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A classical Christian model for inter-religious thinking is the Logos-approach. For many early church fathers, Logos denoted a principle of intelligibility in the world2, in which all human beings par-ticipate. But this participation is differen-tiated according to the depth of partici-pation: “extending to the whole cosmos and all human beings, the intervention of the Logos in Israel becomes more inci-sive; it is only completed with the advent of Christ in human flesh.”3 While this approach has its merits, this article will investigate another potential model for interreligious dialogue – a model derived from the debate in South India over the so-called “Tamil Veda”. The main task of this paper, therefore, is not to evalu-ate the substantive theological claims of the Tamil Veda vis-à-vis the Sanskrit Veda. Rather, the central question to be explored is, Can the Tamil Veda tradi-tion, which holds that two languages can mediate one revelation, illuminate a model for interreligious thinking?

THE TAMIL VEDA DEBATE

The orthodox Hindu tradition restricted revelation to the Sanskrit Vedic tradition. The Mimamsa school of thought, for instance, held that “the quest for religious truth begins with sub-mission to the privileged linguistic com-munication that is the Veda, the canon of Sanskrit sacred texts for ritual practice, recitation, and meditation.”4 This lin-guistic measure of orthodoxy was chal-lenged by the “Dual Vedanta” tradition in South India, where a debate occurred over the possibility of God speaking in a language other than Sanskrit.5 Devoted to both Visnu and Sri, the South Indian Srivaisnava community considered both Sanskrit scripture and the Tamil songs of the twelve mystics as authoritative revela-tory texts. Consequently, the religious thought of this community came to be called “the system of the Dual Vedanta”.

The first Srivaisnava teacher, Nathamuni, allegedly called Tiruvaymoli, an important poem in the Tamil revela­tory text, the Tamil Veda. Carman and Narayanan capture the implication of this claim:

Such a claim was significant in the tenth century CE because no vernacular language had hith­erto been held to be the medium of revelation within Hinduism; no other work had been called a Veda. For the first time in Hindu consciousness, hymns in a language other than Sanskrit were considered to be revealed. The claim was also unique in that none of the teachers in the Srivaisnava community felt that they were rebelling against Sanskrit tradition; nor did they hold either Veda to be inferior to the other. In the Srivaisnava tradition, we see a confluence of two rivers: the coming together of Sanskrit and Tamil cultural tra­ditions and religious literatures.6

Vasudha Narayanan’s The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual is an exposition of the poem Tiruvaymoli. The author attempts to account for the complexity of the text as it related to worship: its revelatory status, recitation schedules, musical renderings, oral and written commentarial traditions, and dramatic performances in temples.7 The Tiruvaymoli involved the same struc­ture of other revelatory compositions in the Hindu tradition. The composition itself is called sruti (that which is heard) and those who were responsible for the transmission of these hallowed words were called rishis, or seers. Hence, in the Hindu tradition, the revelatory event is comprised of both hearing and seeing.8

In her account of the Srivaisnava understanding of revelation, Narayanan focuses on “the paradox of the saint who remained silent until he started uttering eternal truths, the poet who was appar­ently granted blessed visions, which he communicated through words that have been considered sacred.”9 Holding that a vernacular language can be the medi­um of revelation was a radical claim in the Hindu tradition. In light of the controversial nature of this claim, Nanciyar set out to defend the author Satakopan and the Tamil revelation in his “Introduction to Tiruvaymoli”. Satakopan is described as a holy man who “possessed the essential nature of the Lord” and “was afraid at the men-tion of any human goal other than the Lord.”10 The Tamil Veda, according to Nanciyar, possesses the highest authori-tativeness because its works “are accept-able to all those learned people who have knowledge of the meaning of the Veda, and because we see in these works all that meaning of the Veda which must be known by those who are born into the torrent of this world.” Their “sound, utterance and enunciation” reveal that “their foundation is that ‘divine aye’ given by the grace of the Lord.” The fact that those eligible to read the Tamil Veda were not limited to a particular caste suggests the revolutionary nature of this development. In fact, one objec-tion to the inclusion of the Tamil Veda as a revelatory text is that “women, sudras (peasants), etc. are well versed” in the poems. Nanciyar responds to this objection by attributing its inclusion to the mercy of its author. “By his abun-dant mercy the alvar has rendered in the southern language the meaning of the Vedas, so that women, sudras, etc. who are not eligible to study the Veda, will not be lost.”11

Nanciyar comments several times that the Tamil poems are intrinsical­ly connected to the Sanskrit Veda.12 Likewise in the VV, Narayanan points out that even the Srivaisnava tradition today considers the Tiruvaymoli to be similar to the Sanskrit Veda in two ways: their eternal nature and their similar messages. In the thirteenth ­13 century, Alakiya Manavala Nayanar made the claim that the Tamil Veda was preexistent and eternal. Hence, just as the Sanskrit Veda has no beginning or end, so also the Tiruvaymoli was created as it existed before. “In other words,” writes Narayanan, “there is an eternal Tiruvaymolithat, just as the sun and moon are cre, which the poet has ated by Brahma, the creator God, as they existed in previous ages of time, so too now ‘this sacred work which is the Tamil Veda was brought about as it has been manifested as before.’” Narayanan adds, however, that the application of “the eternal preexistent nature of sound and truth to the Tamil Veda is strikingly bold and deliberately lifts the work out of a historical context.”sung now. The Commentator explains

In addition to their eternal nature, both revelatory works are perceived as having similar content. Narayanan high-lights what Srivaisnava literature consid-ers to be the content of the Sanskrit Vedas: the understanding of Visnu as the Supreme Being; the entire universe forms the body of Visnu; and that surrender to the Lord is integral to right worship.14 Narayanan shows how Pillan, an eleventh century theologian who wrote the first commentary on the Tiruvaymoli, quotes extensively from Sanskrit scripture while commenting on Tamil verse.15 Pillan’s aim was to substantiate the similarity between the two texts.

Although the two texts were simi­lar, the community is also attentive to their differences. Alakiya Manavala has emphasized that the Tamil Veda is more accessible. “The Sanskrit revelation is like an ocean, he says, and cannot be utilized easily; the Tiruvaymoi is like drinking water in a jug from which a thirsty person can easily get a drink.” Furthermore, the Tiruvaymoli differs from the Sanskrit Veda in its portrayal of the intensely personal and passionate longing of one particular human being for union with the Lord.

The radical claim that revelation – which was consistently limited to one sacred language – could be medi-ated in another language presupposes an authority that transcends mere human authority. Francis Clooney, S.J., in his consideration of two theologians within the South Indian context who “wel-comed the widening of the possibilities of religious authorship and authority,” explains the shift that must occur, in order for this to be plausible. “In both cases,” he writes, “an appeal to the inten-tion and authority of God expands and realigns the order of religious truths and values. It overcomes possible splits in the canon by giving the divine author priority over language, knowledge, and performance.”17 Now that God is in control of revelation, a position con-trary to the Mimamsa claim, it is now possible that revelation could occur in another language – even in a language like Tamil, which, on account of its Dravidian heritage, could not even be “ranked as a decadent form of Sanskrit.”18 Clooney writes: “Deeper than the issue of language – this language or that lan-guage – is this claim that God chooses a human voice and chooses to speak in one human person’s own words.”19

The form of the transmission of the Tiruvaymoli exhibits both the dialogical nature and mediating function of lan­guage, as well as God’s own priority over the revelatory language. This work has been transmitted from teacher to disciple for generations. Both men and women “of all ages and castes participate in the transmission, teaching, and learning the Tiruvaymoli in special schools established for the purpose, at homes, and in small informal classes held in community cen­ters or temples.”20 While the mode of transmission is communal and dialogical, what a disciple is taught to do is more important here. The disciple is not sim­ply taught to read the text. Rather, one is instructed in the proper art of recitation. While there are several words for recita­tion in the Hindu tradition, the most frequently used word today to recite the Tiruvaymoli is cevai, which means “ser­vice.” For the Srivaisnavas, “recitation is service to the Lord, and it is this attitude that one should take when articulating the words.” The poet himself, however, did not use this word in reference to the recitation of the poem. Nammalvar frequently used a generic word, vallar, which comes from the word vanmai that denotes “having the strength for, or being capable of.”21 Narayanan suggests that, although “Nammalvar has used the words sing, recitation, dance, he uses the word vallar by itself frequently, possibly to indicate that, if one can, one should sing, recite, dance, utter, listen to, learn, or carefully consider the Tiruvaymoli and that all these activities will bear fruit.”22 Our concern here is not to painstakingly account for the history of the words used in the South Indian tradition for recita­tion. The point is that revelation occurs as the text is recited and performed. Narayanan nicely captures the signifi­cance of the ritual and performative com­mentaries on the Tiruvaymoli:

The recitation and interpreta­tion of the Tiruvaymoli locate the deity and the devotee within the paradigmatic pilgrimage of Nammalvar’s search for union with the Lord and the perceived fulfillment of his desire. The ver­bal and ritual comments create those significant moments in the life of the community when the devotee participates in the poet’s quest for the Lord and celebrates the assured nature of the Lord’s grace, which is seen through his revelation of the sacred word. By the revelation of the divine word through a human poet the divine mercy of the Lord is understood as being extended to all human beings. By chanting that divine word everyday, and by acting it our annually in the Festival of Recitation, the devotee par­ticipates in the Lord’s granting of salvation to the poet and, in fact, to the entire community of Srivaisnava devotees.23

Tamil revelation and traditional Sanskrit revelation, although they medi-ate some of the same religious truths, are different from the point of view of language and history. They are embod-ied in different languages and rituals, and yet also claim to mediate knowledge (at least from some perspectives) of the same Lord.

DISCERNING A MODEL FOR INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE: LANGUAGE AND PARTICULARITY

In an effort to learn something about interreligious thinking, we are empha-sizing that the “one revelation-two lan-guages” approach considers real, living, enacted speech, which only happens in particular languages. With the rise of modern philosophical hermeneutics, much attention has been given to the function of human language vis-à-vis the way we experience reality. As intelligent creatures, our primary mode of commu-nication is language. Do we first under-stand and then formulate our under-standing in language? Or is language integral to the very act of understanding?

Sandra Schneiders has attempted to appropriate the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer in the context of religious revelatory texts. According to Schneiders, the new hermeneutical thinkers “insisted that we really do not understand language; rather, we under­stand through language. Language is not so much the object of our knowing as the medium of our encounter with the real.” Prior to its technical or scien­tific uses, language is symbolic. That is, through language we disclose ourselves. Our encounter with another – the very speaking/hearing dynamic – is a mutual entering into of interiority. Speaking/hearing, according to Schneiders, is “not primarily the transfer of information but the mutual gift of selves.” “Human language is so intimately bound up with being that it can even become transparent to divine being, becoming a medium of encounter with God.”24 Understanding language as a medium through which we understand, as well as a shared dialogical process, gives a dramatic sense to the role of language in shaping the human world.

The “two languages-one revelation” approach of the South Indian tradition highlights the performative nature of revelation. God speaks, according to this tradition, not only in the vernacular and Sanskrit languages, but also through the recitation and the ritual perfor-mance these languages. It is not so much that one has the experience and then articulates it into words.25 Rather the revelatory “hearing” occurs in the very enacting of the language. Furthermore, the expansion of revelation in the South Indian context did not just happen, but occurred through a complex his-torical process. Carman and Narayanan comment that the

Srivaisnava tradition contains elements from the culture that developed around the river Ganga in Northern India (a culture that wrote princi­pally in Sanskrit) as well as from the culture of the Kaveri basin in the South, where Tamil flourished. We may perceive the Ganga and the Kaveri civilizations forming the cultural and geographi­cal analogue to Athens and Jerusalem as the joint ancestors of a new way of thinking. The complexities of the Hellenistic and Hebraic heritages seen in western thought are paralleled in the twofold inheritance of the Srivaisnava culture. Like the literatures of Athens and Jerusalem, the Sanskrit and Tamil languages perpetuate two distinct ways of perceiving the universe and a human being’s place in it; and the Srivaisnava tradition is the product of these two ways of thinking.26

This selection does not encapsulate the dynamic of the historical process of revelation of this South Indian tradition, but it does give one the sense of the strong influence of the cultural and historical context of the claim to dual revelation.

ENGAGING PARTICULAR RELIGIOUS SYMBOLIC WORLDS: A CRITICAL EXISTENTIAL APPROACH

We have already pointed out that the inclusion of Tamil as a revelatory language was shocking in the context of first millennium India. In addition, we noted Clooney’s account of the important shift in this tradition of Hindu thinking that gave the divine author priority over language, knowledge, and performance. In the light of these developments in the Hindu tradition and in aid of our pur-pose to discern a model for interreligious thinking, we can now ask: if God has control over revelatory language, ought not human beings also be open to the fact that God may authentically speak through the language of another tradi-tion? This calls for a proper ordering of our hermeneutical priorities.

Grounded in her appropriation of the hermeneutics of Gadamer and Ricouer, Sandra Schneiders proposes that the appro­priation of a text involves “two distinct but non-separable interactive moments: aesthet­ic surrender and critical existential interpre­tation.”27 Appropriation understood as an aesthetic surrender suggests that the rela­tionship of the reader to the text is a relation of a participant to a work of art. Surrender does not necessarily mean a surrender to the content of the work, but rather a way of entering into the multidimensional world of the text through its use of plot, charac­ter, dialogue, irony, etc. Hence, Schneiders writes, “experiencing the text as text is as integral to the work of biblical interpre­tation as hearing a Mozart symphony in concert is integral to the work of the music critic or as seeing Hamlet in the the­ater is to the work of the literary scholar.”28 In order for the text to have a transforma­tive effect, the reader must “surrender to its dynamics at least long enough to be caught up in its existential horizon.” Schneiders questions, for instance, “whether someone who has never felt the religious power of the gospel text, no matter how learned her or his biblical scholarship might be and regardless of whether she or he actually comes to share Christian faith, is competent for New Testament research.”29

The second moment in appropria­tion, according to Schneiders, is a criti­cal existential interpretation. At this level, the reader engages the truth claims of the text. Here truth claims are not simply propositions to be accepted or rejected, but “the presentation of reality that offers itself to us as a way of being, as a possible increase or decrease of per­sonal subjective reality.”30

One danger in interreligious think-ing, to employ Schneiders’ terms, is to jump prematurely to the critical engage-ment of the truth claims, while at the same time leaving behind the moment of aesthetic surrender to the symbolic world of the other tradition. Is not interreligious thinking impoverished if the theologian is not willing at least to some extent to enter into the particularity of the other traditions’ revelatory claims as they are mediated in particular recitation, music, and ritual? The danger of prematurely declaring that this tradition possesses “seeds of the word” or that tradition is “hostile to the word” is the possibility of losing the distinctiveness of the symbolic cultural and religious world.

I also suggest that Schneiders’ expla­nation of the critical existential encoun­ter is helpful for thinking about interre­ligious thinking. Again, in the moment of critical existential interpretation, one does not simply encounter a proposi­tion to be accepted or rejected but “the presentation of reality that offers itself to us as a way of being, as a possible increase or decrease of personal subjec­tive reality.” When a theologian encoun­ters a performance of a religious text of another tradition, he or she can ask not only if this is authentic revelation but also "is this an authentic revelation for me?" This latter question – pro me – is more than an academic pursuit, but an existential query which involves one’s own personal and ultimate convictions. Francis Clooney’s own example is rel-evant here. He describes an encounter with a Hindu God in the living context of a Hindu tradition:

It was the time of the winter festival in honor of Satakopan, and I joined in the daytime and nighttime events celebrated in the great temple there. Perhaps because I had been studying his great Tiruvaymoli for several years and because I had been so graciously received in Alvar Tiru Nagari by Annaviar Srinivasan, a priest in the temple, I felt as much at home as I ever had in India. To be in the temple, with the saint’s people and before Narayana, who he had praised, was a holy moment. But I also saw clearly that I was not a Hindu and could not be one. It had to do with the color of my skin, my ever faltering Tamil, my Irish Catholic upbringing in New York City, and my longer years of study of Christian philosophy and theology. It also had to do with the deeper commitments of my heart, since I had always tried to be one of those who simply ‘left everything and followed Him’ (Luke 5). One does not lightly trade such commit­ments for new ones.” 31

The value of the “one revelation-two languages” model as situated in the context of Schneiders’ view of appropri-ating a text and Clooney’s example is that it preserves the particular symbols and narratives of the religious tradition one is encountering.

CONCLUSION

In this article, I have suggested that the South Indian Hindu tradition of dual revelation offers helpful resources for discerning “one revelation-two languages” approach to interreligious thinking. The emphasis on language has helped us preserve the concrete enact-ment of speech, which has to occur in a particular language. Written in the vernacular, the Tamil Veda was devel-oped in a concrete cultural and historical context. And yet, according to the tradi-tion it also revealed the same Lord as is revealed in the Sanskrit Veda. A shift to an understanding of God’s priority over revelatory language in the Hindu tradi-tion was crucial to the development. God chose to speak through particular human authors – even in a language like Tamil, which could not be considered a decadent form of Sanskrit because of its Dravidian roots. In this light, I sug-gested that it is helpful to think about engaging another religious tradition by first surrendering to its concrete world of symbol and narrative and then criti-cally engaging this tradition, not merely as an intellectual exercise, but as a way of involving one’s personal and existential convictions.

 

Randall S. Rosenberg is a Ph.D Candidate in Christian Systematic Theology at Boston College, Mass., USA

 

NOTES

1 Michael Buckley, “The Study of Religion and the Rise of Atheism: Conflict or Confirmation,” Fields of Faith: Theology and Religious Studies for the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 23.

2 Jacques Dupuis, S.J., Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, translated by Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 147.

3 Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions, 149.

4 Francis Clooney, Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps to Break Down the Boundaries between Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 138-9. Subsequently referred to as HGCG.

5 HGCG, 151.

6 John Carman and Vasudha Narayanan, The Tamil Veda: Pillan’s Interpretation of the Tiruvaymili (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press), 4. Subsequently referred to as TV.

7 The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual (Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 5. Subsequently referred to as VV.

8 VV, 1.

9 VV, 14.

10 “Introduction to Tiruvaymoli,” 118. I thank Francis Clooney, S.J. for his unpub­lished translation.

11 Ibid, 120.

12 In his seventh “positive point,” for exam­ple, Nanciyar writes: “The Veda is in many places witness to their meaning.”

13 VV, 20.

14 VV, 20-1.

15 VV, 23.

16 VV, 26-7.

17 HGCG, 151.

18 HGCG, 151.

19 HGCG, 155.

20 VV, 46.

21 VV, 42.

22 VV, 42.

23 VV, 133.

24 Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 34. Subsequently referred to as RT.

25 I grant that this may be the case with a mystic.

26 TV, 3.

27 RT, 172

28 RT, 173.

29 RT, 174.

30 RT, 174.

31 HGCG, v.