[Reader-list] [Announcements] Truth and Words: A View from the Tamil Ramayana (Golden Jubilee Lecture by David Shulman)

[Praveen Rai]

*Centre for the Study of Developing Societies*
invites you to a Golden Jubilee Lecture

* *

* *

*Truth and Words: A View from the Tamil Ramayana***

by* **David Shulman*


* *

*Kunal Chakravarty* will Chair

Monday, 28 January 2013, 6.30 pm

Multipurpose Hall, India International Centre,

Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi



We tend to think that truth is a universal, independent of cultural
inflections; but this can hardly be the case. David Shulman argues that in
the south Indian world beautifully articulated by the 12th-century poet
Kamban, truth (mey, unmai) is only tangentially linked with knowledge. It’s
primary source lies in the spoken word, which has a life of its own and
exacts an existential cost from both speaker and listener. In addition to
this strong linguistic aspect, itself close to a Bhartrharian view of
language and meaning, true statements have an iconic structure; they can be
distinguished from mantric speech, on the one hand, and from false speech,
on the other, by the ellipses and gaps, with their emotional burdens, that
are always built into truth. He will show how Kamban thematizes these
issues in his Ayodhyakandam.

 David Shulman was trained at the School of Oriental and African Studies by
the great Tamilist John Marr. He is the Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic
Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has worked in the areas
of Telugu literature and history, the history of the Nayaka period, south
Indian historiography, and south Indian Saivism. His main interests lie in
the cultural history of southern India. In recent years he has been
captivated by Kudiyattam, the classical theater of Kerela, and is working
on a book about this remarkable tradition. He is active in the
Israeli-Palestinian peace movement and has written a book about this
work, *Dark
Hope*.
Kunal Chakravarty is Professor at Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University.


Praveen Rai
Academic Secretary
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road
Delhi - 110054
Phone: 91-11-23942199
Fax: 91-11-23943450
www.csds.in
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