An Ornament for Jewels

In this companion volume to Singing the Body of God (Oxford 2002) Steven P. Hopkins has translated into contemporary American English verse poems written by the South Indian Srivaisnava philosopher and saint-poet Venkatesa (c. 1268-1369). These poems in three different languages - Sanskrit Tamil and Maharastri Prakrit -- composed for one particular Hindu god Vishnu Devanayaka the Lord of Gods at Tiruvahindrapuram form a microcosm of the saint-poet''s work. They encompass major themes of Venkatesa''s devotional poetics from the play of divine absence and presence in the world of religious emotions; the telescoping of time past and future in the eternal present of the poem; love human vulnerability and the impassible perfected body of god; to the devotional experience of a beauty that saves and to what Hopkins terms the paradoxical coexistence of asymmetry and intimacy of lover and beloved at the heart of the divine-human encounter. Moreover these poems form not only a thematic microcosm but a linguistic one embracing all three of the poet''s working languages. Like the remembered world of Proust''s Combray in the taste of madeleine dipped in tea or Blake''s World in a Grain of Sand we taste and see in this one particular place and in this one particular form of Vishnu various protean forms and powers of the divine and trace a veritable summa of theological philosophical and literary designs. Each translated poem forms a chapter in itself has its own individual short Afterword along with detailed linguistic and thematic notes and commentary. The volume concludes for comparative reasons with a translation of Tirumankaiyalvar''s luminous cycle of verses for Devanayaka from the Periyatirumoli. As much an argument as an anthology this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian studies comparative religion and Indian literatures.