Performing Sonic textuality: a literary song ritual for the Goddess Kuṟatti

Abstract

A goddess, a mountain girl, Kuṟatti, with rutting elephants as earrings, features in many of the so-called “folk” and “literary” forms of pāṭṭu-song cultures of South India. In Tiruniḻalmāla, The Garland of the Sacred Shadows, considered one of the first tokens of pāṭṭu as meta-genre in Malayalam, Kuṟatti plays a central role in the final part of a long process aimed at purifying the god of Āṟanmuḷa. A rhythmic prose section describes Kuṟatti enacting a counter form of digvijayakrama, crossing geographical and religious boundaries. Once she reaches the temple of Kṛṣṇa Pārthasārati, a “garland” of thematically connected songs invite the goddess to listen, look, participate in the ritual that is taking place. The cadenced rhythm of each line, the concatenation of images create a spiralling effect culminating in the dance of Kuṟatti. In this apical moment, the goddess seems not only to dance, but also to watch herself dancing. How should we frame the multiplicity of the performing self within the context of a sensorial epistemology? How does the sonic dimension of this type of textuality shape the way the ritual dance took place? How do the registers of Tiruniḻalmāla as we see them in the dance of Kuṟatti codify different performative moments? How are we to understand the relationship between the dance and the travel? The talk will address these questions as way to gain new insights in how we think historically about song cultures of pre-modern period South India.