Tiruvannamalai, un lieu saint sivaite du sud de l'Inde, 3 vols.

• Author: Stein, Burton

This superb and as yet incomplete set of volumes on the South Indian temple center of Tiruvannamalai stands as a reminder of the sort of comprehensive and collective intellectual work that could occasionally be published in other days, but now is rarely seen. The project was conceived and carried out by French scholars connected with the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient in Pondicherry in collaboration with Indian colleagues, most notably, the epigraphist and art historian P. R. Srinivasan. Srinivasan was responsible for the large, two-part volume of inscriptions from the various structures of the Tiruvannamalai temple. Overall planning and editorial responsibility for the series was that of Dr. Marie-Louise Reiniche.

Tiruvannamalai, in the North Arcot District of Tamilnadu State, has been a sacred place since the seventh century when it was celebrated by the Saivite hymnist saints Appar and Nanacampantar. Thereafter, Siva, in the fire form of his representation, was frequently mentioned in Tamil and Sanskrit devotional works, making Tiruvannamalai one of the favorite pilgrimage places for Tamil Saivites for centuries. The 500 inscriptions that are found on its buildings have been transliterated and translated by Srinivasan in the first volume of the set; these cover a period of seven hundred years, beginning in the ninth century. Kings of three kingdoms, Chola, Hoysala, and Vijayanagara--whose sovereignty extended over Tamils as well as Telugu- and Kannada-speaking subjects--issued these records. Such continuous royal attendance upon the god there was a sign of the popularity and importance of the temple over much of the medieval period: it was a place where the great always sought to make some mark, thus its epigraphical record is one of the most valuable to historians of the South. The latter will appreciate that many of the inscriptions of the volumes were newly discovered by the Pondicherry team, and it was this preliminary epigraphical work in 1980 that inspired the comprehensive analyses that have emerged at the end of the decade. Additional valuable apparatus for this long, inscriptional volume was provided by Dr. Reiniche.

This first volume of the set is distinctive in another way: its general discussion as well as translations of Sanskrit and Tamil inscriptions are in English whereas the other volumes are in French with all too brief English summaries. It is of course unfortunate that the whole of the work could not have been done...