Tiruvannamalai: Un lieu saint sivaite du Sud de l'Inde: Rites et fetes, vol. 3.

• Author: Davis, Richard
• Position: Book Review

Tiruvannamalai: Un lieu saint sivaite du Sud de l'Inde, vol. 3: Rites et fetes. By FRANCOISE L'HERNAULT and MARIE-LOUISE REINICHE, with Supplement: Le Pararthanityapujavidhi: Regle pour le culte quotidien dans un temple, by HELENE BRUNNER. Paris: ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT, 1999. Pp. 342, illus., maps.

With this volume, scholars at the Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient in Pondicherry have brought to completion an immense collective project, pursued over almost twenty years and filling six published volumes, to study in full depth a single South Indian religious site and its community. The location chosen, Tiruvannamalai, in North Arcot district, Tamilnad, is the site of an ancient Saiva temple, the Arunacalesvara temple, with a large corpus of inscriptions dating back to the early Cola period. The town remains a lively place of pilgrimage in contemporary Tamilnad. The project has previously examined Tiruvannamalai in terms of its epigraphy (vols. 1.1 and 1.2), its archeology (vol. 2), the religious sociology and history of the temple (vol. 4), and the town's demographics and economics (vol. 5).

This volume completes the broad study by providing a full account of daily temple worship, festivals, and the ritual calendar consisting of numerous annual observances. In addition to the full and detailed description of temple rituals, the volume is enhanced by 124 striking photographs taken primarily by the two authors, numerous line drawings and plans, and appendices of Tamil texts relevant to the history of Tiruvannamalai rituals translated by Paul Albert. Finally, the volume includes as a lengthy supplement a translation of the Pararthanityapujavidhi, a Sanskrit ritual text often ascribed (incorrectly) to the twelfth-century Saiva Siddhanta master Aghorasiva, here translated by a modern master of Saiva Siddhanta studies, Helene Brunner.

This volume enters a crowded field. Numerous are the travelers, anthropologists, and historians of Hinduism who have offered descriptions of the ritual activities of the great temples of southern India. The spectacular and very public annual festivals put on by the temples have especially attracted attention. One thinks, for instance, of several important studies (by Dennis Hudson, Carol Breckenridge, Chris Fuller, and William Harmon, among others) of the Minakshi temple in Madurai and its ritual, or of Paul Younger's work on Cidambaram. However, for descriptive detail and comprehensiveness, the presentation...