Victoria British Columbia.

• Author: Ebeling, Sascha
• Position: The History of the Holy Servants of the Lord Siva: A Translation of the Periya Puranam of Cekkilar - Book review

The History of the Holy Servants of the Lord Siva: A Translation of the Periya Puranam of Cekkilar. By Alastair McGlashan. Victoria. British Columbia: Trafford Publishing, 2006. Pp. xii + 417. illus. $51.50 (cloth), $32.44 (paper).

With his new translation of the medieval Tamil Periyapuranam, Alastair McGlashan has accomplished an admirable Teat. Often called the "national epic of the Tamils" or "the fifth Veda," the Periyapuranam ("The Great Purana") is a magnificent narrative poem of 4,281 stanzas (in the standard edition by C. K. Cuppiramaniya Mutaliyar, Periyapuranam ennum tiruttontar purdnam [7 vols.], Coimbatore, 1937ff.). In its complexity, literary perfection, multi-layered symbolism, and grand scale it may be compared to Dante's Commedia or the Roman de la Rose. A key text in the history of Tamil Saivism, it is also known as the Tiruttontar purdnam "The Purana of the Holy Servants," or, if one wanted to render the notoriously untranslatable term purdnam "The History of the Holy Servants," the title McGlashan has chosen. These servants (tontar) are the sixty-three canonical saints of Tamil Saivism known as nayanmar whose life stories are told in the Periyapuranam. The Periyapuranam has been included as the twelfth and last book of the Tamil Saiva canon of scriptures, the Tirumurai, and it remains one of the important Saiva bhakti texts of South India. The author of this massive hagiography is generally known as Cekkilar and is believed to have lived during the reign of the Cola king Kulottuhka II (1133-1150 C.E.) and to have been connected in some way to the Cola court, perhaps as a minister.

McGlashan's new translation of the Periyapuranam is the first full-length English translation (or indeed translation into any Western language) that can be read with profit and pleasure even by a non-specialist audience. At a time when academies often have to produce their work according to fixed lime schedules, McGlashan's decision to take on a translation project of such magnitude, requiring years of intensive work, commands our respect and gratitude. It is perhaps significant that McGlashan is not a full-time Tamil scholar, but. according to the book's back cover, "an Anglican priest, a Jungian analyst and student of Tamil," for whom this translation became a retirement project. Working his way through over four thousand stanzas of complex Tamil poetry, McGlashan has boldly gone where only one man has gone before. Until recently, the only full-length translation available was T. N. Ramachandran's two-volume St. Sekkizhaar's PeriyaPuranam (Thanjavur: Tamil University, 1990, 1995). The word "available" should not be taken too literally here, since...