Tolkāppiyam, also romanised asTholkaappiyam (Tamil:தொல்காப்பியம்listenⓘ ,lit. "ancient poem"[1]), is the most ancient extant Tamilgrammar text and the oldest extant long work ofTamil literature.[2][3] It is the earliest Tamil text mentioning Gods, perhaps linked toHindu deities.
There is no firm evidence to assign the authorship of this treatise to any one author. There is a tradition of belief that it was written by a single author namedTolkappiyar, a disciple of Vedic sageAgastya mentioned in theRigveda (1500–1200 BCE).
The surviving manuscripts of theTolkappiyam consists of three books (atikaram), each with nine chapters (iyal), with a cumulative total of 1,610 (483+463+664)sutras in thenūṛpā meter.[4][note 1] It is a comprehensive text on grammar, and includessutras on orthography, phonology, etymology, morphology, semantics, prosody, sentence structure and the significance of context in language.[4]Mayyon as (Vishnu),Seyyon as (Skanda),Vendhan as (Indra),Varuna as (Varuna) andKotṟavai as (Devi or Bagavathi) are the gods mentioned.[6]
TheTolkappiyam is difficult to date. Some in the Tamil tradition place the text in the mythical second sangam, variously in 1st millennium BCE or earlier.[7] Scholars place the text much later and believe the text evolved and expanded over a period of time. According to Nadarajah Devapoopathy the earliest layer of theTolkappiyam was likely composed between the 2nd and 1st century BCE,[8] and the extant manuscript versions fixed by about the 5th century CE.[9] TheTolkappiyam Ur-text likely relied on some unknown even older literature.[10] The Tolkappiyam belongs to second Sangam period.
Iravatham Mahadevan dates the Tolkappiyam to no earlier than the 2nd century CE, as it mentions thepuḷḷi being an integral part of Tamil script. Thepuḷḷi (a diacritical mark to distinguish pure consonants from consonants with inherent vowels) only became prevalent in Tamil epigraphs after the 2nd century CE.[11]According to linguist S. Agesthialingam, Tolkappiyam contains many later interpolations, and the language shows many deviations consistent with late old Tamil (similar toCilappatikaram), rather than the early Tamil poems ofEṭṭuttokai andPattuppāṭṭu.[12]
TheTolkappiyam contains aphoristic verses arranged into three books – theEluttatikaram ("Eluttu" meaning "letter, phoneme"), theSollatikaram ("Sol" meaning "Sound, word") and thePorulatikaram ("Porul" meaning "subject matter", i.e. prosody, rhetoric, poetics).[13] TheTolkappiyam includes examples to explain its rules, and these examples provide indirect information about the ancient Tamil culture, sociology, and linguistic geography. It is first mentioned by name in Iraiyanar'sAkapporul – a 7th- or 8th-century text – as an authoritative reference, and theTolkappiyam remains the authoritative text on Tamil grammar.[14][15][note 2]
The wordTolkāppiyam is a attribute-based composite word, withtol meaning "ancient, old", andkappiyam meaning "book, text, poem, kavya"; together, the title has been translated as "ancient book",[17] "ancient poem",[18] or "old poem".[19] The word 'kappiyam' is from theSanskritKavya.[20]
According toKamil Zvelebil – a Tamil literature and history scholar, Tamil purists tend to reject this Sanskrit-style etymology and offer "curious" alternatives. One of these breaks it into three "tol-kappu-iyanratu", meaning "ancient protection [of language]".[17] An alternate etymology that has been proposed by a few purists is that the name of the work derives from the author's name Tolkāppiyan, but this is a disputed assumption because neither the author(s) nor centuries in which this masterpiece was composed are known.[17]
The dating of the Tolkappiyam is difficult, much debated, and it remains contested and uncertain.[21][22] Proposals range between 5,320 BCE and the 8th century CE.[22][23]
The tradition and some Indian scholars favor an early date for its composition, before the common era, and state that it is the work of one person associated with sage Agastya. Other Indian scholars, and non-Indian scholars such as Kamil Zvelebil, prefer to date it not as a single entity but in parts or layers.[24] The Tolkappiyam manuscript versions that have survived into the modern age were fixed by about the 5th century CE, according to Zvelebil.[21][24][25] Scholars reject traditional datings based on three sangams and the myth of great floods because there is no verifiable evidence in its favor, and the available evidence based on linguistics, epigraphy,Sangam literature and other Indian texts suggest a much later date.[26] The disagreements now center around divergent dates between the 3rd centuryBCE and 8th century CE.[21][26][27]
The datings proposed by contemporary scholars is based on a combination of evidence such as:
comparison of grammar taught inTolkappiyam versus the grammar found in the oldest knownTamil-Brahmi and old-Tamil inscriptions[7][21]
comparison of grammar taught inTolkappiyam versus the grammar found in the oldest known Tamil texts (Sangam era);[21][28] this evidence covers items such as phonemic shapes, palatals, and the evolution in the use of compounds[29]
comparison of grammar taught inTolkappiyam versus the grammar taught and found in the oldest known Sanskrit texts;[30] this includes tracing verses and phrases found in theTolkappiyam that borrow, translate or closely paraphrase verses and phrases found in the works of ancient and influential Sanskrit scholars such as Panini, Patanjali, Manu, Kautilya, Bharata and Vatsyayana.[21]
comparison of poetry and prose rules taught inTolkappiyam versus the actual early Tamil poetry and prose[31]
Prakrit and Sanskrit loan words (vadacol),[32] and inconsistencies between the sutras of theTolkappiyam[21]
In his book published in 1925, T. R. Sesha Iyengar – a scholar of Dravidian literature and history, states that theTolkappiyam while explaining grammar, uses terms for various forms of marriage in theKalaviyal chapter. Elsewhere it mentions terms related to caste. Such ideas about different weddings and caste, states Iyengar, must be the influence of Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan ideologies. He disagrees with those European scholars who refuse to "concede high antiquity to the Dravidian civilization", and as a compromise suggests the Tolkappiyam was composed "before the Christian era".[33]
In post-Independence India, the Tamil scholar Gift Siromoney states that the Tolkappiyam should be dated based on the chronology of TALBI-P system based inscriptions, which is difficult to date. He suggests that this could be around the time of Ashoka, or centuries later.[34]
Iravatham Mahadevan dates the Tolkappiyam to no earlier than the 2nd century CE, as it mentions thepuḷḷi being an integral part of Tamil script. Thepuḷḷi a diacritical mark to distinguish pure consonants from consonants with inherent vowels only became prevalent in Tamil epigraphs after the 2nd century CE.[35]
V. S. Rajam, a linguist specialised in Old Tamil, in her bookA Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry dates it to pre-fifth century CE.[36]
Vaiyapuri Pillai, the author of the Tamil lexicon, dated Tolkappiyam to not earlier than the 5th or 6th century CE.[21][37]
Kamil V. Zvelebil dates the earliest layer, the coreUr-text of the Tolkappiyam to 150 BCE or later.[38] In his 1974 review, Zvelebil places Book 1 and 2 of theTolkappiyam in the 100 BCE to 250 CE period.[39] Rest of the sections and sutras of the text to centuries between 3rd and 5th century CE. The extant manuscripts of Tolkappiyam are based on the "final redaction" of the 5th century, states Zvelebil.[40]
Takanobu Takahashi, a Japanese Indologist, states that the Tolkappiyam has several layers with the oldest dating to 1st or 2nd century CE, and the newest and the final redaction dating to the 5th or 6th century CE.[26]
A C Burnell, a 19th-centuryIndologist who contributed to the study of Dravidian languages was of the view that theTolkappiyam could not be dated to "much later than the eighth century."[41]
Herman Tieken, a Dutch scholar, states that the Tolkappiyam dates from the 9th century CE at the earliest. He arrives at this conclusion by treating the Tolkappiyam and the anthologies ofSangam literature as part of a 9th-centuryPandyan project to raise the prestige of Tamil as aclassical language equal to Sanskrit, and assigning new dates to the traditionally accepted dates for a vast section of divergent literature (Sangam literature, post-Sangam literature and Bhakti literature likeTevaram).[27] Hermen Tieken's work has, however, been criticised on fundamental, methodological, and other grounds byG.E. Ferro-Luzzi, George Hart andAnne Monius.[42][43][44]
There is no firm evidence to assign the authorship of this treatise to any one author.Tholkapiyam, some traditionally believe, was written by a single author named Tolkappiyar, a disciple of Vedic sageAgastya mentioned in theRigveda (1500–1200 BCE). According to the traditional legend, the original grammar was called Agathiam written down by sage Agastya, but it went missing after a great deluge. His student Tolkappiyar was asked to compile Tamil grammar, which isTolkappiyam.[45][46] In Tamil historical sources such as the 14th-century influential commentary onTolkappiyam byNaccinarkkiniyar, the author is stated to be Tiranatumakkini (alternate name for Tolkappiyan), the son of a Brahminrishi named Camatakkini.[47] The earliest mention of Agastya-related Akattiyam legends are found in texts approximately dated to the 8th or 9th century.[48] According to Hartmut Scharfe, the author of this text was a Jain.[49]
According to Kamil Zvelebil, the earliestsutras of theTolkappiyam were composed by author(s) who lived before the "majority of extant"Sangam literature, who clearly knewPāṇini and followedPatanjali works on Sanskrit grammar because some verses of Tolkappiyam – such asT-Col 419 andT-Elutt 83 – seem to be borrowed and exact translation of verses of Patanjali'sMahābhāṣya and ideas credited to more ancient Panini. Further, the author(s) lived after Patanjali, because various sections ofTolkappiyam show the same ideas for grammatically structuring a language and it uses borrowed Indo-European words found in Panini and Patanjali works to explain its ideas.[29] According to Hartmut Scharfe and other scholars, the phonetic and phonemic sections of theTolkappiyam shows considerable influence of VedicPratishakhyas, while its rules for nominal compounds follow those in Patanjali'sMahābhāṣya, though there is also evidence of innovations. The author(s) had access and expertise of the ancient Sanskrit works on grammar and language.[50][51]
According to Zvelebil, another Tamil tradition believes that the earliest layer by its author(s) – Tolkappiyan – may have been a Jaina scholar, who knewaintiram (pre-Paninian grammatical system) and lived in south Kerala, but "we do not know of any definite data concerning the original author or authors". This traditional belief, according toVaiyapuri Pillai, is supported by a few Jaina Prakrit words such aspatimaiyon found in theTolkappiyam.[52]
TheTolkappiyam deals withilakkanam (grammar) in three books (atikaram), each with nine chapters (iyal) of different sizes. The text has a cumulative total of 1,610 (Eluttatikaram 483 + Sollatikaram 463 + Porulatikaram 664)sutras in thenūṛpā meter, though some versions of its surviving manuscripts have a few less.[4][5] Thesutra format provides a distilled summary of the rules, one that is not easy to read or understand; commentaries are necessary for the proper interpretation and understanding ofTolkappiyam.[53]
Book 1
Eluttatikaram
"Eluttu" means "sound, letter, phoneme", and this book of theTolkappiyam covers the sounds of theTamil language, how they are produced (phonology).[54] It includespunarcci (lit. "joining, copulation") which is combination of sounds, orthography, graphemic and phonetics with sounds as they are produced and listened to.[54] The phonemic inventory it includes consists of 5 long vowels, 5 short vowels, and 17 consonants. The articulatory descriptions inTolkappiyam are incomplete, indicative of a proto-language. It does not, for example, distinguish between retroflex and non-retroflex consonants, states Thomas Lehmann.[53] The phonetic and phonemic sections of the first book show the influence of Vedic Pratisakhyas, states Hartmut Scharfe, but with some differences. For example, unlike the Pratisakhyas and the later Tamil, the first book ofTolkappiyam does not treat /ṭ/ and /ṇ/ as retroflex.[55]
Book 2
Sollatikaram
"Sol" meaning "word", and the second book deals with "etymology, morphology, semantics and syntax", states Zvelebil.[54] Thesutras cover compounds, some semantic and lexical issues. It also mentions the twelve dialectical regions of Tamil speaking people, which suggests the author(s) had a keen sense of observation and inclusiveness for Old Tamil's linguistic geography.[54] According to Peter Scharf, thesutras here are inspired by the work on Sanskrit grammar by Panini, but it uses Tamil terminology and adds technical innovations.[51] Verb forms and the classification of nominal compounds in the second book show the influence of Patanjali'sMahabhasya.[55]
Book 3
Porulatikaram
"Porul" meaning "subject matter", and this book deals with the prosody (yappu) and rhetoric (ani) of Old Tamil.[56] It is here, that the book covers the two genres found in classical Tamil literature:akam (love, erotics, interior world) andpuram (war, society, exterior world). Theakam is subdivided intokalavu (premarital love) andkarpu (marital love).[56] It also deals with dramaturgy, simile, prosody and tradition. According to Zvelebil, this arrangement suggests that the entireTolkappiyam was likely a guide for bardic poets, where the first two books led to this third on how to compose their songs.[56] The third book's linking of literature (ilakkiyam) to the grammatical rules of the first and the second book (ilakkanam) created a symbiotic relationship between the two.[53] The literary theory ofTolkappiyam, according to Peter Scharf, borrows from Sanskrit literary theory texts.[51]
Epigraphical studies, such as those by Mahadevan, show that ancientTamil-Brahmi inscriptions found in South India and dated to between 3rd century BCE and 4th century CE had three different grammatical form. Only one of them is assumed in theTolkappiyam.[53] The language of theSangam literature is same as the one described inTolkappiyam, except in some minor respects.[51]
TheTolkappiyam is a collection of aphoristic verses in thenūṛpā meter.[4] It is ambiguous without a commentary.[53] Tamil scholars have written commentaries on it, over the centuries:
The commentary by Ilampuranar dated to the 11th or 12th century CE is the most comprehensive and probably the best, states Zvelebil.[58] The commentary by Senavaraiyar deals only with the second bookSollathikaram.[57] The commentary by Perasiriyar, which is heavily indebted to theNannūl, frequently quotes from theDandiyalankaram andYapparunkalam, the former being a standard medieval rhetorica and the latter being a detailed treatise on Tamil prosody. Naccinarkiniyar's commentary, being a scholar of both Tamil and Sanskrit, quotes from Parimelalakar's works.[57]
Alexander Dubyanskiy, veteran Tamil scholar fromMoscow State University stated, "I am sure that Tolkappiyam is a work which demanded not only vast knowledge and a lot of thinking but a considerable creative skill from its composer." Dubyanskiy also said that the authority of the text was undeniable: "It is a literary and cultural monument of great importance."[59]
^The palm-leaf manuscripts and commentaries on the text vary slightly in the total number of verse-sutras; they are all about 1,610.[5]
^According to Thomas Lehmann, theTolkappiyam rules are followed and exemplified in Old Tamil (pre-700 CE) literature. The Middle Tamil (700-1600 CE) and Modern Tamil (post-1600 CE) have additional distinct grammatical characteristics.[16] Causative stems of verb bases are "lexical in Old Tamil, morphological in Middle Tamil, and syntactic in Modern Tamil", for example, states Lehmann. Nevertheless, many features of Middle and Modern Tamil are anchored in the Old Tamil ofTolkappiyam.[16]
^Kamil Zvelebil 1973, pp. 138–146 with footnotes, Quote: "this fact would give us approximately the 5th cent. AD as the earliest date of Porulatikaram, and as the date of the final redaction of the Tolkappiyam.".
^abcTakahashi, Takanobu (1995)."2. Erudite works".Tamil Love Poetry & Poetics. Leiden; New York; Cologne: Brill. p. 18.ISBN90-04-10042-3.These agreements may probably advance the lower limit of the date for Tol[kappiyam], but do not mean more recently than the 5th Cent. A.D., as suggested by some critics such as S. Vaiyapuri Pillai [...]
^abTieken, Herman Joseph Hugo. 2001. Kāvya in South India: old Tamil Caṅkam poetry. Groningen: Egbert Forsten.
^Sesha Iyengar, T.R. (1925),Dravidian India, Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, reprinted 1995, pp 155–157
^Gift Siromoney (1983),Origin of the Tamil-Brahmi script, Seminar on "Origin evolution and reform of the Tamil script", pp. 21–29, The Institute of Traditional Cultures, University Buildings, Madras-600005
^Mahadevan, I. (2014).Early Tamil Epigraphy - From the Earliest Times to the Sixth century C.E., 2nd Edition. p. 271.
^Rajam, V. S. 1992.A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry: 150 B.C.–pre-Fifth/Sixth Century A.D. Memoirs of the American philosophical society, vol. 199. Philadelphia, Pa: American Philosophical Society, p. 7
^Vaiyapuri Pillai, S. 1956. History of Tamil language and literature; beginning to 1000 A.D.. Madras: New Century Book House.
^Kamil Zvelebil 1973, pp. 137 and 147, Quote (p. 137): "As we will see later, Tolkkapiyam, the core of which may be assigned to pre-Christian era, consists perhaps of many layers, some of which may be much earlier than others", (p. 147): "Thus, the nuclear portions of Tolkappiyam were probably born sometimes in the 2nd or 1st century BC, but hardly before 150 BC.".
^"It is thus impossible to put the original text much later than the eighth century, for by the tenth century the whole Pāṇḍiya kingdom had fallen under the orthodox Coḷas."Burnell, A. C. (1975). "On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians: Their place in the Sanskrit and Subordinate Literatures". Mangalore: Basel Mission Book and Tract Depository:8–9.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
^George Hart III. "Review of Tieken'sKavya in South India."Journal of the American Oriental Institute124:1. pp. 180–184. 2004.
^G.E. Ferro-Luzzi. "Tieken, Herman,Kavya in South India (Book review).Asian Folklore Studies. June 2001. pp. 373–374
^Anne E. Monius, Book review, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Nov., 2002), pp. 1404–1406
Albert. 1985. Tolkāppiyam phonology and morphology : an English translation. Madras : International Institute of Tamil Studies.
Burnell, Arthur Coke (1875). On the Aindra school of Sanskrit Grammarians: their place in the Sanskrit and subordinate literatures. Mangalore: Basel Mission Book and Tract Depository, 8-20.
Hart, George L. 1975. The poems of ancient Tamil, their milieu and their Sanskrit counterparts. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Selby, Martha Ann (2011) Tamil Love Poetry: The Five Hundred Short Poems of the Aiṅkuṟunūṟu, an Early Third-Century Anthology. Columbia University Press,ISBN9780231150651
