Download or read book The Secret Garland written by Archana Venkatesan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2016-01-10 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kotai-Andal: the only woman among the twelve Alvar saints. Legend tells us of a young girl in the ninth century who swears to marry none but Vishnu. She appropriates a garland meant for him - a transgressive act, yet one of singular devotion.,. Born of her boundless, consuming love for Vishnu are the two exquisite Tamil poems, Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli. These compositions, in which Vishnu is her awesome, mesmerizing and sometimes cruel lover, give expression to Kotai's powerful experiences and her vibrant, bold sensuality. Eventually, the story goes, Kotai wins Vishnu for herself, becoming his bride at the great temple of Srirangam, for which extraordinary feat she earns the title Andal: She Who Rules. The Secret Garland aims to capture the lyricism, beauty and power of the original poems. Archana Venkatesan's detailed notes, based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the two poems contextualize the significance and influence of Andal's continuing legacy. An essential addition to the classical library.

Download or read book The Secret Garland written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers new translations of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli, composed by the ninth-century Tamil mystic and poetess Kotai. Two of the most significant compositions by a female mystic, the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli give expression to her powerful experiences through the use of a vibrant and bold sensuality, in which Visnu is her awesome, mesmerizing, and sometimes cruel lover. Kotai's poetry is characterized by a richness of language in which words are imbued with polyvalence and even the most mundane experiences are infused with the spirit of the divine. Her Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli are garlands of words, redolent with meanings waiting to be discovered. Today Kotai is revered as a goddess, and as a testament to the enduring relevance of her poetry, her Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli continue to be celebrated in South Indian ritual, music, dance, and the visual arts. This book aims to capture the lyricism, beauty, and power of Kotai's original works. In addition, detailed notes based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli highlight the importance of this ninth-century poet and her two poems over the past one thousand years.

Download or read book The Secret Garland written by Archana Venkatesan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2019-01-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legend tells us of a young girl in the ninth century who swears to marry none but Vishnu. She appropriates a garland meant for him - a transgressive act, yet one of singular devotion. Born of her boundless, consuming love for Vishnu are the two exquisite Tamil poem-cycles, Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli. These compositions, in which Vishnu is her awesome, mesmerizing and sometimes cruel lover, give expression to Kotai's powerful experiences and her vibrant, bold sensuality. Eventually, the story goes, Kotai wins Vishnu for herself, becoming his bride at the great temple of Srirangam, for which extraordinary feat she earns the title Andal: She Who Rules. The Secret Garland aims to capture the lyricism, beauty and power of the original poems. Archana Venkatesan's detailed notes, based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the two poems contextualize the significance and influence of Andal's continuing legacy. An essential addition to the classical library.

Download or read book Andal written by Priya Sarukkai Chabria and published by Zubaan. This book was released on 2016-03-11 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ninth century Tamil poet and founding saint Andal is believed to have been found as a baby underneath a holy basil plant in the temple garden of Srivilliputhur. As a young woman she fell deeply in love with Lord Vishnu, composing fervent poems and songs in his honour and, according to custom, eventually marrying the god himself. The Autobiography of a Goddess is Andal's entire corpus, composed before her marriage to Vishnu, and it cements her status as the South Indian corollary to Mirabai, the saint and devotee of Sri Krishna. The collection includes Tiruppavai, a song still popular in congregational worship, thirty pasuram (stanzas) sung before Lord Vishnu, and the less-translated, rapturously erotic Nacchiyar Tirumoli. Priya Sarrukai Chabria and Ravi Shankar employ a radical method in this translation, breathing new life into this rich classical and spiritual verse by rendering Andal in a contemporary poetic idiom in English. Many of Andal's pieces are translated collaboratively; others individually and separately. The two approaches are brought together, presenting a richly layered reading of these much-loved classic Tamil poems and songs.

Download or read book Andal s Garland written by Helen Burns and published by Odyssey Books. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In eighth century India, Andal is born into a world where girls are married and with child by fourteen. Defying the mores of her time, she refuses marriage to a mortal man. Only a god will do. Andal’s imagination is boundless and her antics set the town’s tongues wagging. As Andal becomes more and more absorbed by her visions, she composes songs to her divine lover. Saisha discovers Andal’s songs in a book on a trip to India with her partner Marcus. The verses are confronting and unearth memories Saisha thought were long ago buried. Not only is she unable to conceive, for the past two decades Marcus has chosen celibacy. What defines her as a woman when these two primal desires remain unfulfilled? Andal’s words are deceptively simple, yet shine a lamp on the labyrinths of Saisha’s sexuality and her quest to find peace with the choices she has made.

Download or read book Hymns for the Drowning written by Nammalvar and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2005-04-01 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poems in this book are some of the earliest about Visnu, one of the Hindu Trinity, also known as Tirumal, the Dark One. Tradition recognizes twelve alvars, saint-poets devoted to Visnu, who lived between the sixth and ninth century in the Tamil-speaking region of south India. These devotees of Visnu and their counterparts, the devotees of Siva (nayanmar), changed and revitalized Hinduism and their devotional hymns addressed to Visnu are among the earliest bhakti (devotional) texts in any Indian language. In this selection from Nammalvar's works, the translations like the originals reflect the alternations of philosophic hymns and love poems, through recurring voices, roles and places. They also enact a progression"from wonder at the Lord's works, to the experience of loving him and watching others love him, to moods of questioning and despair and finally to the experience of being devoured and possessed by him.

Download or read book A Hundred Measures of Time written by Nammalwar and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Look, my feet measure beyond earth and sky!’ he said and touched the sky. I have surrendered to my lord who glanced at me with his large radiant eyes. The Tiruviruttam is an iconic poem by Nammāḻvār (c. ninth century CE), the greatest of the āḻvār poet-saints of the Tamil Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition. Its hundred interlinked verses celebrate the love between an anonymous heroine and hero, who come to be identified with Nammāḻvār and his beloved deity, Viṣṇu. The poet masterfully weaves the erotic and esoteric to reveal both the contours of love and the never-ending cycles of separation and union, of birth and death, from which only Viṣṇu can offer release. In A Hundred Measures of Time, Archana Venkatesan has crafted a sonorous free-verse rendering and an accompanying far-ranging essay to delight poetry lovers and scholars alike.

Download or read book The Giver of the Worn Garland KRISHNADEVARAYA S AMUKTAMALYADA written by Srinivas Reddy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: And below her hair; she would put on a garland and spend a few minutes just gazing into a pond; seeing her reflection and satisfying her desire before turning away and returning the worn garland to her flower basket The emperor Krishnadevaraya’s epic poem Amuktamalyada (Giver of the Worn Garland) depicts the life of the medieval Vaisnava poet-saint Andal; or Goda Devi as she is also known; and her passionate devotion to Lord Visnu. Krishnadevaraya’s unique poetic imagination brings to life a celestial world filled with wonder; creativity; humour and vibrant natural beauty. The mundane is made divine and the ordinary becomes extraordinary; the routine activities of daily life become expressive metaphors for heavenly actions; while the exalted gods of heaven are re-imagined as living persons. The poet’s ability to see divinity in the most commonplace activities is an extension of his powerful belief that god is everywhere; in everything; at all times.

Download or read book Wild Women written by Arundhathi Subramaniam and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2024-03-21 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The names of Mirabai, Akka Mahadevi and Andal, are known to many, but innumerable women poets remain relatively unknown. When we hear of them, it is invariably as plaster saints or meek followers. It is time to smell the danger in their words again, to listen to their feral sensuality, their searing questions about custodians of gender and faith. It is time to tune into their brazenness, their heartbreaking longing. Not just for their sake but for ours too. In this anthology of sacred poetry that arrives after the much-loved book, Eating God, Arundhathi Subramaniam weaves together haunting voices of, by and for women across the Indian subcontinent. Here is a lineage of audacious woman-centred spirituality that traverses the poetry of ancient Buddhist nuns, Bhakti and Sufi mystics, tantrikas and Vedantins. There are women here, and men singing as women, and both raising their voices in praise of the sacred feminine. Brought to us through translation, these poems surprise with how intimately familiar their ravenous yearnings and ecstatic freedoms are. Wild Women invites us to reclaim an explosive inheritance of female power, rapture and wisdom.

Download or read book Dying to be White written by Purnima Mehta Bhatt and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-12 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the phenomenon of colorism in India and the Global South and critically analyses the obsession with fair skin and its association with social capital or mobility. Exploring the prevalence of colorism in India, China, Japan, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Kenya and Australia, it traces its roots in history, scriptures, travel narratives, contemporary media and popular culture. How much did colonialism and European imperialism contribute to the desire to be white? How have globalization and the spread of consumer culture and Western ideals of beauty helped exacerbate these issues? The author discusses these questions while looking at the aspirations for beauty and modernity among these societies and the growing popularity of the use of creams, lotions and other methods to whiten the skin as a means to assimilate, emulate the West and gain better prospects and life. Lucid and topical, this book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of race and colorism, sociology, social history, social anthropology, cultural studies, consumer economics, Asian studies and South Asian studies.

Download or read book Play Among Books written by Miro Roman and published by Birkhäuser. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Download or read book Celluloid Classicism written by Hari Krishnan and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of De La Torre Bueno First Book Special Citation, given by DSA, 2021 Celluloid Classicism provides a rich and detailed history of two important modern South Indian cultural forms: Tamil Cinema and Bharatanatyam dance. It addresses representations of dance in the cinema from an interdisciplinary, critical-historical perspective. The intertwined and symbiotic histories of these forms have never received serious scholarly attention. For the most part, historians of South Indian cinema have noted the presence of song and dance sequences in films, but have not historicized them with reference to the simultaneous revival of dance culture among the middle-class in this region. In a parallel manner, historians of dance have excluded deliberations on the influence of cinema in the making of the "classical" forms of modern India. Although the book primarily focuses on the period between the late 1920s and 1950s, it also addresses the persistence of these mid-twentieth century cultural developments into the present. The book rethinks the history of Bharatanatyam in the twentieth century from an interdisciplinary, transmedia standpoint and features 130 archival images.

Download or read book In Andal s Garden written by Archana Venkatesan and published by Marg Publications. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A close focus on the temple-town Srivilliputtur of Tamil Nadu and the worship of one of south India's best-loved goddesses AndalAndal or Goda was a 9th-century Tamil poet and mystic, today worshiped as a goddess across southern India. Her vibrant, sensuous poetry, the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli, sings of her love for Vishnu. Her birthplace is Srivilliputtur, a small town 75 kilometers south of Madurai. Her temple in Srivilliputtur shares space with the Vishnu temple complex, one of the most important of the Tamil Vaishnava temple sites. These two temples share much in common both architecturally and ritually with two major Madurai temples: the Shaiva Minakshi-Sundareshvara temple and the Vaishnava Kudal Alakar temple. Relating the temples in Srivilliputtur to those in Madurai develops an understanding of the nature of temple ritual, myth and patronage under the Pandyans and the later Nayakas. The temple is today a frequent stop for Vaishnava pilgrims, particularly during the three major Andal festivals (March, August and December).

Download or read book Poems of Love and War written by A. K. Ramanujan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 10/13/201010/13/2010

Download or read book A Study in Nayaka Period Social Life written by Jean Deloche and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Hinduism written by Constance Jones and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated A to Z reference containing more than 700 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Hinduism.

Download or read book The Queen of Jasmine Country written by Sharanya Manivannan and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths, dreams, desires, the timeless reality of the body and soul - in the midst of nature's bounty - that is the essence of The Queen of Jasmine Country. It is an astounding work of fiction. - Volga Tonight, under this arena of starlight, I take up my stylus and press it by the glow of a clay lantern into dry palmyra leaves. It is on this night that I dedicate myself - to my self, to who I truly am, to what is invincible and without bondage of time, that predates me, that will outlive me. Ninth century. In Puduvai, a small town in what we now know as Tamil Nadu, young Kodhai is taught to read and to write by her adoptive father, a garland-weaving poet. As she discovers the power of words, she also realizes that the undying longing for a great love that she has been nursing within her - one that does not suppress her desire for freedom - is likely to remain unfulfilled. Then, she hears of a vow that she can undertake that might summon it to her. In deepest winter, the sixteen-year-old begins praying for a divinely sensual love - not knowing that her words will themselves become prayers, and echo through the centuries to come. Rich with the echoes of classical poetry, in The Queen of Jasmine Country, Sharanya Manivannan imagines the life of the devotional poet Andal, whose sublime and erotic verses remain beloved and controversial to this day.