Shared Sanctities

Innovative chapters in Shared Sanctities stitching together maritime history, sacred geography, and memory with impressive ease. Tenavaram emerges not merely as a ruined shrine on the southern tip of the island, but as a cosmopolitan temple-city where peacocks from Sandesha poetry, merchants from Sumatra, Tamil Brahmins, Sinhala kings and Ming admirals all intersect. Hasini handles maps, Tevaram, chronicles and colonial violence without losing the lyrical, almost cinematic quality of her prose. Especially powerful is the tracing of Tenavaram’s afterlives — from Pancha Ishvaram lore to the blue god Upulvan and the half-forgotten lingam and Nandi that still haunts the site.

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“City of Gods” is one of the most evocative chapters in Shared Sanctities, stitching together maritime history, sacred geography, and memory with impressive ease.

Tenavaram emerges not merely as a ruined shrine on the southern tip of the island, but as a cosmopolitan temple-city where peacocks from Sandesha poetry, merchants from Sumatra, Tamil Brahmins, Sinhala kings and Ming admirals all intersect. Hasini handles maps, Tevaram, chronicles and colonial violence without losing the lyrical, almost cinematic quality of her prose. Especially powerful is the tracing of Tenavaram’s afterlives — from Pancha Ishvaram lore to the blue god Upulvan and the half-forgotten lingam and Nandi that still haunts the site.