Prof.

Sivathamby and Tamil literary culture Water will flow from a well in the sand in proportion to the depth to which it is dug, and knowledge will flow from a man in proportion to his learning .- Tirukkural This essay is dedicated to Prof. Karthigesu Sivathamby, internationally renowned Sri Lankan academic who was an authority on Tamil and whose demise at the age of 79 has created a void which is highly unlikely to be ever filled. True to the above quote from Tamil classic Thirukural, Prof.Sivathambys trailblazing academic career was a peerless one and his advice on matter of paramount importance in the field of Tamil language and literature was highly sought after by diverse members of the academia from diverse parts of the globe. It is not an exaggeration that no reputed international monograph on Tamil literature has been out without a quote from Prof. Sivathamby or without ever acknowledging his singular contribution to Tamil scholarship. Life and times of Prof. Sivathamby Prof. Karthigesu Sivathamby was born in Karaveddi in Jaffna and graduated from the University of Peradeniya. His areas of expertise spread over social and literary history of Tamils, culture and communication among the Tamils and Tamil drama and theatre. He has written and published over 70 books and monographs. He presented and published over 200 academic papers at international seminars and journals on the History of Sri Lankan Tamils and literature. In recognition of his singular contribution to Tamil language, Prof. Sivathamby was conferred upon the prestigious Thiru V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar Award by the government of Tamil Nadu in India. Prof. Sivathamby served as a visiting professor of Tamil for universities in India such as Jawaharlal Nehru University and the university of Madras. Among other things, he was instrumental in introducing the Drama and Theatre course of study to universities in Sri Lanka. He served as Emeritus professor of the university of Jaffna and visiting professor to prestigious universities such as Cambridge University and University of Finland. It is pertinent to examine, at least, briefly, the Tamil literary culture which is one of the major Asian literary cultures. Norman Cutler in an academic article entitled 'Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture' to the volume Literary Cultures in History, Reconstructions from South Asia, observes that Tamil Renaissance coincides with the development of a Dravidianist political agenda. Tamil literary culture The term Tamil Renaissance is often applied to the period in the latter half of the 19th century when Tamil literary culture was altered through the recovery, editing, and publication of the early Tamil classics. This period coincides with the development of a Dravidianist political agenda, popular among certain sectors of the Tamil population, that emphasied the antiquity of Tamil civilisation and most importantly, its essential independence from Sanskritic culture. K.Nambi Arooran observes that there was an intimate relationship between the Tamil Renaissance and the ways in which

Dravidianist sentiments aroseThe Dravidian ideologywas formulated partly if not largely on the basis of the ancient glory of the Tamils as revealed through literature. In a similar vein, K. Sivathamby writes It was Tamil literature, more than anything else, that was called into establish the antiquity and the achievements of the Tamils It therefore , comes as no surprise that Tamil literary histories, especially, some of the earliest , are informed by issues underlying the ongoing debates concerning the Dravidian roots of Tamil culture. It was M.S Puranalingam Pillai (1866-1974) who is considered as the Tamil scholar who wrote the first comprehensive survey of Tamil literature plotted as a historical narrative. It was first published in 1904 as A primer of Tamil literature which was subsequently revised and expanded under the title Tamil Literature. Puranalingam Pillai was a professor of English literature at Madras Christian College, and he intended his work to be used as a university text book. Norman Cutler points out that the story of Tamil literary history as he tells it is emphatically underwritten by a Dravidianist ideology. It begins with the first extent Tamil grammatical text Tolkappiyam, and the poems collected in the carikam anthologies. For Puranalingam Pillai, as for many like-minded scholars, this corpus lends credence to the view that Tamilnadu was the site of an early Dravidian civilisation that predated and flourished independently of the Aryan-dominated North. He interprets Tamil literature as largely as a record of the interaction between this civilisation and other cultural forces that entered Tamilnadu from the outside. Central to Puranalingam Pillais representation of Tamil literature are its antiquity, its vastness, and its high moral standards. Puranalingam Pillais history exhibits a number of features that are recognisable, though sometimes somewhat modified, in subsequent histories of Tamil literature. Most notably, he subdivides the literary field into chronologically ordered segments: (1) poems collected in carikam anthologies and the so-called eighteen shorter works ( Patinenikilkkanakku) (The Age of Sangams, up to 100C.E); (2) long narrative poems by Jain and Buddhist authors generically classified as Kaviyam in Tamil and often referred to as epic in English; (3) canonical poets of Tamil Vaisnava and Saiva poet-saints( The Age of Religious Revival, 600-1100 C.E); (4) works by court poets composed during the reign of the imperial Colas, the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta sastras, the most influential medieval commentaries on Tolkappiyam, Cilappatikaram, and Tirukkural, and the poems of the Tamil Siddha poets ( The Age of Literary Revival, 1100-1400 C.E) ; (5) late medieval poetry, much of which was composed and circulated in sectarian communities ( The Age of Mutts, 1400-1700 C.E); and (6) works composed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (The Age of European Culture, 1700-1900 C.E). This basic model is followed by many subsequent histories of Tamil literature, even if they may differ somewhat in specifics. Apart from Puranalingam Pillai, other notable Tamil scholar who wrote the history of Tamil literature was S. Vaiyapuri Pillai who wrote History of Tamil Language and Literature. Normal Cutler observes though there are fundamental differences between

Puranalingam Pillais work and Vaiyapuri Pillais work; Puranalingam Pillais narrative of Tamil literary history supported a Dravidian social and political agenda and Vaiyapuri provided a brief for the opposition in Tamil culture wars of the 1930s through 1960s, they share number of themes and concerns. They include a historicized perspective on Tamil literature; concern for relationship between Tamil and Sanskrit; concern for religious affiliations of texts and authors; a stand on the relevance ( or lack thereof) of Tamil literary legends to literary history; and a tendency to highlight certain great books as exemplary contributions of Tamil culture to world literature. ----------------------------09. Prof. Sivathamby and Tamil literary culture Part -2 In this essay I would like to further explore the salient works in Tamil literary culture and would, primarily, focus on Tirukkural. Tirukkural is made up of 1330 couplets on a wide range of themes relating to family life, society, asceticism, kingship and the protocol of love. There is no exact historical record concerning Tiruvalluvar, the supposed author of the book. According to the available information about Tiruvalluvar, he was a law-caste weaver. Diverse scholars conclude with conflicting dates for the Tirukkural. Kamil Zvelebil, proposes that Kural was composed during the 5th century CE. Some scholars were of the view that Tiruvalluvar was a Jain, a view fiercely contested by some other scholars. Since the text is virtually free of sectarian polemics, Tiruvalluvars religious identity is of secondary importance. The verses of Tirukkural are grouped in chapters ( atikaram) of ten verse of each and each chapter carries a title which is fairly obvious and identifiable of the theme or the topic in the constituent verses. The chapters are further categorised into three divisions with titles corresponding to three of the four aims of the man : ( Tamil urutipporul Skt purushartha); virtuous behaviour in the context of both house-holder life and a life of renunciation (aram), prosperity realised through life in the public sphere and good governance (Porul), and pleasure through amorous experience (Kamam or inpam ). Norman Cutler is of the view that some commentators further subdivided those three divisions into two or more subsections. Tirukkural as a classic The evidence of Tirukkurals stature as a classic, not only in modern times but also in the past, is considerable. There are ten premodern commentaries on the text, of which five are extant and five have been lost. Quotations from or allusions to Tirukkural are

found in other Tamil literary works , the most frequently cited being verbatim quotations of verses 55 and 360 in Manimekalai. Yet another indication of Tirukkurals long-standing eminence is a collection of 50 verses praising Tirukkural and Truvallauvar entitled Tiruvallauvamalai ( tenth century). Each verse is attributed to a different poet , including, in the early verses of the poem, a disembodied voice, the goddess of speech, Siva in his manifestation as the poet Iraiyanar, and many of the poem of legendary Tamil carikam. Scholars have tended to situate Tirukkural either as part of carikam corpus in the early period of Tamil literary history or in a succeeding post-carikam age. According to certain widely accepted versions of Tamil literary history, the earliest period of Tamil literary production, the carikam period which was dominated by a largely native Tamil aesthetic sensibility, was closely followed by an age characterized by a strong didactic bent, due at least in part to the influence of Buddhism and Jainism. The majority of the texts included in the traditional grouping of 18 shorter works, including Tirukkural, are assigned to this later period. Only one other text of the eighteen Nalatiyar, is said to be an anthology of verses by Jain monks-even remotely approaches Tirukkurals visibility among modern Tamil texts. The paradigms of eighteen shorter works post dates the composition of Tirukkural and the other texts including this group. The term first occurs in Peraciriyars 13th century commentary on Tolkappiyam. It also occurs in the other roughly contemporary commentaries on the ilakkanam texts Tolkappiyam and Viracoliyam (eleven century). The defining criteria for this grouping are purely formal, though most modern literary historians note the preponderance of texts among its group that fall within the category of ethical literature( Tamil nitinul). The term nitinul is attested as early as Parimelakars late 13th century commentary on Tirukkural, but this tells us little about texts stature as a distinctive literary work. One of the prominent facts about Tirukkural is that it is often located in an era when Buddhism and Jainism exerted overarching influence in the literary life of Tamilnadu and scholars such as Vaiyapuri Pillai postulated that the author of Tirukkural was a Jain. Against the backdrop of modern Tamil cultural nationalism, Tirukkural has acquired a pivotal position in the Tamil literary culture that supersedes any identification it, once, had with a Jain religious or cultural program. Virtually every religious community in Tamilnadu has a claim to Tirukkural and one may encounter strong resistance to the idea especially in certain non-Brahmin Saiva circles to the idea that the author of Tirukkural was a Jain. Norman Cutler points out that N. Subramanian, somewhat less polemically, locates the composition of Tirukkural in the framework of a liberalised Hinduism that was not adverse to incorporating ideas identified with other religious communities. Other scholars are inclined to emphaise the texts tolerance, eclecticism, and indeed its universality without attempting to assign it a specific religious affiliation. Valluvars religious affiliations

One of the contentious issues around Tirukkural is Valluvars religious affiliations. Some scholars concluded that the text transcends sectarianism. Norman Cutler observes, This tension can be traced to Tirukkurals career in Tamil cultural history. The text has, in various times and environments, been appropriated by spokespersons for one or another religious traditions. The most noteworthy example is found in the late-thirteen century commentary by the Vaisnava Brahmin Parimelalakar. Even if Vaisnava themes are not prominent in this, the most influential of several Old commentaries on Tirukkural, Parimelalakar unequivocally construes the overall plan of the text, as well as specific verses, in terms of Brahmanic paradigms. In recent times, however, Parimelalakars construction of Tirukkural has , often, been challenged , sometimes respectfully and sometimes adversely, in favour of other interpretations that downplay any strong association between Tirukkural and Sanskrit culture. For some scholars, the Kural expresses the values of an early Tamil civilisation characterised by a rationalist rather than a narrow sectarian sensibility , while for others it represents a unique experiment in ecumenicalism. The most pertinent query that might yield form this tension is how closely are religious sectarianism and literary culture intertwined? Cutler points out, On the one hand, carikam poetry is , often, described as secular; on the other, canonical poems of the Vaisnava and Saiva saints and the theological oriented commentaries on the Vaisnava poems were clearly produced in a sectarian context and have played a major role in the formation and maintenance of sectarian identity.