teachers and dancing traditions here and in other South
Indian States. There are two schools of dancing traditions, one named the
Vazhuvoor School and the other, Pandanallur School, the first to the north of
Thiruvarur at about 35 km and the second to the north-west of Thiruvarur at about
55 km by road and both have eminent performers proudly claiming to have been
disciples of these Schools. Bhagavatha Mela, a theatre tradition that enjoyed
munificent patronage in the 18th century, with devotional plays both
in Tamil and Telugu, continues to find expression in annual series of
enactments in Melattur and Saliyamangalam,
45 km west of Thiruvarur.
A
great Sivaite religious centre, Thiruvarur and the region surrounding it, had, until
the recent past, many saints of mystical tradition, though not of the orthodox
kind. Some of them belong to the ancient Tamil Siddha tradition. Saint Thirumoolar (Thiruvavaduthurai) Saint
Pattinathar (Thirumalairayanpattinam) Paranjothi Munivar (Vedaaranyam) had,
each in his own way, contributed to the canonical texts of Sivaism. Of the
sixty three Sivaite saints, Karaikal Ammaiyar is one among the foremost and her
place of birth is Karaikal, a coastal town to the north-east of Thiruvarur and
another in this line of saints, Siruthonda Nayanaar, belongs to
Thiruchenkaattankudi, again 12 km to the north-east of Thiruvarur. Two more
saints among the sixty three, Naminanthi Adigal, Seruththunai Nayanaar,
Thantiyatikal and Somaasimaara Nayanaar belonged either to Thiruvarur or to
places close to it.
Thiruvarur
and its deity is the subject of the devotional verses of all the three
pre-eminent saint singers of the Sivaite tradition, Gnanasambandar, Appar and
Sundarar. Their songs on Thiruvarur forms the largest chunk of the Sivaite
canon known as Thevaaram. Of these three, Sundarar lived in Thiruvarur and has
the reputation of making the lord of Thiruvarur a go-between in his love
affair. In later days Thiruvarur became the subject of Tamil literary works, and
of many Telugu works, of poets in various literary forms, including the puraana
form and forms of dance dramas.
It
may be of interest to the academics and the scholarly world that Thiruvarur had
a great grammarian in Tamil, Vaidyanatha Desikar, celebrated by the Tamil
speaking world as a teacher and as the author of the treatise, Ilakkana Vilakkam. There were also
Swaminatha Desikar and Subbaiya Pandaram, the latter of Kilvelur near
Thiruvarur, who were both teachers of Tamil grammar and literary texts to the
great Tamil savant, Meenatchisundaram Pillai. Divakara Munivar, the author of Dhivakara Nikandu,
a dictionary of synonyms of the Tamil lexicographic tradition, was of Ambarmaahaalam,
a village about 12 km to the north of Thiruvarur. To this Tamil lexicographic
tradition belong Chidambara Revana Munivar, Veeramamunivar of Elakkurichi near
Thanjavur and Venkatasubrahmanya Bharathi of a village near Pattukkottai, all
falling within the Cauvery Delta. At
least three great medieval Tamil poets, authors of epics of lasting fame and
influence, belonged to places around Thiruvarur: the eminent Kamban known for
his Kamba Ramayanam, Ottakuthar,
supposedly a contemporary of Kamban and author of Thakkayakapparani, Jayankondar who composed Kalingaththupparani, a work celebrating the victorious war that a
Chola king fought to subjugate Kalingam, the modern Orissa. Another equally
famed medieval poet, Pukazhenthippulavr, the author of the epic, Nalavenbaa, is said to have belonged to
Kalappaal, a village some 27 km south of Thiruvarur.
The
Sivaite Mutts at Thiruvavaduthurai, to the north-west of Thiruvarur,
Tharumapuram, to the north-east, and ThruppananthaL to the north-west of
Thiruvarur, close to the south bank of River Coleroon, have all been functioning
as protectors and promoters of Sivaism to which mission they saw reason to
annex the duty of patronizing Tamil scholars and learners. The great Tamil
scholar of the recent past, Meenatchisundaram Pillai, and the scholar, teacher and editor of a
great number of until then unknown ancient Tamil texts, U. Ve Swaminatha Iyer,
were both the protégés of Thiruvavaduthurai Mutt and the latter was born in
Uthamadhanapuram in Thiruvarur District.
The
Tamil Dravidian identity politics owes a good deal to leaders, activists, enthusiasts
and sympathizers in Thiruvarur and its neighbourhood. The Justice Party that
was to inaugurate and was later to strengthen the Dravidian movement in the
electoral arena was led, for a number years till his demise, by Sir A.T. Panneerselvam
who lived around 10 km to the north-west of Thiruvarur. The Tamil Purist
movement, which sought to cleanse Tamil of Sanskrit words that were considered
an incursion, was initiated and led by Maraimalai Adigal of Nagapattinam.
Several journalists of repute, novelists, film artistes, and administrators,
including G. Parthasarthy, the former Vice-Chancellor of JNU and, earlier,
Ambassador to China, G. Gopalswami
Iyengar and K. Santhanam , both of them first Railway Ministers of independent
India, and the latter, Chairman of
India’s first Finance Commission, were
born in the neighbourhood of Thiruvarur and this region had also been known for
yielding a good crop of High Court
Judges such as Sir T.Muthuswami Iyer of Thiruvarur, who was the first Indian to have been elevated
as Judge of the Madras High Court. The
first Indian to be a judge of the Supreme Court of India, known then as the
Federal Court, was Sir S. Vardachariar of Nagapattinam.
The eastern part of the old Cauvery
Delta, of which Thiruvarur is a major hub, was undoubtedly the first site in
Tamil Nadu where landless farm labourers living in subjection for centuries had
successfully rallied under the radical leftist leadership. The response of the
administration in the colonial and independent India was initially that of an
irate government but still the agrarian movement won land reform measures and
an arrangement of fair wages for the labourers through the sacrifice of
thousands cadres and scores of their leaders, a number of whom became martyrs
in their struggle.
The creative instinct of the Eastern
Delta that found expression in poetry, musical dramas and devotional
compositions in verse through the centuries eagerly sought secular expression
in modern literary forms like the novel and short story in the contemporary
world and of the novelists who thus emerged, T. Janakiraman of Thevankudi,
south-west of Thiruvarur and M.V. Venkatram of Kumbakonam had won Sakithya
Academy awards for their individual novels.
Thiruvarur and its neighbourhood is thus
an exciting palimpsest of languages and cultures of varied provenance,
religions and religious sects of different philosophies and periods, social and political ideologies of different
persuasions and objectives.
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