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To: agathiyar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: On the Date of Sangam Literature
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From: "K. Kalyanasundaram"
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For the benefit of those who might not have read it, I am
reposting here an interesting posting by Prof. George Hart
made to Indology list in Aug 2001 on the date of Sangam Literature.
Kalyan
------
URL:
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind0108&L=indology&D=1&O=D&F=P&S=&P=5444
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 08:36:57 -0700
Reply-To: Indology
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From: George Hart
Subject: Tamil Sangam Literature -- Herman's Tieken's book
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I notice the message reproduced at the end of these comments in
Indology in July. While I have not yet seen Prof. Tieken's book,
I can certainly respond to the ideas on the back cover. There is
overwhelming and indisputable evidence that the anthologies were
not written as late as the ninth or tenth century. It is, moreover,
quite certain that the Sangam anthologies were not patterned after
Prakrit or Sanskrit. Let me make a few brief points.
1. Language. This is absolutely indisputable. The Sangam texts use
very different (and demonstrably much more archaic) forms and vocabulary
than later texts of the sixth century onward. Many verb forms that
disappeared by the sixth century can be shown to be part of an older
Dravidian verb system that is quite consistent with an age of the
second or third century. The vocabulary is also quite different from
that of later works -- it has much less Sanskrit, and uses words that
are not attested later. A good source for these older forms is V. S.
Rajam's A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry :
150 B.C.-pre-fifth/sixth Century A.D. Philadelphia, Pa., American
Philosophical Society, 1992.
2. Content. While the akam (love) poems share some themes with Prakrit
and even Sanskrit (as I have shown), they are still radically unlike
the poems in those languages. Prakrit has nothing like the five tiNais,
and it is not nearly as carefully worked out, with stock speakers,
stock images for each landscape, ragas (called paNs) for each, and
the like. There is absolutely nothing like the PuRam (heroic) poems
of the PuRananuru and the Patirruppattu in Prakrit or Sanskrit. That
is because the Puram poems are mostly written as imitations of the
productions of low-caste bards and drummers.
3. Culture. The poems show a coherent culture that is utterly different
from the 9th or 10th century. It is clear, if one reads the Purananuru,
that the poems are directly about events the authors have heard of.
Many of the poems concern marginal people at the borders of society.
This is not the case of the Sanskrit or Prakrit traditions. Where is
there anything like the famous Kalittokai poem of the lame man pursuing
the hunchback woman?
4. History. The poems name hundreds of poets and kings -- and string
them
together in a narrative that is chronologically coherent. The names
are quite unlike the names of the 9th and 10th century. There are many
historical facts that have been confirmed by archeological and other
evidence -- some kings who appear on coins, or in datable contemporary
inscriptions (1st-3rd century), Roman coins, description of trade also
found in outside sources, and the like.
5. Literary theory and usage. The Tolkappiyam describes theories and
systems that are mostly quite foreign to Sanskrit and Prakrit, but which
fit Sangam literature quite well. Its grammar describes some forms that
are quite old (as shown by the earliest inscriptions), and even the
writing system it describes, with the puLLi, has now been shown to be
as early as the second century or even earlier. The Sangam poems do
not use anything related to Sanskrit meter, unlike the poems of later
times. By the ninth and tenth centuries, almost all literature in Tamil
divided its stanzas into four parts, like Sanskrit and Prakrit (though
they never actually borrowed Sanskrit meters).
6. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jaina elements. In the Sangam poems, Murugan has
not yet been identified with Kartikeya -- he is a folk spirit that
possesses people and must be propitiated. There is not much mention of
Visnu or Siva, while it is clear that Jainism and Buddhism are both
present in Tamil Nadu. Many of the gods are local and do not appear in
later literature. All of this accords perfectly with what we know of
that
period, and does not fit at all the later period.
This is only a cursory response -- it seems almost a waste of time to
go on, as the evidence is so abundant and convincing. The fact is, the
poems are quite unaware of Prakrit or Sanskrit literature -- though they
do know of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (which fits with their
accepted date of 1st-3rd century AD). They do not resemble Prakrit or
Sanskrit literature enough to be modeled upon them -- I have argued that
both Tamil and Prakrit/Sanskrit use the same body of conventions, which
they got through southern (Tamil and Maharastri) folk traditions. But
the poems themselves are quite different and work in very different
ways.
Finally, there is a convincing -- and enormous -- body of coherent and
mutually reinforcing historical, linguistic, cultural, religious and
literary evidence that shows clearly the poems are much earlier than the
9th or 10th century. Yes, some 9th or 10th century poets might have
decided
to write some "old" literature based on Prakrit and Sanskrit. But would
they have invented hundreds of archaic forms and words that fit the
development of Dravidian? Would they have eschewed Prakrit/Sanskrit
ideas and metrical patterns? Would they have carefully gotten rid of
almost all their Sanskrit words and invented hundreds of words that are
not found in the other 9th century literature? Would they have made up
the names of hundreds of poems and kings and woven them into a huge
corpus
that is chronologically consistent (and fits with inscriptional and
numismatic evidence)? Tiken's argument (if it is correctly reflected
in the blurb on the back cover) just does not make sense. It is as if
one were to claim the Vedas were written in the 10th century AD by a
group of people who wanted to reflect an idealized past. Indeed, the
Sangam works contain much more historical information than the Vedas
-- it would be much easier to 'prove' that the Vedas were written in
the 10th century than that the Sangam poems were. What is it about some
European Sanskritists that makes them unwilling to accept that a non
Indo-European people could create a great literature on their own in
South Asia? The evidence of the non-derivative nature of Sangam
literature
is absolutely convincing. I hope that some will read the translation
of the Purananuru that Heifetz and I recently published. How these
poems could be derived from the Sanskrit/Prakrit tradition utterly
mystifies me -- and I have read most of the kavya literature (Kalidasa,
Magha, Bharavi) in the original. And I have read the Prakrit poems
with the chaayaa anuvaada. By the way, the Purananuru is one of the
seminal texts of premodern India -- it is quite as important as the
epics
and the Vedas for understanding the development of South Asian culture.
>From George Hart, Prof. of Tamil and Chair of Tamil Studies,
Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA
Here is the message from the July forum:
Did Tamil Cankam poetry describe a contemporary society, or an idealized
pure Tamil society of the past, as it was imagined in a time already
greatly influenced by North-Indian Sanskrit culture ... ?
The following recent publication is perhaps of interest to readers of
this list because of the challenging thesis on the relative chronology
of early Tamil poetry and Sanskrit Kaavya defended in it.
Title: Kaavya in South India: Old Tamil Cankam Poetry.
Author: Herman Tieken Publ.: Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2001
>From the back cover: "Old Tamil Cankam poetry consists of eight
anthologies
of short poems on love and war, and a treatise on grammar and poetics.
The main part of this corpus has generally been dated to the first
centuries AD and is believed to be the product of a native Tamil
culture.
The present study argues that the poems do not describe a contemporary
society but a society from the past or one not yet affected by
North-Indian
Sanskrit culture. Consequently the main argument for the current early
dating of Cankam poetry is no longer valid. Furthermore, on the basis
of a study of the historical setting of the heroic poems and of the role
of Tamil as a literary language in the Cankam corpus, it is argued that
the poetic tradition was developed by the PaaNTiyas in the ninth or
tenth century. ... ... the identification of the various genres of
Cankam poetry with literary types from the Sanskrit Kaavya tradition ...
indicates that in Cankam poetry Tamil has been specifically assigned
the role of a Praakrit. ... "
Jan E.M. Houben Kern Institute P.O. Box 9515 NL-2300 RA Leiden
J.E.M.Houben@... --
