Embodying the Spirit (meyppāṭu): A puttiṇai Perspective
Religions January 24, 2025 DOI: 10.3390/rel16010024 (opens in new tab) via DOAJ
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractThe author explains the early Tamil concept of meyppāṭu as a kind of action involving embodying the spirit, manifesting in ordinary emotional experience, love at first sight, theatre emoting, and spirit possession. Using the personaic triad (mūviṭam) from puttiṇai theory, the author outlines meyppāṭu across primal community, state society, and industrialist state. In the primal world (viḻuttiṇai), meyppāṭu ensured a love-based lifeway necessary for the wellbeing of people and non-human beings. The author argues this understanding is needed today to end the Anthropocenic industrialist lifeway that has brought humans and other beings to the brink of disaster.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | <i>meyppāṭu</i> <i>puttiṇai</i> <i>taṉmai</i> <i>muṉṉilai</i> <i>paṭarkkai</i> |
| Key finding | Argues that the early Tamil concept of meyppāṭu, understood through the personaic triad of puttiṇai theory, reveals a love-based lifeway in the primal world that is necessary to counteract the destructive Anthropocenic industrialist lifeway. |
Abstract
I explain the early Tamil idea of meyppāṭu as a kind of action, which consists of embodying the spirit, and show how it manifests itself in ordinary emotional experience, in love at first sight, in emoting in theatre, and in spirit possession. The analytical tool I employ is the concept of mūviṭam, or the personaic triad, the central concept in the theory called puttiṇai. Using this tool, I outline the idea of meyppāṭu in the primal community, in the state society, and also in the industrialist state, and show how the understanding of meyppāṭu in the primal world (what I have called viḻuttiṇai) ensured a love-based lifeway necessary for the wellbeing of the people and all the beings other than humans that were also part of that world, and why this understanding is necessary today to end the present Anthropocenic industrialist lifeway, which has brought humans and beings other than humans to the brink of disaster.