Food fights: Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain dietary polemics in South India

History of Religions

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 228-261

  Ulrich, Katherine E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449183586     PISSN: 00182710     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/513255     Document Type: Review

References (71)

1. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 1966; repr., Ark Paperbacks, 1995), 116ff
2. I use the term "Hindu" here to refer to Śaivas (people worshipping the god Śiva), Vaiscombining dot belowncombining dot belowavas (people worshipping the god Viscombining dot belowncombining dot belowu), and Śāktas (people worshipping Śakti, the goddess); the term is an anachronistic but useful way to refer collectively to people who accept the authority of the Vedas but also engage in practices such as temple worship that are closer to contemporary Hinduism than to Vedic sacrificial religion. On the issue of religious and sectarian labels, see Romila Tharpar, "Imagined Religious Communities? Ancient History and the Modern Search for a Hindu Identity," Modern Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (1989): 209-31
3. and Leslie C. Orr, "Identity and Divinity: Boundary-Crossing Goddesses in Medieval South India," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73 (2005): 9-43
4. James Laidlaw, Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 290
5. Christopher P. H. Murphy, "Piety and Honor: The Meaning of Muslim Feasts in Old Delhi," in Food, Society, and Culture: Aspects in South Asian Food Systems, ed. R. S. Khare and M. S. A. Rao (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1986), 99
6. The Pallava kingdom was centered around what is now northern Tamilnadu and flourished from the sixth through the eighth centuries; the Cōlcombining macron belowa dynasty's center was the Kaveri River delta in central Tamilnadu during their ninth- through twelfth-century heyday; the Pancombining dot belowdcombining dot belowyas were in the far south, Madurai being their capital, and they overlapped chronologically with the other two dynasties. On the history of the region in the period covered in this article, see Nicholas B. Dirks, "Political Authority and Structural Change in Early South Indian History," Indian Economic and Social History Review 13, no. 2 (1976): 125-57
7. T. V. Mahalingam, Kancipuram in Early South Indian History (London: Asia Publishing House, 1969)
8. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijaynagar, 4th ed. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999)
9. Karen Pechilis Prentiss, The Embodiment of Bhakti (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)
10. and Leslie C. Orr, Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)
11. For more positive evaluations of the Mancombining dot belowimēkalai, see Anne E. Monius, Imagining a Place for Buddhism: Literary Culture and Religious Community in Tamil-Speaking South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
12. and Paula Richman, Women, Branch Stories, and Religious Rhetoric in a Tamil Buddhist Text (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, 1988)
13. The genre identification of the Mancombining dot belowimēkalai is traditionally that of an epic (Sanskrit kāvya, Tamil kāppiyam); classical Tamil dramatic theory adopted the basic categories of Sanskrit literary theory as espoused by Dandin. As a number of authors have noted, this traditional view is somewhat problematic given that Dancombining dot belowdcombining dot belowin's definition of kāvya requires features (e.g., a male hero) notably absent from the Mancombining dot belowimēkalai as well as from the Nīlakēci, discussed below. See Richman, Women, Branch Stories, 158-60
14. Peter Schalk, "Introduction," in Schalk, A Buddhist Woman's Path, 16-21
15. and Alvapilcombining dot belowlcombining dot belowai Vē luppilcombining dot belowlcombining dot belowai, "Historical Background of the Manimekalai and Indigenization of Buddhism," in Schalk, A Buddhist Woman's Path, 53-94
16. Mancombining dot belowimēkalai 13.31-34
17. For an alternate interpretation of the story of Āputtirancombining macron below, see D. Dennis Hudson, "The Courtesan and Her Bowl: An Esoteric Buddhist Reading of the Mancombining dot belowimēkalai," in Schalk, A Buddhist Woman's Path, 180-81
18. Mahēndravarman I, the seventh-century Pallava monarch discussed in the following section, built the first rock-cut temples in southern India at Mahabalipuram. See Mahalingam, Kancipuram in Early South Indian History, 64-76
19. The Nākas (Sanskrit, Nāgas) in mythology are semidivine beings who are part snake and part human and are associated with treasure and waters. On the Nākas in mythology, see J. Vogel, Indian Serpent-Lore, or The Nāgas in Hindu Legend and Art (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1995; first published, London: Probsthain, 1926)
20. and Vijay Nath, Puranas and Acculturation: A Historico-Anthropological Perspective (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2001), 103-5
21. For a complete translation and fuller discussion of this passage and the place of the Nākas in the Mancombining dot belowimēkalai, see Richman, Woman, Branch Stories, 39-51
22. Maggie Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 8
23. Peter Hulme, "Introduction: The Cannibal Scene," in Cannibalism and the Colonial World, ed. Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 34
24. drawing on an essay later in the same volume: Crystal Bartolovich, "Consumerism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Cannibalism," in Barker et al., Cannibalism and the Colonial World, 212-13
25. For example, the Valāhassa Jātaka, in which merchants are shipwrecked on an island inhabited by yakkinīs, who take the form of beautiful women and entice the merchants into marriage. The merchants discover that the yakkinis have the nasty habit of eating their husbands every time a new wreck provides a new batch of men. See Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 71-76
26. For a good overview of the various Buddhist attitudes toward vegetarianism, see Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values, and Issues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 156-65
27. Mahāvibhaṅga, Suttavibhaṅga, Pācittiya 39
28. On the importance of dāna in Pali Buddhist literature, see James R. Egge, Religious Giving and the Invention of Karma in Theravada Buddhism (Richmond, VA: Curzon, 2001)
29. On the magic bowl, see Hudson, "The Courtesan and Her Bowl," 151-90
30. and Pirëmâ Nantakumār, "The Magic Bowl in the Mancombining dot belowimēkalai," in Schalk, A Buddhist Woman's Path, 133-50
31. Marie-Claude Mahias, Délivrance et convivialité: Le système culinaire des Jaina (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris, 1985), 100-103
32. R. Williams, Jaina Yoga: A Survey of the Mediaeval Śrā vakācāras (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983), 50-55, 110-16
33. Laidlaw, Riches, 153-72
34. Mahias, Délivrance, 98-105)
35. On Candragupta's fast, see P. S. Jaini, The Jaina Path of Purification (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979), 6. The first references to the fast are centuries later than Candragupta himself
36. K. V. Ramesh, "Appendix: Jain Epigraphs in Tamil," in Jaina Literature in Tamil, by Appaswamy Chakravarti (New Delhi: Bharatiya Jñanapitha, 1974), 146, 177-78
37. The food offerings, in some cases, would then be redistributed to priests and/or worshippers as prasād, but, as Davis's superb account of worship rituals in Śaiva Siddhānta illustrates, this was not always the case (Richard H. Davis, Ritual in an Oscillating Universe: Worshipping Siva in Medieval India [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991])
38. K. R. Srinivasan, Cave Temples of the Pallavas (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1964), 6
39. and Robert Sewell, ed., The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (Madras: Diocesan Press, 1932), 23
40. Indira Viswanathan Peterson, "Sramanas against the Tamil Way: Jains as Others in Tamil Śaiva Literature," in Open Boundaries: Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History, ed. John E. Cort (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 163-85
41. Glenn E. Yocum, "Buddhism through Hindu Eyes: Śaivas and Buddhists in Medieval Tamilnad," in Traditions in Contact and Change: Selected Proceedings of the XIVth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, ed. P. Slater et al. (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), 149
42. For an analysis of the inscriptional evidence for this period, see R. Champakalakshmi, "Religious Conflict in the Tamil Country: A Re-appraisal of Epigraphic Evidence," Journal of the Epigraphical Society of India 5 (1978): 69-81
43. Peterson, Poems, 10
44. Va. Cu. Ceṅkalvarāyapilcombining dot belowlcombining dot belowai, Tēvāra olcombining dot belowinercombining macron belowi (I. Campantar) (Tirunelvēli: South India Śaiva Siddhānta, 1963), 189-230
45. The farce has been interpreted in a variety of ways; see, e.g., Hudson, "The Courtesan and Her Bowl," 160-63, which reads it as referring to esoteric (i.e., tantric) rituals
46. Of the four other scholars who have addressed this issue, three have interpretations significantly different from mine. Mincombining macron belowātcombining dot belowcicuntarancombining macron belowār, Vēluppilcombining dot belowlcombining dot belowai, and Irāmaccantirancombining macron below Nākacāmi cited the verses on fish and meat as examples of criticism of Buddhists; see, respectively, Campantarum Camancombining dot belowarum, 139-40
47. Nākacāmi, "Buddhist Icons," 158-59
48. Several authors have discussed the ways in which people stress the tastiness of a forbidden food; see, e.g., Nathan Katz and Ellen S. Goldberg, "Asceticism and Caste in the Passover Observances of the Cochin Jews," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 57, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 53-82, esp. 65 (for the tastiness of leaven)
49. On the Kancombining dot belowncombining dot belowappan story, see Whitney Cox, "The Transfiguration of Tincombining dot belowncombining dot belowan the Archer," Indo-Iranian Journal, forthcoming
50. D. Dennis Hudson, "Violent and Fanatical Devotion among the Nayanars," in Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism, ed. Alf Hiltebeitel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 381-83
51. and Anne E. Monius, "Love, Violence, and the Aesthetics of Disgust: Śaivas and Jains in Medieval South India," Journal of Indian Philosophy 32 (2004): 113-72
52. Hudson, "Violent and Fanatical Devotion."
53. Philip Lutgendorf, "Dining Out at Lake Pampa: The Shabari Episode in Multiple Ramayanas," in Questioning Ramayanas, ed. Paula Richman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
54. For a simple retelling of the stories of the Kancombining dot belowncombining dot belowappancombining macron below and Circombining macron belowuttoncombining dot belowtcombining dot belowar, see Vidya Dehejia, Slaves of the Lord: The Path of the Tamil Saints (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2002), 79-82
55. the Circombining macron belowuttoncombining dot belowtcombining dot belowar story from the Periya Purāncombining dot belowa is translated in full by George Hart, "The Little Devotee: Cēkkilār's Story of Circombining macron belowutoncombining dot belowtcombining dot belowar," in Sanskrit and Indian Studies, ed. M. Nagatomi et al. (Boston: Reidel, 1980)
56. and analyzed at length by David Dean Shulman, The Hungry God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 18-86
57. On the lack of clear sectarian boundaries, see Orr, "Identity and Divinity," and Donors, Devotees, 23-25
58. On the "conversion" of Mahēndravarman I, see "Two Cave Inscriptions from the Triśirāpalcombining dot belowlcombining dot belowi Rock," in South Indian Inscriptions, vol. 1, no. 33, ed. E. Hultzsch (Madras: Government Press, 1890)
59. Richard H. Davis, "The Story of the Disappearing Jains: Retelling the Śaiva-Jain Encounter in Medieval South India," in Cort, Open Boundaries, 213-24
60. M. Aruncombining dot belowācalam, Tamil Ilakkiya Vararalaru, Tamil Pulavar Varalaru [History of Tamil literature, history of Tamil poets], vol. 5 (Tiruccircombining macron belowrcombining macron belowampalam: Gandhi Vidyalayam, 1972), 110-11
61. Kamil Veith Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1974), 139
62. Most Western works on the text identify her as a demon; see, e.g., Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, 139. While thought provoking, the ontological blurriness is not germane to this article
63. T. P. Meenakshisundaran, A History of Tamil Literature (Annamalainagar, Tamilnadu: Annamalai University, 1965), 100
64. for a translation of Hariscombining dot belowena's Sanskrit version of the story, see Friedhelm Hardy, "The Story of King Yaśodhara," in The Clever Adulteress and Other Stories: A Treasury of Jain Literature, ed. Phyllis Granoff (New York: Mosaic, 1990), 118-39, 120, for the sacrifice of a flour rooster
65. Peterson, "Śramanas," 164
66. This is particularly so given that Tamil literature prior to this period lacks such polemics. Even works such as the Cilappatikāram, which are nominally Jain, are remarkably free of religious bias. Much of the earlier literature does not have even a nominal religious affiliation; the famous collection of ethical proverbs the Tirukkurcombining macron belowalcombining dot below has been claimed by every religious group in the region as its own, and scholars' opinions are equally divided. The early Caṅkam poetry was, for the most part, secular; gods and goddesses appear, but as features of the landscape rather than objects of emotional devotion. See A. K. Ramanujan with Normal Cutler, "From Classicism to Bhakti," in The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan, ed. Vinay Dharwadker (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 234
67. On symbolic capital, see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 16 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977; repr., 1995), 183
68. James Heitzman, Gifts of Power: Lordship in an Early Indian State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)
69. Paul Younger, The Home of Dancing Śivancombining macron below: The Traditions of the Hindu Temple in Citamparam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
70. For an excellent discussion of orthodoxy versus orthopraxy, see Catherine M. Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 191-97
71. H. Daniel Smith, "Impact of 'God Posters' on Hindus and Their Devotional Traditions," in Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia, ed. Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 36-39