Embodying the Spirit (meyppāṭu): A puttiṇai Perspective
Religions January 24, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3390/rel16010024 via DOAJ
Summary
The early Tamil concept of meyppāṭu is explained as a form of action that involves embodying a spirit, appearing in ordinary emotions, love at first sight, theatrical emoting, and spirit possession. Using the personaic triad (mūviṭam) from puttiṇai theory, the analysis traces meyppāṭu across primal community, state society, and industrialist state. In the primal world (viḻuttiṇai), it supported a love-based lifeway benefiting humans and other beings. Reviving this understanding is argued as necessary to end the current Anthropocenic industrialist lifeway threatening disaster.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The early Tamil idea of meyppāṭu as embodying spirit, understood through puttiṇai theory, once sustained a love-based lifeway in primal communities that is now needed to counter the Anthropocenic industrialist crisis. |
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.