CHAPTER FIVE RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION Religion and Nature Cankam literature, as it has come to us, contains various strata of development in the religious thought of the Tamils. We have evidence for totemism, for animism, for polytheism as well as for monotheism. Though there is a school of thought that believes categorically that the religious and spiritualistic interpretation of the world seems to have been a regular process from animism to polytheism, and from polytheism to monotheism, Tamil literature, on the other hand, would seem to substantiate the view of the rival school, that polytheism and animism are development posterior to monotheism. The belief in one God, Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, was prevalent in Cankam times. There is a strong theis-tic trend proceeding from the earliest Tamil literature available. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan has himself observed that “contact with the highly civilised Dravidians led to the transformation of Vedism into a theistic religion.1 Besides the usual Cankam verses cited in support of the ancient Tamil belief in a personal Supreme God, the word Kaṭavuḷ itself, found in the earliest Tamil works extant, is proof of the Tamils having acquired early notions of God’s transcendence and immanence. With regard to Nature, God is its Creator, and from him came the five elements and the worlds.2 A further proof of Tamil culture originating in the hills is the evidence of the development of their religious thought from the cult of Murukan. This cult of a Supreme God was ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 S. RADHAKRISHNAN, The Hindu View of Life, Allen and Unwin, London, 1948, p. 22. 2Nar; 240, 1; Puram; 194, 5; Lectures on Purananuru (Tm), pp. 167-243, Madras, 1944; SWAMI GNANAPRAGASAR, The Tamils, their early History and Religion, o.c; pp. 49-105. |