Tolkappiyam Pdf

[Boleslao Drinker]

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 the Tolkappiyam was likely composed between the 2nd and 1st century BCE,[8] and the extant manuscript versions fixed by about the 5th century CE.[9] The Tolkappiyam 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 the puḷḷi being an integral part of Tamil script. The puḷḷi (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 to Cilappatikaram), rather than the early old Tamil poems of Eṭṭuttokai and Pattuppāṭṭu.[12]

The word Tolkāppiyam is a attribute-based composite word, with tol meaning "ancient, old", and kappiyam meaning "book, text, poem, kavya"; together, the title has been translated as "ancient book",[17] "ancient poem",[18] or "old poem".[19] The word Kavya from Sanskrit can be seen as coming from the Tamil word kappiyam.[20]

The word Kappiyam can have three possible origins "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 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 century BCE and 8th century CE.[21][26][27]

"Eluttu" means "sound, letter, phoneme", and this book of the Tolkappiyam covers the sounds of the Tamil language, how they are produced (phonology).[50] It includes punarcci (lit. "joining, copulation") which is combination of sounds, orthography, graphemic and phonetics with sounds as they are produced and listened to.[50] The phonemic inventory it includes consists of 5 long vowels, 5 short vowels, and 17 consonants. The articulatory descriptions in Tolkappiyam are incomplete, but this is not indicative of a proto-language because some tolkappiyam texts have been lost owing to the invompleteness. It does not, for example, distinguish between retroflex and non-retroflex consonants which shows that some texts from the tolkappiyam were either stolen or lost, states Thomas Lehmann.[49] 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 of Tolkappiyam does not treat /ṭ/ and /ṇ/ as retroflex.[51]

"Sol" meaning "word", and the second book deals with "etymology, morphology, semantics and syntax", states Zvelebil.[50] The sutras 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.[50].[52] Verb forms and the classification of nominal compounds in the second book show the influence of Patanjali's Mahabhasya.[51]

"Porul" meaning "subject matter", and this book deals with the prosody (yappu) and rhetoric (ani) of Old Tamil.[53] It is here, that the book covers the two genres found in classical Tamil literature: akam (love, erotics, interior world) and puram (war, society, exterior world). The akam is subdivided into kalavu (premarital love) and karpu (marital love).[53] It also deals with dramaturgy, simile, prosody and tradition. According to Zvelebil, this arrangement suggests that the entire Tolkappiyam was likely a guide for bardic poets, where the first two books led to this third on how to compose their songs.[53] 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.[49] The literary theory of Tolkappiyam, according to Peter Scharf, borrows from Sanskrit literary theory texts.[52]

Epigraphical studies, such as those by Mahadevan, show that ancient Tamil-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 the Tolkappiyam.[49] The language of the Sangam literature is same as the one described in Tolkappiyam, except in some minor respects.[52]

The Tolkappiyam is a collection of aphoristic verses in the nūṛpā meter.[4] It is unintelligible without a commentary.[49] 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.[55] The commentary by Senavaraiyar deals only with the second book Sollathikaram.[54] The commentary by Perasiriyar, which is heavily indebted to the Nannūl, frequently quotes from the Dandiyalankaram and Yapparunkalam, 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.[54]

Alexander Dubyanskiy, veteran Tamil scholar from Moscow 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."[56]

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