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Translating Tamil God Into Sanskrit in Vedāntadeśika's Dramidopaniṣattātparyaratnāvalī

Presenter:

· Manasicha Akepiyapornchai Cornell University (Ithaca, United States of America)

Timeslot:

07/26 | 17:50-18:10 UTC+2/CEST

Abstract

Through the myriad intersections of language, scripture, and theology, I explore the role of translation in a religious community of medieval South India. Specifically, I investigate scripturalisation of vernacular devotional poetry through translation within the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, the most influential orthodox brahmanical community devoted to God, Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa. From its beginning around the tenth century CE, the Śrīvaiṣṇavas have been grounded in Sanskrit and Tamil scriptures, the Upaniṣads and the Tiruvāymoḻi respectively. Around the twelfth century CE, the medieval Śrīvaiṣṇavas began to translate Sanskrit scriptures into Tamil and Tamil scriptures into Sanskrit, thus bringing the two languages, scriptures, and, importantly, different theologies into conversation. Among the translations, the Dramidopaniṣattātparyaratnāvalī by Vedāntadeśika, a significant Śrīvaiṣṇava theologian who lived around the thirteenth century CE, is arguably the most important one. I argue that, by translating the Tiruvāmoḻi into Sanskrit, Vedāntadeśika transformed the Tamil devotional poetry which focuses on the relationship between God and His devotees into a Sanskrit philosophical distillation of the ontology of God and claimed the equivalence between the Sanskrit Upaniṣads and the Tamil Tiruvāymoḻi. The Dramidopaniṣattātparyaratnāvalī obscures the linguistic, scriptural, and theological heterogeneity of the two heritages and allows the imagination of unitary communal identity. Thus, translation into an authoritative language like Sanskrit is indispensable to the scripturalisation of vernacular literature and a formation of a unified religious community.