Early Hindu Sectarian Printed Books: An Analysis of a Tamil Library

Abstract

On a trip to South India in the early 1850s, the German missionary Karl Graul collected a library of Tamil books. His library contains some of the first books that Tamils edited and published for Tamil audiences. This article analyses the Shaiva and Vaishnava works in this collection, arguing that in this early period of Tamil publishing, Tamil Hindus turned to print in part to counter Christian evangelisation. They edited and published texts previously transmitted on manuscripts, in order to build a corpus of Shaiva and Vaishnava printed books that would challenge the Christian monopoly of Tamil print. The article focuses on the editing activities and institutional affiliations of Tamil Shaiva editors, most importantly the prominent scholar Vedagiri Mudaliyar.