South Indian Studies

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South Indian Studies presents thirteen essays discussing in close detail topics that range from the cultural significance of the coconut to the treatment of nature in Akam poetics, from matriliny to Yakshagana, from Hindu Astronomy to Buddhist Art, from the role of the village to the public library systems, and from St.Thomas to C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar. These essays of interdisciplinary nature by diverse hands find common ground and concern in focusing for the most part on the indigenousness of this region. Contributors include Kapila Vatsyayan, Elinor Gadon, Usha V.T. and S. Murali among many others. These essays are more than merely introductory, more than mere critical assessments. The pattern that emerges from a close reading of the various facets of South Indian history and life is one rich in complexity and yet indigenous, and like the Tantric mandala, with its different colours and patterns, configuring into a unified system. This book certainly is bound to be of interest to the casual reader as well as the scholar.

S.Murali is a poet, painter and critic-a specialist in Indian aesthetics. He received his Ph.D from the University of Kerala (1990) and is a scholar of repute deeply concerned with indigenous values and essential issues. His book The Mantra of Vision: An Overview of Sri Aurobindo's Aesthetics (1997) has come to be recognised as a valuable contribution to the study of Indian poetics and compa rative aesthetics. He has also authored a collection of poems and sketches-Night Heron (1998). He is a well known painter and his works have gone on display at several exhibitions in India and abroad. His publications include poems, translations and essays on.art, literature and ideas in journals of international repute. He has as much involvement with nature and environment as with poetry and painting. At present Dr. Murali teaches in the Department of English, University College, Trivandrum, Kerala.

South Indian Studies was primarily intended as a volume of essays by diverse hands on a variety of topics ranging from the mundane to the hieratic, of an interdisciplinary nature, but centering on South Indian life, culture, art and literature for the most part an introductory book, explaining and clarifying south India's rich and indigenous heritage in the light of recent scholarship and studies. However, over the period of time while I was collecting and collating the material for this book I only became conscious all the more of the inordinate nature of my task: so much work has already been done in this direction and so much remained to be explored and analysed. Further, as my study progressed, I came to realise with more and more certainty that this was an area that was forever diversifying and thereby growing in complexity and reach. As newer directions are pursued the process invariably ushers in newer perceptions that challenge earlier assumptions and views. Can one see south India as separate from the rest of that vast conglomerate of living experience that we often regard under the collective nomenclature of "India"? And at the same time, shouldn't one realise the indigenous nature of the southern states with their totally different culture and living from the northern states Can one at any time speak with assured confidence of a pan-Indian culture Quite difficult questions these! Many scholars in a variety of fields that I had had discussions with appeared to think that there does exist a serious discrepancy in considering the Indian experience under one collective head that fails to recognise the South Indian identity-but, however, at the same time they all had this to say that it would be an extremely difficult and perhaps futile task to disengage the south from the rest of India and seek for its indigenousness.

**Contents and Sample Pages**