PART-2: HERMENEUTIC
THEORIES:
2.1 HERMENEUTICS AND PSYCHOANALYSIS:
The agama school are very rich in
phenomenology and psycho-analysis. Unfortunately this aspect is not known to
most Tamils and Saiva onlookers. It is possible psychoanalysis was practiced in
tamilagam 1000years ago. I have tried to bring them to the fore front.
Books like sivagnana siddhiar are very
rich in this aspect. A full area of research on agamic psychology is underway
in Malaysia by Prof.K.Loganthan (Univ.Sans.Malay-Penang)[i].
The process of hermeneutics is not new in tamil.
Tolkapiam a grammar book written in the 5th century CE calls it “
nool neri”நூல்நெறி. This means
already the process of uncovering hidden meanings of the earlier texts was
happening in tamil literary history.
Agamic psychology may benefit modern
psychiatry too. There could be difference of opinion in this matter especially
with the core ontologists[ii] of saivism. However I
have received good responses from the psychiatry circles. I leave it to the
readers to make their own impressions.
The term hermeneutics originally refers to the
biblical elucidation and analysis . It was first used by Freidreich
Schleiermacher in the early nineteenth century. It was further developed by
Thomas Dilthey, Martin Heidegger in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. In modern times it is actively worked by H.G.Garderner, E. Belli,
Michael Foucalt, J.Lacan, and Jacques Derrida[iii].
Hermeneutics is concerned with “uncovering hidden
meanings that are beneath an explicit memory”. Hermeneutics is an important sub
discipline European philosophy. It is deals with the individual meanings
produced in a specific instance of discourse. It also deals with the
methodology by which the meanings are extracted.
Behavior, verbal expressions, and experiences are
inherently symbolic. Our writings and literature hence contain the
psychologically deeper meaning in them. Hence ancient classical texts have
hidden meanings. Language like Tamil hence is a treasure trove of such symbolic
meanings in their long tradition of literature. In that context our ancient
epics, anthologies are capable of being interpreted for hidden meanings.The
explicit memories and their meanings are not transparent. But they are
interpretable as conveying meanings that lies underneath[iv].
It is also
theorized that psychoanalysis as a kind
of hermeneutics of the mind. The progress of hermeneutics into a full- fledged
science is increasingly explored in
philosophy, psychology, literary and sociology circles[v].
In my work I take up the saiva siddhantham for hidden
meanings. Hermeneutic aspects of saivism are very fascinating and we shall see them one by one.The religious
practices of Hinduism and saivism in particular have enormous symbolism. The
temple art and the “puranic” stories are very salient examples.
The Siva puranam and linga puranam have a lot of
symbolisms. The idols and the iconography of saiva temples are inherent with
symbolisms. Notable amongst them are the images like gajasamharar,
kalabairavar, pitchadanar, rishabarudar, dhakshinamoorthy, annamalaiyar,somaskandhar…etc.
The place names in Cauvery delta are also has many
symbolic connotations. Pull-riku-vell-ur(vaidheeswarankovil), kazhumalam
(seer-kazhi[vi]),
thiru- kudamukku[vii],
karuvoor, thiru-avadu-thurai…etc. Each place has a story and an unconscious symbolism beneath
that. Each idol has a meaning and a story behind it. Each temple has a
mythology and a philosophy underneath.These are examples for the need for
hermeneutics within saivism. This extends to the temple formation itself.
Temple structures themselves contain the hidden
meanings. The core philosophy is
symbolized and made into the pattern of temple. Repeated and stereotype of
temples with the some basic pattern tells anyone who see them there could be a
idea behind these. The temple culture
as a whole in cholamandalam gives us the need for observing them and go into
their hidden meanings of the ancient people who constructed and imparted into
them. Study of the
literature,iconography,temple styles and rituals are hence a fertile field for
hermeneutic research.
Ironically the hidden themes within the saiva tenets
themselves were in search of the hidden themes of their earlier agamic texts.
The siva agamas –especially th gnana kandam chapters contain the philosophical gist
of the agama works. These gnana kandam were studied and their meanings were
extracted into the saiva siddhantha texts.
The saiva siddhantham itself is an hermeneutic work and we are studying
their deeper meanings in the light of our modern understanding of
psycho-analysis. This is the surprising
feature in my quest for the understanding of the saiva tenets[viii].
The Vedas contain stray mentions
about the pathi-pasu-pasa relationships ( 3000-1000 BC). This concept is
elaborated more in the gnana kanda of
the siva agama( 100-500AD). The
pathi-pasu pasa concept is basically a psycho-genetic, psych- analytic,
psych-structural and psych-dynamic basis within the vedhas and the agamas.
These issues were taken in a more
pronounced and exclusive way in the saiva
siddhantham( 500-1000AD). The tamil
stream of saiva -sastras contain them in it( 1000-1400AD). These are further
explored and the analytic, object relationship, defence mechanisms and the
therapy are detailed in the sastra texts
in tamil. Even in the recent 12th world saiva conference ( held at Annamalai
university-2008) the basic structure of the conference as
“veda-agama-purana-thirumaurai-sathira” meet. This highlights the continuity
among the historical philosophicl continuity amongst them.
The pandara texts and the Bashyams of the siddhantha tradition(1500-1900 AD)
have even more expanded the psychotherapy aspects in them. This is a systematic
process of bringing out hidden themes of the
psyche. Hence from vedic times to modern
time there is a hermeneutic process
underneath the siddhantha tradition. Now I venture into the comparison of the
modern psychoanalytic theories in them –which I call it as my hermeneutic
effort.
[ii]
As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest
this formulation of what ontology is, so it's only a first approximation. Many
classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology: the question whether
or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of universals, etc..
These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or
not a certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists. But ontology is usually
also taken to encompass problems about the most general features and relations
of the entities which do exist. There are also a number of classic
philosophical problems that are problems in ontology understood this way.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/ retrieved on 12.2.2013.
[iii]
http://international-journal-of-axiology.net/articole/nr7/art11.pdf(
hermeneutics essays by Teodor
NEGRU,Piatra Neamt, RomaniaGadamer-Habermas Debate andUniversality of
Hermeneutics)
[iv]
The term hermeneutics covers both the
first order art and the second order theory of understanding and interpretation
of linguistic and non-linguistic expressions. As a theory of interpretation,
the hermeneutic tradition stretches all the way back to ancient Greek
philosophy. In the course of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, hermeneutics
emerges as a crucial branch of Biblical studies. Later on, it comes to include
the study of ancient and classic cultures.With the emergence of German
romanticism and idealism the status of hermeneutics changes. Hermeneutics turns
philosophical. It is no longer conceived as a methodological or didactic aid
for other disciplines, but turns to the conditions of possibility for symbolic
communication as such. The question “How to read?” is replaced by the question,
“How do we communicate at all?” Without such a shift, initiated by Friedrich
Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, and others, it is impossible to envisage the
ontological turn in hermeneutics that, in the mid-1920s, was triggered by Martin
Heidegger's Sein und Zeit and carried on by his student Hans-Georg
Gadamer. Now hermeneutics is not only about symbolic communication. Its area is
even more fundamental: that of human life and existence as such. It is in this
form, as an interrogation into the deepest conditions for symbolic interaction
and culture in general, that hermeneutics has provided the critical horizon for
many of the most intriguing discussions of contemporary philosophy, both within
an Anglo-American context (Rorty, McDowell, Davidson) and within a more
Continental discourse (Habermas, Apel, Ricoeur, and Derrida). http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/
Augustine who first introduces the
universality-claim of hermeneutics. This claim arises from the connection
Augustine establishes between language and interpretation, but also from his
claim that interpretation of Scripture involves a deeper, existential level of
self-understanding.
…………in his engagement with
specifically hermeneutic issues such as the proper authorship of certain
pseudo-Aristotelian texts. Presupposing the relative unity of an author's work,
Aquinas questions the authenticity of these texts by comparing them to the
existing Aristotelian corpus, thus anticipating a critical-philological
procedure that would later emerge as a crucial aspect of Friedrich
Schleiermacher's notion of grammatical interpretation. This, however, is not
the only point of contact between medieval philosophy and modern hermeneutics.
Another such junction is the way in which medieval interpretations of Sacred
texts, emphasizing their allegorical nature rather than their historical roots,
are mirrored in Gadamer's attempt to rehabilitate the hermeneutic relevance of
the allegory.
….Martin Luther's sola scriptura
that we see the dawn of a genuinely modern hermeneutics. Following Luther's
emphasis on faith and inwardness, it was possible to question the authority of
traditional interpretations of the Bible in order to emphasize the way in which
each and every reader faces the challenge of making the truths of the text her
own. Our understanding of a text does not consist in a faithful adoption of the
predominant or authorized readings of the time. It is up to the individual
reader to stake out her own path to the potential meaning and truth of the
text. Reading now becomes a problem in a new way.
….Giambattista Vico, the author of the Scienza
nuova (1725), is another central figure in the development of early modern
hermeneutics. …..Vico argues that thinking is always rooted in a given cultural
context. This context is historically developed, and, moreover, intrinsically
related to ordinary language, evolving from the stage of myth and poetry to the
later phases of theoretical abstraction and technical vocabularies. To
understand oneself is thus to understand the genealogy of one's own
intellectual horizon. This grants a new urgency to the historical sciences.
Moreover, it offers a model of truth and objectivity that differs from those
entertained by the natural sciences. The historian does not encounter a field
of idealized and putatively subject-independent objects, but investigates a
world that is, fundamentally, her own. There is no clear distinction between
the scientist and the object of her studies. Understanding and
self-understanding cannot be kept apart. Self-understanding does not culminate
in law-like propositions. Appealing to tact and common sense, it is oriented
towards who we are, living, as we do, within a given historical context of
practice and understanding.
….In the seventh chapter of the Tractatus
theologico-politicus (1670), Spinoza proposes that in order to understand
the most dense and difficult sections of the Holy Scriptures, one must keep in
mind the historical horizon in which these texts were written, as well as the
mind by which they were produced. There is an analogy, Spinoza claims, between
our understanding of nature and our understanding of the Scriptures. In both
cases, our understanding of the parts hinges on our understanding of a larger
whole, which, again, can only be understood on the basis of the parts
…….In his Einleitung zur
richtigen Auslegung vernünftiger Reden und Schriften (1742), Chladenius
distinguishes hermeneutics from logic, but also elaborates a typology of points
of view. Attesting to the legacy of Leibniz and Wolf, the so-called School
Philosophy, the focus on the different points of view enables Chladenius to
explain how variations in our perception of phenomena and problems may cause
difficulties in our understanding of other people's texts and statements. At
stake is not really a historical methodology in the modern meaning of the term,
but a didactic and cognitively oriented procedure of interpretation. In order
to understand what, at first, might look strange or obscure—and Chladenius
outlines a whole catalogue of different obscurities—one ought to take into
account the tacit and pre-reflective assumptions characterizing the point of
view from which the problematic text or statement was brought forth.
On the one hand, there is an
interest in the human sciences and a willingness to defend the integrity of
these sciences as distinct from the natural sciences. On the other hand, there
is a deep concern with the problem of making sense of the texts handed over to
us from the past. These are the twin pillars on which modern hermeneutics is
built. For, strictly speaking, it is only at the point where these two
orientations merge and mutually inform one another that we encounter the first
attempts at articulating a genuinely philosophical hermeneutics. This happens
in the period of German romanticism and idealism. Herder, the Schlegel
brothers, and Novalis are all important in this context. So, too, is the
philosophical background provided by Kant and Hegel. Yet it is Friedrich
Schleiermacher who first manages to pull together the intellectual currents of
the time so as to articulate a coherent conception of a universal hermeneutics,
a hermeneutics that does not relate to one particular kind of textual material
(such as the Bible or ancient texts), but to linguistic meaning in general.
The structure of history, Ranke
argues, echoes the structure of a text in so far as it consists of a particular
kind of co-dependence between parts and whole. Like reading, understanding
history means moving along the paths of the hermeneutic circle, from part to
whole and back again. Because the historical mind is itself situated in
history, there is, however, no end to this circular movement. History cannot,
as the Hegelians had been arguing, be conceptualized, once and for all, by
speculative philosophy. Understanding history is an ongoing activity. This,
however, does not make it superfluous as a science. In our effort to understand
history, historical life is brought to consciousness about itself. Doing
historical work means actively participating in the cultural tradition that is
being investigated; it means being historical in the most emphatic way.
Like Ranke, Droysen is interested in
the methodology of the historical sciences. Trying to break free from the
idealistic tradition to which Ranke still adhered, Droysen makes the case for a
theory of history that, like the methodology of the natural sciences, has less
to do with the object of study (history or nature) than with the manner in
which the study is carried out. The natural sciences uncover universal natural
laws. The historical sciences are sciences of understanding. Unlike the
scientist of nature, the historian is separated from the object of study by the
ever-renewed and self-renewing tradition. Her object is always mediated. Yet in
understanding history the researcher also understands something that is
ultimately her own, the outcome of human freedom, goals, and desires. At the
end of the day, it applies even for Droysen that history is intelligible and
meaningful—that the study of it permits a kind of objectivity that is different
from but still comparable to the one at stake in the natural sciences.
In Heidegger's view, hermeneutics is not a
matter of understanding linguistic communication. Nor is it about providing a
methodological basis for the human sciences. As far as Heidegger is concerned,
hermeneutics is ontology; it is about the most fundamental conditions of man's
being in the world. Yet Heidegger's turn to ontology is not completely
separated from earlier hermeneutic philosophies. Just as Vico had started out
with a critique of the Cartesian notion of certainty, so Heidegger sets out to
overthrow what he takes to be the Cartesian trajectory of modern philosophical
reason.With this turn towards ontology, the problems of philology become
secondary. Hermeneutics now deals with the meaning—or lack of meaning—of human
life: it is turned into an existential task.
After the publication of Being
and Time, Heidegger stops engaging with explicit hermeneutic issues (as
well as the terminology of understanding, interpretation, and the hermeneutic
circle). This aspect of his thinking, however, is taken up by his student,
Hans-Georg Gadamer.
Gadamer works within the
Heideggerian paradigm to the extent that he fully accepts the ontological turn
in hermeneutics. Yet he wants to explore the consequences of such a turn for
our understanding of the human sciences. This, Gadamer thinks, can only be done
if we leave behind the framework of romantic hermeneutics, both in its
Schleiermacherian and in its Diltheyan versions. Going back to Vico and the
neo-Aristotelian strands of early modern humanism, Gadamer wants to combine the
Heideggerian notion of the world-disclosive synthesis of understanding with the
idea of Bildung, of education in culture. This, by and large, is the
project of Wahrheit und Methode (1960), a work that Gadamer spent more than
30 years completing.
Human being, Gadamer argues, is a
being in language. It is through language that the world is opened up for us.
We learn to know the world by learning to master a language. Hence we cannot
really understand ourselves unless we understand ourselves as situated in a
linguistically mediated, historical culture. Language is our second nature
The force with which Truth and
Method came to shape the conjunctures of contemporary hermeneutics can only
be envisaged by taking into account how, over the past 40 years, the discussion
of philosophical hermeneutics has, by and large, been a discussion of Gadamer's
work.
One example is Emilio Betti.
Publishing his Teoria della interpretatione in 1964, Betti approaches
hermeneutics from a non-ontological point of view, explicitly connecting
himself to the legacy of Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Hermeneutics, for Betti,
should confine itself to the epistemological problems of interpretation, and not
try to engage with the deepest conditions of human existence. Speech and texts,
Betti argues, are objectified representations of human intentions. To interpret
their meaning is to breathe life into these symbolically mediated intentions.
This is possible because although the interpreter's individuality and the
individuality expressed in the text are constitutively different, the
interpreter may overcome her own point of view in order to get a grasp on the
meaning of the text. At issue is an attempt to re-create the original process
of creation: not in order to reach the psychological state or content of the
author, but to get at the true and only meaning of the text.
…..Similar aspirations lie behind
the criticism launched by Eric D. Hirsch in the second half of the 1960s.
Hirsch's major work, Validity in Interpretation (1967), attempts to
refute the central Gadamerian notion of the fusion of horizons. Like Betti,
Hirsch takes this idea to invoke a problematic epistemic relativism. Without a
concept of validation, he argues, no interpretation would be more plausible
than any other. Knowledge and objectivity would be impossible in the domain of
hermeneutics. But knowledge and objectivity, Hirsch thinks, is precisely what
defines the human sciences, even though these sciences are based upon
interpretation rather than explanation.
In a number of articles, Habermas
draws attention to what he takes to be the political naiveté of Gadamer's
hermeneutics. In Habermas's view, Gadamer places too much emphasis on the
authority of tradition, leaving no room for critical judgment and reflection.
Reason is denied the power of a critical, distanced judgment. What is needed is
therefore not just an analysis of the way in which we de facto are conditioned
by history but a set of quasi-transcendental principles of validity in terms of
which the claims of the tradition may be subjected to evaluation. Hermeneutics,
Habermas argues, must be completed by a critical theory of society.
It is important to realize how
Habermas's objections differ from those brought forth by Betti and Hirsch. As
opposed to Betti and Hirsch, Habermas does not claim that Gadamer's approach to
hermeneutics is completely mistaken. He argues, rather, that Gadamer ascribes
to hermeneutics an illegitimate kind of universality. Hence, the fundamental
problem with Gadamer's hermeneutics would not be solved by calling for a
hermeneutic method. The idea of a formal method is indeed convincingly
criticized by Gadamer. Instead, what is needed is an effort to work out an
adequate standard of validity, or what Habermas refers to as the
quasi-transcendental principles of communicative reason. Only thus may
hermeneutics, guided by the social sciences, serve the purpose of emancipation
and social liberation.
….Whichever line of argument one
finds more convincing, it is hard not to agree that both Gadamer and his
critics have gained from these encounters. And it is, it seems, the concessions
and the criticisms, the specifications and the revisions, that have made it
possible for a philosopher such as Paul Ricoeur to propose something like a
third way in hermeneutics, an alternative to both a merely epistemic
orientation in hermeneutics and to Gadamer's ontological questioning of the
distinction between facticity and validity in interpretation.
Indebted to psychoanalysis as well
as to the tradition of French semiotics, Ricoeur sets out to demonstrate that
there is no unbridgeable gap between ontological and critical hermeneutics.
Although the differences between the two are genuine, he proposes an
alternative that aims at unifying the most convincing aspects of them both.
Ricoeur agrees with Habermas and Apel that the hermeneutic act must always be
accompanied by critical reflection. Yet he does not find that this requires a
leaving behind of the field of tradition and historical texts. Thus Ricoeur
emphasizes how the text itself may open up a space of existential and political
possibilities. This dynamic, productive power of the text undermines the idea
of reality as a fixed, unyielding network of authoritative patterns of
interpretations.
……Here Derrida questioned the idea
of a continuously unfolding continuity of understanding. Meaning, he insisted,
is not based on the will to dialogue alone. Most fundamentally, it is made
possible by absence, by the relations of a word to other words within the
ever-evasive network of structures that language ultimately is. Our relation to
the speech of others, or to the texts of the past, is not one of mutual respect
and interaction. It is a relationship in which we have to fight against
misunderstanding and dissemination, one in which the focus on communality in
language provides but a harmful illusion. The ethics of hermeneutics, consisting
in the recognition of the possible truth of the other's point of view, tends to
cover up the way in which the other escapes me, the way in which the I
always fails to recognize the thou in its constitutive difference.
……Gadamer, on the other hand, argues
that Derrida's position—his rejection of every continuum of meaning, of an
orientation towards truth, and of a genuine communication—potentially harbors
indifference and that the focus on discontinuity and fragmentation resembles
the kind of thinking that he criticized, in the first part of Truth and
Method, as aesthetic consciousness. Precisely by emphasizing how the
subject may reach beyond herself in dialogical encounters with others does the
term Bildung, in Gadamer's view, allow for an ethical aspect of
hermeneutics, for a hermeneutics that may contribute to a political, rather
than an aesthetic humanism.
The ethical significance of
hermeneutics, particularly its resources for handling relativist challenges,
has been an important issue in the reception and exploration of hermeneutic
thought in Anglo-American philosophy. However, the main impetus for
appropriation and integration of hermeneutics with elements of the analytical
tradition has been meta-philosophical. The most influential exponent of this
development is Richard Rorty.
Gadamer is a lesser, but perhaps
more enduring, hero of Rorty's attempt to deconstruct the representationalist
paradigm in philosophy from within. As Rorty articulates his conversational, non-representationalist,
anti-methodological view of philosophy after epistemology, he turns precisely
to Gadamer's account of understanding. Philosophical conversation should not be
a search for commensuration, it should be, rather, hermeneutical. In relying on
this term, Rorty intends to appropriate Gadamer's description of understanding
as a fusion of horizons, as an event in which the subject is altered, rather
than a process over which she exerts methodological control.
Rorty's application of Gadamer for
his pragmatist, anti-ontological purposes, is, however, quite selective. For
instance, while Gadamer finds in Kant an essential source of liberating
anti-scientistic insight, Rorty unequivocally casts Kant as the arch villain of
representationalism and institutor of the scheme-content distinction. Another
measure of the distance between them is the difference between Rorty's avowedly
ethnocentric defense of liberal ideals, and Gadamer's notion of the
appropriation of tradition as a way of being responsive to reason.
Nevertheless, the contact points between Rortyan pragmatism and hermeneutics
are real and significant, not least expressed in the commitment to the idea of
philosophy as intellectual activity in the humanistic tradition.
….. dynamic, practical, educational
aspect of dialogue is an essential element of ontological hermeneutics, and
McDowell draws explicitly on it. McDowell aims to conceive of persons as
biologically embodied temporal creatures immersed in a shared world, yet
capable by nature of being responsive to reason and thus of becoming free
subjects. Thus he addresses, among other things, a central problematic of much
Anglophone philosophy of mind. A critical ingredient in McDowell's project,
however, is the idea of second nature. In virtue of their natural
capacities, creatures like us are potentially dialogical, that is, responsive
to reason. The development of second nature is precisely the realization of
this potential. McDowell, drawing on explicitly Aristotelian elements in
Gadamer's notion of reason, provides an original perspective on the
requirements of naturalism as he works out the nature of this transformation
into second nature in hermeneutical terms. McDowell focuses in particular on
the dialectical, organic relation between tradition and the subject who comes
at the same time to understand, to continue, and to renew that tradition. This
process can be regarded as an opening up of the space of reason. It is,
simultaneously, a realization of the subject's autonomy as a thinker and an
affirmation of the authority and openness of tradition. In McDowell's
conception, it provides a tool for understanding sensitivity to reason as a
realization of a potential inherent in biological nature.
……….Three common points of emphasis
are immediately salient: on a tight connection between understanding and truth;
secondly, on the interpenetration of our grasp of linguistic meaning and of
objective reality; and, thirdly, on the social nature of meaning and thought.
With regard to the first point, Davidson's approach to the nature of linguistic
competence has emphasized the constitutive role of the so-called principle of
charity in all interpretation. This principle has it that we understand each
other as speakers and agents principally and fundamentally in so far as we take
each other as rational agents, as, in McDowell's phrase, responsive to norms of
reason. For Davidson this means, among other things, that we take each other's
sincere utterances on the whole as true. This is an inevitable outcome of what
it is, as Davidson conceives it, to understand the language of another. While
Davidson is concerned to give an account of the nature of linguistic competence
that lets us specify the form of a semantic theory for a speaker, Gadamer seeks
to illuminate how it is that a concrete, temporally immersed and spatially
located individual may be open to, and understand, a point of view different
from her own. For Gadamer, as we have seen, this implies some kind of change or
movement, and here, too, in the fusion of horizons, the individuals grasp of
truth as something over and above her own particular perspective, turns out to
be the critical lever. For both Davidson and Gadamer, in spite of their
different theoretical interests, communication depends on our ability to see
the truth conveyed in the articulated point of view of another.
……..From different theoretical and
philosophical perspectives, then, Gadamer and Davidson both take positions that
break dramatically with the subjectivist tradition in modern philosophy, a mode
of thinking that, following Descartes, ascribes a deep epistemic and
ontological significance to the first-person perspective, the reflecting I.
Undoubtedly this is a key reason for their common relevance to philosophers who
are struggling to break away from traditional modern approaches to the problems
of validity, of knowledge and of mind-world relations.
….. This effective-history,
moreover, is dialectical—our reading of the early hermeneuticians, our
understanding of the potential inherent in their thought, is shaped essentially
by this very effective-history, which both separates us from them and makes
them understandable to us. Appreciating hermeneutics as a living tradition is
not, in the end, a matter of identifying a theory or a family of theories. It
is fundamentally a matter of perceiving a moving horizon, engaging a strand of
dialogue that is an on-going re-articulation of the dynamically historical
nature of all human thought.
Ramberg, Bjørn and Gjesdal, Kristin,
"Hermeneutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2014/entries/hermeneutics/>.
[vi]
Seerkazhi is originally called as kazhumalam. The name is mentioned
in the sangam texts like patinapalai. Here
karikalan was garlanded by the royal elephant and was chosen as the
king. The term kazhu-malam has metaphysical connotations. Kazhu stands for
“rinsing” and “malam “ for the anava,kanma and maya. The river here is called
as “kazhumalayaru”.
[vii]
Kumabakonam as it is called
now is mentioned as thiru-kuda –mukku.( kumbam is the Sanskrit word for kudam)
In the mythological deluge lord shiva came here and floated the pots containing
the germinal seeds of life. The pots met at this point and the seeds of life
were released for the life to flourish once again after the deluge. The deluge
is celebrated even now as mahamaham. Lords arrival in a boat along with the
sakthi is idolised in seerkazhi brahmapureeswarar temple and worshiped as
“thoniappar”. The deluge mythology is also seen in Sumerian, Biblical and
vedic.. mythology.
[viii] Shivagama Tantra Yoga
The tantric scriptures of shaivism are the shivAgamas. These along with the
vedas are considered the holy scriptures of the religion. Both vedas and Agamas
are blessed to us by the God shiva Itself, through the divines and sages. Like
the word veda indicate knowledge the root gam in the word Agama
indicate the dynamism. (Agama is interpreted as the one that
"arrived" from God). As the name indicate Agamas are the dynamism of
the supreme knowledge. It is the implementation or recipe for attaining the
Supreme Truth. If vedas are the science, Agamas are the engineering.
What does Agama tantras
have ?
Agamas elucidate four glorious parts/paths called padas. They are charya kriya yoga and GYAna
There are 28 shivAgamas. All of them have these four parts. The
order and the name change. (For e.g. in some of the Agamas it could be called
vidya pAda etc.) These four are the worship procedures prescribed for the
devotees.
- caryapAda details
the prAyashcitta vidhi
(atonement), pavitra
vidhi (purification), shivalinga
lakshaNam (qualification/characteristics of shivalinga), japamAlA, yogapaTTa lakshaNam
(characteristics of japamAla-rosary and yogapaTTam-used in yogic posture).
- kriyapAda
explains mantra uddAraNam
(elevation with mantras), sandhyAvandhanam
(twilight salutation), pUja,
japa, homas (worship, chanting, rites), samaya viSheSha nirvANa
AcAryAbhiSheka (initiations into the spiritual stages).
- yogapAda tells
about the thirty six tattvas,
tattveshvara, yama niyama Asana samAdi procedures.
- GyAna pAda
elucidates the characteristics of pati,
pashu, pAsha.
vEdAgama
Agamas, like vedas are the sources of almost all the philosophical doctrines
and the religious life of Hinduism in general and shaivism in specific. It
enunciates the nature of the Supreme as well as the way to get to It. Agamas
advocate the practical aspects (implementation aspects) of religious life and
regulations that would make the worship streamlined to produce the ultimate
benefit. So these have quite good elaboration of the rituals. These glorious
rituals could be the public worship performed at temples or the personal ones
performed at the residence. The rules of Agamas can be followed by any person
without bothering about caste, color, creed or sex. The core philosophy the
Agama tantras explain are about the three things pati, pashu, pAsha .
Some of the Agamas appear to put forth non-dualistic and some others the
concept of more than one "real" thing. vedas are called nigama and along with Agama, they are regarded as shR^iti. vedas are full of mantras and so are in the form of aphorisms, but the Agamas are in the form of discussion and so are available in the simple verse structure. Both vedas and Agamas were revealed to the world by the riShis from their spiritual vision.
Agama tantra source and
verses
The Agamas originated from the Supreme shiva's five faces, namely sadyojAta,
vAmadeva, aghora, tatpurusha, Ishana. There are two classifications
of Agamas. They are shivAgamAs and rudrAgamas
depending upon who the first propogator of the corresponding Agama
were (shivas or rudras). There are 10 shivAgamas and 18 rudrAgamas. These
Agamas form the basis of the worship of Lord shiva. These Agamas also have upAgamas - the supporting Agama tantra texts. These are 204 in count for the 28 Agamas. Some of the Agamas are said to be having trillions of verses. For example kAmika, sUkshma and sahasra Agamas. Lots of these texts have been lost out in the history. Many of the Agamas available today are not having all the parts in full. Some of the Agamas have only some of the pAdas available. http://www.shaivam.org/agama.htm
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