Arumuka Navalar (; 18 December 1822 – 5 December 1879) was a Sri Lankan Shaivite Tamil language scholar and a religious reformer who was central in reviving native Hindu Tamil traditions in Sri Lanka and India.
Navalar's birth name was Nallur Arumuka Pillai. He was born in a Tamil literary family, and became one of the Jaffna Tamils notable for reviving, reforming and reasserting the Hindu Shaivism tradition during the colonial era. As an assistant working for Peter Percival – a Methodist Christian missionary, he helped translate the King James Bible into the Tamil language. He established Hindu schools and published a press in order to publish reading materials for Hindu children to educate them on Hindu religion and also practice and rituals of Hindu religion. With his knowledge of Christian theological premises, Navalar became influential in creating a period of intense religious rivalry with Christian missionaries, defending Tamils and their historic religious culture in India and Sri Lanka, preventing large-scale conversions to Christianity.
He was one of the first natives to use the modern printing press to preserve the Tamil literary tradition. He defended Hindu Shaivism, calling it samaya (Observance, Religion) of "True Being" (sat, soul), and he used the same techniques to counter Christianity that Christian missionaries used against Hinduism. As part of his religious revivalism, in a manner similar to Christian mission schools, he built schools that taught secular and Hindu religious subjects. He is credited with finding and publishing original palm leaf manuscripts. He also attempted to reform Hindu Shaivism and customary practices in Sri Lanka, such as by showing Shaiva Agamas (scriptures) prohibit animal sacrifice and violence of any form.
Biography
Navalar was born in 1822 as Nallur Arumuga Pillai to a Hindu family in Sri Lanka. His family belonged to the Vellalar caste, which constitutes about 50% of the Tamil Hindus on the island nation. The Vellalars were related to farming., Quote: "Arumuga Navalar and Jnanaprakasha Muni belonged to the Karkatta Velala class" (p. 40). (For the legend on how Navalar's ancestor learnt Hindu texts and became accepted as learned in the Hindu community, and a part of Shaiva monastery tradition, see pp. 41–43) Historically, the Vellalars had been a part of the elites who owned lands, were literati, patrons of temples and monasteries. At the time of Navalar's birth, they were a part of the socio-political leadership in Jaffna Peninsula, a strip of land (40 by 15 miles) separated from South India by the Palk Strait. Navalar grew up in a literati Tamil Shaiva family.
Navalar's home was in the town of Nallur on the Jaffna Peninsula. The principal town Jaffna and the peninsula (as well as the West Coast and Eastern regions of Sri Lanka) were predominantly Tamil Saiva in culture distinct from that of the Sinhalese Buddhists elsewhere. It was closely linked to the Saiva culture of South India. It was also home to the Jaffna Kingdom that had patronised this culture before it was defeated by the Portuguese colonials in 1621 CE. Nallur was also the capital of the defeated kingdom.
Arumugam's father Kandharpillai was a Tamil poet and provided a foundation in Tamil literature to Arumuga Navalar. His mother Sivakami was known for her devotion to supreme Saiva deity Lord Siva. Arumugam studied the Indian classical language, Sanskrit as well as Tamil grammar. Arumugam studied English in a Christian mission run school as a day student. After his studies, he was asked to stay on at the Jaffna Central College to teach English and Tamil. The missionary school principal, Peter Percival employed him to assist in the translation of the King James Bible and other Christian literature into Tamil to further their missionary reach and objectives.
Navalar immersed himself in the study of the Bible as well as the Vedas, Agamas and Puranas. When he started his studies, he wondered whether Shaiva Hinduism or Christianity was the right path. After his studies, he became convinced that the Shaiva religious tradition in the Vedas and Agamas was the right path, and that the Christian path wasn't. Arumugam Navalar felt that Hindu Saivites needed a clearer understanding of their own ancient literature and religion. He continued to help the Christian missionaries but resolved to challenge the theological ideas of these missionaries, as well as launch reforms and spread the original ideas of Shaivism. Navalar left his job under Peter Percival that he had with the Wesleyan Mission, although Percival offered him a higher salary to stay on. He decided not to marry and relinquished his patrimony and did not get any money from his four employed brothers. From then until the end of his life, he and his projects were supported by those who believed in his cause.
Through his weekly sermons at Hindu temples, he also attempted to reform local Tamils of all practices that did not find sanction in the Hindu Vedas and Agamas. The lecture series and its circuit continued regularly for several years and produced a Saiva revival, helping informed piety grow among many Jaffna Saivas. This was a direct tactical response to confront what he called the "mockery" of the Hindus by Christian missionaries. During this period, he continued to assist Percival to complete the translation of the Bible, as well as his study of the primary texts of both Christianity and Hinduism. When there was a conflict as to Percival's version and another competing translation, Arumugam traveled to Madras to defend Percival's version. In 1848 he founded his own school and finally parted company with Percival. Navalar believed that the Christian missionaries should be viewed as a gift from Shiva to help awaken his community to discover their own dharma path (puram) from "which they had departed" and away from the path of the "barbaric Europeans" (purappuram), states Hudson.
Background information
Tamil people are natives in Tamil Nadu. Tamilakam (ancient Tamil country) had followers of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The Hinduism, Tamil and Sanskrit has been spread by priests, traders to Southeast Asia. By the 12th century CE, the Tamils had an extensive network of temples, religious literature and pilgrimage sites dedicated to Shaivism and Vaishnavism. Of these, the Shaiva samayam (religious tradition) was most influential in the Jaffna region. They held the Vedas and Agamas to be the bedrock of their beliefs. Navalar was born and raised in this background.
The 18th and 19th century Tamils in India and Sri Lanka found themselves in the midst of intrusive Christian missionary activity and their polemics against Hinduism. According to D. Dennis Hudson, Tamil Saivas opposed Christian missions from the earliest days, based on indirect literary evidence. Printing press was not available to the Hindus in colonial era South Asia, and the Shaiva community used their oral tradition and handwritten notes for anti-missionary literature. Once Hindus gained access to printing presses, they mass-produced religious literature to condemn Christian propaganda in Jaffna and Chennai (then Madras) in the same way that Christian missionaries had used mass-produced literature to attack Hinduism. Arumuga Navalar was one of the first Tamils who became adept at this information war, and to undertake as his life's career the intellectual and institutional response of Saivism to Christianity in Sri Lanka and India.
The 19th century Protestant missionaries from England and America in Jaffna believed that Hindu Shaivism was "evil" and in the struggle God and the Devil, they began to use publications such as The Morning Star to reveal the "falsity" of Hindu Shaivism and highlight texts such as the Skanda Purana in their schools for children. This angered the Shaiva community, who began their own efforts to counter the methods of the Christians.
Response to Protestant propaganda
In September 1842 two hundred Hindu men gathered at a Siva temple monastery. The group decided to open up a school to study Vedas and Agamas. The group also decided to start a press with the help of resident Eurasian Burghers. Arumugam Navalar who was part of the organisation wrote about the meeting in The Morning Star in a sympathetic tone.
While Arumugam Navalar was still working under Peter Percival and translating the Bible, he published a seminal letter in The Morning Star under a pseudonym in September 1841. It was a comparative study of Christianity and Hindu Saivism and targeted the weakness in the argument Christian missionaries had used against local Hindu Saiva practices. The missionaries had attacked the idol worship and temple rituals of the local Hindu Saivas as "devilish" and of "no value". Navalar, an avid reader of the Bible as he worked to translate it into Tamil, stated that Christianity and Jesus himself were rooted in the temple rituals of the ancient Israelites and that the reverence to the icons of Christianity such as the cross was akin to Shaiva's reverence for the icons of Hinduism such as the lingam. If Christians find their churches, rites and symbols as pedagogically useful, why shouldn't Shaiva Hindus have the same human rights and religious choices, argued Navalar. His letter admonished the missionaries for misrepresenting their own religion and concluded that in effect there was no difference between Christianity and Hindu Saivism as far as idol worship and temple rituals were concerned.
Circuit preaching
Using the preaching methods popularised by the Methodist preachers, he became a circuit preacher. His first secession was on 31 December 1847 at Vaitheeswaran Temple in Vannarpannai. It was a weekly event known as Prasangams on every Friday evening. In these secession he read from sacred texts and then preached in a manner that lay people understood. He was helped by his friend Karttikeya Aiyar of Nallur and his students from his school. The sermon topics were mostly ethical, liturgical, and theological and included the evils of adultery, drunkenness, the value of non-killing, the conduct of women, the worship of the linga, the four initiations, the importance of giving alms, of protecting cows, and the unity of God.
Emphasis on Agamas In his weekly sermons, he attacked Christians and criticized the benighted practices of local Hindus. He specifically reprimanded the trustees and priests of the Nallur Kandaswami Temple in his home town because they had built the temple not according to the Agamas a century ago as well as used priests who were not initiated in the Agamas. He also opposed their worship of Vel or the weapon representing the main deity as it did not have Agamic sanction.
Reformed school system The school he founded was called Saivaprakasa Vidyasala or School of Lord Siva's splendor. The school did not follow the traditional Tamil teaching system, in which each student worked on his own pace and the teacher pupil ratio was extremely low. Although this system produced stellar experts in subject matter but took too much labour and was inefficient compared to the western system used by the Missionaries. He developed his teaching methods based on the exposure he had with the Missionaries. He developed the curriculum to be able to teach 20 students at a time and included secular subject matters and English. He also wrote the basic instruction materials for different grades in Saivism. Most of his teachers were friends and acquaintances who were volunteers. This school system was duplicated later in Chidambaram in India in 1865 and it still exits. But the school system he founded in Sri Lanka was replicated and over 100 primary and secondary schools were built based on his teaching methods. This school system produced numerous students who had clearer understanding of their religion, textual foundations, rituals and theology.
Navalar title