Embodying the Spirit (meyppāṭu): A puttiṇai Perspective

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.