Profiling the Pious Devotee

So, who are the true adorers of Tamil? For this modality, they are those who think of Tamiḻttāy as their teyvam and have faith and confidence in her divinity, her compassion, and her supreme abilities. The pious devotee chastises his fellow speakers for failing to reverence Tamiḻttāy, or for ridiculing and scorning her. “There are base people who do not know about the depth of your excellence! Grant me grace, so that I do not become one of them.” Because her detractors’ minds were filled with confusion, they say harsh things about her. “What indeed is the worth of their knowledge?” her adorers demanded (Velayutam Pillai 1971: 61-62).

Since her pious devotee believes that Tamiḻttāy is an omniscient being, the source of his life and wisdom, and his ultimate refuge, he is also convinced that his salvation, and that of his fellow Tamilians, lies in securing her grace (aruḷ). Her aruḷ would cure Tamil speakers of laziness and sloth, and grant them manliness and courage; it would destroy all illusions and rid them of all sins, past and present; and it would release them from the cycle of births. So her devotee beseeches her to open her eyes and grant him grace. Indeed, one of his favorite poetic genres is the tirupaḷḷiyeḻucci (the awakening [of the lord] from sleep), for he is convinced that ignored by her followers, Tamiḻttāy has gone to sleep, and thus no longer offers them grace. As Diana Eck notes, “In the Hindu view, not only must the gods keep their eyes open, but so must we, in order to make contact with them, to reap their blessings” (1985: 1). Thus, crucial to the structure of piety that develops around Tamiḻttāy is the belief that both she and her speakers must “awaken” and “open their eyes” it is only then that she would be able to grant grace, and they could receive it. All would then be well with the (Tamil-speaking) world.

Just as he longs to receive her aruḷ, the pious devotee also yearns to experience her, with his mind, heart, and all his senses. So he imagines her as residing on his tongue. He longs to “immerse” himself in her and blend with her very being (Velayutam Pillai 1971: 61-62). There is an erotic subtext to the piety of the devout in tamiḻppaṟṟu, as there is in so much of devotional Hinduism. Indeed, some of her adorers are so overcome when they contemplate her beautiful and splendid form that, they confess, “[Our] bodies brim with ecstasy; our hair quivers in excitement; [our] tongues stammer with love; and [our] bones melt” (Velayutam Pillai 1971: 68; see also Sivalinga Nayanar 1940). In Varadananjaiya Pillai’s words:

	Our hands in prostration, our minds throbbing with joyousness,
	the hair on our bodies quivering in excitement,
	Brimming with ecstasy, we offer you our prayer!
	May you live long, O Tamiḻttāy! O mother of ours!
	May you flourish for ever and ever and ever.
	(Velayutam Pillai 1971: 82)

This kind of ecstatic piety supplements the more overt but secular sexual economy of the erotic modality of Tamil devotion, as we will see. Increasingly, as the imagining of Tamil as a familial mother figure came to dominate tamiḻppaṟṟu, desire for Tamiḻttāy could only exist in the interstices. But within the modality of pietistics, erotic sensibilities were granted some latitude, for divine sexuality continued to have a kind of currency that was not so readily conceded to maternal sexuality within the new bourgeois codes of morality that were put in place in colonial South India.