Prof. Sivathamby and Tamil literary culture

Part 1

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.- ThiruKural This week’s column 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.Sivathamby’s 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, it’s 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 arose…The Dravidian ideology…was 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 Pillai’s representation of Tamil literature are its antiquity, its vastness, and its high moral standards.

Puranalingam Pillai’s 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 Pillai’s work and Vaiyapuri Pillai’s work; “ Puranalingam Pillai’s 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.