Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan
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Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan is an independent Indian scholar of Indology.[1] and co-founder and President of the South Asia Research and Information Institute, a U.S.-based non-profit organization "focused on research and information dissemination related to South Asia."[2]
Life and career[edit]
Palaniappan graduated with a Bachelor of Technology (Aeronautical Engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras; a Master of Science from the University of Iowa; a Master of Business Administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania; and a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from the University of Pennsylvania.
Palaniappan has worked for several years in the transportation and information technology industries. Palaniappan has authored multiple peer-reviewed articles in Indology and has presented lectures dealing with South Asian cultural history.
Indological contributions[edit]
Palaniappan's research employs an inter-disciplinary approach utilizing Tamil philology, epigraphy of inscriptions in Tamil and other South Asian languages, Sanskrit texts, anthropology, and Dravidian linguistics. From his research emerges a significantly new picture of early Tamil society. Some of his significant findings and publications are described below.
Jainism and caste[edit]
Palaniappan's paper On the unintended influence of Jainism on the development of caste in post-classical Tamil society[3] was published in the International Journal of Jaina Studies (IJJS) and investigates the etymologies of well-known Tamil words like pulaiyaṉ and dispels their traditional and popular etymologies. According to Palaniappan, "there were no despised low castes or untouchables in the ancient Tamil society. For more than a millennium, these facts have been forgotten by the Tamil tradition. Tamil scholars [...] have failed to realise the true state of ancient Tamil society."[note 1][note 2]
The historical social status of Tamil Pāṇar in Hagiography Versus History[edit]
"Hagiography Versus History: The Tamil Pāṇar in Bhakti-Oriented Hagiographic Texts and Inscriptions,"[7] published by the Institut Français de Pondichéry in its Collection Indologie -132 titled Archaeology of Bhakti II : Royal Bhakti, Local Bhakti, treats the historical status of Tamil Pāṇars who were primarily musicians and bards during the Sangam era and showa that traditional Tamil scholars, including modern scholars like George L. Hart, have mistaken hagiography as history and considered the Pāṇar, the Tamil bards, to have been untouchables.
Palaniappan concludes that the Pāṇar played in Sanskrit theater, sang in Brahminic temples in front of the deities, trained the temple dancers in music and were held in high esteem by the society.
"Āḻvār or Nāyaṉār"[edit]
"Āḻvār or Nāyaṉār: The Role of Sound Variation, Hypercorrection and Folk Etymology in Interpreting the Nature of Vaiṣṇava Saint-Poets,"[8] published by the École française d'Extrême-Orient in South Indian Horizon: Felicitation Volume for François Gros on the occasion of his 70th birthday, argues that a gradual sound change of the name for Vaiṣṇavaite Tamil poet saints took place from the 9th to the 11th century, from Āḷvār (ஆள்வார்), meaning "One who rules" or "(Spiritual) Master," to Āḻvār (ஆழ்வார்), meaning "One who is immersed," through sound variation, hypercorrection and folk etymology.[note 3][note 4]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ His summary of the paper reads:[4][clarification needed] "Tamil nationalist scholars have held that the early Tamil society was casteless. But, they have not been able to explain away the occurrence of words such as pulaiyaṉ, iḻipiṟappiṉōṉ, iḻipiṟappāḷaṉ, and iḻiciṉaṉ, which are traditionally interpreted as low-born persons in classical Tamil literature. On the other hand, these words have led scholars like K. K. Pillay and George Hart to state that the concept of untouchability - and hence the notion of caste - has been present from the time of classical Tamil literature. All these scholars have failed to consider the influence of Jaina worldview reflected in the classical Tamil literature. When the classical Tamil texts are analyzed using information from the field of Jainism along with philology, Dravidian linguistics, and South Indian epigraphy, one could see that neither untouchability nor caste was indigenous to Tamil society. In fact, the word pulaiyaṉ, which later came to mean ‘a polluted man’, originally meant ‘a man who causes auspiciousness/prosperity’. Ironically, the non-violence principle of Jainism was an inadvertent catalyst in the development of violence-ridden untouchability among the speakers of Dravidian languages in post-classical Tamil times."
- ↑ Palaniappan’s IJJS paper on Jainism and caste has been cited four times since 2008,[5] but has been included in the list of important state-of-the-art articles in the Oxford Bibliography Online on Hinduism and Jainism by Jonathan Geen.[6] According to Geen, "Palaniappan 2008 presents a case of unintended Jain influence in the formation of castes in South India." Geen further describes the IJJS article as "A technical and heuristic argument based on philology and textual study. Argues that it was specifically Jain influence in the development of Tamil language that led to the notion that a caste system—and particularly a low-caste status—existed in ancient Tamil civilization, when in fact it did not."
- ↑ Palaniappan:
* "Āḻvār is but a corrupt form of āḷvār which has been used interchangeably with nāyanār in secular and religious contexts in the Tamil land."
* "Notwithstanding the Vaiṣṇava claim of unbroken teacher-student tradition, the fact that Nāthamuni has used the form āļvār but Piļļān, a disciple and younger cousin of Rāmānuja, ended up using the form āḻvār suggests that there has been an error in transmission somewhere along the teacher-student chain between the two teachers. This error was obviously due to the influence of the sound variation that has occurred in the Srirangam area and elsewhere". - ↑ Palaniappan’s findings on ‘Āḻvār’ have been cited by Alexander Dubyanskiy. In his article on Āṇṭāḷ, Dubyanskiy writes: "Āṇṭāḷ was among the twelve Āḻvārs, the poet-saints, adepts of Viṣṇu, canonized by the tradition, which accepted the interpretation of the meaning of the word āḻvār as “submerged, plunged [in love for god],” from the verbal root āḻ, “to plunge, to be in the deep.” But recently it was convincingly shown by S. Palaniappan (2004) that initially the term in question was represented by the word āḷvār (from the verbal root āḷ “to rule”), which reads as “those who rule, lords”, and was applied in the texts, both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava, to Śiva and Viṣṇu accordingly (pp. 66–70). In the course of time the term underwent the process of sound variation, took the form āḻvār and acquired the folk etymology which was accepted and fixed by the tradition. It is worth noting here that this interpretation agrees well with the meaning of the poetess’ nickname Āṇṭāḷ, which means “she who rules."[9][10] "Data" (PDF). www2.rsuh.ru.
References[edit]
- ↑ Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan, Humanities Commons
- ↑ "Home page". South Asia Research and Information Institute. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
- ↑ "On the unintended influence of Jainism on the development of caste in post-classical Tamil society".
- ↑ "Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan - Academia.edu". independent.academia.edu.
- ↑ "Google Scholar". scholar.google.nl.
- ↑ "Hinduism and Jainism - Hinduism - Oxford Bibliographies - obo". www.oxfordbibliographies.com.
- ↑ Palaniappan, Sudalaimuthu. "Hagiography Versus History: The Tamil Pāṇar in Bhakti-Oriented Hagiographic Texts and Inscriptions". The Archaeology of Bhakti II: Royal Bhakti, Local Bhakti – via www.academia.edu.
- ↑ Chevillard, Jean-Luc. "South Indian Horizon. Felicitation Volume for François Gros on the occasion of his 70th birthday" – via www.academia.edu.
- ↑ Charlotte SCHMID, Emmanuel FRANCIS (2011-08-12). "The Archaeology of Bhakti I - École française d'Extrême-Orient". Publications.efeo.fr. Retrieved 2019-02-28.
- ↑ http://www2.rsuh.ru/binary/object_40.1412591563.13923.pdf
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