Pallava Time Inscriptions
Devotees'
Donations and Property of the Gods
The transformation
of Hindu cults in the far south of India, the Dravida country, in the
first millennium AD led to the development of the phenomenon of gift giving
to a god. Gods thus became property owners, but their divine nature made
this process complicated and contradictory. The inscriptions of the Pallava
era contain data about how the process began.
* By YAROSLAV TARASYUK
Before the second half of the first
millennium AD, the propagation of the ideology of bhakti
in the Tamil lands reached a new stage, which can be characterized by
the development of temple cults. Scholars suppose that the perception
of the inaccessibility of a transcendent deity and, at the same time,
the desire to see it, to touch it, to become aware of its presence had
been paradoxically incorporated into South Indian bhakti.
A Bhakta
appealed to a god not so much in hope of being released from the circle
of rebirth, as by the idea of attracting, by unlimited and inexplicable
magnetism, something of its perfect appearance. Such a transformation
of Hindu cults on South Indian soil was clearly exhibited in forms of
worship, namely in temple cults. Images and statues in temples were themselves
perceived to be the living god or, at the very least, as the symbol of
the living god.
The construction of temples promoted the development of
temple rituals. In the temple, the god was treated like a king. The temple
was perceived of as a palace. Priests were the god's professional servants-courtiers
and bhaktas his loyal
subjects. As F.Hardy pointed out, the service materializes in the acts
of worship which are themselves modelled on the service rendered to a
king. Such features as the dressing of the vigraha,
placing ornaments on it, then holding a mirror in front of it, fanning
it with a camara
(a yak-tail whisk), and holding a parasol over its head and the like were
adopted from the royal cult and integrated into the puja
(See: Hardy, F. Ideology and
Cultural Contexts of the Shrivaishnava Temple, IESHR, vol.
XIV, No. 1, pp. 132-135).
The rituals surrounding the 'earthly' life of gods created
various needs, which were met from devotees' donations. God-inhabited
images in temples became the masters of the villages and owners-utaiyars
of the lands, gold, and cattle granted to them. This right of gods to
possess material property raises questions about its nature. In the records
about grants to gods (devadana),
known to us from the Pallava Copper Plate Grants, we find references to
the transference of the king's right to possess. A god received exemption
from paying specified taxes and dues and 'everything that the king could
receive and enjoy' (Mahalingam, T.V. ed, Velurpalaiyam
Plates of Nandivarman III / Inscriptions of the Pallavas, Delhi
(1988), p. 377, lines 57-58). So, the right of a temple god to be master
of a village could be compared to that of a king. But this right to possess
certain property had a tinge of temporality. A king could interfere with
it. Chitrur Plates of Nripatungavarman inform us about a king's decision
to grant a devadana
village to fifty-four brahmans. However, in order to pay damages of the
god the devadana-owner
--, the king declared another village as a substitute devadana
(Idem, p. 444, lines 78-83). Therefore, a temple god's right was limited
by a king's will.
Research that has been conducted into temple epigraphy of
the Pallava times has concentrated largely on the nature of donations
made by different categories of devotees-donors. The contents of these
inscriptions are documents which confirm the obligations of those involved
in the usage of a gift to a god and lay down the responsibilities of the
trustees. In most cases (endowments of gold and cattle), the donor personally
transmitted the gift to a community in return for the obligation to fulfil
necessary conditions. Only in infrequent cases of land grants could the
gifted property be made the hereditary possession of a temple priest.
And this priest then possessed the god's land and paid the necessary taxes
as an owner.
Such acts do incorporate some elements of a gift.
The Chitrur Plates
of Pallava Nripatungavarma
(Plates with ring )
SOURCE:
STATE MUSEUM, ANDHRA PRADESH, HYDERABAD.
But it looks like a payment for the worship and services in a temple, which were necessary to the welfare of a devotee-donor. As a result, a temple god as the donee was not in the position to actually use a gift, and depended on the accuracy with which communal organizations or private persons, chosen by a donor, fulfilled the obligations. Moreover, these agreements might be unrealizable or only fulfilled after delays or violations. This is confirmed either indirectly by the formulas of the obligation parts in the inscriptions and by the imposition fines or directly by those inscriptions dealing with the consent of a devotee-donor to re-address the use of the gift to community-trustee's needs, for example, irrigation works. In this connection, the trustee could grant certain privileges to this donor (See: Inscriptions of the Pallavas, nos. 223, 227).
All this demonstrates that during the Pallava period
when the construction of temples was still in its infancy, when there
was no effective management of temple property, and when an algorithm
of 'use' of the 'earth' property by a temple god had not been worked out
local temple deities depended not only on a king, the principle
donor and patron, but also on communal management. The resources of temples
were useful to communities, and to the temple gods the services of the
communities were crucial.
In the subsequent period, this situation underwent the changes.
The relations of temples with communal organizations were gradually more
determined by one further principle. The representatives of a god began
to make an allocation of gifts according to temple needs. To name but
an example, the cult of Chandikeshvara
(Chandeshvara) was introduced in communal organizions' support
in shaiva temples
and, henceforth, Chandikeshvara
was perceived of as the 'chief servant' and 'divine manager' of the worldly
property of god Shiva.
In modern times, the endowments to temples' gods are controlled
either by independent trustees and managers, over whom the temple administration
only has limited powers, or directly by temple administration. *
)
Dr Yaroslav Tarasyuk
is a historian who visited the IIAS in Leiden as a Gonda Fellow between
September 2000 and January 2001 to work on his research project, 'Grants
under the Pallavas: Donor, Donation, Donee, Trustee (Social and Economic
Meaning)'. He is presently affiliated with the Institute of Oriental Studies,
the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. E-mail:
kuisarat@mtu-net.ru