Preface
Seeing through Texts: Doing Theology among the Śrīvaişnavas of South India is about the Tamil language songs of Śațakõpan in the 9th century, about the commentaries on those songs by the ācāryas learned teachers of the Śrīvaişņava Hindu tradition in the 12th-14th centuries, and about how to do theology there, among poets and teachers, at the end of the 20th century.
The beginnings of this book go back almost fifteen years, when I first studied Tamil and started to read the songs of the Tamil Vaişņava saints, the älvārs. Other projects intervened, and this project itself divided into smaller tasks: reading and trans-lating the 1102 verses of Tiruvaymoli; learning to follow the subtle and rich style and thought patterns of Śrīvaişņava com-mentary in its several, intermingled languages; visiting Madras for extended stays in 1982-3 and 1992-3; finding my way, as much as possible, into the Śrīvaişņava community, listening, watching and learning, making friends, finding some bound-aries that could not be crossed; discerning my theme, purpose and audience in the process of writing and rewriting; learning how to teach and do theology at home. Taking all this time has, I hope, worked out for the better: "to see through"-to pay attention, to clear a way, to become a skeptic but then to learn to take another look; to see by way of what people say and do and write this is not a simple process, it ought to take time.
Seeing through Texts is in some ways a sequel to Theology after Vedanta (SUNY, 1993), even though it need not be read in conjunction with that book. Like that earlier work, Seeing through Texts seeks to balance Indological, comparative and theological commitments, trying to make them flourish together instead of just compete for attention. The goal has been to read some ancient devotional hymns and the commentaries on them in a way that opens into the wider set of concerns that occupy us today when we do comparative study and think about things religious. It seeks to be substantive, concerned about what is
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