Tolkāppiyam

Tolkāppiyam, also romanised as Tholkaappiyam (Tamil: தொல்காப்பியம், lit. "ancient poem"), is the most ancient extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. It is the earliest Tamil text mentioning Gods often identified as Hindu deities. Mayyon as (Vishnu), Seyyon as (Skanda), Vendhan as (Indra), Varuna as (Varuna) and Kotṟavai as (Devi or Bagavathi) are the gods mentioned.

Quotes

• It is unfortunate that the most ancient Sangam compositions are probably lost for ever ; we only know of them through brief quotations in later works. An early text, the Tamil grammar Tolkàppiyam, dated by most scholars to the first or second century AD,35 is “said to have been modelled on the Sanskrit grammar of the Aindra school.”
  • K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India, p. 130.
  • quoted in VEDIC ROOTS OF EARLY TAMIL CULTURE Michel Danino Written in 2001 and published in Saundaryashri: Studies of Indian History, Archaeology, Literature and Philosophy (Festschrift to Professor Anantha Adiga Sundara), P. Chenna Reddy, (ed.), Sharada Publishing House, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 19–30.

• Its content, says N. Raghunathan, shows that “the great literature of Sanskrit and the work of its grammarians and rhetoricians were well known and provided stimulus to creative writers in Tamil.... The Tolkàppiyam adopts the entire Rasa theory as worked out in the Nàtya øàstra of Bharata.”
  • N. Raghunathan, Six Long Poems from Sanham Tamil (reprint Chennai : International Institute of Tamil Studies, 1997), p. 2, 10.
  • quoted in VEDIC ROOTS OF EARLY TAMIL CULTURE Michel Danino Written in 2001 and published in Saundaryashri: Studies of Indian History, Archaeology, Literature and Philosophy (Festschrift to Professor Anantha Adiga Sundara), P. Chenna Reddy, (ed.), Sharada Publishing House, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 19–30.

• It also refers to rituals and customs coming from the “Aryans,” a word which in Sangam literature simply means North Indians of Vedic culture ; for instance, the Tolkàppiyam “states definitely that marriage as a sacrament attended with ritual was established in the Tamil country by the Aryas,”
  • K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, A History of South India, p. 130.
  • quoted in VEDIC ROOTS OF EARLY TAMIL CULTURE Michel Danino Written in 2001 and published in Saundaryashri: Studies of Indian History, Archaeology, Literature and Philosophy (Festschrift to Professor Anantha Adiga Sundara), P. Chenna Reddy, (ed.), Sharada Publishing House, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 19–30.

• The Tolkàppiyam also formulates the captivating division of the Tamil land into five regions (tiõai ), each associated with one particular aspect of love, one poetical expression, and also one deity : thus the hills (kuriji ) with union and with Cheyon (Murugan) ; the desert (pàlai ) with separation and Koççavai (Durga) ; the forests (mullai ) with awaiting and Mayon (Vishnu-Krishna) ; the seashore (neytal ) with wailing and Varuna ; and the cultivated lands (marutam) with quarrel and Ventan (Indra). Thus from the beginning we have a fusion of non-Vedic deities (Murugan or Koççavai), Vedic gods (Indra, Varuna) and later Puranic deities such as Vishnu (Màl or Tirumàl). Such a synthesis is quite typical of the Hindu temperament and cannot be the result of an overnight or superficial influence ; it is also as remote as possible from the separateness we are told is at the root of so-called “Dravidian culture.”
  • VEDIC ROOTS OF EARLY TAMIL CULTURE Michel Danino Written in 2001 and published in Saundaryashri: Studies of Indian History, Archaeology, Literature and Philosophy (Festschrift to Professor Anantha Adiga Sundara), P. Chenna Reddy, (ed.), Sharada Publishing House, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 19–30.