Yet to be edited
Herman Tieken, Kavya in South India:Old Tamil Cankam Poetry, New Delhi, Manohar, (2001), Reprinted 2017
Tieken not only challenges but also rattles the settled orthodox view about the antiquity of Sangam Tamil literature. He also claims that, ‘…the wandering saint figuring in the songs is not the poet of the songs, but a persona. Bhakti poetry is part of the cult around such saints, which, however, has developed only in approximately the tenth century….’ (pp. 7-8). Above all he claims that the Sangam literatures are nothing but remake of Kavya in archaic Tamil modelling Sanskrit literature. Already there is a tussle between the Sanskrit and Tamil among scholars and particularly among Tamil lovers who claim the originality of Sangam Tamil literature not corrupted by Sanskrit which came later in Tamil country. But the way Tieken presents his thesis with proper analysis of the genre of Sangam Literature comparing with Sattasi and Kamasutra by providing internal evidence can hardly be questioned. The traditional proof provided the absence of any reference to Pallava kings1 as the evidence for the early date Sangam Tamil literature is also challenged by Tieken by saying:
…In fact, we know next to nothing of the history of South India before the Pallavas. Practically all we know, or think we know, has been based on Cankam poetry, which has come to serve as the main source of the reconstruction of the early history of the south because it would date from that period. The situation reminds us of Baron von Munchhausen, who pulled himself up by his own hair.
One of the complicating factors in dating Cankam poetry before the Pallavas is that there is no real evidence that early of the use of Tamil as a language for producing literature. In fact, the earliest evidence of such use is found in the Pandya copper plate grants from the eighth century onwards. Before that, Tamil was used for ordinary conversation and, in inscriptions, for business matters only, not for literature…. (P. xi)
According to Tieken the poets who composed the Sangam literatures in Pandya period used some kind of archaic Tamil was nothing but an attempt to produce those literature in pure Tamil by avoiding even any loan words from Sanskrit. This we can understand even today. For example even in this 21st century any author writing any historical fiction or film script use some kind of archaic Tamil that goes few centuries before completely different from contemporary spoken Tamil. Even they use what we call as ‘literary’ [ilakkiyat] Tamil which we never use in our normal conversation in ordinary life. Sometimes this kind of ‘chaste’ Tamil or ‘literary’ Tamil is used only by the politicians when they make some statements or give some speech in some conferences or meetings. So according to Tieken:
…the poets who composed Cankam poetry have to be looked for among the authors of the royal grants of the Pandyas in the eighth and ninth centuries. In the Puram poems, they provided Tamil with a past as a literary language, going back to the days beyond the Pallavas during whose reign Sanskrit was the court language. The rareness of Sanskrit loanwords in the Cankam poems was part of the attempt to produce (p. xiii) a pure Tamil. Together with references to the Pallavas, Sanskrit loanwords were avoided as much as possible. As to the presumably archaic nature of the language … it may be pointed out that the relationship of the poetic language with the contemporary language as known through inscriptions shows striking resemblances to that of Prakrit or Apabhramsha with Sanskrit (e.g. the absence of synthetic past tense forms in Prakrit and of compound verb constructions in Tamil). As I have already argued elsewhere, another characteristic of the language, the combination of elements from various regional dialects, is also typical of the North Indian literary vernaculars. (pp. Xiii-xiv)
To prove his thesis Tieken says that, ‘Except for the Pallavas, until the beginning of the ninth century the history of Tamilnadu is obscure. Undoubtedly, there were Pantiyas, Colas and Ceras then, as there already were in Asoka’s time in the third century B.C, and in the beginning of the seventh century and, again, from the end of the eighth century onwards. However, the problem is that none of these dynasties, or peoples, left any records of their own before that latter date….’.(pp134-35) And using the bilingual Velvikudi inscription, which has two prasastis, one in Sanskrit and one in Tamil he says:
From their inscriptions it becomes evident that the Pantiyas wished to present themselves as the inheritors of a great Tamil culture which had flourished some time in the past. It is precisely such historical claims as evinced by the Pantiyas which provide the raison d’être of Cankam poetry. The historical Puram poems evoke the very period which the Pantiyas zealously tried to revive. It was a period in which Tamilnadu was ruled by Tamil dynasties which would have patronized Tamil poetry. This “literary” history is an invention which serves to sanction the Pantiyas occupation with the development of a literary Tamil and the institution of a cankam for the standardization of Tamil in Madurai. The revival of Pantiya rule in the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries would thus constitute the absolute lower limit of Cankam poetry. That is to say, earlier evidence of the conditions implied in Cankam poetry is lacking. (p. 138)
Further with a twist he says that:
The Cankam texts indeed cater to Pantiya interest. In this respect the Patirruppattu, which is exclusively devoted to the Ceras, forms an exception. Another exceptional feature of the Patirruppattu is the format, which shows a striking similarity to that of Bhakti poetry. As I will try to show in Chapter 10 Bhakti poetry is later than Cankam poetry, in that ideologically it represents a next step. All this suggests that the Patirruppattu is a relatively late addition to the corpus. The inclusion of such a late “Cera” text in the Cankam corpus points to the conclusion that the corpus as we now have it has reached us not directly from the Pantiyas but represents a Cera redaction.(p. 196)
And concludes, ‘Taken all factors together I think we have to conclude that Cankam poetry has been “invented” by the very same poets who composed the inscriptions for the early Pantiyas of the beginning of the ninth century. In any case, with the Pantiyas, and only with the Pantiyas, we find evidence of the conditions for Cankam literature. (p. 201)
Before going about the date of Tamil Sangam and bhakti poems, regarding nature of certain Tamil words in relation to Sanskrit Shulman says, ‘…Once again, such words, which look and sound a lot like their Sanskrit originals, are entirely Tamil, just as no one would think to declare words like “fraternity” or “equality” un-English, despite their Latin derivation.’2
It is also important to note here the refutation about the false dichotomy of cosmopolotian models by Shulman:
…Pallava-period inscriptions are primarily in Sanskrit but also reveal strong Tamil elements, including Tamil verse forms and biruda royal titles—so that we can definitely speak, by this period, of “political Tamil” (that is, royal panegyric), a relatively early form of what Sheldon Pollock has called vernacularization, involving local inflection of the Sanskrit cosmopolotian models. Perhaps this is not the best way to state the matter. Pallava and Pandya political Tamil was largely standardized, universalized, and at the same time an integral variant of pan-Indian political discourse; thus “the Pallavas played a decisive role in making the Tamil country part of the Sanskrit cosmopolis.”3 Were it not to reinstate the false dichotomy, I would be tempted to say that Pallava and Pandya patronage of Tamil poets and scribes played a decisive role in making the emergent Sanskrit cosmopolis an organic part of evolving cosmopolitan (p.105) Tamil.[emphasize added]4
However regarding the Bhakti Tamil poems what the author says is bit confusing, ‘…The {bhakti Tamil} songs are supposed to have sprung forth spontaneously. This, however, is obviously a fiction. The songs represent a learned poetic tradition. In this connection I need only refer to the fact that they are metrical.’ (p. 221). There are two reasons to doubt this thesis. First if metre is the criteria then it assumes that those saints who composed those songs were illiterate and do not know about the metrical grammar to compose poems. But we know that Thirunavukkarasar also known as Appar was a Jain monk who later become a Saiva saint. As most of the Jain monks were well educated and trained in literature why not Appar also cannot compose his poems in metrical style. Similarly Thirujanasambandar also is a well educated person which we can collect from various autobiographical information from his songs. Above all according to the tradition Sambandar also took along with him Tiruneelakandar who is a ‘paanar’ (one sings the songs) well trained in composing music with proper metre. Several saints lived in South India, particularly in Tamilnadu are called ‘vagyakaras’ which means that they not only wrote poems but also composed music for it. The famous Carnatic Trinity, viz., Muthuswami Deekshidar, Syama Sastri and Thyagaraja are the best example for this. Even Purandaradasa is called as ‘Sangeetha pitamaha’ (the father of Carnatic Music). Next is that, as I myself write bhakti songs, I know that composing that kind of bhakti songs requires not only spontaneous inspiration but personal devotion to the deity. Though the author challenges the oral5 tradition still what he presents is also based on assumption as he further says:
Until the necessity of a period of oral transmission has been proved we should proceed from the assumption that the Bhakti songs which we now have are the product of a written literary tradition. That is to say, they were composed in the process of compiling anthologies, larger and smaller collections, of such songs. In this way we are, again, far removed from the way of life of the mad, wandering saints depicted in the songs.
The above findings lead to the conclusion that the saints are not the poets of the songs, but that they are personae in the songs. The songs evoke the words which certain mad, wandering saints are supposed to have uttered when they were possessed by god. If the saints are indeed personae, or examples of an ideal type of devotee, the poetry assumes the existence of a cult around these persons. However, this cult, which is now wide-spread in Tamilnadu and beyond, cannot have existed long before the tenth century. In any case the first references in inscriptions to the setting up of images of the saints, in case Saiva saints, date only from that century onwards (Swamy, 1972) All this would suggest that Bhakti poetry is indeed not much earlier than the ninth or the tenth century.[emphasis added](p. 222)
Even if we take for granted, based on the study of Tieken that both present Sangam Tamil Literatures and bhakti poems were composed later by some Tamil scholars based on the model of Sanskrit Kavyas, do we need to assume or image that there existed completely no Tamil poems ever before which could definitely not only inspired by also provided some kind of model for the later Tamil writers of these Sangam Literature? Do we need to assume that all in a sudden only from 8 or 9th century alone all kinds of literary activities in Tamil land suddenly erupted because of the influence of the Sanskrit Kavyas? Considering the nature of Tamil and its rich tradition of poems, arriving to such conclusion would question the very nature of Tamil itself, which even a common Tamilian won’t easily accept however she might be poor in her knowledge regarding the poems and other Tamil literatures. Note what Shulman has to say about Sangam poems:
…Even if the poets of the Sangam period offer us, for the most part, fictionalized, or semifictionalized, accounts—but I have tried to persuade you that not all the poems need be seen as fictional in a narrow sense—these texts reek of concrete, sensuous, often tragic, reality. By far the strongest argument, in my view, in favour of an early date for the puram poems is precisely this overwhelming atmosphere in the poems of an intimately known set of circumstances along with the typical heroic values that make those circumstances somehow bearable.
I cannot go farther than this. I see a possible cluster as early as the second and third centuries, and another, more ample and possibly more likely one in the fourth and fifth… (p. 82)
…Sangam poems, like Sanskrit kavya, were composed to be learned and remembered precisely in the form their author gave them. When exactly they were written down is a different matter—in the Tamil case, almost certainly by the fourth-to-fifth century period of redaction, at the latest. Textual variation in the Sangam corpus is, on the whole, rather limited and may reflect mostly the contribution of later copyists…. (p. 89)
This crystallizing Tamil literary tradition was, in its own terms, highly autonomous and self-regulating, but not in the sense of being remote from Sanskrit sources or influences; there is no such dichotomy….(p. 105)
So the conclusion that the author arrives based on his careful study of Velvikudi and Sinnamannur inscriptions6, Hala’s Sattasai, Akam and Puram poems, proving that ‘Kalittokai and Paripatal and their counterparts comparing with Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda and Natyasastra (chapter 8) comparing Kalittokai and Paripatal with Gitagovinda and Natyasastra) is this7:
As shown, Tamil functioned initially as an equivalent of Prakrit. In the inscriptions of the Pantiyas it was used for local history. In Cankam poetry Tamil (p. 229) is the language of primitive, illiterate people or else it has been used for describing these people and their customs. The genres were selected for their potentialities of showing Tamil in its role as a Pakrit. The reverse mechanism is seen in the Pattuppattu, in which the epic world of Sanskrit Mahakavya has been reduced to the narrow borders of Tamilnadu in accordance with the nature of Tamil as a local language. Similarly, mythology in the Pattuppattu has been regionalized, dealing with Murukan, a typically local, indigenous god. By contrast, in Bhakti poetry Tamil is used to address and praise the two great North Indian gods of Sanskrit mythology, Siva and Visnu, who have been provided with local, Tamil speaking avataras. Furthermore, the poetry is equated with the Veda, an issue which has become central to its interpretation in the subsequent period. The local Tamil language is no longer used as a Prakrit but as a kind of Sanskrit. (pp. 229-230)
Though the Tieken presents undisputable internal evidence from the Sangam and Sanskrit literatures and external evidence from the inscriptions with a careful and scholarly analysis from various ankles, still he will more rattle the settled view about the antiquity of Sangam Tamil literature than merely challenge it. However it will be an interesting study and debate as there is a traditional rivalry between Tamil and Sanskrit regarding their mutual influence on each other which was well documented by several scholars. Particularly several articles in the book ‘Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation…’8 would help other scholar’s perspective will challenge Tieken’s thesis in this book. For example Whtney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani in the Preface (pp. vii-x) in this book say:
…The model of consmopolitan and vernacular literary interaction proposed by the Sanskritist Sheldon Pollock, as summarized in his magnum opus of 2006, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, has supplied an argumentative framework that has become more often than not implicit in the recent comparative work on Tamil and Sanskrit, and this volume is no exception. This is most clearly in evidence in Francis’ contribution, which offers a meticulously documented correction of Pollock’s characterization of the epigraphical practices recorded in the Pallava kingdom. More generally, however, the basic fabric of Pollock’s historical model, in which the superimposition of cosmopolitan Sanskrit catalyses the literarisation of a vernacular speech-form, which only gradually attains equal dignity with the language of the cosmopolis in the literary and political arena, fails rather dramatically to adequately account for the long shared history of Sanskrit and Tamil….9
Tieken also quote the work of Pollock in support of his theses. Though Pollock broke a new ground for understanding the relationship between Sanskrit and vernacular languages, particularly Tamil, yet he is not left unchallenged by other scholars. In this same book (Bilingual Discourses). For example Emmanuel Francis says:
…I will not deny that the history of the Cankam corpus is a complex and debated matter, but when Pollock presents {Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press.2006, 383-385} a description of Tamil in the first millennium, he only mentions facts that go well with his general theory: the late appearance of the legend of the Cankam, the written character of Bhakti poetry, the commentatorial writing modelled on Sanskrit, the adaptation in Tamil of Sanskrit epics, the philologisation of language, the conceptual borrowing from the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. Not a word about the Puram literature centred on kings, about the tinai concept so specific to Cankam poetry, about the pirapantams (a specifically Tamil type of work, even though its name is Tamilised Sanskrit) which are the heirs of Tamil Cankam conventions, however subverted they may be sometimes….10
This challenge by Francis is very important considering the fact that this also challenges Tieken’s view about the date of Tamil Saint’s poem which he claims very later date. At least we know that the first three Alvars (Poihai, Bhutam and Pei) lived long before other Alvars and composed Tamil poems. According to my lay man’s understanding is that even if we claim that Tamil bhakti poems by Saints were written later, they cannot appear all in a sudden without leaving any previous model to be emulated by later writers. According to my understanding no literature activity will burst out all in a sudden from any vacuum. Not only literature but any kind of art will have slow, but natural and spontaneous growth which will take different forms influencing successive generation. But claiming that all in a sudden at the end of 8 or 9th century, imitating the Sanskrit Kavya genre some Tamil poets wrote not only the Sangam literature but also bhakti poems is beyond my imagination and comprehension. This view is also substantiated by this scholarly remark again by Francis:
First, there is an ancient Tamil literature going back to the first centuries of the first millennium, the so-called cankam corpus known through later anthologies. Pollock quite rapidly dismisses this Cankam corpus as being “obscure” or “opaque” as far as its history and development are concerned. Even though the date of any particular poem in these anthologies and the status of this literature—the usual opinion is that a bardic oral tradition was taken over by a literary written tradition responsible for its anthologisation—is debatable, it is nevertheless generally accepted that already several centuries before Pollock’s vernacularisation, that is relatively early in the first millennium, there existed an expressive or imaginative Tamil for the description of kings (that is the Puram poetry; see also the theme named paataan in poetics). However thorny the dating, (p.394) the consensus is that at least before the middle of the first millennium, Cankam poetry, which is a worldly literature comparable to kavya, was established. However late a written aspect may have come to attach itself to this Cankam poetry, the anthologisation as well as the later creation of a Cankam legend proves that there was an interest for this early literature in the Tamil country, that it was an early revered and known beginning.11
Finally my doubt about Tieken’s thesis particularly about Tamil Bhakti poems is also based on his assumption ‘the necessity of a period of oral transmission’ as he says:
The idea of a period of oral transmission is a consequence of the interpretation of the poems as oral and spontaneous on-the-spot compositions of wandering bards. This interpretation was given a scholarly basis by Kailasapathy (1968), who drew attention to the pictures the poets in Puram gave of themselves as wandering from court to court in search of a patron, on the one hand, and the occurrence of stereotyped formulas and themes in the poems, i.e., features typical of bardic, oral poetry, on the other. However, this theory was subsequently challenged by Hart (1975), who pointed out that the poems are not instances of epic but of lyric poetry. Furthermore, Hart referred to the syntactic complexity of the poems, which is indeed far removed from the simple “adding” style of epic poetry. According to Hart, the poems are the compositions of high-class, literate poets who modelled their poetry on that of contemporary low-class, illiterate performers…. (p. 103)
But based on my personal experience I can say authentically that one need not and cannot question or doubt about the existence of ‘oral transmission’ of poems in India almost in every language. For example William J. Jackson says:
Purandaradasa, as far as we know, never wrote his lyrics on paper systematically. It is not known if followers of his were able to do that for him either. But the songs have a vivid quality; they clicked in the folk (p.73) mind and lodged in people’s memories. They survived and thrived on their own, echoing in devoted minds. Children learned them by heart, singing them with family members, repeating them to friends.
It is uncertain just how intact and faithful to the original versions the songs, as we have them today, are; since it was an oral tradition, the form could have changed during the intervening five centuries. We cannot say if today’s versions are the only ones, or how many may have been lost. It is likely that the Haridasas who preserved them may have interpolated some elements here and there, raga, tala, words; it happens, just as episodes in stories told to wonder-loving people take on different aspects when often retold. And some Haridasas who were composers in their own right, when rendering Purandaradasa songs might have changed them. Most lovers of Purandaradasa’s songs admit their inability to know whether all songs with his signature are really by him. The songs are not always uniform; most likely some Haridasas put in their own words when they forgot the original ones, since that is a natural process. (p.74)
Purandaradasa composed in a variety of forms. The pada is a simple song which even those without training are often able to sing after hearing it a few times. [emphasis added] .12
This being the case with Purandaradasa who lived in the recent past (1485 to 1565) where writing is well known in Vijayanagara Kingdom why should we question the oral transmission of Sangam and particularly bhakti literatures further few centuries before? This is a pan-Indian phenomenon. Even in this 21st century we can witness this. In the area where I live at present one can regularly hear the all night performance on the 10th day funeral ritual local artist performing (in Telugu) whole night beginning around 10.00 pm and ending at 6.00 am reciting so many songs by heart and narrating stories. This kind of art form is called Terukkutu in Tamil. As a young boy I have witnessed so many Terukkutus and most of the artists were illiterate but learnt all those songs orally. Even several songs that I know both in Tamil and slokas and mantras in Sanskrit I learned orally. I quote several Tirukkurals not memorizing by reading the text but often heard from my father who used to quote them to rebuke us or to teach us. Similarly I learnt so many Tamil Bhakti songs as they were broadcasted from the Tamil in the early morning from temples which we listened. Even today several Carnatic musicians (except few exceptions) make it a strict discipline to do the performance even for two or three hours singing not seeing any text before them. Just watch any performance by leading artists in YouTube for this. While they train their disciples this is the one condition which put to them: learn the songs by heart and never see any text while performing as it will distract your attention to render the raga in proper way. The Vedic tradition of oral transmission of Veda is a well know fact. This being the reality even now, why should one question the oral transmission several centuries before where written text are very limited within palm tree leaves materials and construct a thesis based on such assumption? Even now there are several poets who can write poems on the spot without need to write down them to check. They are called ‘varakavi’. The famous Tamil poet Kannadasan who also wrote several thousand songs for films always dictated his songs to his assistant (Panju Arunachalam) while reclaiming on a pillow in the studio. He can sing several songs spontaneously. There is also a famous tradition existed in several parts of South India known as ‘lavani’ in which two opponent groups has to sing spontaneously in responding to the question of the another part which were given again in poem. People like Tieken coming from west where they need printed text of not only the poems but also musical notes while singing in churches or consorts can hardly understand this rich oral tradition in India.
Regarding the debate on Tolkappiyam (pp. 143-45) Tieken says, ‘the Tolkappiyam cannot possibly be earlier than the ninth century date of Tolkappiyam’ (145). And he continuous:
The indebtedness of the Tolkappiyam to the Sanskrit grammatical tradition is more or less well-established. As far as the study of the Tolkappiyam is concerned a relatively late date might in fact be a blessing in disguise. For, the investigation of the relationship of the Tolkappiyam and the Sanskrit grammatical tradition has so far been marred considerably by the necessity to exclude from its scrutiny later Sanskrit grammars. (p.145)
But refuting this point Dominic Goodall points out:
…Paninian grammar may have “fertilized” other Indian languages, beginning with Tamil, in such a way as to stimulate grammatical thinking, but to view Tamil grammar exclusively or primarily in terms of the influence of the Astadhyayi upon the Tolkappiyam would be simplistic: the contact between traditions of grammar in Sanskrit and Tamil continued over many centuries and the dialogue may well have involved many lost intermediaries.13
In overall, considering the nature of the debate and analysis that Tieken under takes in this book, only those who are interested in this subject, particularly relationship between Tamil and Sanskrit alone can understand this book. Even ordinary Tamilians cannot follow these debates. However this is important for all the students of Tamil who wants to know the origin and development of Tamil which is one of the Classical languages of the world. If one can compare the book David Shulman, Tamil: A Biography, London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2016 will enrich these kinds of study further.
Notes
1 …The Pallavas are mentioned (as Tontaiyor, the Tamil equivalent of the Sanskrit name) in one of the Ten Long Poems but not, it seems, in the anthologies; this striking silence about a major polity has often been taken to mean that the early Sangam poems must predate the existence of the Pallava kingdom. Arguments from silence are, however, usually weak and often wrong. —— David Shulman, Tamil: A Biography, London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2016, op. Cit. p. 84
2 Shulman, op. Cit. P. 14. Further: …This chapter is not the place to attempt to resolve this issue, although I think we should definitely avoid confusing “Dravidian” which is properly a linguistic term, or, for that matter, “Aryan,” with ethnic or social categories. I doubt very much that there were ever “pure Vedic Aryans” 40 or “Dravidians” among the speakers of any first-millennium B.C. Indic languages. What we can say with (p.18) confidence is that speakers of Vedic Sanskrit were in contact, from very ancient times, with speakers of Dravidian languages, and that the two language families profoundly influenced one another, to differential effect in accordance with geographical and cultural-historical variation throughout the subcontinent. As far as syntax goes, there is ample room for continued debate; but it is likely that the Dravidian non-finite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of possible influence from Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit.—Shulman, pp. 18-19
40. Southworth, Franklin C. “Lexical Evidence for Early Contacts between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian.” In Madhava M. Deshpande and Peter Edwin Hook, eds., Aryan and Non-Aryan in India. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia no. 14; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies. 1979: 297
3 Francis, Emmanuel. “Praising the King in Tamil during the Pallava Period.” In Whitney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani, eds., Bilingual Discourse and Cross Cultural Fertilisation: Sanskrit and Tamil in Medieval India, Pondichery: Institut Francais de Pondichery, pp. 359-409, p. 398 notes no. 117 in Shulman.
4 Shulman, op. Cit. Pp. 105-06,
5 …Sangam poems are, indeed, “oral” in nature and use—not because they were improvised (they were not), and not because they were not recorded (they were, in one way or another), but because they were meant to be sung aloud in some (p.90) public space where, with all the linguistic and cognitive complexity that informed them, they could do their work. —Shulman, pp. 90-91
6 Except for the Pallavas, until the beginning of the ninth century the history of Tamilnadu is obscure. Undoubtedly, there were Pantiyas, Colas and Ceras then, (p. 134) as there already were in Asoka’s time in the third century B.C, and in the beginning of the seventh century and, again, from the end of the eighth century onwards. However, the problem is that none of these dynasties, or peoples, left any records of their own before that latter date….The Velvikudi inscription, which has two prasastis, one in Sanskrit and one in Tamil, is itself a clear example of the outcome of this linguistic policy. The Sanskrit prasasti traces the Pantiya dynasty back to its mythic ancestor Pandya, who at the beginning of the present Kalpa was reborn as Buddha, son of the Moon. Buddha’s son, Pururavas, who introduced the dynasty’s emblem of the pair of fish, is said to have shared his throne, and taxes, with Indra. Next the prasasti mentions Jatila, alias Parantaka, and three of his immediate predecessors. This is followed by a prasasti in Tamil. In contrast to the Sanskrit prasasti, which provides the Pantiyas with a purely mythological ancestry, the Tamil prasasti is a piece of concrete and detailed local history. It enumerates altogether seven ancestors of the present king (p. 135) Netuncataiyan and adds many details concerning battles and conquests. (p.136)
…The Pantiya experiment with the two prasastis may be interpreted as (p.137) an attempt, or rather, as the outcome of an attempt to raise the regional language to a status comparable to that of Sanskrit. At the same time, it should be noticed that each dialect was apparently assigned a sphere of its own, Sanskrit North Indian mythology and Tamil local history….—pp.135-138
7…Cankam poetry cannot possibly be older than the Pantiyas of the Velvikudi and Sinnamannur inscriptions. It is thus later than the introduction of Sanskrit literature into South India. Indeed, on closer consideration we have to do with texts composed fully in accordance with the laws and conventions of Kavya. In this respect the development of Tamil literature agrees exactly with that of the other South Indian vernacular literatures, which without exception have all developed against the background of Sanskrit literature. Moreover, the development of Tamil literature is not much older than that of the other South Indian languages….—p. 229
8 Bilingual Discourse and Cross-Cultural Fertilisation: Sanskrti and Tamil in Medieval India, ed. Whitney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani, Pondichery, Institut Francais De Pondichery Ecole Francaise D’extreme-Orient, 2013
9 ibid. Whtney Cox and Vincenzo Vergiani in the Preface, pp. vii-x, p. ix
10 ibid. Emmanuel Francis. Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period. Pp. 359-409, p. 393
11 ibid. Emmanuel Francis. Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period. Pp. 359-409, pp. 394-95 [Those who are interested to read further scholarly critique on Pollock on this point see —Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period, Emmanuel Francis, pp. 361-409, pp, particularly pp. 398-401]
12 William J. Jackson. Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints, New Delhi, (1998) Indian Paperbacksp. 2002.
13 Introduction. Dominic Goodall. Pp. 1-11, in Bilingual Discourse, op. cit, p. 8
Bibliography
G.L. Hart The Poems of Ancient Tamil. Their Milieu and Their Sanskrit Counterparts. Berkeley. 1975.
K. Kailasapathy, Tamil Heroic Poetry, Oxford. 1968
B.G.L.Swamy, “The Four Saivite Samayacaryas of the Tamil Country in Epigraphy” .Journal of Indian History L, 1 (1972), 95-128). 1972)
Appendix
The following can go to notes or I can give reference about it–db
Though it is very long and only a critique about Pollock, still I find a proper response to Tieken in the follow summary by Francis which is worth reading as it is:
Second, Pollock’s ensuing view that “there is no doubt that for many centuries Tamil was, if not mute, then certainly not loquacious in the domain of political-expressive, until in the last several centuries of the millennium it began to speak with an altogether new and confident voice” (2006: 292) is an overstatement. The Pallava evidence provided above attests to the relatively early appearance of political, literary, expressive or imaginative epigraphy in Tamil, that is at the beginning of the 7th century, as opposed to the 8th century, at the earliest, for Pollock. We may find that the lists of birudas are not very imaginative. But the venpa at Talavanur and the Centalai verses are good pieces of political poetry.—p. 395
So, if vernacularisation as conceived by Pollock concerns only the early Pandyas, what is the impact of this fact on his general theory? Criticism of Pollock’s concept of vernacularisation has already been expressed from a variety of perspectives, 110 but I will concentrate here on Tamil. Since vernbacularisation as conceived by Pollock played only a minor role for Tamil, as I have tried to demonstrate, and since there was an ancient Tamil literary tradition, we arrive at the question why, before political discourse in Tamil, Sanskrit was adopted, for centuries, as the language of power in certain sectors of the Tamil area.
One has to keep in mind that Sanskrit appeared relatively late in the epigraphy of the Tamil country. Sanskrit is used intensively in royal Pallava epigraphy only from the middle of the 6th century onwards. Earlier Pallava Sanskrit prasastis exist, but mostly in the Andhra region. Only one has been found near Kancipuram, but it is in prose, not in verse as Pallava prasastis usually are from ca. 550. It thus seems that before the Pallavas, usually considered as culturally oriented towards the north, there was no need in the Tamil country for a discourse of public power, be it in Tamil or in the Sanskrit, supposing that Puram poetry had no public dimensions. In any case, the Pallavas played a decisive role in making the Tamil country part of the Sanskrit cosmopolis.
Pollock argues that Sanskrit was chosen for its aesthetic dimension (power and culture being inseparable, see Pollock 2006: 2ff.), not because it was a language associated with Hinduism. But since there was an ancient Tamil literary tradition—as Cankam poetry certainly presents a form of the language with significant aesthetic dimensions—why then did Tamilian dynasties not rely on it straight away, instead of waiting until after the Sanskrit discourse of power had been established to choose (p.398) Tamil? In other words, why is it that Sanskrit served as a model in the case of the early Pandyas, and as a trigger in the case of the Pallavas? The choice of Sanskrit by the Pallavas may be explained not only by the fact that it enabled the aestheticisation of power through its specific features (on these, see Pollock 2006: 254 ff.), but also because Sanskrit was associated with Hinduism, a rationale Pollock dismisses (op. cit.: 74).
Pallava Sanskrit, with the exception of IP 1`7, is linked to the establishment of Brahmanic institutions (brahmadeya) and Hindu temples (devadana). When we know the authors of these prasastis, their names reveal they are Brahmins.112 It is then conceivable that while dynasties turned away from Buddhism—too moralist, not sufficiently sanctifying the violence of royal duty—towards Hinduism, they adopted Sanskrit because it was the language of the religious culture (even though it could be shared by others) and of the Brahman elite. Pollock shows that Sanskrit was adopted first by foreign dynasties which could emancipate Sanskrit from its religious background, that is, secularise it. That may be true, but it doesn’t follow that the same logic operated everywhere, every time. Sanskrit had to be secularized to be able to serve as the language of politics, but once this had been accomplished, it could be adopted also precisely because it was associated with the specific religious specialists that the Brahmins are. What I want to say is that in a Brahmanic world, dynasties could choose Sanskrit because it allowed them to pretend to be dharmic kings in the eyes or ears of Brahmans, or even to challenge Brahmanic discourse on kingship in its own language.
This suggestion goes against Pollock’s view about religion in the choice of Sanskrit, and against his criticism of the concepts of brahmanisation, sanskritisation, legitimation, ideology and functionalism (op. cit.: 511). I believe these theories indeed have their flaws, several of which are (p.399) pointed out by Pollock, but that the analysis of political discourse in Tamil invites us to refine them, not to dismiss them and replace them entirely with Pollock’s aesthetic theory. I contend that kings were engaged in an ideological debate for legitimation not with the people dominated, but with the dominant Brahmanic Sanskrit ideology and with rival dynasties. They chose Sanskrit because, after it had been secularized, it was available for political discourse and because it was the language of those at whom their discourse was directed: the Brahmins as source of authority—or of contested authority—and the other competing dynasties. They chose Sanskrit as a political lingua franca permitting a discursive relation with Brahmin ideology and rival dynasties.
As Sanskrit developed as a language of political discourse, it triggered expression in the vernaculars. Such expressions surfaced first in the Tamil country, because it already knew a literary tradition to latch onto. The early Pandyas adopted a political Tamil fitting the model of vernacularisation described by Pollock. In the Pallava realm, a political Tamil relying more on the Tamil literary culture was adopted, at first mainly on local initiative (Talavanur; Centalai, from a minor dynasty that never used Sanskrit). This trend finally reached the Pallava court under the reign of Nandin III.116
In this rise of political Tamil we can discern an early form of regionalism that can be related to the process of “territorialization of Tamil cultural space” and to the creation of a “political regionality in the premodern Tamil world” mentioned by Pollock (2006: 385-86, 413 ff.). In a sense the intrusion of Sanskrit caused this rise: Tamilians took conscience of their difference in an India globalized through the (p.400) Sanskrit cosmopolis, and wanted to show their Tamilness in the language of public political discourse itself. From the local level this process arrived at the court. It is maybe symptomatic that this happened in the middle of the 9th century, at a time when the Pallava dynasty was near its end, no longer playing a major role in South India.—Praising the king in Tamil during the Pallava period, Emmanuel Francis, pp. 361-409, pp398-401
110. See Shulman (2007), Tieken (2008) mainly about North India, Fussman (2008:171 ff.), and Ali (2011) about Indonesia. Tieken and Ali insist that the dichotomy between symbolic, expressive Sanskrit and documentary, administrative vernacular during the first millennium is not sustainable. For the same criticism concerning Pallava records, see Orr (2009:99ff.).
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