Introduction

This chapter lays down the groundwork for the monograph. It deals with the three important threads of enquiry pursued in the book. The first is the reception of the figure of Ramalinga Swamigal in the hagiographies and biographies which emerged during and after his lifetime, culminating in his apotheosis as a quintessential Tamil and Dravidian saint. The second thread is the genealogy of the doctrine of “compassion towards living beings”, cīvakāruṇyam, in Ramalingar’s writings, establishing how this doctrine has much older roots in Tamil Śaivism. An important by-product of this investigation of Ramalingar’s thoughts on compassion is that this book maps new grounds in the study of Tamil Śaivism. In a departure from scholarship to date on this subject, it traces an important strand of its intellectual genealogy in the doctrinal concerns of the Tamil Śaivasiddhānta and Tamil Vīraśaivism in the crucial period leading up to early colonial modern. The third thread is the tracing of the transformation of majoritarian Tamil religion, which is Tamil Śaivism, as it negotiated the challenges of modernity and transformed itself in that process.