ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some of the earliest hagiographies on Ramalingar. The earliest recorded accounts of Ramalinga Swamigal’s life come from either his very own lifetime or the immediate aftermath of his disappearance. They are not many – just three to four scant accounts, but they are clear on a number of issues – the most important of these being how we are to understand Ramalingar’s significance and how we are to place him, his works, and his disappearance within the framework of a specific religious tradition. Written by those directly acquainted with him, or his associates, these writings fall recognizably within the genre of narratives that are called hagiography, about the exemplary holy life. This chapter suggests that contradictions and unease, especially regarding his final days, haunted the hagiographical tradition around Ramalingar from its incipience and that this is discernable in their multiple and even contradictory agendas and in the uneasy intermeshing or disjuncture of their paradigmatic and particular features.
