In the early Middle Ages, the Tamil bhakti movement was actively developing in southern India, which resulted in the traditions of religious poetry of the Nayanars (Shaivites) and Alvars (Vishnuites). The hymns of the Nayanar poets dedicated to the praise of the god Shiva were collected in the Tirumurei, a sacred poetic canon. An important feature of the work of Nayanars and, first of all, the poets of the collection "Devaram", which forms the core of this canon, is the pronounced focus of poetry on the formation of collective religious consciousness among the audience listening to it. The article describes the religious and cultural context of the Nayanars 'work, as well as the peculiarities of the poets' speech contact with their audience. In this connection, a religious hymn is analyzed not just as a poetic text, but more broadly as a verbal event that presupposes a communicative situation between the poet, the audience and the deity. At the same time, the communicative-pragmatic (linguistic-poetic) method of six functions of a verbal event based on Roman Jacobson, introduced by the researcher of Bhakti poetry Norman Cutler, is used as a method of analysis based on the stanzas of Sambandar's hymns.

Keywords: India, Shaivism, Tamil bhakti, nayanars, communicative and pragmatic methods of poetic analysis.

The main genre of Nayanar poetry is a religious hymn, which is designated by the term "padigam" (patikam), which most likely comes from the Sanskrit word padya ("stanza", "poem"). It is known that the structure of padigama goes back to some Vedic hymns. Usually, a padigam is a poem consisting of ten stanzas praising Shiva, who is staying in a certain temple in a certain place. Stanzas usually have a refrain. The final 11th stanza is also added to them. As a rule, it contains the name of the poet and speaks about the benefit that the listener or performer of the hymn receives from communicating with this poetry.

From the sixth to the twelfth centuries A.D., the Hindu movement of Bhakti (bhakti — from Skt.bhakti) flourished in the Tamil south of India for various reasons, including the religious struggle between Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. bhaj "to share", "to be partaker" [of god]). It was based on a mass feeling of emotional love for the deity and is associated with the activities of legendary saints-poets who, traveling through the Tamil land, composed and sang hymns full of love and devotion to God, whom they perceived as the Universal Absolute, but in a concrete, sensually comprehended form. Bhakti in southern India resulted in two powerful Tamil religious traditions-the Vishnuites of the Alvars (from tam. "to be immersed", alvar "those who are immersed [in the love of Vishnu]" 1 and the Shaivite Nayanars (from the Sanskrit Paua "to strive", "to love", "to honor", "to lead"; nayanar "those who strive

1 Along with ghem, there is also reason to believe that the original name of Alvara was derived from the Tamil alvar "rulers".

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(lead) [to Shiva]"). These traditions were based on the cults of the Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva, respectively, which gave rise to literary traditions that were based on the ancient tradition of classical Tamil poetry and later became the source of the philosophical systems of Tamil Vishnuism and Shaivism. The Nayanars ' work, which served as the material for this article, was enshrined in the sacred canon "Tirumurai" (tam. tirumurai "sacred order"), the first seven parts of which (out of twelve), its core, make up the collection "Devaram "(tam. tevaram "garland of god") - a collection of hymns by three Sambandar poets, Appara and Sundarara, systematized presumably by the poet Nambi Andar Nambi (X or XI c.). The final part of the "Tirumurei" was a collection of the lives of 63 Nayanar saints (27 of them poets) - "periyapuranam" (tam. periyapuranam "great purana"), the author of which is Sekkizhar (XII c.).

According to the hagiographies of the Nayanar poets, most of their lives were spent on pilgrimages to sacred Shaivite sites, in honor of which they sang hymns. At first, the poets were accompanied by bhaktas from their inner circle, some of whom were relatives or friends. A special role in the environment was assigned to musicians. Thus, in the Periyapuranam, it is said that the musician Yalppanar accompanied the poet Sambandar (VII century) on almost all his pilgrimages and accompanied the singing of padigams on the stringed musical instrument iale. From the life of Sambandar, it is known that his relative wrote down the texts of sung hymns on palm leaves, on the basis of which it can be concluded that the written recording of his work was very early and theoretically could coincide with the first performance of hymns.

During the pilgrimages, the number of poets ' audiences grew rapidly along with their fame. The temples visited by Nayanars and sung in hymns, most of which were located in small rural settlements in the Kaveri Delta, gradually turned into large pilgrimage centers where bhaktas could always stay for the night, receiving food from the common kitchen.

Around the poet-saints, who were later officially canonized by the Shaivite tradition, groups of bhakta followers united, forming large religious communities. Poets became a kind of key figures, "leaders" of such communities. As in the cases of famous saints, many poets were attracted to the rumor of miracles occurring in their presence — spontaneous healings, resurrections from the dead, supernatural acquisition of desired objects, miraculous visions, prophecies. But at the same time, it was extremely important for the bhaktas to be near the poet at the moment of spontaneous singing of the hymn to God. From the looks of it, such a presence was considered a special boon for god-seeking adepts.

According to the lives of the poets in the Periyapuranam, the ability to create hymns was obtained miraculously as a divine gift sent down from above. This happened as a result of a certain event that had the sacred meaning of a sacred initiation in the life of a nayanar. As a rule, it was an experience of contact with God, "meeting" with him. Hymns were born and sung spontaneously, performing the function of both a means of such contact and its description. The hymn took on the essence of the poet's loving "sacrifice" to God. At the same time, the anthem was traditionally performed in the presence of a listening audience. This is directly indicated in the works of Sambandar, for example, in stanza II-5-11 2 where the performance of the hymn "before righteous people" (nallarkal type) is mentioned, as well as in stanzas where direct appeals to bhaktas occur (a striking example is padigam Sh-38, which contains the following appeals in form 2- go l. mn. ch.: "O you who have become slaves of [Shiva]!" (atiyar ayinir), "O you who crave [Shiva's] mercy!" (arul vendunir), etc.).

2 Here and further, the numbering of hymns-padigams is given according to "Tevaram" [Tevaram..., 1984] in the sequence: collection number - padigam number - stanza number.

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the special state of consciousness in which the poet lived was the moment of gaining divine experience. This state can be called mystical religious ecstasy. It is believed that during the performance of the hymn, the poet, contemplating the form of Shiva in this particular place with an internal "subtle" vision, conveyed this vision to the listeners through verbal images, fixing the visual image of God in the collective consciousness and thus uniting the audience in communion with the divine. In this connection, it is important to mention that the last stanza of each Nayanar hymn is devoted to the description of the benefits of listening and performing religious poetry, and this feature is characteristic not only of their poetry, but also of the poetry of other religious traditions in India (the last stanza of a religious hymn is designated by the Sanskrit term srutiphala, "the benefit of listening").

So, the essence of performing a hymn as a sacred act is to create a certain unity of God, the poet-performer and the audience. This is the basis of the point of view on the function of the anthem, which is shared, in particular, by the American researchers N. Cutler and I. Peterson.

So, I. Peterson in the book "Poems to Siva". The Hymns of the Tamil Saints» (1991) пишет:

"The Tamil hymn poets sought to help other bhaktas in their circle to see (kap-) Shiva, approach him (nannu -, natu-, anuku -, seg -), and lose themselves in love with him (uruku-, neku-, kaci-). The poets ' description of Shiva focuses on visual images and the act of seeing. Contemplation is most important in establishing intimate contact or communion with the divine in Hinduism and finds its full expression in the traditions of temple worship of the divine image, which are the main contexts of bhakti in Hinduism..."

"The poet-saint performs the function of a 'seeing eye' that captures the vision, or image of Shiva, so that others can also ' see ' this image... Generations of Tamil Shaivites have recognized this as the primary function of bhakti poetry..."

"The Tamil saints find many meanings in the myth that tells how the gods Vishnu and Brahma boldly tried to prove their superiority over Shiva, but could not comprehend the cosmic form of Shiva as a fiery lingam in its entirety. One interpretation of this myth is that no one but those who love God can see him, seeing God can only happen through his grace. This means that only those who love Shiva can describe him when they see him. From the point of view of Tamil shaiva bhaktas, an "objective description" of Shiva is meaningless; the only true image of God can only be that "seen" by the loving eye of the poet-bhakta "(Peterson, 1991, p. 32).

The tradition of singing hymns is maintained by Tamil Shaivites to this day (although not in its original form). N. Cutler notes that the performer of the hymn (oduvar) at the moment of singing feels like a poet-nayanar and thus comes into contact with God, and the listeners of the hymn must also identify with the saint-poet in order for them to have this contact [Cutler, 1986, p. 50, 74]. Hymns translate the poet's experience into that of the audience, and in this way they gain an affinity for the divine. Moreover, these hymns are used by Tamil bhaktas to model their experience of the divine (Cutler, 1986, p. 112).

Speaking about the impact of hymns on the consciousness of the audience, it is important to note not only their religious and mystical function (aimed primarily at the "internal", deeply intimate transformation of the consciousness of bhaktas), but also their religious and propaganda function, which has an "external", social orientation. The point is that from the seventh century onwards, Nayanar hymns became a means of propaganda for Brahmin Hinduism (Shaivism) during its rivalry with Jainism and Buddhism for religious supremacy in the Tamil south. The most striking example in this regard is the padigams of Sambandar. The tenth stanza of almost every one of them contains an unequivocal condemnation of Jains and Buddhists who "do not know love" for Shiva [see: Pavlova, 2013, pp. 31-42]. So often there are direct appeals to the audience with the call to "follow the only righteous path", i.e., Shaivism, with which they are taught.

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It is connected with the revival of the native Tamil culture, language, religious and cultural community and statehood in general, which fell into decline in the face of the planting of "alien" religions. In the final stanza of each padigam, where the author's name is mentioned (possibly added later by the editor), it is emphasized that the author is Tamil and the padigam is written in pure Tamil. Stanzas calling on Tamils to worship Shiva together as the Universal Absolute took on the sound of a sermon in song form. As a result of this propaganda, by the tenth and eleventh centuries, Brahmin Hinduism had become the dominant religion in the South, and Shaivism had taken on the form of a state ideology, playing an important unifying role in the formation of powerful political and economic structures in the Tamil states.3
In order to influence the formation of the audience's consciousness and fulfill the two functions I have outlined, the hymns had a number of features, including purely poetic techniques that helped to quickly perceive the sound of the text and fix it in the collective memory. Among them::

• the use of special poetic means for verbal communication with the audience, giving stanzas a propagandistic character (verbs in the imperative mood, etc.). For example, " Look, what [Jains and Buddhists] say is not true... "(1-5-9), "do not listen to Jains' speeches... " (I-10-10), "The benefit of ending karma [will be found] if you think [about it]! Direct your thoughts to the path leading to Validayam 4... " (1-3-3), etc. Among the elements of verbal communication with the audience, along with direct appeals to the bhaktas, one can note rhetorical questions to them, exclamations, appeals, etc.

* mandatory singing of the national anthem with musical accompaniment;

• alliteration (e.g. Sambandar stanza II-15-5: kalaiyane kalai mali cempor kayilai malaiyane malaipavar mummatil mayvitta cilaiyane enpavar mel vinai nilla 5);

* easy-to-remember repetitions, or cliched phrases, in each verse of the padigama (sometimes with slight variations). As a rule, the stanzas repeat the name of the geographical place where Shiva resides, with epithets (for example, 1-13 "Viyalur, abounding in waters", etc.), or it can be repeated appeals and requests to God (I-6 " O lord, shining in Maruhala ... Say...", etc.);

* as a rule, the ten stanzas of padigam have a similar syntactic and thematic structure, leading them to a general scheme, while allowing for various descriptive variations. Usually, the scheme looks like this: geographical name (description, epithets) - the place where Shiva resides (description, epithets). As an example, we can cite the stanzas of padigama I-13:

Viyalur, abounding in waters, is the place of a lord who has matted hair, a shining head crowned with a new moon, the owner of a stormy stream and a serpent, and whose body is decorated with the skin of that fierce elephant that he defeated, so that the goddess with her locks of soft and fragrant kuravam flowers was afraid! (I-13-1)...

Viyalur, full of waters, where people worship together with the celestials-this is the name of the place of God, who is the manifest form of the great, supreme meaning, sacred texts, music, many arts, the [spiritual] guide, the ultimate goal for those who strive [for him] in thought! (I-13-5), etc.;

3 The problems associated with Tamil statehood in the early Middle Ages still cause scientific controversy. For various points of view on this issue, see [Alaev, 2011].

4 Validayam is one of the many settlements that make up the so-called" sacred geography " of Tamil Shaivites. A common characteristic of the Devaram hymns is the mention in each of them of the geographical name of a particular sacred place where Shiva "resides" and where the poet made a pilgrimage.

5 The translation of the stanza is as follows: "Karma will not remain with those who say: "O dweller in Tiru Karayils, radiant with good, wielder of the bow with which he destroyed three fortresses of the enemy, lord of Mount Kailasa, like gold, abounding in male deer, holding the deer!" (the word kalaiyaan" holding the deer "may mean" lord of the arts").

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■ use in hymns elements of the poetic tradition of the "Sanga era" 6, which remains an invaluable ancient cultural asset of the Tamils and is firmly anchored in their mentality.

Given the live performance of a hymn as a phenomenon that presupposes a mandatory relationship between the poet (or performer) and the audience listening to it, it is not enough to conduct a study of such poetry solely as a literary text. If we consider the object of analysis more broadly - not only as a text, but also as an element of religious practice, then we need to take into account the context, which is the traditional situation of live performance of the hymn in front of the audience. More precisely, this situation presupposes the unity of three components: the poet (performer), the audience, and God, to whom the hymn is primarily addressed.

N. Cutler proposed the following image of such a model [Cutler, 1986, p. 112]:

Hence, there is a need for a method of complex analysis of hymn stanzas. In my opinion, the linguistic-poetic method is well suited as a method of analysis that can take into account both the text itself and the entire communicative situation associated with it. N. Cutler spoke about the expediency of using it to analyze the stanzas of hymns of Tamil Bhaktas in his book "Poems of Experience. The Poetics of Tamil Devotion " (1987), where he partially applies this technique in analyzing the poetry of five early Tamil bhaktas: three Alvar poets and two Nayanars-the poet Kareikkal Ammeyar and the poet Manikkavasahar.

The methodology in question is based on the theory proposed by R. Jakobson (1981; 1975). This is the theory of the six functions of a verbal event (and in the case under study, the verbal event is a hymn stanza in the intended situation of its performance by the poet), which combines both linguistic and purely poetic characteristics. Moreover, speaking about some linguistic characteristics of stanzas, we can approach the identification of some elements of psychology, the state of consciousness of the poet.

Jacobson outlines six attitudes and functions of a verbal event:

1) installation on the sender-addressee (in particular, the transmission of his emotions), which corresponds to the emotive function;

2) installation on the addressee (the desire to cause a certain state in him), corresponding to the conative function;

3) installation on the message (installation on its form) - a poetic function;

4) installation on the language system - a metalanguage function (of course, it is not mentioned in the analysis of hymn stanzas);

5) attitude to reality - referential, otherwise denotative or cognitive function;

6) contact setting is a phatic function [Yakobson, 1975, pp. 193-230].

6 The literature of the "Sanga era" consists of the earliest monuments of Tamil literature, approximately dating from the period from the first to the fifth centuries AD.

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As an example, I analyzed the stanzas of the poet Sambandar, who authored the largest number of padigams (384 in total) in the collection "Devaram". Depending on the manifestation / non-manifestation and the different "hierarchy" of the five functions of the verbal event in stanzas (we are not talking about the metalinguistic function here) the poet identifies 11 types of such verbal events. Here are some of them.

Most of Sambandar's stanzas are narrative - descriptive. They refer to the scheme already mentioned above: geographical name (description, epithets) - the place where Shiva resides (description, epithets). In such a verbal event, although it is addressed to the audience, the conative and phatic functions are usually not formally expressed, the emotive function is present, and the referential and poetic functions are especially emphasized. But at the same time, there are other types of stanzas where the hierarchy of functions differs markedly from the first type. For example:

The bhaktas who have directed their thoughts to Validayam, who live without parting from the great lord who has decorated the majestic head with datura flowers, do not know pain when [his] people praise by saying the appropriate [words], along with many bhaktas, sprinkling [the altar] with water from their palms and [scattering] blooming flowers! (I-3-1).

Here the addressee is not directly expressed, but it is known that it is the same audience of bhaktas, and the conative function, although not formally expressed, is present in the stanza. By exclaiming about the bhaktas who "directed the thought to Validayam", the poet means to say to the addressee: "direct the thought to Validayam, and you, like these bhaktas, will not know pain." In the utterance, the poet "draws" an example of what happens if you think about Shiva in Validayama, and also shows the addressee what ritual should be performed to praise god (by describing the actions of people in Validayama).

Example of another stanza from the same padigam:

Good as the cessation of karma [you will find], if you think [about it]! Think of the path that leads to Validayam, the towering one, removing the fetters that weigh down those who come to the world, the temple where the mighty one, holding weapons of fire in his hand, red, wearing ornaments, and loving lord, dwells with the goddess, when [he is] constantly praised by those who have no suffering! (I-3-3).

Here, in the presence of emotive, referential, and poetic functions, the pronounced conative and phatic functions attract attention. The addressee-poet wants to arouse in the addressee (who is another person - a bhakt or a potential bhakt) the desire for contact with Shiva in the place of Validayam ("think about the path..." verb 2 l. pov. nakl.). At the same time, the addressee also informs about the" benefit " of this action for the addressee ("good as the cessation of karma [you will find], if you think...").

There are a number of stanzas where the addressee (emotive function) is especially vividly presented as a carrier of a sense of community, brotherhood with other worshippers of Shiva. A typical example is padigam I-12, where the statement reflects the situation of a joint pilgrimage to a sacred place:

We will reach Mudugundrama, where worthy female dancers [and] many women [dance to] the sounds of the festival are dancing to the sound of the drum - the temple where the expert in the Vedas resides, sitting on a great young bull, crowned with a moon in his hair, and the owner of a red sacred body! (I-12-7).

The stanza can be considered not only as an expression of a common feeling-the desire to reach Mudugundram (where the addressee is both the poet and the bhaktas, which is conveyed by the verb in the form of 1 l. pl. ch.), but also as a call from the poet to the bhaktas, encouraging them to join him on the way to the sacred place (the meaning of the verb passes into the meaning of its form In this case, the utterance shows a conative function and, possibly, a phatic one - the poet's desire to establish contact with the surrounding audience in order to direct it to God.

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The next type of utterance of the poet is a generalized outpouring of his feelings for God and the place where he resides:

My heart feels nothing but the great god, who has a stream of water on his head, who dwells in Nindriyura, where there are experts in the sounds [of the Vedas], which resound to the music of the conch and drum that fills all directions of the world! (I-18-3).

The emotive function is emphasized here, while the conative and phatic functions are not formally expressed. Quite often there are examples of stanzas of this type, where the addressee includes many Shiva bhaktas in addition to the poet, and then the utterance takes on the character of a certain "communal manifesto" of bhaktas.:

Our thought knows nothing but the feet of our beloved, who dwells in Nindriyur, surrounded by rice fields, [Shiva], inaccessible to the knowledge of the god who swallowed the universe, and the god on the flower, when they argued who is [supreme]! (I-18-8).

Adhering to the main task of this article-to reveal the features of the relationship between the poet and the audience, an analysis was made of those stanzas where such a relationship is somehow reflected. Along with them, there are others (for example, containing direct appeals and requests to God), where formally the addressee is God (a conative function) and their focus on the audience is not externally expressed, but this does not mean that it is absent.

It is important to note that the actual poetic function in most stanzas of hymns is not given a primary place, unlike, for example, the verses of Sanga poetry and Sanskrit poetry, where the entire statement of the poet is reduced to this function. So, if we compare the stanzas of hymns with the stanzas of Sanskrit poetry, we can see the absolute dominance of the poetic function (installation on the form of communication) in the latter. This comparison was made by I. Peterson. She compared a Sanskrit poem from an 11th-century anthology with a stanza from the Sambandar hymn (I-39-1).:

"May the God of tangled hair grant you protection! During his crazy dance under the full moon in the twilight of the night, the golden mountain and the trees growing on it sway, as well as the moon and sun sway to the beat of him! It was as if the whole world had bowed its shining head in admiration, with its hair and earrings trembling! (from a Sanskrit anthology of the XI century).

Our Lord, who dwells in the blessed Vetkalama, anointed the body with ashes from the funeral pyres! When he, who is the end and beginning of all, dances to the loud sounds of the muzhavam drum, holding a bright fire in his hand, in the presence of the daughter of the mountains, the bubbling and foaming waters of the Ganges flow down the crescent moon! "(collection "Devaram", I-39-1) [Peterson, 1991, p. 28-29].

Both texts are devoted to the same topic - the description of the cosmic dance of Shiva. In the first text, it was important for the author, first of all, to cause aesthetic delight in the audience with his skill, witty poetic play (Mount Meru is likened to the bhakta's head bowed before the image of dancing Shiva, which, in turn, is likened to the whole world; the trembling earrings adorning this head are likened to the heavenly bodies, etc.), while the stanza Sambandar's book, "although rich in iconographic and sensual elements, is devoid of sophisticated poetic embellishments," and the author's goal is to create a "real" image of Shiva here and now in the mind of the listener (and perhaps initially in his own mind), so that the poet and the listener can have contact with God [Peterson, 1991, p. 28-29].

Therefore, I repeat, it can be argued that in the hierarchy of functions of a verbal event in the hymns of Tamil bhaktas, the poetic function as a whole does not occupy the highest position. In such stanzas, in my opinion, the conative and phatic functions become very important, although they are sometimes not formally expressed, since the statements of the bhakta are always directed at the addressee-God and the audience, receiving a certain "reaction" from them and establishing (maintaining) contact with them.

Thus, when analyzing the works of Tamil bhaktas, the vast material of which remains poorly studied at the moment (first of all, this concerns ote-

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It is necessary to pay special attention to the study of its interrelationships with the context. I hope that this article in some way indicates the direction of more detailed studies of bhakti poetry, which should still be undertaken.

list of literature

Alaev L. B. Southern India. Kommunal'ni-politicheskii stroi VI-XIII vekov [Communal and political system of the VI-XIII centuries]. Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2011.

Bychikhina L. V., Dubyansky A.M. Tamil Literature, Moscow, 1987.
Pavlova M. B. The role of the Tamil medieval poet Sambandar in strengthening Hinduism in the South of India. 2013. № 5.

Yakobson R. Lingvistika i poetika [Linguistics and poetics]// Structuralism: Pros and Cons, Moscow, 1975.
Cutler N. Songs of Experience. The Poetics of Tamil Devotion. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University press, 1987.

Jakobson R. Linguistics and Poetics// Style in Language / Ed. by T.A. Scbcok. Cambridge, Mass., 1960; To же: Selected Writings. Vol. III. The Hague-Paris -New York. 1981 (in Russian: [Yakobson, 1975]).

Periya Puranam. Panniru Tirumucaipatippu niti veliyitu № 19. Ccnnai. 1970.

Periya Puranam / Ed. N. Mahalingam, Sri Ramakrishna Math. Madras: Mylaporc, 1985.

Peterson I.V. Lives of the Wandering singers: Pilgrimage and Poetry in Tamil Saivitc Hagiography // History of Religions. 1983. Vol. 22. № 4.

Peterson I.V. "Poems to Siva": The Hymns of the Tamil Saints. Delhi, 1991.

Tevaram. Hymnes sivaites du pays tamoul / Ed. etablie par T.V. Gopal Iyer; sous la direction de F. Gros. Vol. 1. Nanacambandar. Pondichcry: Publications de l'Institut Francais d'indologic. 1984. № 68(1).

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