You are here: SriPedia - Oppiliappan - Archives - Dec 2007

Oppiliappan List Archive: Message 00053 Dec 2007

 
Dec 2007 Indexes ( Date | Thread | Author )
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]


Dear friends,

The way a community conducts its wedding ceremony, and
holds celebrations, can reveal quite a lot about its
cultural past, present and future. To a really
discerning witness, simply following how a wedding
event takes place can be an object lesson in social
anthropology and history. The grand wedding I held in
Los Angeles -- at which to be a family-guest I had
happily chosen to travel thousands of miles -- the
wedding was, for me at least, a lesson of sorts,
though I confess I am an historian or anthropoligst of
only the pedestrian sort.

To me my cousin Sow Kavita Cande's ("KandhAdai")
wedding in LA seemed to mirror, more or less
accurately, what I fancifully choose to describe as
the "State of the SriVaishnavite Union" (a
parliamentary expression borrowed from the rather
beleaguered and eroded institution of the American
Presidency circa 2007). If I could study closely and
draw some lessons and conclusions from the wedding
proceedings, I thought to myself, I could perhaps also
prepare and deliver (privately to myself more than to
anyone else) a kind of presidential "state of the
union" address summing up the state of the
SriVaishnavite society or community at large as it
lives and breathes today.     

                   ***************

In the "State of the SriVaishnavite community" (I
hesitate to call it "Union" for reasons that will be
obvious to the well-informed), the marriage event in a
family was always the product of what may be called
two great Forces. These two Forces, on the one hand,
acted harmoniously together and yet, at times, seemed
to be severely opposed to or even mutually exclusive
of each other. I call the forces "Force 1" and "Force
2".

"Force 1" is the force of strict, solemm religious
(ritualistic) tradition. "Force 2" is what I call the
secular force. 

The first Force looks upon the purpose of a wedding
ceremony as primarily sacrosanctifying a human
contract between bride and groom and their respective
families where each commits to the other a lasting
lifetime bond. So the emphasis here is always on
strict and extensive adherence to age-old Vedic rites
and customs of the wedding altar viz.: the
"vivAha-sUtrAs" that solemnized weddings.

The second Force, on the other hand, being rather
secular in outlook regards weddings as primarily an
occasion for individual celebration and communal
festivity. The emphasis here is far less on ritual and
far more on creating a happy and memorable occasion
for social or familial bonding. 

While "Force 1" is keen to stress upon the purely
ritual content of the wedding as the main purpose of
the event, Force 2, on the other hand, is keen to
stress upon fun and frivolity to be the chief purpose
of the occasion. While the first Force seeks to add an
air of stern 'gravitas' to the wedding ceremony, the
second Force seeks to create an all-round atmosphere
of light-heartedness, romance and 'joie-de-vivre' for
the occasion.      

                  ***************

The 2 forces both harmonize and collide with each
other. When they harmonized, they produced some of
sentimentally the most beautiful and symbolically the
most powerful of wedding sacraments that have been
observed, practised and handed down the centuries in
our rich and ancient culture. But when they collided
with each other they ended up encroaching upon each
other's rightful space on the sacramental platform of
a typical SriVaishnavite marriage; and the result
either was all the romance and fun going out of a
wedding event or else, the wholesale abandonment of
age-old marriage rites and customs as being too
"meaningless", "outdated" or "irrelevant".      

There are a number of sequences, for example, in the
SriVaishnavite wedding-event that are true testimony
to that beautiful blending of strict religious ritual
and lively romantic sentiment which we may indeed
describe as the perfect harmonizing of Force 1 and
Force 2, so to say. The "maalai maathal" (exchange of
garlands between bride and groom), "oonjal" (the
bridal swing ceremony), "maapiLai-azhaippu" and
"kaasi-yaathirai" ("the groom sulking off in huff to
Kasi on a pilgrimage and being entreated back to the
wedding-altar by the bride's family") etc. are all
wonderful examples of stern ritual tradition and
frivolous social gaiety co-habiting happily on the
sacramental platform of SriVaishnavite matrimony. IN
these sequences, it is not solemn and sacred "vaideeka
mantras" alone (being chanted by the officiating
brahmin-priests) that are central to the proceedings
but equally high in profile and significance are the
charming songs, dance and romantic frolicking (engaged
in by family ladies, guests and children) that are
also attendent on the same event.         
                  *************

Historically and traditionally, it was gender that
divided the proponents of Force 1 and Force 2 amongst
the SriVaishnavite community.

While the menfolk were 


                  (to be continued)
             ***************************

dAsan,
Sudarshan 














Warm Regards,
Sudarshan

" A life is perhaps worth nothing; but nothing certainly is worth as much as 
life". 
(Andre Malraux)


      Forgot the famous last words? Access your message archive online at 
http://in.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php



Oppiliappan Koil Varadachari Sadagopan
http://www.sadagopan.org  
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Oppiliappan/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Oppiliappan/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:Oppiliappan-digest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    mailto:Oppiliappan-fullfeatured@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    Oppiliappan-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index ] [Thread Index ] [Author Index ]
Home Page
http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia
oppiliappan-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To subscribe to the list