Possession Rites and the Tantric Temple: A Case-Study from Northern Kerala J. R. Freeman Department of Anthropology University of Pennsylvania USA This paper represents a rather schematic summary of a much more extended argument for what I call "formalized possession" being a central locus of religious experience in south India (Freeman 1992). Though I believe the core of my findings would hold for most other areas of south India, both presently and in historical perspective, I shall confine my presentation here to the region of northern Kerala, where I have worked most intensively with primary textual and ethnographic materials. To begin, let me state briefly what I intend by the term "formalized possession." I refer to the widespread belief throughout south India that formally stipulated and ritually prepared "bodies", whether of animate or inanimate matter, can routinely become receptacles for the consciousness and person of deities.<1> It is through these bodies that deities are subsequently perceived to interact, communicate with, and tangibly benefit worshippers, and this indeed constitutes the raison d'etre of worship. By highlighting the formal features of this paradigm of worship I intend to stress the facts that possession phenomena are: 1) culturally constructed and codified at the conceptual level; 2) socially stipulated and regulated at the level of organization and recruitment; and 3) ritually effected through the process of performative enactment. I believe this tripartite understanding of formalization affords a useful perspective on spirit possession in south India for several reasons. First, it gets us beyond certain dichotomous and inadequate generalizations about the locus of possession phenomena: that they must either be sought in individual religious or psychological experience (Eliade 1964; Freed and Freed 1964) or in collective responses to societal inequities (Lewis 1971). Second, my alternative focus on the specific socio-cultural (and therefore inter-subjective) construction of possession accords better with the indigenous understanding that this state is primarily effected through the power of its constituent ritual procedures rather than through the psychologies of individual practitioners (Freeman 1993). Finally, this focus on possession as a deliberately directed and formalized operation illuminates more general beliefs concerning the relation of consciousness to matter in this culture, beliefs that blur our seemingly commonsensical distinction between animate and inanimate forms of existence. While I must defer the philosophical treatment of these issues to a later work, an important anthropological finding follows directly from these beliefs and is central to the present paper. This is the fact that the worship of materially inanimate images in puja, on the one hand, and of ecstatic human practitioners, on the other, are demonstrably informed by the self-same cultural logic of the deity's ability to possess and act through various media, irrespective of whether these media are normally perceived as living beings or insentient objects. The thesis that what I am calling formalized possession has been conceptually central to much of south Indian religious practice further suggests the need for dismantling the distinction between image-worship or puja as "classically Hindu", versus "possession cults" as "folk" or "tribal" practices (Jones 1968). Accordingly, in the present paper I shall briefly compare two ostensibly very different traditions of worship in northern Kerala, one "high-Hindu" and one "folk", through a consideration of their orientation to formalized possession. The first tradition examined is the austerely agamic or tantric worship of high-caste temples, conducted by Brahmans according to their Sanskrit sastras. The second is the widespread folk-tradition of teyyattam, which expressly entails possession as central to its mode of worship, and which is the principal religious forum for those castes who were traditionally designated as Untouchable (Kurup 1973; Ashley 1979; Freeman 1991). In comparing these traditions, I hope to demonstrate their conceptual, social, and likely historical linkages to each other through their mutual reliance on an enduring paradigm of formalized possession. [----DISKUS Editor's note: diacritical marks (for sastra, teyyattam, etc.) cannot be shown in the text but a list of Malayalam and related terms indicating diacritics has been included at the end of this article for convenience of readers. You may delete this Editor's note once read.---] Tantra in Kerala Teun Goudriaan says of tantrism that "What is most often called by this term is a systematic quest for salvation or for spiritual excellence by realizing and fostering the bipolar, bisexual divinity within one's own body" (1981:1). Elsewhere, he further specifies how this realization is achieved in tantrism through elucidating a characteristic set of techniques such as mantra, yantra, cakra, mudra, and nyasa (1979). These techniques are outside Vedic Hinduism, he writes, yet are similarly oriented to realizing spiritual liberation (mukti) or worldly enjoyments and domination (bhukti) (ibid.: 6). Broadly speaking, these characterizations would apply fairly well to the content of tantra in Kerala. In terms of Goudriaan's general observation, I shall indeed argue that tantric belief and practice in Kerala are fundamentally predicated on the living presence of divinity within the human being, and on the invocation of this divine presence into and its evocation from a conscious human host.<2> More specifically, Goudriaan's coverage is also apt in terms of the particular ritual techniques of mantra, yantra, mudra, nyasa, etc., being employed as the chief means by which these invocations and evocations are accomplished, at least among the Brahmans. These ritual techniques are interrelated as part of a complex of worship in Kerala, and it is in these techniques' conceptual linkages both to each other, and to the doctrine of embodied divinity that I would identify this Kerala complex as characteristically tantric . There are, however, important differences between the "tantra" practiced in Kerala as an anthropologist or historian would perceive it, and the picture usually presented by our textualist colleagues working elsewhere in India. Most importantly, there is the fact that tantra has been institutionalized in Kerala (and elsewhere in south India) as the official form of temple worship, mediated and controlled by hereditary priests. It is therefore not generally known or practiced for spiritual liberation (mukti) by individual aspirants (sadhakas) according to their personal inclination. Prominence is instead given in Kerala tantra to concerns of a decidedly this-worldly sort (bhukti), pursued in the institutional setting of the temple by Brahman ritual specialists acting on behalf of a worshipping clientele (cf. Brunner 1990). Furthermore, since in Kerala the designation tantri can usually apply only to a Brahman of a relatively high rank whose practice of tantra is predicated on his exclusive access to Vedic verses, there is no sense that tantra or its practice is extra-Vedic, heterodox, or antinomian in its orientation.<3> This tradition of temple-based tantra has been remarkably well consolidated by the single caste of indigenous Kerala Brahmans, the Nambutiris. Their formulations took canonical form in a 15th century Sanskrit treatise called the Tantrasamuccaya, which has been consistently recognized, if not followed, as the single authoritative manual of Kerala temple worship (Unni 1989). My preliminary study of this living textual and ritual tradition has suggested that there may be little remarkable about its central practices and beliefs that would differentiate it from what scholars term agamic temple worship of the neighboring Tamil Nadu or elsewhere.<4> The central tenets of worship are similarly predicated on the ability of the Brahman priests to install the conscious power (caitanya) of the deities into permanent images which are protectively insulated in temples as repositories of that power, in order to conduct controlled ritual interactions with the deities on behalf of worshippers. As stated earlier however, what is characteristically tantric in this tradition is that this ability to install and maintain a deity depends centrally on the priest's ability to first invoke the god into his own body - in some sense, to himself become the god.<5> It is only subsequent to this process of self-invocation that this caitanya is deposited in the permanent images. For those not familiar with the specifics of tantric worship, I can here provide only a brief characterization. Most centrally, the practitioner's organism is subjected to a series of gestures and visualizations whereby its various elements and constituents are imaginatively dissolved, purified, and then reconstituted in divine form. This process is achieved by various incantations (mantras) which are visualized as deposited (nyasa) in various parts of the organism, replacing its gross parts with their subtler mantric counterparts. Conceptually, this involves an introjection of the macrocosm and its elements into the microcosm of one's own being, such that the two are one and the practitioner is visualized as merged with, or identical to, the substantial presence of the universal deity.<6> The key juncture in this image worship is the subsequent invocation, or avahana, of this humanly embodied power into the image itself. In its clearest form, this process of avahana, starting in the body and ending up in the image, is described from a modern Malayalam treatise (closely following the Tantrasammucaya and its commentaries) as follows:<7> "Taking the aromatics, flowers, and grain mixture along with water from the conch in the two joined hands, bring them into the proximity of your muladharam [at the base of the spine], and in order to dislodge that caitanyam situated in the muladharam, intone one pranavam [the syllable "Om"]. With another pranavam, raise that caitanyam upward through the susumna, and bringing the hands reverently to the heart, praise [the deity] with the upacaram [the mantra of honoring the god as guest]. Then uttering a pranavam, separate a fragment of the caitanyam from your heart, and with another pranavam, raise the hands up to the dvadasanta-lotus [above the head], and join that fragment of consciousness with the Supreme Self (paramatmavu) that is situated there. Intoning the "root" [the basic mantra of the deity] three times, conceive the actual form of the root-mantra, and uttering, "Lord! Come, come!", with a pranavam, separate that fragment of consciousness from the Supreme Self and bringing it through the susumna-channel, conduct it into the pingala-channel [of the heart]. Then, with the utterance "I invoke [you]", conduct it in the form of breath through the right nostril that is the portal of the pingala, into the flower and grain mixture in the hands. Intoning the root-mantra, offer the flower and grain mixture to the heart of the image, and make that consciousness enter the image's left nostril, which is the portal of the ida [-channel], into the susumna. Through that course, visualize it as joined to the heart-lotus of the image, and then performing a flower-offering, show the mudras of invocation." The portent of this passage, then, is that the divine consciousness (caitanyam) originates in the body of the priest (in the psycho-physical locus of the muladharam), is conducted upward through the appropriate channels (nadi) to join its divine counterpart in an imaginary locus above the head (the dvadasanta-lotus), then is brought down again into the body to be exhaled as breath into the offerings, through which it is transferred by similar physical conduction into the heart of the image. Following the establishment of the divine consciousness in the the image's heart through some final mantras and gestures (mudras), the priest then carries out the full routine of mantric depositions (nyasam) on the image that he earlier carried out on his own body. What is clear from this sequence is that the treatment of the image is based on the priest's own earlier transformation into the deity rather than from its possessing any independent program of invocation. Once this ritual transformation is completed, the substantial image (murti) is then visualized through meditation (dhyanam) by the recitation of those verses which describe the appearance of the deity (dhyana-slokam). This process of meditation is reported to render the deity visibly present, and he or she is then offered all the hospitalities of worship including food offerings, etc.. Worshippers participate in this primary process only at a distance and by proxy and their main interaction with the deity concerns the transfer of its blessings to them, effected through receiving the leftovers of food, flowers, and unguents given to them as "grace" or prasadam. The Teyyam Complex Kerala Brahmanism was reportedly one of the most exclusionary systems of caste-Hinduism practiced in India. Most of those castes below the tiny minority of Brahmans, castes who elsewhere in India would have belonged to one of the higher of the four varna categories, were in Kerala placed in the lowest grade as Sudras. All the rest, probably the demographic majority of the Hindu castes, were formerly designated as Untouchable (literally "those without caste-status", the a-varnar). In Kerala, however, the latter were not just forbidden physical contact with the upper castes; they were banned from even approaching the castes of varna-grade (the sa-varnar), according to a measured scale of distances keyed to particular caste identities. This system was mapped into the regime of Brahmanically served temples by forbidding the avarnar from approaching even the outer walls of temples, and by further dividing the interior space of the temple into architecturally marked zones of proximity to the sanctum which further sorted the Sudras and other savarnar according to their sub-caste standing. For all those castes of the avarnar grade this traditional setup assured that they never entered or participated in the functions of a Brahmanical temple, except either through mediation by other castes or in those temples that partially relaxed the rules for certain festival days. This exclusion from "high Hinduism", however, hardly impoverished the religious life of the lower castes; rather it ensured that they maintained and further developed their own modes of worship and institutionalized networks of shrines for serving their own unique deities. These deities are known as teyyams (cognate with the Sanskrit daiva) and the mode of worshipping them is called teyyattam, literally the "dancing of the gods". This worship takes place at shrines specifically dedicated to one or more of these deities. The principal rite, the actual teyyattam sequence, entails specialists of the lower avarnar castes donning a costume specific to a particular deity, reciting that god's mythical history in song, becoming possessed by its spirit, dancing through the shrine compound, and then interacting with worshippers, as the god, to receive their offerings and distribute to them blessings and grace. These shrines are generally organized and managed on a caste or lineage basis, and are still an integral part of the social organization of all the traditionally avarnar castes of northern Kerala. In terms of their religious and social import, these shrines were (and usually still are) the functional equivalents of temples among the upper castes. The shrine structures may range from an architecturally elaborate, walled, temple-like structure, to a small closet-like affair in an open compound, to nothing other than a cleared space in a wood or field where a temporary shed or altar may be set up. The fully costumed teyyam worship occurs only on an annual basis, though many shrines also have monthly rites, conducted by locally resident caste-priests attached to the shrine (called komaram or veliccappatu). In our usual manner of speaking, teyyattam is a "possession cult", since the entire program of worship is predicated on the deity's taking over the body and mind of the dancer and speaking and acting through his body as the vehicle of expression and interaction with the congregation. The same process is experienced by the shrine-priest of a teyyam deity, as well, when he performs the aforementioned monthly rites of worship. These practices and their officials are cognate with a whole range of similar "folk" traditions throughout south India, and I am convinced that teyyattam is thus part of a relatively coherent "Dravidian" paradigm of worship. The paradigm is predicated on possession, is strongly implicated in a cult of the dead and has historical roots which we can clearly trace back to the classical Tamil literature of the early centuries C.E.<8> Indeed, most of the teyyam deities either explicitly derive from the apotheosis of deceased human beings, or can be shown historically to have connections with lineage ancestral cults in their specific social origins. The understanding in all cases of teyyam-worship is that the original spirit of the departed being or god has been ritually re-enlivened through invocation into the body of his or her vehicle. This invocation, however, is always deliberate, ritually controlled through a series of formalized procedures and has as its vehicle a person who is socially entitled and inducted into that role. It is therefore clearly a case of formalized possession as I have earlier defined this term, and it is the relation of this to what we usually call tantra that I now wish to take up for consideration. The first link in this relationship has to do with the way the images used in worship are conceptualized in regard to the teyyam dancers or to the teyyam priests. When they are not activated through possession, most teyyam deities are housed in some kind of enshrined image, be it a full image (vigraham), a flat icon (titambu), a sword, or a simple altar or stool. This power has been previously installed exactly as we noted above with regard to Brahmanical temple installation (pratistha), either by Brahmans themselves, (for those castes they consent to serve), or by priests of other castes. We previously saw that all Brahmanical invocations, whether in the initial act of installing an image, or as the prelude to daily worship, entails summoning the deity first into the body of the priest and then transferring it to the image. It is this power which is then tapped and serves to (re)activate the body of the teyyam dancer or priest and turn him literally into the god. As a highly charismatic teyyam priest told me:<9> "The consciousness (caitanyam) of the goddess has been deposited in a certain place; that is the temple at which we worship. At the time we get the spiritual vision of possession (darsanam), all of that divine power (sakti) we get comes from that image which is installed in the shrine chamber...The possessed vision of all the teyyam performers and teyyam priests is one and the same, but it is only in the rites [by which they get it] that there are differences." These rites in which he notes a difference are the rituals (karmam) and incantations (mantras) which the teyyam priest performs closed up in the sanctum, in contrast to the analogous rituals and narrative songs (torrams) which the elaborately costumed teyyam dancer performs in front of the shrine. Both receive their power bodily from the image through these respective rites, and both speak and behave as the deity, until they return this conscious power (caitanyam or sakti) to the shrine, where it is stored for another day. But it should not be supposed from the foregoing quote that precedence is thus given to the inanimate locus of this power over its human vehicles. Indeed we have earlier seen how temporal and logical priority is rather given to the human organism as the source of divine power in Brahmanical temple rituals. Similarly, in relation to his teyyam rites, the same priest just quoted described for me the role of the teyyam priest as follows: "A teyyam priest is a man whose human spirit, standing within him, is witness to the goddess in whom we believe. It is that very consciousness lodged in our heart which we transfer into some other object. It is then to show others that there is consciousness in this object, that the teyyam priest performs his rituals." Besides the image itself, such objects which are enlivened may include swords, umbrellas, and different kinds of ritual insignia, which leap and quiver in their bearers' hands. Semantically, the 'behaviors' of such objects ("leaping", "dancing", "quaking", etc.) qualify them as 'possessed' by the deity in exactly the same terms that are applied to a human medium. During performances, the divine consciousness may freely pass back and forth between human and normally inanimate media, and this capacity is reflected in the foundation myths of teyyam shrines as well." Finally, the conceptual equivalence between the image worship entailed in puja and the rites of possession is preserved in the Malayalam semantics of worship itself. To give the most striking example, the Sanskritic word darsana (literally "seeing"), which refers in standard Indian religious usage to worshippers passively viewing the enshrined idol of a deity, has the common meaning in Kerala of becoming possessed by the god. These semantics reveal how the "seeing" of the deity's external physical image, which in Kerala worship serves largely as a conceptual prop, merges with the internal "vision" that is the real goal of worship; it is a "vision" not in the sense of viewing deity as an object different from oneself, but in the sense of perceiving oneself as deity. This again clearly parallels the conception of the Brahmanical invocation and "possession" in temple tantra, and what I wish to do now is briefly consider the means by which this state is effected in teyyam worship for comparison with that of the temple. The Rituals of Possession Compared Ideally, the teyyam dancer is supposed to keep various vows and a limited fast before major teyyam performances. The teyyam priests similarly keep a series of lifelong vows dedicated to the particular gods they incarnate and serve. In the case of major festivals, a teyyam performer will actually live in partial seclusion in a specially built hut near the shrine for as many as forty-one days before the teyyattam begins. In such cases he is supposed to concentrate all his mental energies on the deity he will incarnate, and he recites various verses to the deity with other minor rites under the supervision of a senior dancer. It is not much of a stretch to suggest the obvious similarities of this period of seclusion, tutelage, recitation, and meditative rites to the stage of initiation known as diksa in the tantric traditions.<10> Though such major performances with their extended seclusions are relatively infrequent, even the routine teyyam performances find their scaled-down equivalents through the dancers' residence in the make-up shed. Almost every shrine has such make-up sheds either attached as permanent structures to their compounds or temporarily thatched for the occasion. The performers arrive there the night before a festival begins and consecrate the shed with a flame from the central shrine. From the time just after their arrival when they are ritually dedicated to the particular deity they will perform, they are supposed to remain in the make-up shed and its environs, observing a partial fast for the duration of the festival. Immediately before a dancer's costuming for the possession and dance begins, he comes before the shrine, and is given banana leaves containing sandalwood paste, some parched grain mixed with turmeric powder (called kuri), and five cotton wicks lit from the lamp of the deity. The items in the leaf are said to be the deity's prasadam (material grace), and after eating some of the grain mixture and tossing it over the crown of the head, the dancer smears the sandalwood paste on various parts of his body in a specified manner. He then passes his hand over the flame from the burning wicks three times and touches his brow, wafting the vapors towards him. The wicks are then taken to a special masonry altar to the north of the shrine, laid out in a specified manner and worshipped briefly with some rites and silent verses. The exegesis of these rites I received from various performers indicate clear parallels with those performed by their Brahmanical counterparts, the temple tantris. The kuri is literally the "mark" or "trace" of the deity, his or her physical substance which is ingested and smeared onto the body of the dancer. This process is concretely conceptualized as the absorption of the god's being into that of the performer, and the acts of smearing are on certain nodes of the body believed to correspond to the nadis and cakras of tantric physiology. There is a clear correspondence here to the process known in the Kerala tantra texts as vyapaka, literally "pervasion", wherein purely imaginary mantric syllables and elements of the deity are rubbed onto the body parts of the practitioner, effecting his physical transubstantiation into the person of the deity. In teyyattam this smearing is done literally using the physical substances of the god's worship, while in tantra, the vyapaka or nyasa (imposition) of the elements is imagined and cursorily mimed. Similarly, for the teyyam rites of inhaling the fumes of the five wicks and offering them on the altar, there seems to be a more substantialized re-enactment of what in tantra is accomplished through acts of breath-control (pranayama), partly mimetic gestures (mudras) and imaginative visualization (sankalpa). In teyyattam, the flame of the wicks is understood as the physical substance of the deity's sakti, absorbed by conduction through the skin, and the wicks themselves and their fumes represent either the five life-breaths (pranas) known to tantra or the five physical elements (bhutams), understood here to be the breaths or elements of the god's body which are inhaled and absorbed into the body of the dancer. Finally, the offering of the wicks is done on the special altar at the northern end of the teyyam shrine compound, where blood-sacrifices are performed at the close of a teyyattam. In temple tantra, there are elaborate visualizations of the destruction of the gross body and its elements as the prelude to their replacement with the subtle elements of the deity. There is almost certainly some such idea in teyyattam as to why the breaths or elements of the mundane body are laid out as an offering where blood-sacrifices are performed; they must be destroyed before being replaced with their divine counterparts. Again, however, there is a kind of literalism operative here, for we should recall that many teyyams are in fact the apotheosis of deceased human heroes and heroines who were only reconstituted as divine following their deaths as living persons. These deaths are not infrequently portrayed in the teyyam narratives as a kind of self-sacrifice or as a victimization to various social forces or injustices which the soon-to-be deity willingly endures. What is in evidence here is a series of correspondences: the ritual of self-sacrifice shades readily into that of battle; the surrendering of one's life-force to the deity is tantamount to possession by it; and possession itself is both assimilated to and effected by the absorption of the ancestors into the persons of deities, whence they can be periodically reinvoked through the living hosts of their mediums.<11> With the introductory rituals over, the elaborate process of completing the makeup and costuming begins. This is generally done in public view before either the main shrine or northern altar and may take as long as an hour or more to complete. The items are applied to the body of the dancer by his support-troupe as he sits on a ritual stool called the pitham which corresponds to the one in stone on which the image of the deity sits in the sanctum. He meditates on the deity throughout this process, while he and the troupe sing the set pieces dedicated to the specific deity he is incarnating. Known collectively as torrams, these songs verbally depict the origins, life-history, physical description and migration of the god to the present site of performance. They culminate in the dancer singing the song of possession (uraccal torram) which "fixes" (urayuka) that state in his consciousness. There is a productive interplay operative here between the external process of the costuming and make-up that transforms the dancer into a tangible icon of the deity, and the content of the songs that supplies the dancer and audience with a rich set of verbal images to fill out cognitively and emotively the physical transformation. Externally, his body is made into a living icon of the deity, even as verbally he introjects images and narratives of the deity's living presence into his person through song. These torram songs again find parallels to the Brahmanical texts of worship. The torrams very much fill the same functional roles as the texts of praise (stotras), invocation (avahana) and meditation (dhyana-sloka) used in tantric rites. In the case of the torrams, though, these functions are elaborated and expanded and they are all more clearly linked into the instrumentality of actually effecting the deity's descent as an animate and interactive presence than is the case in the temple rites. Thus rather than being merely descriptive of the deity's appearance, as in the case of Brahmanical stotras or dhyana-slokas, we have noted that most torrams have, in addition, a well developed narrative content. They usually recount the deity's origins and actions which they then explicitly analogize to the process of recreating the deity and its active powers in the ritual context of teyyattam.<12> This is further charted in the sequence of deictic shifts - from third person praises and narrative episodes, to second person praises and the genre of invocation (vara-vili, the "call to come"), to the torram of "congealing" the god's presence which finally culminates in first person "speech of the god" (daiva-vakku) and direct interaction with the worshippers. The performance of teyyattam, then, is much more explicit and overt in its development of the process of transforming the priest or dancer into the person of the god, the process which in agamic literature is called sivikarana, or "becoming a Siva" (Davis 1992). And what I trust is by now quite clear in all of this is that the procedures - verbal, mental and physical - by which this possession-transformation is effected, are culturally scripted, formalized undertakings. Their effectiveness may thus be said to be "performative" in the Austinian sense of speech-acts. As I have suggested elsewhere, however, the domain of such performatives may perhaps be fruitfully extended to include formal acts of mental imaging; these we might call, on analogy, " thought-acts"(Freeman 1993:121-23) . Just as we found that the semantics of the Sanskritic term darsanam provided evidence at the linguistic level for the interpenetration of image-worship and spirit-possession in Kerala, so we find a similar confirmation in the specific semantics of Dravidian terms relating to the process of visualization entailed in the possession itself. The word torram as we saw earlier is the generic name for the songs which describe the deity and bring on possession in teyyattam, but it is also used of the whole initial phase of a teyyattam performance, wherein the deity is first summoned and possesses the dancer. This noun torram and its allied verbal forms are related to the intransitive Dravidian root /tonr, meaning "to seem," or "to appear", referring to the passive reception of cognitive or sensory experiences. When turned into transitives by strengthening this root to /torr however, such words further imply an active agency which intentionally conceives of things in such a way as "to make them appear", that is, in actuality, as effective entities in the real world. Most Western ontologies would of course deny such a materially effective capacity to purely imaginative, mental activities; yet the usage of these words in the Malayalam texts and among my informants, makes it quite clear that such a power is indeed being posited of human and divine consciousness. Similarly, in keeping with our agenda of comparison with the temple practice of tantra, the Sanskrit term sankalpa and other such derivatives from the root /klp which are common in the tantric texts clearly show the same semantics of effectively bridging between what we would call a "merely imaginative" and a materially effective reality.<13> Such terms are regularly used in the Brahmanical tantric texts as directives instructing the practitioner to "imagine", or better, to "conceive" of such-and-such an entity or state of affairs as being actually manifested during the invocation procedure. The whole of the subsequent worship indeed depends on the assumption that such thought-acts are performatively effective in actually summoning and establishing the ontologically real presence of the deity. Here again, such mental conceptions are formalized in that their actual contents are verbally specified, imaginatively internalized, and intentionally performed as directed cognitive acts such that practitioners conceive of themselves and their images as identified with or possessed by the consciousness and person of the deity. Social and Historical Interaction I have indicated something of the convergence between tantra and teyyattam in their mutual concern with effecting possession by the deity, at the level of both ritual practice and espoused belief. In this final section, I wish to review some supporting evidence that the interrelation between these two complexes has been correspondingly intimate, long-standing and clearly registered both structurally and historically in the religious practices of Kerala. If, in keeping with the general theoretical orientation of this paper, ritual is viewed not just as reflecting culture, but as in part constituting it, then we would expect the ritual structures of tantra and teyyattam to define spaces and practices which replicate the social-structural relations between the constituencies of the two religious complexes. This is indeed the case. At the most general level, we have seen that the Brahmanical temple is exclusionary of the teyyam festivals, since the performers and their rites are not permitted within the outer walls of the temple. The situation is actually far more complex however, and closer attention reveals that both within the Brahmanical complex and in the articulations of this complex with the wider society, there is a clear integrating of ritual structure, belief, and personnel between the systems of tantra and teyyattam. To begin with, all Brahmanical temples have annual festivals in which the consciousness of the deity is invoked into a special festival image (utsava-bimbam or titambu) that is taken out on procession within the outer walls of the temple, and then often out into the village streets for a mock "hunt" and a bath in a local river or tank. Such festivals are the closest analogy we have to teyyattams within the purely Brahmanical temples. Like teyyattams, these events have as their very rationale the annual issuance of the deity out of its sanctum and into contact with the general populace from whom it is normally insulated in the temple precincts. Furthermore, the festivals are clearly "popular" to the extent that they require drumming and music by non-Brahman castes, accompaniment by armed attendants of the martial castes and various rites and services of the artisan and servant castes. This emergence of the deity into freer interaction with a lower-caste public is also registered in its corresponding association with lower, demonic divinities and their associated human attendants who accompany the image in its procession outside the temple. The latter lower-caste attendants are often in fact the ecstatic priests (veliccappatus or komarams) of nearby teyyam-shrines who become possessed by their respective caste-deities on these occasions, just they would during teyyattams. What the festival thus represents is a phase in the normal program of orthodox Brahmanical worship where popular rites (which from the Brahmanical perspective are therefore tinged with the impure and the demonic) can effect an accommodated intrusion into the temple in association with the high-caste utsavam. From the societally more encompassing vantage point of teyyattam, however, it seems likely that utsavams themselves have developed in emulation of and interaction with the distinctive non-Brahmanical paradigms of worship which exist outside the temple, rather than the "folk cult" being dependent on or derivative of the textually mandated festivals. This becomes more apparent when we look comparatively across the spectrum of castes to the differently patterned relationships between festivals and temple worship. For example, Brahmanical temples which do not allow teyyam festivals within their walls may nevertheless have associated teyyattams celebrated outside their walls, managed by lower castes but temporally orchestrated so that they correlate meaningfully with the textually conducted utsavams inside. In temples of the royal and martial castes both kinds of festivals may coexist, calendrically adjusted to accommodate each other and managed by a single set of personnel serving in festivals of both types. Alternatively, among the middle castes the teyyattam itself may alone occupy the role of the principal festival, in which case the rules of temple entry are normally suspended so that the teyyams can be performed within the walls of the outer temple-compound where the festival-image would normally process. In this instance the rituals of invocation correspondingly exhibit a clear synthesis between the rites that would ordinarily be performed on the festival-image, and those that are performed by the teyyam dancers to invoke the deity into their bodies. Finally, in the shrines of the lower castes, there are no daily rites performed to images (aside from lighting lamps in the morning and/or evening outside the shrines) and the only ordinary worship is that offered to possessed teyyam dancers or priests in annual and monthly rites. What I believe all of this indicates is that the possession-festival complex that characterizes teyyattam is not dependent on those features of Brahmanical image-worship in temples that we regard as classically Hindu. Indeed, the opposite case might be argued, for we have seen that the very logic of image-worship itself is predicated on the priest's formal possession by the deity. Now it becomes further apparent that the possession-festival paradigm is neither logically nor culturally dependent on the Brahmanical temple, and that high-caste worshippers even strive to incorporate this low-caste paradigm into their temple regime, as we see in the following. Clear evidence of this relationship emerges where pollution concerns have kept Brahmanical temples ostensibly sealed off from low and demonic modes of popular worship, but where these institutions have subsequently developed their own substitute ritual forms in evident emulation of the same. One such form occurs in temples that prohibit teyyattam but put on festivals known as pattutsavams, or "song-fests". These are performed in the temple-compound by drawing elaborate images (kalams) of popular deities on the ground in colored powders and employing non-Brahman temple servants to invoke the deities into the images by singing their praises in Malayalam songs to the accompaniment of drumming, just as would be done over the body of the dancer in teyyattam. The deities are often in fact the same named beings as those worshipped in teyyattam, and the powder-images are sometimes clearly modeled on the costumed forms. The songs are very similar to torrams and the specialists are known as teyyampatis, "those who sing for" ( In those temples served by the Pitarar, the associated teyyam performance area is in the outer compound of the main temple itself, and the kalasa-tara for the teyyams is indeed located midway along the northern wall corresponding to the area where the Pitarar do their killing within the inner compound wall. As mentioned earlier, the kalasa-tara is named for the toddy-pot (kalasam) that sits atop this altar. In Brahmanical temple usage, this same Sanskrit word kalasa refers to pots of water or other potable fluids like coconut-milk that are offered to the deities or poured over them in ablution (abhisekha). These fluids have divine powers invoked into them and are thereby believed to strengthen and vivify the god's image in temple rites. They also retain some of these powers after divine use and they are recirculated among devotees as potable prasadam (tirtham). In teyyattam, where the kalasams routinely contain alcoholic beverages, the possessed teyyam dancers actually consume part of these kalasam offerings from ritual vessels. Sometimes they urge worshippers to consume the liquor with them as participants in the rite, and later the surplus is redistributed as prasadam. In temples where the Pitarar preside, giant, ornamented kalasams of toddy are carried in procession within the outer compound during teyyattam, and in such cases, the teyyam festival itself is called kalasattam "dancing the kalasam" after this rite. Even in the case of humbler teyyattams it is required that a kalasa-tara be set up and tended by a special priest of the toddy-tapper caste (Tiyyar) who will carry the pot in procession with the deity. In the Pitarar temples, however, one of these same Tiyyar who brings the giant kalasams for the teyyattam, will supply an alcoholic kalasam to the priests on a daily basis for their offerings within the sanctum itself. In the Pitarar's daily use of this same liquor that is diacritical of low-caste festivals, supplied by the same low-caste official, we thus find another telling example of higher incorporation of popular festival elements into the daily rites of the temple. Indeed, in the whole complex of blood sacrifice, liquor, and flesh offerings being brought inside the Pitarar temple we find in this case, as with the various substitutions used by Nambutiris we considered above, clear evidence for a long and synthetic convergence between those traditions we label "folk", on the one hand, and tantric on the other. By the brief sampling of materials presented in this section, I trust I have made a case for the complex and sustained nature of interaction between the tantric temple cult of Kerala Brahmanism and the popular practice of teyyattam. What I wish to reiterate here, however, is that all of these component rites I have examined are implicitly predicated on the charging of these ritual substances and their human agents with the power of divine consciousness. That is why in the first part of the paper I tried to indicate that there were also conceptual continuities informing this interaction, and that despite the effect of caste and pollution barriers in generating different ritual expressions there was a basic and underlying rationale to worship which I have glossed generally as "formalized possession." To conclude, I wish to present two brief, but important pieces of textual evidence in support of the nature and depth of this interaction. The first evidence comes from the oral ballad literature known as Vatakkan-pattu, the "Northern Ballads". These are basically secular songs describing the exploits of various heroes of the martial castes, and while undated they seem clearly to have been composed in the pre-British period (perhaps as early as the 16th century)(George 1968:24-27; Parameswaran Nair 1967:46-49). In the context of our discussion, what several of these songs depict is quite remarkable: they describe how Brahman temple-priests, specifically Nambutiri Brahmans, used to become bodily possessed by the deities they served and speak in the voice of the god as oracles, exactly in the manner teyyam-priests do today (e.g. Appunni Nambyar 1983:396). Such evidence points to a time when it was possible for Brahmans simultaneously to play two roles; that of sastric ministrant to the enshrined image within the temple and that of ecstatically possessed medium out in the compound for worshippers. This suggests, along with other evidence I have gathered that there has been a fairly recent suppression of the outward forms of possession among the higher castes, but that the paradigm of worship nevertheless retains its conceptual underpinnings in the rites of invocation, as we have seen. The second piece of evidence comes from the teyyam songs themselves and points in the other direction to the downward filtration of the Sanskritic technical vocabulary of tantric religious experience. It is harnessed in this case however against the caste system and argues for a universally human experience of divine possession against the social canons of an exclusionary Brahmanism. The teyyam in question is named Pottan, the apotheosis of an Untouchable laborer who is supposed to have encountered and challenged that great advaita champion of Brahmanism, Sankaracarya. The narrative of this confrontation, which dates back at least to the 14th century, tells how Sankara, fearing ritual pollution, once ordered an Untouchable who was blocking his way to get off the path and withdraw to the appropriate distance. Rather than yield the path the Untouchable delivered an enlightening sermon on the spiritual baselessness of caste-distinctions and ultimately revealed himself to be a deity in disguise. In the teyyam-song, Pottan's rejoinder to the great sage is predicated on an unambiguously tantric claim to spiritual experience: "That indestructible Lord who dwells in the dvadasantam, As our preceptor, who remains divorced from all desires, fetters, and defilements, Who, in you and me, in the earth, as in the sky, Exists as One, pulsating with radiance Bursting from the muladharam, he courses through the inner nadi, And passing through the Sadadharam, He arrives at the "cranial lotus", situated above; Then when he reaches the "susumna-portal", and strikes against it, Drops of nectar exude from the "moon's orb" and reach the muladharam. And when there comes such a feeling of bliss, How can one entertain notions of duality? When you do not even know yourself, How can you have aversion to me? <15> These verses, which I have heard sung by modern descendents of the formerly Untouchable castes, clearly describe the same tantric process of bodily fusion with divine consciousness that we examined in the Brahmanical text translated in the first part of this paper. We should recall however that here the context is that of teyyattam, where the singer of these verses is overtly manifesting possession by the deity Pottan whom he literally impersonates. And we might finally note that Pottan claims this experience not just for ritual specialists, whether Brahman temple-priest or lowly teyyam performer, but rather as a universal capacity of all humans to tap that divine consciousness in the depths of our being. It is a consciousness which we all possess, and which therefore possesses us. Notes 1. This notion that enlivened bodies can be of either biological or inanimate material finds support in such words as vigraha which can mean both the human body and an inanimate image of a deity. Similar usages are found for the word murti. 2. It is important to keep in mind, when we refer to the "divinity within one's own body", as Goudriaan does, that the tantric view of the human bio- and psychological nexus (parts of which are explicitly subtle and non-physical) posits a far more comprehensive entity than is currently covered by the Western, biological conception of the human organism (see e.g. Flood 1993). For an intriguing thesis relating the priests' transubstantiation with the deity to their relatively lower social status vis-a-vis other Brahmans, see Appadurai (1983). Many of my ideas in the present piece were sparked by Appadurai's article, and I hope to treat the status issue in light of my own partly convergent historical thesis in the near future. 3. There are citations of tantri being used of other high castes in temple service, as in Gundert (1872:427). Such usages seem exceptional, however, and in both my own field experience and most other sources the term explicitly applies only to Nambutiri Brahmans who officiate in temple service (Padmanabha Menon 1933:41; Visnu Nambutiri 1982:87; Unni 1989:7). There is routinely a further distinction between the tantri, as the original installer and yearly renewer of the temple images' power, and the daily priest, or pujari, usually called santi in Malayalam. The tantri is the highest authority over a temple and appoints and is considered the guru over the pujaris. We learn from Menon that while most pujaris did not actually study the Veda (though they recited Vedic verses learnt from their preceptors on a daily basis in their tantric pujas and daily rites), the tantris were found even in the lofty category of Nambutiris known as Adhyans, who "engage themselves much in the reverent study of the Vedas" [sic] (ibid.:38). 4. See Davis (1991) for the Saiva tradition of the Tamil Nadu, and the good description of tantric puja by Sanjukta Gupta (1979). Though the latter purports to be generally applicable to pan-Indic schemes of tantric worship it is also based on a south Indian text. Considering such sources, the content of Kerala 'tantra' seems substantially the same as agamic temple worship elsewhere. The significant differences seem to derive more from the structural differences in Kerala temples and the particular schedule of pujas and attendant personnel rather than from different principles of ritual practices or their underlying beliefs (Unni 1987:68). 5 I am being somewhat imprecise here as to the invocation, which I will cover from a Kerala tantric perspective below. The process really proceeds with an evocation of caitanya from the body, to join the deity who dwells in a subtle locus (cakra or adhara) outside and above it, then entails invoking it back into the body, whence the combined power is again transferred out, this time into the image. On the process of the priest actually becoming a Siva in the Tamil tradition, see Davis (1991, Chapter Three). Doctrinally speaking, Davis is doubtless correct in pointing out that in the southern dualist school of Saiva Siddhanta one can only aspire to a qualitative but ontologically distinct identification with Siva rather than a complete merger in his being, as in the non-dualist Saivism of Kashmir (1992:111). Ritually and experientially speaking, however, it seems both traditions clearly recognize something closely akin to, if not identical with, possession (Surdam 1984:cvii-cxxii; Sanderson 1985:200-201; 213, notes 90 and 91), and from this perspective, the doctrinal disputes over providing an ultimately dualist versus monistic fiat for practice appear as strained and scholastic impositions (following Sanderson 1992). 6 In the Kerala treatises, such a transformation is admitted to be difficult to experience on a regular basis, though one is supposed to go through the recitations of the mantras and attempt the vision, even as a layman, in ones daily rites (K. Sankaran Nambutirippatu 1974:34-36). For those engaging in puja however, these rites are essential in a very extended form (K. Narayanan Nambutiri 1987:1-21; Mahesvaran Bhattatirippatu 1987:Chapter 5). 7 This is taken from the textbook of the All-Kerala Tantris' Association (M. Sankaran Nambutirippatu 1974:39-40). The spellings of Sanskrit-derived terms in my translation follow the Malayalam of the text (as they do in other contexts, where I have the Malayalam, rather than Sanskrit usages in mind). The exposition in this text closely conforms to the two major Sanskrit commentaries on the Tantrasamuccaya (Mahadeva Sastry: 1953:224-226). The basic process, including the transfer of consciousness into the image through the medium of the priest's breath, is also confirmed for the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta tradition, treated by Davis (1991:32). 8 I use the term Dravidian in its territorial and ethnological sense based on linguistic affiliations across south India. This linguistic, territorial, political, and religious usage of the term was well established indigenously in pre-modern times. For the significations of the term Dravidian in a 14th-century Kerala text see Freeman (1991:26, ff.). In terms of a widely shared cult of formalized possession throughout the region of south India (including Sri Lanka), I have compiled a good deal of research in an unpublished study (Freeman 1992). 9 Unless otherwise noted, all such passages are translated from Malayalam-language interviews I conducted in Kerala, during the field-season of August 1987 to August 1988 under a grant from the Fulbright-Hays D.D.R.A. Program. 10 Considerations of space preclude my treating this matter here. On diksa in the tantric and southern agamic traditions, respectively, see Hoens (1979) and Surdam (1984). Of great anthropological interest is the fact that Nambutiris receive diksa into their system of tantra not from their gurus but from their fathers, paralleling both the hereditary nature of Nambutiri control over and practice in temples, and the similarly hereditary nature of succession (generally matrilineally) to priesthood and teyyam-dancing among the lower castes. 11 I have recorded a case of a curse between co-lineages, in which successive victims were absorbed into the joint deity, only to use that deity to precipitate another death in the opposing lineage in retaliation for their own. These various spirits' individual personas emerged through oracles during festival times. 12 There are usually formulaic invocations either analogizing the incidents depicted in the song to the present locale of performance ("as you did there and then, so may you do here and now"), or indexically linking them in a temporal and spatial succession ("after doing such-and-such there, you have now come here"). 13 These semantics were first made apparent to me in Malayalam during interviews and conversations with informants over the existential status of their beliefs, conceptions, or imaginings (sankalpam) of their deities' attributes and powers. It soon became apparent, though, that their usage of sankalpam could not be translated as belief or imagination, since in English this implies a state or activity which is private, internal and need have no objective correlation with reality except at the level of the subject's volition or fancy. The unmarked, default semantics of sankalpam, however, normally implies that the reported mental image or volition accords with, or even effects an objective reality. To delimit the usage to the English semantics of "belief" as implicitly opposed to knowledge of reality, Malayalis usually feel the need to qualify the word as verum sankalpam, "mere belief", or sankalpam matram, "imagination only". It was these usages that led me back to a consideration of the Sanskrit semantics of such words, as well as of Dravidian lexical equivalents, such as torram, treated earlier. 14 This association of the northern quadrant with cults to violent deities (particularly goddesses) who require blood sacrifice, and even the term "northern gate" itself, is also widespread and apparently ancient in the Tamil country (Dumont 1986:426; van den Hoek 1979). Hart's description of the ancient, royal suicide-rite called "facing north" (vatakkiruttal)(1975:88-93), is, I believe, part of this same complex, and continued until recent times in Kerala, where it was practiced even by lower caste sorcerers (Freeman 1991:77-78). 15 Major parts of the texts of Pottan's teyyam songs are given in Balakrsnan Nayar (1979:425-434), though there are some problems with a number of the verses as presented there. I have instead followed versions I collected and recorded from performers of the Malayan community in the field. I have written an unpublished monograph on this fascinating deity, part of which was presented at a conference (Freeman 1990). A verbatim but somewhat problematic translation of the portions found in Balakrsnan Nayar (which are not credited to him) can be found as an appendix in Ayrookuzhiel (1983:170-181). References Appadurai, Arjun 1983 The Puzzling Status of Brahman Temple Priests in Hindu India. South Asian Anthropologist 4(1):43-52. 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Moffatt and A. Morton (trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flood, Gavin 1993 Body and Cosmology in Kashmir Saivism. San Francisco: Mellen University Press Freed, Ruth and Stanley 1964 Spirit Possession as Illness in a North Indian Village. Ethnology 3: 152-71. Freeman, J. R. 1990 Sanskrit for the Untouchable: Text, Caste, and Power in the Folk-religion of Malabar. Fourth Annual South Asian Studies Conference, University of California at Berkeley, February 1990 (unpublished). 1991 Purity and Violence: Sacred Power in the Teyyam Worship of Malabar. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania. 1992 Formalized Possession in South India and Sri Lanka. Contribution to the Round Table entitled "Greater South India/Sri Lanka in the Longue Duree", for the 44th Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Washington, D.C., April 1992 (unpublished). 1993 Performing Possession: Ritual and consciousness in the Teyyam complex of Northern Kerala. 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Kunnamkulam, Kerala: Pancangam Press. Padmanabha Menon, K. P. 1933 History of Kerala, Volume III. T. K. Krishna Menon (ed.). Rpt. 1984, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services . Parameswaran Nair, P. K. 1967 History of Malayalam Literature. E. M. J. Venniyoor (trans.). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Sanderson, A 1985 Purity and Power among the Brahmans of Kashmir. In M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes (eds.), The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History; pp. 190-216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992 The Doctrine of the Malinivijayottaratantra. In T. Goudriaan (ed.) Ritual and Speculation in Early Tantrism: Studies in Honor of Andre Padoux; pp. 281312.. Albany, N.Y.: State University Press of New York. Sanjukta Gupta 1979 Modes of Worship and Meditation. In Sanjukta Gupta, D. J. Hoens, and T. Goudriaan (eds.), Hindu Tantrism; pp. 121-183. Leiden: E. J. Brill. (Handbuch der Orientalistik) Sankaran Nambutirippatu, K. 1974 Nityakarmmam. Kunnamkulam, Kerala: Pancangam Press. Sankaran Nambutirippatu, M. 1972 Tantradarppanam, Part I. Tirunavaya, Kerala: Tantravidyapitham. Surdam, Wayne 1984 South Indian Saiva Rites of Initiation: The Diksavidhi of Aghorasivacarya's Kriyakramadyotika. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. University of California at Berkeley. Unni, N. P. 1987 Tantrapaddhati. Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan. 1989 Tantrasamuccaya: A General Introduction. In T. Ganapati Sastri (ed.), The Tantrasamuccaya of Narayana with the Commentary Vimarsini of Sankara. Delhi: Nag Publishers. van den Hoek, A.W. 1979 The Goddess of the Northern Gate: Cellattamman as the "Divine Warrior" of Madurai. Colloques Internationaux du C.N.R.S. No. 582 - Asie du Sud. Traditions et Changements; pp.119-129. Paris: C.N.R.S. Visnu Nambutiri, M. V. 1982 Nambutiribhasa Sabdakosam. Kottayam, Kerala: National Book Stall. -------------------------------------------------------------- Malayalam and related terms with diacritics: To print this list or display it properly on-screen use a non-proportionally spaced font such as courier, and single (or less) line-spacing. abhisekha ' _ _ adhara advaita _ agama _ _ avahana bali bhukti _ bhutam caitanya cakra daiva _ daiva-vakku / darsanam _ _ diksa ' _ dhyanam _ / dhyana-sloka _ /_ dvadasanta gurusi ida ' kalam ' / kalasam / kalasa-tara - karmam _ komaram kuri - mantra _ mudra mukti _ _ _ muladharam _ murti _ nadi ' naivedyam _ Nambutiri _ nyasa _ _ paramatmavu _ _ patuka/patu ' ' _ pattutsavam '' . pingala _ Pitarar ' _ pitham ' pranavam ' _ prana ' _ _ _ pranayama ' _ prasadam pratistha '' _ _ puja _ sadhaka / sakti . sankalpa . _ sankalpam matram / . / . _ _ Sankara, Sankaracarya /_ santi /_ sastra /_ _ Siveli / _ sivikarana ' / _ _ Sri Bhuta-bali stotra /_ Sudra Susumna ' Tantrasamuccaya teyyam _ teyyampati ' _ teyattam '' _ tirtham titambu nrttam ' ' _ torram -- _ upacaram _ uraccal torram - -- urayuka - utsavam vara-vili ' varna ' _ Vatakkan-pattu ' '' _ _ vatakken vatil ' vatakkiruttal ' _ veliccappatu ' ' . verum sankalpam - vigraha _ vyapaka yantra END