Prof. Sivathamby and Tamil literary culture

[Part -2]

In this week’s column I would like to further explore the salient works in Tamil literary culture and would, primarily, focus on Tirukkural.

Tirukkural is made up of 1330 couplets on a wide range of themes relating to family life, society, asceticism, kingship and the protocol of love. There is no exact historical record concerning Tiruvalluvar, the supposed author of the book. According to the available information about Tiruvalluvar, he was a law-caste weaver.

Diverse scholars conclude with conflicting dates for the Tirukkural. Kamil Zvelebil, proposes that Kural was composed during the 5th century CE. Some scholars were of the view that Tiruvalluvar was a Jain, a view fiercely contested by some other scholars. Since the text is virtually free of sectarian polemics, Tiruvalluvar’s religious identity is of secondary importance.

The verses of Tirukkural are grouped in ‘chapters’ ( atikaram) of ten verse of each and each chapter carries a title which is fairly obvious and identifiable of the theme or the topic in the constituent verses. The chapters are further categorised into three divisions with titles corresponding to three of the four “ aims of the man” : ( Tamil urutipporul Skt purushartha); virtuous behaviour in the context of both house-holder life and a life of renunciation (aram), prosperity realised through life in the public sphere and good governance (Porul), and pleasure through amorous experience (Kamam or inpam ).

Norman Cutler is of the view that some commentators further subdivided those three divisions into two or more subsections.

Tirukkural as a classic

“The evidence of Tirukkural’s stature as a classic, not only in modern times but also in the past, is considerable. There are ten premodern commentaries on the text, of which five are extant and five have been lost. Quotations from or allusions to Tirukkural are found in other Tamil literary works , the most frequently cited being verbatim quotations of verses 55 and 360 in Manimekalai. Yet another indication of Tirukkural’s long-standing eminence is a collection of 50 verses praising Tirukkural and Truvallauvar entitled Tiruvallauvamalai ( tenth century). Each verse is attributed to a different poet , including, in the early verses of the poem, a disembodied voice, the goddess of speech, Siva in his manifestation as the poet Iraiyanar, and many of the poem of legendary Tamil carikam.

Scholars have tended to situate Tirukkural either as part of carikam corpus in the early period of Tamil literary history or in a succeeding post-carikam age. According to certain widely accepted versions of Tamil literary history, the earliest period of Tamil literary production, the carikam period which was dominated by a largely native Tamil aesthetic sensibility, was closely followed by an age characterized by a strong didactic bent , due at least in part to the influence of Buddhism and Jainism. The majority of the texts included in the traditional grouping of 18 shorter works, including Tirukkural, are assigned to this later period. Only one other text of the eighteen –Nalatiyar, is said to be an anthology of verses by Jain monks-even remotely approaches Tirukkural’s visibility among modern Tamil texts.

The paradigms of “eighteen shorter works” post dates the composition of Tirukkural and the other texts including this group. The term first occurs in Peraciriyar’s 13th century commentary on Tolkappiyam. It also occurs in the other roughly contemporary commentaries on the ilakkanam texts Tolkappiyam and Viracoliyam (eleven century). The defining criteria for this grouping are purely formal, though most modern literary historians note the preponderance of texts among its group that fall within the category of ethical literature( Tamil nitinul). The term nitinul is attested as early as Parimelakar’s late 13th century commentary on Tirukkural, but this tells us little about text’s stature as a distinctive literary work. “

One of the prominent facts about Tirukkural is that it is often located in an era when Buddhism and Jainism exerted overarching influence in the literary life of Tamilnadu and scholars such as Vaiyapuri Pillai postulated that the author of Tirukkural was a Jain. Against the backdrop of modern Tamil cultural nationalism, Tirukkural has acquired a pivotal position in the Tamil literary culture that supersedes any identification it, once, had with a Jain religious or cultural program. Virtually every religious community in Tamilnadu has a claim to Tirukkural and one may encounter strong resistance to the idea especially in certain non-Brahmin Saiva circles to the idea that the author of Tirukkural was a Jain. Norman Cutler points out that “N. Subramanian, somewhat less polemically, locates the composition of Tirukkural in the framework of a “liberalised Hinduism” that was not adverse to incorporating ideas identified with other religious communities. Other scholars are inclined to emphaise the text’s tolerance, eclecticism, and indeed its “universality” without attempting to assign it a specific religious affiliation. “

Valluvar’s religious affiliations

One of the contentious issues around Tirukkural is Valluvar’s religious affiliations. Some scholars concluded that the text transcends sectarianism. Norman Cutler observes, “This tension can be traced to Tirukkural’s career in Tamil cultural history. The text has, in various times and environments, been appropriated by spokespersons for one or another religious traditions. The most noteworthy example is found in the late-thirteen century commentary by the Vaisnava Brahmin Parimelalakar. Even if Vaisnava themes are not prominent in this, the most influential of several “Old” commentaries on Tirukkural, Parimelalakar unequivocally construes the overall plan of the text, as well as specific verses, in terms of Brahmanic paradigms.

In recent times, however, Parimelalakar’s construction of Tirukkural has , often, been challenged , sometimes respectfully and sometimes adversely, in favour of other interpretations that downplay any strong association between Tirukkural and Sanskrit culture. For some scholars, the Kural expresses the values of an early Tamil civilisation characterised by a “rationalist” rather than a narrow sectarian sensibility , while for others it represents a unique experiment in ecumenicalism. “

The most pertinent query that might yield form this tension is how closely are religious sectarianism and literary culture intertwined? Cutler points out, “ On the one hand, carikam poetry is , often, described as secular; on the other, canonical poems of the Vaisnava and Saiva saints and the theological oriented commentaries on the Vaisnava poems were clearly produced in a sectarian context and have played a major role in the formation and maintenance of sectarian identity”.