composition cannot be fixed later than the third century before Christ.5 It is this book which gives the scholar a wealth of material for the study of the social life and literary conventions of the Tamils of the half millennium preceding the Christian era. As such, the third part of the book, which deals with the functions, the matter, and the mode of poetics, Porulatikaaram, is the first and fundamental source for the study of Nature in ancient Tamil literature. It describes the conventions which regulate the two-fold classification of Tamil poetry, namely, “Love poetry and all that is not love poetry” (Akam, Puṛam), the landscape, the seasons, the hours appropriate to each aspect and emotion of love; the trees and flowers which are symbolic of different landscapes or strategic movements; in short, how Nature is to be framed as the background of human behaviour and emotions in poetry. The poetry belonging to the age before and immediately after the composition of Tolkaappiyam has not come down to us. What have reached us are the Ten Idylls (Pattuppaaṭṭu) and the Eight Anthologies (Eṭṭuttokai) which are collections of poems composed after Tolkaappiyam by various poets, most of whom belonged to one single epoch. Most of this poetry was composed before the second century A.D.6 These poems, however, do not exactly belong to a Golden or Augustan Age of Tamil literature as has been supposed. Indications point to their being the efforts of an age when decades of convention were setting limits and marking boundaries to poetic inspiration, and preventing the free and unfettered beat of the poets’ wings. Nevertheless, it is a great and spacious age in Tamil literature. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5 In addition to the works mentioned see SIMON CASIE CHITTY, The Tamil Plutarch, Colombo, 1946. In the note (p. 122) under the title “Tolkaappiyanaar,” T. P.MEENAKSHISUNDARAM dates the work as anterior to third century B.C. Later interpolations are not ruled out. 6Dr. U. V.SAMINATHA IYER, Kuruntogai (Tm) Introduction, p. 8 ff, 2 ed., Madras, 1947.Pierre Meile, in Histoire des Littératures,Vol. I, p. 1046 ff, Paris, 1955. 7 S. KRISHNASWAMY IYENGAR in the Tamilian Antiquary, No. 5, Trichinopoly, 1909, writes of this period as The Augustan Age of Tamil Literature. The phrase has been often used since then by writers on Tamil literature. |