New Donation – South Indian Temple Photographs

For this week’s blog, we’re delighted to share some exciting news about our collections. Professor Christopher Fuller, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, has generously donated a small but remarkable collection of material relating to Hindu temples in Tamil Nadu, South India, especially the Minakshi Temple in Madurai.

Professor Fuller is a leading scholar of Hinduism and Indian society, including the relationship between religion and politics in India. Beginning in the 1970s, he conducted extensive research in the great Minakshi Temple in Madurai, Tamil Nadu – a vibrant and historically significant temple dedicated to the widely worshipped Hindu goddess Minakshi, often portrayed in Tamil literature as a warrior queen, and her consort Sundareshwara, a form of the great god Shiva.

The core of the collection consists of more than 300 photographs taken by Professor Fuller during his fieldwork between 1976 and 1988, and in 1994-95. Most of the 1976-88 photographs show the elaborate processions in annual temple festivals, including the decorated images of the deities, the priests and other temple officiants, and the watching devotees. The collection also includes striking views of temple architecture, notably the colourful and intricately carved gopurams of the Minakshi Temple.

The 1994-95 photographs include images of a special ceremony to award training certificates to priests and of a kumbhabhishekam, also known as the renovation ritual, at a small temple at which Minakshi temple priests officiated. There is also a set of photographs documenting the Minakshi temple’s own major renovation ritual in 1995. Although renovation rituals should be held every twelfth year, they have often been delayed in the Minakshi Temple for political reasons, which makes this visual record of a fairly rare event especially valuable.

Alongside the photographs there is also a small amount of textual material relating to the temple, including printed festival programmes and priests’ registers in Tamil issued by the temple administration. Together, these materials provide a fuller picture of temple ritual and administration, and priestly organisation. There are also genealogical charts for the priests drawn by Professor Fuller.

So, the above is really just a quick overview of the material, which I hope would spark some interest in you. In the coming months we’ll work closely with Professor Fuller to get the material properly catalogued, before making them accessible for public research. We hope to be able to share more updates as this work progresses, so watch the space!

We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Fuller for this generous donation. For those interested in exploring his scholarship further, two of his books Servants of the Goddess (1984) and The Renewal of the Priesthood (2003) – both focused on the Minakshi Temple and its priesthood – are available to consult in our Library.