Religion and the emergence of print in colonial India: Arumuga Navalar’s publishing project

Abstract

This article offers one of the first scholarly analyses of the impact of print on religion in India in the middle of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the publishing project of Arumuga Navalar, one of the most important authors and editors of Tamil Shaiva works. I examine the details of some of Navalar’s key publications, especially his 1852 prose rendition of the Tamil Shaiva classic Periya Puranam. This work was part of Navalar’s effort to make Shaiva canonical texts, traditionally composed in verse, more widely accessible. He employed prose and print to defend established Shaiva caste and ritual practices; to respond to Christian critiques of Hinduism; and to marginalise Shaiva voices that questioned caste or engaged in ritual innovation. I argue that in nineteenth-century South India, print served as an effective tool to disseminate messages of established religious interests.