Snakes, goddesses, and anthills: Modern challenges and women's ritual responses in contemporary South India PDF

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Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation i...

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Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non-exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: _________________________________

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Amy L. Allocco

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Snakes, Goddesses, and Anthills: Modern Challenges and Women’s Ritual Responses in Contemporary South India By Amy L. Allocco Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Division of Religion West and South Asian Religions _________________________________________ Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Ph.D. Advisor _________________________________________ Paul B. Courtright Committee Member _________________________________________ Vasudha Narayanan Committee Member _________________________________________ Laurie L. Patton Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the Graduate School ___________________ Date

Snakes, Goddesses, and Anthills: Modern Challenges and Women’s Ritual Responses in Contemporary South India

By

Amy L. Allocco B.A., Colgate University, 1997 M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School, 2001

Advisor: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Ph.D.

An abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Graduate Division of Religion West and South Asian Studies

2009

Abstract Snakes, Goddesses, and Anthills: Modern Challenges and Women’s Ritual Responses in Contemporary South India By Amy L. Allocco This dissertation is an ethnographic study of contemporary Hindu snake (nāga) traditions and the worship of snake goddesses (nāgāttammaṉ) in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Specifically, it analyzes the repertoire of vernacular practices connected with

nāga dōṣam (snake blemish), a malignant condition that is believed to result from inauspicious planetary configurations in an individual’s horoscope. This astrological flaw is most often linked to having killed or harmed a snake, and is faulted for delaying marriage and causing infertility. Indigenously, these afflictions are identified as distinctly “modern” problems and understood to be increasingly prevalent. Because South Indian

nāgas have long been associated with fertility in belief, custom, and local mythology, nāga traditions offer a religious framework to respond to these modern dilemmas, and the worship of snake goddesses has dramatically expanded as a result. New media, such as devotional magazines, have also played an important role in the popularization of nāga dōṣam traditions, its ritual remedies, and particular snake goddess temples. I propose that these innovating nāga traditions represent a distinctively local, culturally inflected “modernity” and reflect some of the gendered tensions of contemporary Tamil social life. This dissertation, then, analyzes how traditional religious practice can serve as a flexible, modern means through which to negotiate a range of shifting social and economic contexts. It charts nāga ritual traditions (which include recontextualized as well as more explicitly “invented” rites) as they are being self-consciously adapted to meet a spectrum of new ritual and social needs that these challenging contexts inspire. These rituals are primarily performed at local, neighborhood snake goddess and anthill temples, which form an urban network of sites well-known for their power to counter

dōṣam. These local goddesses, some of whom were previously known for curing poxrelated illnesses, enjoy a dynamic and expanding ritual repertoire, a growing annual festival tradition, and the patronage of devotees from an increasingly broad array of caste backgrounds.

Snakes, Goddesses, and Anthills: Modern Challenges and Women’s Ritual Responses in Contemporary South India

By

Amy L. Allocco B.A., Colgate University 1997 M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School, 2001

Advisor: Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, Ph.D.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Graduate Division of Religion West and South Asian Studies

2009

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research and writing of this dissertation has been a lengthy process, during which time I accrued many debts. First, and foremost, I extend my gratitude to the countless individuals in South India who assisted me with this project – devotees, temple priests, ritual musicians, textual scholars, astrologers, and ritual specialists – and without whom this study would not exist. While it is impossible to name them all, many of their narratives are contained in these pages, and their insights, questions and perspectives will continue to inform and shape my scholarship and my teaching. In Chennai I owe my greatest debts to S.R. Hemavathy and her family, both immediate and extended, in Chennai and Sadras. I must mention particularly Amudha, Mahendran, and Bhuvana, each of whom made significant contributions to my fieldwork process. This family has given me a place to stay many times, and has welcomed me at their rituals and family events for more than a decade. For many years of affiliation and assistance on matters academic and logistic, I thank the staff at Chennai’s Kuppuswami Shastri Research Institute, and especially its Director, Dr. V. Kameswari. Dr. T.V. Vasudeva spent many hours searching out and reading Sanskrit texts with me for this project, and served as an invaluable source of

personal and experiential knowledge on ritual practices and procedures. Many thanks, and a great deal of affection, are extended to my friend and teacher, Dr. K.S. Balasubramanian, as well as to his wife Bhuvanaswari and son Sudarshan. Also in Chennai, my dear friend Jayanthi has, along with her family, offered me wonderful cups of coffee and the privilege of uncensored conversation. She, and our friend Nithya, have listened to my fieldwork tales and given me space to debate many of the issues I encountered. Thanks are also due to Geeta and Lata Ramashesan and their parents, who welcomed me at their rituals and, over years of conversations, offered many valuable comparative perspectives. Numerous others have also extended assistance, hospitality, ritual knowledge, and friendship, including J. Lalitha and her family (who offered me a home during an earlier period of research), Seethalakshmi, Raghu, Nataraj, Anto, Gomiti, Yoga, Mariyamma, Saroja, and Rajalaksmi. Finally, I must express my deep gratitude to Sunil Kumar his many contributions to this project as well as for our many years of friendship. In ways too numerous to count, he has enriched the years of research that have gone into this dissertation. For Tamil training I am grateful to Dr. Bharathy of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) Tamil Language Program in Madurai, a wonderful teacher whom I greatly

admire. She also provided introductions and logistical guidance at key stages of this project, for which I am thankful. In Chennai, I read Tamil texts with Professor Ramamurthy for several extended periods, during which I benefited from his extensive knowledge and was heartened by his interest in this project. I also thank Ambika Lakshmi, who worked with me in private Tamil tutorials in Atlanta. Among the fieldwork assistants who consulted with me during various stages of this project, a special note of thanks is owed to Kalaiarasi, an emerging scholar who impressed me with her keen eye and graced me with her friendship. During the final festival season of my fieldwork, she introduced me to her favorite snake goddess temple, and the time we spent there enhanced this project’s focus. I am also thankful to Kishore Bhattacharjee and his colleagues at Guwahati University in Assam and to Sk. Makbul Islam in Kolkata for facilitating fruitful for research on the snake goddess Manasa, as well as to Uttam Bathari for inviting me to present some of the material that became this dissertation at the Indian Council of Historical Research in Guwahati in 2007. At Emory University, I owe the greatest debt to my advisor, Joyce Flueckiger. I have learned a great deal from her in the eight years that she has mentored me, and this

dissertation is immeasurably better for the many hours she spent discussing it with me and providing feedback on specific chapters and ideas. Thanks are also due to Laurie Patton, whose penetrating comments gave me a lot to consider, and to Vasudha Narayanan, who shared her early enthusiasm for this project and later offered both personal and scholarly insights about this material. Paul Courtright contributed his own characteristic blend of deep knowledge, incisive comments, and big questions. I am grateful for all of these, as well as for his friendship and his absolute faith in me. My entire graduate process at Emory was facilitated by Pescha Penso, to whom I offer my wholehearted thanks. My colleagues in the Program in West and South Asian Religions have, at various points, been valuable conversation partners about the “stuff” of this dissertation, and about the research and writing process. Among them, I am particularly grateful for Antoinette DeNapoli, Josie Hendrickson, Peter Valdina, Luke Whitmore, and Kate Zubko. Several institutions and organizations provided generous financial support for this project. An AIIS Junior Fellowship enabled extended periods of research in India, and shorter trips were made possible by funds from Emory University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Fund for International Graduate Research, and the Graduate

Division of Religion. I would like to extend sincere thanks to several members of the AIIS organization: to Purnima Mehta, Director General in Delhi (who managed to procure timely research visas for me on several occasions); to Dr. Pappu Venugopala Rao in Chennai (who offered important logistical support and practical assistance); and to Elise Auerbach in Chicago (who advised me on several key issues and who demonstrated enormous flexibility and a willingness to help). I am particularly grateful for the American Association of University Women (AAUW) for awarding me an American Fellowship to support my dissertation writing. This fellowship made it possible for me to write full-time in the last year and, ultimately, to complete this project. My last set of debts is intensely personal, and must begin with thanks for my parents, Janet and Pierre Allocco. In every way and at all stages of my life, development, and studies, they have demonstrated how deeply they value education and how committed they were to seeing me reach my goals. I am profoundly grateful for their years of unwavering support and for their joyfully expressed pride in my accomplishments. Gratitude is also due to my dear friends Meghan Sweeney and Margaret Lias, who housed me on many trips back to Emory once I had moved further afield and who visited me in India while I was carrying out this research. Their

encouragement and laughter has spurred my progress and smoothed my way. Closer to home, I appreciated the company of a close circle of friends – especially Heather, Becky, Niki, and Chad – who cheered me on at every stage. At a crucial point in my dissertation writing Peggy Cowan provided her sunny and quiet corner office at Maryville College; this space made an enormous difference and for it I am sincerely grateful. My stepsons, Isaiah and Immanuel, regularly paid me visits as I wrote (and rewrote) this dissertation in various library spaces, often bearing coffee and snacks. They maintained many of the rituals of our family when I was away so that coming home at the end of many hours of work was always something special. My last words must be reserved for my husband Brian, my biggest fan and my very best friend. He has played many roles in the years that it has taken for this dissertation to come to fruition, and has cooked more meals, answered more arcane questions, printed more drafts of chapters, and proofread more prose than he probably cares to count. Throughout it all, he has reminded me of the truly important things, both in my work and in my self, and embodied the lesson that “home” can be wherever we are together, from Tamil Nadu to Tennessee.

NOTE ON TRANSLATION AND TRANSLITERATION The contemporary Tamil language exhibits a wide diglossia between written and spoken forms, and spoken Tamil varies widely in different regions of Tamil Nadu and at different caste and class levels. A great deal of its religious vocabulary -- the terms, concepts, and categories this study interacts with most frequently -- relies on Sanskrit words. This use of Sanskrit is not uniform, however. Against the backdrop of ongoing debates in Tamil Nadu about whether temple priests should chant mantras in Sanskrit or in Tamil, some religious specialists consulted in this study deliberately use only the Tamil forms of these terms. Many of the terms in question also have established Anglicized forms, which is not surprising given the centuries of contact and exchange with the English-speaking world. Tamil is a truly layered language, and there are instances where even a single deity name may be rendered three or more different ways within the same temple complex: on signs, in temple literature, and in the oral productions of its priests and devotees. My transliteration decisions were guided by several desires, chief among which was to produce a readable text that would be accessible to a wide audience. To this end, I generally follow Sanskrit spellings for religious, ritual, and other terms, both

because these forms would be most familiar and recognizable to many of my readers (and allow them to place my discussions in conversation with other scholarly treatments of similar issues), and because many of those with whom I spoke used these forms themselves. For example, I opt for darśan rather than the Tamil taricaṉam, and bhakti instead of the Tamil pakti. In a few cases I have struck a compromise between forms, and render certain words in their Sanskrit form but with the addition of the final -m that was typically found in spoken Tamil, because its omission would have placed the term in an artificially Sanskritic register. Examples of terms that reflect this compromise are

prasādam (Skt. prasāda; Ta. piracātam), abhiṣekam (Skt. abhiṣeka; Ta. apiṣēkam), and liṅgam (Skt. liṅga; Ta. liṅkam). In almost all places I include the Tamil term in parentheses upon first usage, and I also provide the Tamil forms of most terms in my glossary. The reader will, however, note some variations, particularly when I quote verbatim. The vast majority of my fieldwork was carried out in Tamil. Taped interviews and Tamil texts were translated by me, often in collaboration with fieldwork assistants. In the excerpts from these sources that I include here, my glosses, stage directions, and other interpolations are enclosed within square brackets. I indicate specific words or phrases

that were originally spoken in English with two asterisks (e.g., *main*), and also indicate if a quoted conversation was conducted in English. In a few places in the text I use italics to indicate emphasis. With ease of readability in mind, I have omitted diacritical marks for most proper names, including the names of individuals, caste names, and place names. Instead, I use the most common English forms of these words, which facilitates identification and the reader’s ability to locate places and temples on maps and in other scholarly studies. I do, however, use diacritics for names of specific texts (e.g. Mahābhārata). For deity names I have chosen the most common English form, so Shiva rather than the Sanskrit

Śiva or the Tamil Civaṉ. When it comes to temple names I do not use diacritics, except for the first time I mention my primary research site, Mundakakkanni Amman Temple, and two other main snake goddess temples where I conducted fieldwork and which are discussed at length in this dissertation. Their full names are included at first usage and thereafter they are called by shortened names without diacritical markings. Diacritics are also provided in the Glossary for a few key goddess names and temple names. Where I use diacritics in Tamil words I follow the standard Madras University Tamil Lexicon

system and also italicize, but where words have passed into common English usage (e.g., karma, sari, mantra) I use neither diacritics nor italics. Finally, in spoken Tamil plurals (designated by appending the suffix -kaḷ) are rarely indicated. I have supplied a final -s in my English translations to indicate plurals where appropriate, but have not added them to Tamil words where they did not occur in direct speech.

ABBREVIATIONS

lit.

literally

MK Amman

Muṇṭakakkaṇṇi Ammaṉ

Ta.

Tamil

Skt.

Sanskrit

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One: Introduction to a Tradition in Transition..................................................... 1 Finding the Field .......................................................................................................... 1 Context for a Changing Tradition ................................................................................. 5 Mylapore and Shared Boundary Identities ................................................................... 8 The Ethnoscape ......................................................................................................... 12 Sources and Methods ................................................................................................ 21 Snakes and Anthills .................................................................................................. 29 Forms of the Snake Goddess in Tamil Nadu ............................................................. 31 Rahu and Ketu .......................................................................................................... 41 Snake Worship and Nāgas in Scholarly Sources ...................................................... 49 Anthills in Scholarly Sources ..................................................................................... 64

Dōṣam in Scholarly Sources ...................................................................................... 71 In/Fertility in Scholarly Sources ................................................................................. 76 Tamil Goddesses and Tamil Ritual in Scholarly Sources .......................................... 79 Delayed Marriage and Infertility: Perceptions and Realities ....................................... 84 Invoking Tradition and Ritual as Responses to the Blemishes of Modern Times ....... 90

Dōṣam on the Rise ................................................................................................... 94 The Organization of the Dissertation ....................................................................... 106

Chapter Two: Locating the Causes of Nāga Dōṣam ................................................... 113 The Case of Archana .............................................................................................. 113

Defining Nāga Dōṣam ............................................................................................. 119 Mult...