Religion of Sangam Period

Religion of Sangam Period

· The religion of the Sangam age was not uniform.

· Their rituals were related to animism and other forms of anthropomorphic diety worship.

· The whole philosophy of reincarnation, hero worship, ancestor worship, sati worship etc. were related to death.

· Animism accounts for a good part of Tamil Sangam religion and comprised worship stones, water, stars and planets.

· A mere planted log of wood called Kandu was an object of worship for it was believed that a deity resided in that log of wood.

· Three strands of religion, clearly marked off from each other, are discernible during the Sangam period:
1. The indigenous gods and systems of worship
2. The exotic Hindu gods and systems of worship
3. The exotic non-Hindu religious faiths and functions.

· The hunters of the hill tracts worshipped murugan as the god of the hillock.
· Indra, god of Marudam, was worshipped by the agriculturists. There was a special festival instituted in puhar in honour of Indra.

· The fishermen and the people of the coastal regions worshipped varuna, the god of the wide ocean.

· Korravai was the goddess of victory.

· Among the established gods worshipped according to rituals, the three eyed god (Siva), Murugan, Tirumal, Balram and Indra seem to have been the more important.

· The temple was called nagar, koil, kottam, purai or devlayam.

· The popularity and prevalence of the Brahmanical Velvi (Yajna) the Sraddha and panda to the dead, fasting etc. are well attested to by the Sangam literature.

· References are not lacking to the performance of Vedic sacrifices and the sacrificial posts, the Yupas, those of Pandya king Mudukudumi Peruvaludi being the best known.

· The word Yakacalai is used for Yajnasala.

· Vishnu sleeping on the coils of Ananta in Kanchipuram is mentioned in the Perumbanarruppadai.

· Shiva as Ardhanarisvara (half-man half-woman), his bull Nandi, his Ganas, in fact the whole gamut of Saivite legends are found together in the invocatory verse of the Purananuru.

· Siva, Balarama, Krishna, and Subrahmanya (better known as Murugan in Tamil) are mentioned together in one poem.

· The birth of Subramanya from Kali and his warlike achievements like the destruction of the Asura called Sura are favourite themes of the poets.

· The worship of this deity was attended by primitive dances known as Velanadal.

· The reference to the worship of the deity of the forest (Kaduraikadavul), often identified with Durga, may be another survival of a similar nature.

· Though Buddhism and Jainism must have found a footing in the land, there are few references to them in this literature.

· Ascetics wearing orange robes and carrying a Tridanda (Mukkol) are referred to.
· Tapas – austerities.
· There are references both to cremation and burial urns, and to judge only from the trend of these references, cremation and burial appear to have been alternative modes of disposal, and the Manimekalai furnishes evidence that both these and other methods of disposal survived together up to a relatively late age, say the sixth or seventh century AD.

· Some light on the funerary rites of the time is thrown by the references to the wife offering a Pindam (rice-ball) to her dead husband who was supposed to eat it at the instance of a Pulaiyan, before his pyre was kindled.

· Indra, Yama, Varuna and Soma (Kubera) are mentioned as the guardians of the four directions: the east, the South, the west and the north respectively.

· Gods on the basis of caste are also mentioned in the Silappadikaram.

· Brahma (the four faced one), the thirty-three Devas and the eleven Ganas are also mentioned in Tirumuruarruopadai.

· Umai, Tirumal, Kalaimaga, Aylrani (wife of Indra) were some of the goddesses worshipped.

· There seem to be parallel names in Tamil and in Sanskrit for the same gods – Murugan and Subrahmanya, Tirumal and Vishnu, Siva and Rudra.

· Among the temples in the Sangam age there is specific mention of quite a large number.

· The temple was called Nagar, in latter-day inscription’s we also read of Vinnagara, meaning the temple of ‘Vishnu’.

· Kottam, Koil, Nagar, Il or Griha meant place of residence; hence the expression Vishnugriha also meant ‘temple for Vishnu’.

· The name ‘Siva’ is rarely mentioned in the Sangam literature; but many of his attributes (namely, the three-eyed one, the one that destroyed the three aerial forts, he that holds the Trisula, he that is seated under the Baniyan tree) are given in many contexts.

· Siva, of course had his temple and Kari Kilar advising Pandyan Palyagasalai Mudukudumipperuvaludi, says that his royal umbrella should be lowered when he comes round the temple of the three-eyed one.

· The temple of Indra is mentioned in Silappadikaram and in Manimekalai.

· The festival of Indra was held all pomp by Chola king in puhar and Manimekalai calls it “the festival of the thousand-eyed one”. His temple was called Vajrakkottam, for Vajra is the divine weapon of Indra.
· The commencement of the festival of Indra (Vira Kalkol) was proclaimed by the beat of drums placed on elephant’s back.

· Tirumal as Tirumal and as Kannan is quite often mentioned and was worshipped and associated with Valigaon (Baladeva) and with Kaman.

· Synthesis of the non-Aryan Tamil and the Aryan Vedic deities had begun during this period.

  · The culture of Sangam age, as a whole, is a synthesis of the Tamil and Aryan cultures.