நூலியல் பதிவு

Open Library Tamil culture and civilization: readings: the classical period (Asia Publishing House, 1971; ix, 233 பக்.) எனப் பதிவு செய்கிறது.

வாசிப்பு

1971 தொகுப்பின் பொது ஸ்கேன் கிடைக்கவில்லை. கீழே ஏற்கனவே டிஜிட்டல் ஆகிய செவ்வியல் பண்பாட்டுக் கட்டுரைகள் (மேலும் Tamil Culture தொகுதிகள் 1–12 இல்). Past/Present/Future இலங்கை உரை, Ethical Interpretation, Stoicism கட்டுரைகள் IA பக்கப் படங்களிலிருந்து மறு-OCR; அடிக்குறிப்பு/தமிழுக்கு ஸ்கேன் விரும்பத்தக்கது.

Tamil Culture and Civilization

Archive article for the 1971 Asia Publishing House anthology (readings, classical period). No public full scan of that anthology was found. Closest on-site reading: essays already in Tamil Culture vols 1–12 and cleaned article pages.

Contents

1. Publication note
2. Ethical Interpretation of Nature
3. Tamil Culture — Past, Present and Future
4. Indian Thought and Roman Stoicism

Publication note

Open Library: Tamil culture and civilization: readings: the classical period (Asia Publishing House, 1971; ix, 233 p.), selected and introduced by X. S. Thani Nayagam.

Read the full journal on the Tamil Culture, volumes 1–12 document page.

Ethical Interpretation of Nature

The Ethical Interpretation of Nature

Synced from re-OCR’d ethical-interpretation-nature (IA leaves 94–104; Tamil quotations restored).

Xavier S. Thani Nayagam · Tamil Culture, Vol. I Nos. 3–4 (September 1952)

IT IS a favourite point with writers on India to say that the “historical sense” is wanting in all ancient Indian literature. If by a “historical sense” is meant a sense that ought to have produced chronological tables, and authors like Herodotus and Livy who wrote to recount the deeds and facts of the past, then it must be admitted that no literature has come down to us that warrants the existence of such works.

Yet, ancient Tamil literature abounds with allusions, both to contemporary and past events. If even in the absence of works similar to those written by Greek and Roman historians, it has been possible to trace out a history of the Tamil people during the Cangam period, it is due to the historical references in Cangam literature.¹ Many of these references occur in love-poetry. This fact ought to prove to some extent how much the Tamils relished historical references. At the same time, it must be observed, that even these references were often made not only to praise the memory of great Tamil personages of the past but also to eulogize their patron-kings and patron-chiefs. For instance, a poet writes about the gossip in the locality regarding the courtship and clandestine meetings of a hero and a heroine. It may be he has an actual “case” in mind, or it may be he is just imagining a poetic situation. The poet would compare the wide-spread gossip and scandal-mongering (அலர்) of neighbours to some contemporaneous or past victory in battle achieved by a king or chief he admires, or from whom he has received bounteous gifts, saying that the gossip was more resounding than the shouts with which the foes of his hero retreated in battle, or louder than the jubilant cries of his patron’s soldiers when they cut down the “guardian tree” of his enemy. Or the allusion may be manifestly to historic exploits performed by the nation’s heroes in the past.²

Apart from the purely historical allusions, Cangam literature contains also numerous passages in which the poets associate landscape with historical events and historical persons. This historical association in nature poetry is also to be found among poets of other nations like Vergil. English poets have used it in poems here and there. Byron’s Childe Harold contains many passages where landscape evokes thoughts and reflections on the past, and Scott is famous for seeing his landscape always through historical association. The Tamil poets too had a capacity to see the earth coloured by this historical association, but their manner of expressing historical association is worth noting for it is both rare and impressive.

The tresses of the heroine have a fragrance that floats in the breeze. The fragrance reminds the poet of the fresh sweet smell that emanates from parks and jungles on a morning when the mullai is in bloom, and forthwith he compares the fragrance of the tresses to the fragrance of the forest-reserve of one of his patrons, say Ori:

Her tresses smell like the fragrant breeze that blows having traversed through the forest-park of Ori of the liberal hand and the valiant chariot.³

The tresses of a heroine are compared sometimes to a flourishing city, but often to the wavy river sand, or the wavy dry bed of a river. The waves of her tresses are thus compared to the side-bed, of not any river, but one that the poet would like to extol, say the ford of the Kaveri at Uranthai, the capital of the Colas or the banks of the Vaigai near Kudal.

Potiyil, one of the peaks of the Western Ghats, stands like a lofty sentinel in the Southern portion of the range. The sandal-wood that grows on this mountain and these ranges has been always a favourite term of comparison with poets including Kalidasa. The hill would seem to have been included for sometime within the kingdom belonging to chiefs of the Ay family. The heroine is said to be as fragrant as the sandal-wood, or the vengai and kanthal of Ay’s Potiyil, and cooler than its water-lilies.⁴

The eyes of a heroine are usually compared to neydal blooms or to water-lilies. But often the flowers are specified as belonging to the lakes or tanks of some historic place or famed ruler. Thus, in a poem of the Akananuru collection, the eyes are compared to the neydal blooms of a maritime lake (கழி) bordering the sea near Korkai, the emporium of the Pandyans.⁵ Paranar, in another poem of the same collection, after having enumerated the various difficulties and obstacles that a hero has to overcome to keep a tryst with his heroine, concludes saying that they are as difficult to overcome as the outer defences and the defence-forests of Tittan’s Uraiyur.⁶

நொச்சி வேலித் தித்த னுறந்தைக்
கன்முதிர் புறங்காட் டன்ன
பன்முட் டின்றால் தோழிநங் களவே

Another poet compares the forlorn appearance of the heroine on learning of the impending departure of the hero, to the groves around the Kaveri:

Thy forehead is like unto the honey-smelling groves floored with white sand on the tender shores of the great river. After the March festival, under the dense trees rich with foliage and flowers may be seen the ashes of fires kindled by those who have been feasting. As desolate as the grove without people art thou. Your shoulders too, once resembling the elegant and stately bamboos that grow on the flanks of the Potiyil hill that belongs to the Ayan, master of the Southern sea rich in peerless pearls, have also lost their pristine elegance.⁷

And thus numerous examples may be given of the brief but significant ways in which history and Nature and personal association are linked together by the Tamil poets in the composition of imagery. As great an attraction for them was, however, to consider an ethical aspect in Nature, often based on historical and personal association.

The Tamils were always a hard-working and industrious people. The fertility of the soil was greater in the Cangam period than now, but was not so great as to require much less energy and industry on the part of cultivators than are required at present.

It happened that Nature made up by providing an abundance of luxury goods in exchange for what she exacted by labour from the Tamils. The hills of Tamil Nad provided pepper, cinnamon and other spices; her seas gave pearls and red coral; her forests yielded metals and precious stones. Therefore, as early as historical records go the Tamils have distinguished themselves as traders, with China to the East, with Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Roman Empire to the West. They made the most of what Nature gave them, and their commerce added not a little to the wealth of their country.⁸

The Tamils were also known for their spirit of warfare. The chiefs and kings fought intermittently among themselves, and as it happens when war and diplomacy and alliances have become common, they developed early a very honourable code of warfare.

Their commerce with foreigners, and their warfare made them develop high ethical standards of conduct. Honesty, truthfulness, bravery, love of honour, are virtues without which no people may distinguish themselves in trade or war. Mercy and sympathy are also qualities which are natural to those who have attained a position of permanent wealth and to the warrior used to the miseries of the battle-field. Hence the repeated emphasis in Tamil literature on the right use of wealth by distributing it to the poor and the needy.

Cangam literature is nearly one-fourth ethical if you consider the didactic poems as well as those that personify and illustrate virtuous deeds and allude to virtuous persons. “Ethics in Cangam literature” would certainly form enough matter for a voluminous study. Here is a typical poem of four lines by Avvai, “The Tamil Sappho.”

Land whether it be high or low, cultivated or uncultivated may be called good not because it yields good crops, but because it yields good inhabitants.⁹

And here is a typical comparison where a certain lover’s words are said to be as faultless and true as the arrows shot by the archers of the army chief, Palyan.¹⁰

கொற்றச் சோழர் கொங்கர்ப் பணியியர்
வெண்கோட் டியானைப் பேஎர் கிழவோன்
பழையன் வேல்வாய்த் தன்னநின்
பிழையா நன்மொழி தேறிய இவட்கே

Tamil poetry abounds with passages in which the fertility of a region or kingdoms, unfailing rains, well-watered rivers, abundance of birds and beasts and general prosperity are ascribed to the righteous rule of the sovereign. The panegyric poems of the Pattuppattu, the Patirruppattu and the Purananuru are impregnated with this idea. The praise of a sovereign’s rule meant the praise of the hills, the rivers and the general beauty and fertility of his kingdom. Sometimes the panegyrics assume a language reminiscent of Vergil in the fourth eclogue. Describing the region of Ilanthirayan, the poet says, “in his land there are no marauders that attack way-farers to rob them of their goods. Peals of thunder you will not hear; the serpent will not kill, nor the forest animals hurt. Proceed, therefore, as you will.”¹¹

When praising sovereigns, the roar of the ocean or the cataract, and the sound of thunder are said to be the drums that announce his greatness. The heights of the mountains bespeak the heights of greatness achieved by him. The streams that descend the mountain sides may be seen shimmering silverlike from far and wide; they are the silver banners that proclaim his victories and his unrivalled prowess in war.¹²

The waters even in the biggest and deepest of his rivers are so clear that ornaments that have fallen off from those sporting in the river may be seen lying deep down on the sands. The clear waters are an indication of the unsullied record of his rule.¹³ This mode of praise occurs in the panegyric poetry, both in explicit terms and by suggestion.

Nature’s reflection of righteousness is not due to the actions of the sovereign alone. It may be due to deeds of individual chiefs as well as the deeds of a people of the entire village. An amusing and significant poem of the Kali odes presents a young lady and her companion as apparently wondering that Nature could be so luxuriant in the country of her lover who has not kept his tryst. The inference is that since he has not kept his word he cannot be an upright man, and consequently Nature cannot appear lovely in his land.

What! The river glimmers! Can it truly glimmer in the land of one who is not true to his promises,—who has not kept his word? What! the rain cloud wanders,—does truly the rain cloud wander in the land of him who is the cause of wasting form?¹⁴

இலங்கு மருவித் திலங்கு மருவித்தே
வானி லிலங்கு மருவித்தே தானுற்ற
சூல்பேணான் பொய்த்தான் மலை

She expresses her surprise in similar language about these beauteous and beneficent aspects of Nature, for she would expect that the land of one who has been false to her would be deprived of Nature’s beauty and Nature’s bounty.

Another poem in the same collection is an imaginary exhortation to relatives of a young lady not to refuse her hand in marriage to the young man who has rescued her from being swept away by the waters of a river. In rescuing her, the young man has had to clasp her to himself, and according to the Tamil code, it was but proper to get her married to the one who was first to touch her. It was the ancient ideal that a young lady should not touch or be touched by anyone else than the one who was to be her partner in life. The speaker who counsels her people threatens that unless propriety is observed in this regard and the young lady given in wedlock to the one who had clasped her for the first time,

The valli will not yield its roots, the hilltops will not yield honey, the garden pannicum will not bear fruit—because the mountain dwellers have observed that which is evil.

In the mountain summits which attract the eye, and there the gloriosa superba casts around its fragrance, the bows of the archers fail not just because their wives are devoted exclusively to their sires.¹⁵

The inference in the latter part is that the hunters in the hills will not be successful in obtaining food with the bow and arrow if they do not regard the propriety regarding the wedlock in question. Such is the power of chastity, that a chaste maid or a chaste wife could merit seasonal rains for her village.¹⁶ Such is the power of the prayer of these good men that their devotions bring rain when they are in need, and keep away the rain clouds when it threatens to rain too much.¹⁷

Vergil enunciated a principle of poetry much in vogue among the ancients when he said that what is described ought to correspond to the dignity of the theme or the hero—si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae. The Tamil poets took pains to describe everything noble even in the landscape of imaginary heroes. In love poems, the heroes and heroines may be real or imaginary. The poet may have in mind actual incidents from life or he may be describing incidents his poetic fancy has built up. The heroes and heroines are depicted as ideal persons for Tolkappiyar and the poets believed in another principle enunciated also by Aristotle that a class is represented by the best of its type.

They chose the best of the types they described, and the nobility of the landscape is always made to reflect the nobility of character of their heroes.

Descriptions and allusions to Nature contain historical references of a kind which allude to the goodness, gentleness and kindness of the historical heroes. When Shakespeare in Coriolanus refers to Valeria as—

chaste as the icicle
That’s curdied by the frost from purest snow
And hangs on Dian’s temple¹⁸

he no doubt meant that ice, pure everywhere, becomes purer by association with the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the celebrated edifice in honour of the goddess of chastity. The Tamil poets work in similar associations where possible. The eyes of a lady are compared to the round water-lilies. A Tamil poet would not be satisfied with any simile in general; he would want a historical simile. He would rather refer to the water-lilies growing in the region of a particular king or chief. This topical and specific setting served a double purpose, namely to praise the region, or its ruler, as well as to say that the flowers in the particular region would be lovelier because of the goodness and righteousness of the persons associated with it. The latter inference is derived from the historical allusion and the lesson is that the beauty of a landscape is commensurate with the moral beauty and ethical ideals of its rulers and citizens. While in puram poetry such assertions are directly made as may be seen in any panegyric poem, in akam poetry they are alluded or suggested as in the examples that follow.

The taste of water after eating the goose-berry is sweet. However, the poet thinks that it will be sweeter after eating of the goose-berry in Pannan’s garden, for he is one who does not live for himself but for others.¹⁹

Pari, one of the last seven patrons of poets, had a picturesque lake in the hilly territory of which he was chief. The water-flowers that bloomed there are sometime objects of comparison. In a poem in which a lover is remonstrated for his coldness and indifference towards his beloved, the lady’s nurse addresses him in these words:—

Once, even if my lady had offered you the green fruit of the margosa, you would have received it as sweetest sugar. But now, were she to give you even the clearest water of a January morning from the cool lake of Pari’s hill, it might scald you and taste bitter. Such is your wavering love.

Waters on a January morning would be cool and crystal-clear in all lakes. Many lakes could have been taken as a term of comparison in the Tamil country. But here the poet pays a compliment to Pari as well as teaches a moral lesson. Waters in Pari’s territory ought to be clearer because he has a clear and unsullied record, and his lake is cooler because he refreshes with his giving all those who have recourse to him. Similarly, the flowers of his lake are more fragrant, and the poet would compare the heroine’s fragrance, not to any flower in general, but to the flowers of Pari’s lake, or to the flowers that bloom on Sirumalai of the Pandyans, or on the hill of Ori, the beneficent chief, or of Ay.²⁰

Much that was ethical entered also into the world of Tamil imagery. A few examples will suffice. The bee goes from flower to flower. Having spent the day among aquatic flowers, when the sun sets and the aquatic flowers close their petals, the bee betakes itself to the flowers on creepers and branches which flower at night. The bees that abandon the lotus and the water-lily in the evening for the jasmine and the kantal remind the poet of those who forsake the friendship of men whose wealth and influence are on the decrease.²¹ Another poet imagines a trial of strength between a rogue elephant and a tiger. To the bee the tiger’s spots seem to be flowers of the vengai. It flies to and fro between the elephant and the tiger, trying to taste of the elephant’s rut, as well as of what it imagines to be the flowers of the vengai. The bee reminds the poet of those peace-makers who seek to bring together two contending armies or two opposing parties.²²

For wealth of Nature imagery the kali odes occupy a very prominent place in Cangam literature. In the kali odes of the palai class the sun is represented as cruel as a sovereign that is an unjust ruler. On the other hand in a neydal kali where Nature is considered under a different aspect, the sun is compared to a victorious and virtuous king proceeding to another world to enjoy the fruits of his good deeds.²³

Trees in the palai region are said to be dried up like the tree under which has sat a man that hath borne false testimony.²⁴ They are also said to be devoid of fruits and leaves like a young man whose youth has passed in a lonely existence. Like the petty-minded man whose wealth does not benefit those who approach it, and like the end of him that lives a life of wrong-doing which ends in self destruction, the tree too dries up even to its very roots.²⁵ The luxuriant trees, on the other hand, that border rivers and tanks are suitable similes for those who flourish because they share their wealth with the poor and the needy.

The trees on the well watered river banks grew like the wealth of him that gives without stint, and lives a virtuous life doing no evil to others.²⁶

The trees were heavy with flowers like the bounty of him who realises the transitoriness of life.²⁷

Like the wealth of the bountiful man, the trees bloomed; like the effortless ease of those who enjoy the wealth of such a man, the bees sported among the flowers.²⁸

The petals of the gloriosa superba are compared to women’s fingers and the entire flower, especially before it has unfolded itself is compared to the two hands joined in an attitude of supplication. Trees and plants that are bent or drooping are compared to the bent head and shy posture of wise and learned men who have heard their own praise spoken in their presence.²⁹

From animals too the Tamil poets learned wisdom. The hero as well as the heroine recall their own course of love when they observe what part love plays in the behaviour of animals. The elephant that strokes with its trunk the back of its mate or helps it to feed on bamboo-shoots, the deer calling unto deer, the dove cooing unto dove, the buffalo, the crab, all these teach them or remind them of the affectionate relation that should exist between those who are pledged to each other.

Notes

1. Writers like P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar and K. N. Sivaraja Pillai have based their works entirely on this literature.
2. Kur.; 328; 393; Agam 36; 45; 209; 253; 256.
3. Kur., 199.
4. Kur.; 84.
5. Agam; 130. Cf. Agam; 47, 69.
6. Agam; 122, 21–23. நொச்சி வேலித் தித்த னுறந்தைக் / கன்முதிர் புறங்காட் டன்ன / பன்முட் டின்றால் தோழிநங் களவே.
7. Agam; 137.
8. E. H. Warmington, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, Cambridge, 1928.
9. Puram; 187.
10. Nar.; 10, 6–9. கொற்றச் சோழர் கொங்கர்ப் பணியியர் / வெண்கோட் டியானைப் பேஎர் கிழவோன் / பழையன் வேல்வாய்த் தன்னநின் / பிழையா நன்மொழி தேறிய இவட்கே.
11. E.g. Puram; 143, 12, «நின்று நின் மழையும் பாட»; Puram; 231 ff.; Maduraikkanci; 105 ff.; Patir.; 28.
12. Perumpan.; 40–43; Patir.; 69, 78; Agam; 162, 358; Patir., 70, 22; Puram; 126 ff.
13. Patir.; 86.
14. Kali; 41, 42. இலங்கு மருவித் திலங்கு மருவித்தே / வானி லிலங்கு மருவித்தே தானுற்ற / சூல்பேணான் பொய்த்தான் மலை.
15. Kali; 39.
16. Kali; 19, 20; Kali; 39, 8.
17. Puram; 143, 1–3.
18. Coriolanus, V, iii, 65–67.
19. Agam; 54.
20. Kur.; 19. Cf. Agam; 47, 69, 78.
21. Agam; 71, 1–4. நிறைந்தோர்த் தேரும் நெஞ்சமொடு குறைந்தோர் / பயனின் மையிற் பற்றுவிட் டொரூஉம் / நயனின் மாக்கள் போல வண்டினம் / சுனைப்பூ நீத்துச் சினைப்பூப் படா.
22. Kali; 46.
23. Compare Kali 13 with Kali 118.
24. Kali; 34, 10.
25. Kali; 10.
26. Kali; 27, 1–2.
27. Kali; 32, 11.
28. Kali; 35, 1–2.
29. Kali; 118.

Tamil Culture — Past, Present and Future

Re-OCR’d from Internet Archive page images (Tamil Culture, Vol. IV No. 4, 1955, pp. 341–364; IA leaves 1374–1397) and lightly edited for readability. Hyphenation rejoined; page headers and footnote blocks separated; obvious character errors corrected against the scan. Tamil verse that remains unclear is marked — prefer the scan view for citations.

Contents

1. Opening
2. What is Culture?
3. The Antiquity of Tamil Culture in Ceylon
4. Twin Cultures
5. The Tamil Language
6. Tamil Literature
7. Ideals of Life
8. Present State
9. Tamil at the University
10. Responsibility of the State
11. Some Ways and Means
12. Unto the Last

Opening

Xavier S. Thani Nayagam · Tamil Culture, Vol. IV No. 4 (1955), pp. 341–364

An address delivered under the auspices of the Tamil Cultural Society, Colombo, 2 August 1955.

"Tamil"means"sweetness, "and"Culture"has been defined as"sweetness and light."'"Tamil"and"Culture, "therefore, make a most graceful combination both in Language and in Life. It is this graceful combination that has brought us here this evening.

The Tamil Cultural Society has completed three years since its inception. If it is to be of greater service to the Tamil-speaking peoples, it should be our privilege to welcome to the Society more members from every walk of life. It is by the growth of organised action among the Tamil-speaking population that the Society may hope to realise what it has so elaborately planned. There was never a time in the history of this Island when concerted action was so vital to our existence as it is today. It is the aim of the Tamil Cultural Society to have an Island-wide membership of at least ten thousand people, all united in the furtherance of the cause of Tamil Culture, the Tamil Language, Tamil Literature and the Tamil Arts. This may seem an ambitious aim, but it is not beyond realisation, provided every Tamil-speaking citizen is conscious of his heritage, and of his duty to pass on that heritage to the generations that will succeed him in this Island.

What is Culture?

Culture has been defined as a "way of life, "as"sweetness and light", as "activity of thought and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. "These brief definitions are sufficient to show the comprehensiveness and the indispensability of culture, for one must have a way of life, and that way of life should be combined with sweetness and light, with activity of thought, and with beauty and humane feeling.

Tamil Culture is nothing else but the Tamil way of life, a pattern of gracious living that has been formed during the centuries of Tamil history. It has been conditioned by the land, the climate, the language, the literature, the religions, the customs, the laws, the food, the games and toys of the Tamil people, by the palmyra palm, the gingelly oil, and the vegetables associated with them. Culture is a most elusive and at the same time an all-embracing term.

The Antiquity of Tamil Culture in Ceylon

Tamil Culture has existed in this Island from time immemorial. All the weight of geological, anthropological, historical, literary and linguistic evidence point to the existence in Ceylon of a people with racial and cultural affinities with the inhabitants of South India.

The Mahavamsa itself recognizes the existence of a civilized people living in cities at the time of the landing of Vijaya. The Mahavamsa too supposes a pre-Buddhist period in Ceylon when the religion of the people was Hindu. The story of Elara's reign, the statement,

"When he had thus overpowered thirty-two Damila

Kings, Dutthagamini ruled over Lanka in single sovereignty, "the rule of Tamil kings, the accounts of the Vaitulyan doctrine, and references to "Damiladevi," "the Chola

people,""the further coast"and"the other coast, "point to an ancient time when Tamil Culture and Sinhalese Culture existed side by side upon this Island. The relations of the Sinhalese Kings with Nagadipa, with the Chera, Chola, Pandya Kings of South India their dynastic alliances, their embassies, their treaties, and even their wars and their intrigues, are evidence of a fraternal rivalry that existed between these neighbouring kingdoms. There is a tendency to exaggerate these wars and to portray these cultures as if they were perpetually in conflict. Such a portrayal is one of the dangers of history. The truth is, that to one well read in Ceylon and South Indian history, these conflicts seem like the internal conflicts of kindred peoples. The wars of the Tamils against the Sinhalese are not any more numerous or hostile than the wars among the Tamil kingdoms themselves. At the time the Portuguese landed on this Island, there is ample evidence for the honoured place Tamil had at the Court of Kotte and for the Tamil schools that the Portuguese founded in the Western and North Western Provinces. When printing was introduced into this Island for the first time, the Dutch published books both in the Tamil and Sinhalese tongues. A copy of a Tamil book published in Colombo in 1754 by the Dutch Pastor Bronsveld, refers

in its dedication to the Tamil language spoken within the greater area of this Island. (Maxima cum hujus insulae parte Tamulice loquentem).

Robert Knox and the Dutch despatches speak of the Tamil townships and the Tamil-speaking people of the Kandyan Kingdom.

Twin Cultures

The comparative study of the Tamil and Sinhalese languages, of the literatures and grammar in the two languages, of place-names, of the drama, the dance, the architecture, the sculpture peculiar to the two cultures of this Island reveal to what limits they influenced each other. Anthropological surveys have shown the extent to which the common racial characteristics are shared by the populations that speak the two languages, and history testifies to the shifting of populations from one kingdom to another and to the sections of people that have changed one language for the other. The laws, the caste system, the patterns of social structure, reveal very many common elements. For the existence and inter-penetration of these cultures, there is no better evidence than a religious shrine like Kathirgamam held sacred by the Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, located in the southernmost part of Ceylon, and the religious shrines of the Buddhists located in Nainativu, a northernmost outpost of the Island, held sacred also by Hindus.

The existence of two different religions did not always prevent the patronage that kings of one persuasion extended to the religion that was not theirs; did not prevent the patronage and employment of Saivaite Brahmins at the Sinhalese Courts; did not prevent marriage alliances of Sinhalese Kings with Tamil Saivaite Queens; did not prevent the teaching of Tamil along with Sinhalese, Pali and Sanskrit at the more famous pirivenas as testified by the Gira Sandesa (15th century).

There was a time when Buddhism counted many Tamils among its followers, even in Ceylon, and Tamil Buddhist monks contributed in no small measure to the enrichment of Tamil literature and Pali literature.

Viharas were established in the Tamil-speaking areas of Ceylon and South India, and Tamil monks came to teach as well as to learn in the Sinhalese kingdoms. It will always remain a source of pride to us that the greatest, if not the only classical epic of Theravada Buddhism exists in the Tamil language. The poetry of Manimekhalai (2nd cent. A.D.) has been forgotten by scholars because of its didactic and doctrinal appeal, but it remains one of the finest jewels of Tamil poetry with an abundance of quotable lines, like

(Tamil verse — see scan.)

(Tamil verse — see scan.)

(Tamil verse — see scan.)

The Virasoliyam, a compendious Tamil grammar, was compiled in the 11th century by a Tamil Buddhist, Buddhamitrar. The origin of Tamil is attributed in this grammar to Avalokitesvara (Bodhisattva). This grammar seems to have influenced the Sinhalese grammar Sidatsangarava. Among the more famous Tamil Buddhists that visited Ceylon on religious and cultural missions were Sangamitta (4th c.), Buddhadatta Mahathero (5th c.), Vajrabodhi (7th—8th c.), Anurudha (12th c.), Dharmakirti, author (?) of the Culavamsa (13th c.). Dignaga, Dharmapala of Nalanda, Bodhidharma of China were three other illustrious Tamil exponents of Buddhism. '

The Tamil Language

The Tamil language has been spoken in this Island, it would seem, at least for the last three thousand years. The punchmarked coins of an early era point to connections that Ceylon may have had with Mohenjodaro and the Indus Valley civilisation. Tamil poetry composed in Ceylon has been included in the earliest Tamil Anthologies, and the Tamil spoken in Ceylon represents a pre-Pallava period with its ancient morphological and grammatical forms and its repertoire of words considered obsolete for centuries on the neighbouring continent.

A language is always a mirror of a people's genius.' The Tamil language has been spoken basically in its present form for the last two thousand years, and it continues even now to be the living language for thirty to forty million people—about thirty million people in India, more than two million people in Ceylon, nearly one million people in Malaya, Vietnam and Indonesia, and many thousands scattered over Fiji, Mauritius, Madagascar,

Africa and even Trinidad and the Martinique Islands.

Tamil is as much a classical language as Greek, Latin or Sanskrit, with this difference that while her ancient contemporaries have changed beyond recognition or been long regarded as"dead", Tamil continues to be one of the most vigorous of modern languages, and perhaps offers the only example in history of an ancient classical tongue which has survived to this day and yet remains young as it was two thousand. years ago. |

TAMIL CULTURE.REFERENCE TO CEYLON 347

The monumental Tamil-English Dictionary by Miron Winslow was commenced in Jaffna by Joseph Knight, assisted by Gabriel Tissera and Rev. Percival (two Ceylonese), and it is in the introduction to this Dictionary that Dr. Winslow has the oft-quoted passage:

"It is not perhaps extravagant to say that in its poetic form the Tamil is more polished and exact than

the Greek, and, in both dialects with its borrowed

treasures, more copious than the Latin. In its fullness

and power, it more resembles English and German than

any other language."

Dr. Slater said, "The Tamil language is extraordinary in its subtlety and sense of logic"; and W. Taylor observed earlier, "It is one of the most copious, refined and polished languages spoken by man.";

Tamil speech as obtaining in Ceylon, and Tamil phonetics as obtaining especially in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, show a fidelity to the earliest Tamil grammars which the speech of South India does not—a clear indication of the development of Tamil in Ceylon unhampered by the extraneous influences to which South India was subject.

Tamil Literature

Tamil Literature has made certain definite contributions to world thought and letters. Its love poetry and its inclusion of love poetry in its theory of poetics are indications of the humanistic approach to life that is characteristic of Tamil Culture. The love poetry of the Tamils is the product of a people among whom the finest ideals of courtship and wedlock had long been cherished. The ethical poetry of the Tamils has been the wonder of all foreigners who have studied it. The maxims of Thiruvalluvar or the Tirukkural is a book of which Dr. Albert Schweitzer has said. a. Quoted in Preface to Winslow's Tamil-English Dictionary, Madras,

"There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty | wisdom.'? And Dr. Pope observed:°"I have felt sometimes as if there must be a blessing in store for a people that delight so utterly in compositions thus remarkably expressive of a hunger and thirst after righteousness."1° If English be the language of commerce, French the language of diplomacy, Italian the language of love, and German the language of philosophy, then Tamil is the language of devotion. The devotional poetry in Tamil is so great in bulk, and in depth and intensity of emotional fervour, that its continued study has given the language a certain aptitude for the expression of themes pertaining to mysticism and contemplation. The Nature Poetry of the Tamils is again the result of a people who lived intimately with Nature. No people, except perhaps the people of the Pacific Islands, have made so much use of flowers and plants in daily life for various purposes as the Tamils have done. The Tamils said it with flowers not only in love but also in warfare. The ancient Tamil warriors went to battle, their brows decked with garlands, and each strategic movement had its own symbolic flower. The influence and vitality of Tamil Culture in Ceylon has been such that it has produced a Tamil literature of worth, of which there is indisputable evidence from the 13th century, and many a Ceylonese poet and scholar crossed the Straits and won fame and recognition in other lands where Tamil is spoken. The name of Arumuga Navalar is associated with a great revivalist movement in Tamil and Saivism; C. Y. Thamotherampillai was a pioneer editor of the classics which spear-headed the Tamil Renaissance; V. Kanagasabaipillai opened up a new A. SCHWEITZER, Indian Thought and its Development, pp. 200— 205, London, 1936. KANTHA, Terra Tamulice, Colombo. 1910 SN"Dictionary; SRE

horizon to many a foreigner with his"The Tamils Eighteen Hundred years ago;"N. Kathiravelpillai distinguished himself as a lexicographer; Cumaraswamy Pulavar was recognized as a scholar of outstanding merit; Swami Vipulananda occupied the Chair of Tamil at the Annamalai University, and Swami Gnana Prakasar established his reputation for comparative philology and for the history of the Tamil-speaking people. The records of some of the earlier Tamil writers of Ceylon have been included in the"Tamil Plutarch"compiled by Simon Casie-Chetty. Sinhalese sovereigns of various periods extended their patronage to Tamil poets, and the story is told of the forlorn Tamil bard that set out from Jaffna with his poem to the Court of Rajasingha at Kandy, to be told on the way that the last Tamil-speaking King of Ceylon had been taken captive.

Ideals of Life

Tamil Literature was the result of the Weltanschauung, the world outlook of the Tamil-speaking peoples, and at the same time that literature kept alive the outlook and those ideals which shaped it. Imagination is a gift which has been associated with great commercial peoples, and no people in this part of the world were such skilful navigators or traders as the Tamils.

The sea ports of the then Tamil country, which included all the Malabar coast as well, were busy ports of call into which ships from the West sailed with their gold, lamps, wine and goblets, to return home laden with pepper and silks and cotton and ivory, and with the pearls of the Tamil seas. Teak from the Tamil country has been found in the ruins of Ur of the Chaldees, and peacocks and apes of the South were sold abroad as early as Solomon's time. Yavanar, or men of the Graeco-Roman world, established

350 TAMIL CULTURE |. colonies and trading stations in the Tamil Kingdoms, and were even employed as engineers, body-guards, palaceguards,and city-guards in the service of Tamil Kings."

In this trade and overseas expansion the ports of North Ceylon played a great part which is forgotten in the age of the steamship and the aeroplane. Kalpitiya, Mantote, Kayts, Elephant Pass, Trincomalie have a naval. history that has yet to be studied from local and foreign records, including the Arab chronicles.

The Tamil Argonauts turned their eyes even more naturally towards the East and with them they carried their art and architecture, their religion, their language and their laws. It is agreed by most writers on Indian influences on South East Asia that the Tamil Kingdoms were among the earliest and the most active.

The author of the Periplus and Ptolemy speak of the ships that used to sail from the Eastern coasts of South India and Ceylon to the land of gold (Malaya and Java), and Fa Hien refers to his voyage to Java, via Trincomalie. Having travelled lately through South East Asia, I have been able to follow the routes taken by the Tamil Argonauts and see the many lands where the Tamil-speaking people left behind the traces of their genius and culture. In the architecture of Champa and Cambodia, in the sculptures of the Museum of Tourane, in the Saiva Siddhanta system of religion once followed in Indonesia and Indo-China, in the bronzes of Siam, may be seen the traces of Tamil influence. The Bharata Natyam has affinities with the dances of Cambodia and Bali; the Tamil sacred verses are recited by the Court Brahmins of Thailand at the Tamil feasts of Thirupavay and Thiruvempavai and during the coronation of their kings; certain tribes in Sumatra go under the Tamil names of Chera, Chola, Pandya and Pallava; and the temples of Dieng plateau, of Po-Nagar,

TAMIL CULTURE.REFERENCE TO*CEYLON 351 of Mi-son (Vietnam), of Angkor Thom, show the influence of Tamil architecture.

Islam was spread in the Malay Archipelago largely by Tamil-speaking people.

Because of their international outlook, trade and navigation the Tamils eschewed insularity and developed a remarkable universality of outlook. Wendell Wilkie in One World begins his book with the statement, "In future our thinking must be worldwide. "The Tamil poet anticipated him by two thousand years when he said

Every country is my country; Every man is my kinsman.

(Tamil original — see scan.)

This sense of universality was instrumental in fashioning Tamil society after a broad and tolerant pattern. Albert Schweitzer in his Indian Thought and its Development shows exhaustively the optimistic, humanistic sense of life and life affirmation, the joie de vivre, that is characteristic of the Tamil attitude to life. He has also shown that three of the greatest philosophers of India, namely, Sankara, Ramanuja, Ramananda came from the South and were indebted to Tamil thought.

The happy warrior delineated by the Tamil classics is one who has a sense of honour and of chivalry, and who will rather die than turn his back upon a foe or an adverse circumstance. Honour, bravery and nobility ( urert ) required one to bear the marks and scars of battle on the bosom. The story is told of the Tamil matron that heard of her son who had fallen in battle. She hurried to the battlefield in distress lest he should have fallen in retreat, but was relieved and happy when she saw the wounds on

his chest, the infallible sign that he had fallen facing the enemy. | 13 G. COEDES, Les etats Hindouises, Paris, 1948. _

The Tamil warrior was expected to cover himself with glory in the arts of war and of peace. Men were illustrious because they left a glorious name ( ys ):—

(Tamil verse — see scan.)

The ideal of tolerance, the will to live and let live, is well illustrated by the anthologies which include poems of every shade of religious and philosophic belief. It is further clear from the scenes in Manimekhalai of Tamil cities where philosophers of rival schools expounded their own doctrines from their respective booths, under their own flags—a two thousand-year old anticipation of Hyde Park Corner.

The tradition of Bhakti and the ideal of tolerance explain the fact that nearly every world religion can claim in Tamil a voluminous literature. Tamil Culture has been enriched by poetical works of Saivaites, of Vaishnavites, of Jains, of Buddhists, of Muslims, of Catholics, of Protestants. No other language in the world has been the vehicle of the epic poetry of so many different religions, not Latin, not Sanskrit.

As the ideal of the Philosopher-Statesman was outlined by the Greeks, as the Orator was delineated by the Latins, the Courtier and Governor by the English, the Tamils conceived their educational ideal as the Complete Man, the Perfect Man (#1erG@er) endowed with honour, greatness, culture, benevolence and grace.

Further, a life of altruistic love was recommended to every Tamil. It has been found that persons dedicated to service and love live longer than others, and probably it is the altruism of Tamil Culture

(Tamil verse — see scan.)

Present State

When one examines the present state of the Tamilspeaking peoples and their fidelity to the ideals that moulded their culture one wonders if they have not lost a great deal of the virility and resource that characterized them of old. It is true they continue to live, to be theistic, and to have a love of the language and literature that nurtured them, but enterprise, initiative, creative activity and philosophic thought are necessary to them, if they are not to be noted for inertia and apathy. Some of their ancient contemporaries are no more; the Chams and the Khmers with whom they traded and who under their inspiration erected colossal monuments are themselves spent forces in the world of today. Unless we are alive to the needs for the conservation and transmission of this culture, it may well be that a few centuries hence we shall have precious little of this heritage left behind in the country of our birth.

'- 1. As the basis and source of this apathy and inertia, I would point to the ignorance of the language, of the literature, of the arts, of the history, of the culture, that exists among our people today, especially among those sections that combine wealth and influence and a lop-sided Western education. Cultures disappear by those very causes by which they flourish, and the disappearance of the ideals that nourished Tamil Culture will eventually lead to the disappearance of Tamil Culture itself. They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.

During the last fifty years there has been a revival of interest in Tamil, and this revival must be attributed to the printing and popularising of the Tamil classics. But that revival in Ceylon will not be complete unless it reaches every section of the Tamil-speaking public, particularly those who establish the norms of appreciation and the standards of refinement.

2. The dearth of philosophic thought is, perhaps, the greatest drawback in the popularising of true values in Ceylon. In the spate of talk and oratory about our past glories, we run very dry concerning the problems that affect us in the domain of thought, concerning our beliefs, our code of right and wrong, our political creeds, our ideals of service, our national unity. Philosophy is not the peculiar business of the angels; it is human business, everybody's business.

The want of creative activity in writing and the Fine Arts that we remark today is mainly due to the lack of an interest in philosophic studies and in pure thought. The publishing houses are bringing out translations and adaptations of foreign works and commentaries on the ancient classics, but original works, works in Tamil that deserve translation into foreign tongues, books on the problems vital to man today are noticeably scarce.

3. A lack of originality is seen in the Tamil radio, the Tamil films, and the Tamil newspapers. It is also visible (or audible) in the platform oratory that is being developed in a manner so that the sense follows the sound; it is audible in the alien Tamil accent that is heard over Radio Ceylon; in the hybrid imitations that pass for Tamil dance, and in the poor norms of appreciation of Tamil music."*

• • 4, The emphasis hitherto in the Tamil Renaissance has been on the study of literature. An equal emphasis is necessary today on the Fine Arts of the Tamils. We have not produced recently any great sculptor or any great painter. It is by a revival of these arts that we shall teach our people the art of life and the art of gracious living. A very famous English writer on. the Tamil dance wrote to me some time ago from Canada:"I would give anything to have a glimpse of a Pallava sculpture. or a Chola bronze. "It requires an aesthetic mind to be so moved by art.

"4 BERYL DE ZOETE, The Other Mind, p. 14, London, 1953.

TAMIL CULTURE.REFERENCE TO:CEYLON 355 I have no intention of continuing these observations because I see at the same time a few signs of an awakening of effective mterest in our cultural heritage. But the question that agitates our minds today, the mind of every Tamil-speaking citizen be he Muslim or Hindu, Catholic or Protestant, or Buddhist, concerns the future of Tamil Culture in this country. LANGUAGES OF ADMINISTRATION The stagnation in Tamil Culture that has been noted before is not a little due to the want of State patronage during the last three or four hundred years. With the dawn of a new era in our national life, it is but legitimate for us to expect the State to extend the same measure of support to the development of the culture of the two major nationalities that form the Ceylonese nation. (I follow A. L. Kroeber's definition of nation and nationality:"Here are some contemporary cases of political nations that include two or more nationalities. Belgium is almost equally divided between Waloons speaking a French dialect in their homes and Flemings speaking a ' variant of Dutch. Switzerland is 72 per cent German speaking, 21 per cent French, 6 per cent Italian, 1 per cent Romansch. The Union of South Africa has a white population that is part English speaking and part Afrikaans or Dutch speaking, plus the racially distinct Bantu-Negro natives. India in 1947 set up house-keeping on its own, as two independent political nations with dozens of nationalities and languages."') 15 In the formation and preservation of nationalities. language is by far the most objective factor. It is the free inter-communication of common speech that provides the consciousness of kinship. Language is the rational and spiritual matrix in which a culture lives, moves and has its being. Hence the Tamil poets have consistently lost

356 TAMIL CULTURE |

themselves in a mystical enthusiasm over the nature of

the language, calling it the sweetest possible names: Aste, Aérpdp, acid, sorb, Gasp, usted, Qeyisup, Sisip, 2utsdp, Car Pdsdyp, gprrr_.yp,

The use of the Tamil language in the civil, educational and social life of this country is an absolute necessity if Tamil Culture is to survive. Today, Tamil is spoken in every part of Ceylon by over two million people; it is indigenous to this Island; its speakers constitute a major nationality; its cultural influence in the nation is very much greater than, may be gauged from the numerical strength of its speakers. Words are the living memorials in which are enshrined much of social and political history. The inner life of every people is stereotyped in their language, and retained there for the instruction of future generations. I could give you hundreds of Tamil words and terms, the disuse of which in administration would impoverish the Tamils in Ceylon in more ways than one. It is but a fundamental and human right that Tamil be one of the languages of administration all over the country so that the Tamil-speaking population may transact their business with Government in their own language, and consequently that their business is attended to by members of the Government service who have a minimum knowledge of the Tamil language.

There is a flagrant contradiction in the' statements of those thinkers who would have Tamil as a medium of instruction in schools but not as a medium in administration. If there is equality of opportunity in this Island, it should be made compulsory for a Government servant to have a minimum knowledge of both languages so that he may serve in any part of the Island.

That two languages should function as languages of administration is nothing new in the history of multilingual or bilingual states. South Africa, Canada, Belgium,

Switzerland have their own solutions to the language problems. When three nationalities, four languages, and adherents of three religions have co-operated to build an exceptionally"national"nation in Switzerland, two languages in Ceylon should present no difficulties provided we are determined to preserve the unity of our nation and the territorial integrity of our country. The rule by majority as practised in homogeneous states which have only one language, one nationality, one race, one religion, may not be exercised in countries with a plurality of cultures, nationalities, languages and religions. If the

Swiss confederation has made concession to a language like Romansch which is spoken by only one per cent of its population in one of its twenty-five Cantons, and to Italian spoken by six per cent of its population in two of its Cantons, there must be an affinity between democracy and language that is worth learning."

"In all these countries, Belgium, South Africa and Switzerland, none of the linguistic groups can be properly called a ' national minority,' as each has absolute equality of status with the majority group and its language is

used by the state side by side with the language of the

majority."—(N. Hans, Comparative Education, p. 50.)

In the interests of national stability and solidarity it might be useful for cultural leaders of bilingual and multilingual states to study the questions of national languages on an international plane. Such conferences would strengthen the claims of the Tamil language in Ceylon. sw £

Tamil at the University

If a language is to be the matrix of a flourishing and progressive culture, it is necessary that it be taught at a University level both as a language and as a medium. I am making no suggestion here with regard to the time when our national languages may be introduced into the University or about the preparation needed for its intro-

358 TAMIL CULTURE | duction. Nor am I minimising the importance of a high standard of English desirable at our Universities, but if we wish to develop our languages and our literatures for modern needs and the expression of modern thought, such a development is inconceivable without the national languages becoming the medium in which our intelligentsia think and write, speak and teach. Even for the success of the national languages medium in the elementary and secondary schools, it would seem that a literature at a University level of thought is a prior requisite. So too it is a prior requisite for the progress of all technicalized means of mass communication like the press, the radio and the cinema. The history of the great Buddhist Universities and the Hindu Mutts of the neighbouring continent, as well as the history of Universities in other parts of the world, should convince us 'of the creative influence exercised by these institutions of higher learning in the transmission of language and culture and in the development of the mother-tongue.

The complaint of creative inactivity in Tamil letters and the barrenness of Tamil Art in Ceylon of today is primarily due to the absence of a centre of Tamil thought and Tamil basic research. Our population and our need, would justify the founding of two more Universities, which would be mainly concerned with the development of the national languages. A University in the Northern or Eastern Province with a Tamil cultural emphasis and another in the South of Ceylon, heir to Totagamuwa, would meet the needs. Of the Wijaya Bahu Pirivena, Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam speaking at the Calcutta University Institute in 1916 said:

"In the fifteenth century we had in Ceylon a

splendid College of the University type in the Wijaya Bahu Pirivena at Totagamuwa in Galle District, presided over by Ceylon's greatest poet, Sri Rahula Sthawira. It was catholic in its aims and provided instruction for Buddhists and Hindus, clerical and lay, in all the knowledge of the time."(Eastern Ideals in Education, in Studies and Translations.)

To deny Tamil, equality of status and opportunity at the University or at the Universities of Ceylon, is to deny to the Tamil-speaking people that scholarship and opportunity for national service and cultural refinement which are the ends and aims of higher learning. A University

"aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm

and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlarge-

ment and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating

the exercise of political power and refining the inter-—

course of private life."—(Cardinal Newman, Idea of a

University.)

Are we to be denied these gifts of University life merely because a bilingual University is supposed to be a novel institution in our national experience? Bilingual Universities are no uncommon feature of bilingual and multilingual countries. They tend to set the tone and the example in tolerance, good understanding and co-operation for the rest of the country. And bilingualism at the University and in administration function on the understanding that on the part of the language groups there will be no linguistic or cultural imposition which involves the sacrifice of the mother-tongue.

The existence of the age-long cultures side by side should be looked upon as a source of fruitfulness and mutual benefits. Hence our Universities, schools. and adult educational agencies should provide opportunities for the study of the two national languages. Citizens should be encouraged to learn the other national language so that they may break the linguistic barrier in the interests of social harmony. In Ceylon, we possess already a linguistic environment favourable to the study of Sinhalese, Tamil and English, and as many citizens as possible should avail themselves of this opportunity to obtain a knowledge of the three languages, naturally, in varying degrees of proficiency. 7

Responsibility of the State

Thus far I have spoken of State patronage and of institutions for the promotion of Tamil Culture in Ceylon. The State may not relinquish its obligations in favour of private enterprise and initiative, nor may it attempt at consoling us with the assurance that"Tamil will be taken care of in South India. "Our reply then would be:"We are Ceylonese and the Tamil language belongs here in its own right, and even if Tamil per impossible ceased to be the living language in other parts of the world, we shall endeavour to make it continue to flourish in this Island reserve. "An assurance of Tamil prosperity in South India would be similar to assuring the French-Swiss nationality that French need not be an official language in Switzerland because it is the official language across the border in France, or that the University of Lausanne is superfluous because there is a University in Paris, or to Saying that the mother-tongue may be neglected in Australia because English is taught in the United States. The growth of Tamil.in Ceylon has been independent, though that growth did always admit of influences from across the seas in the same manner as the other great language of this Island.

Nor is it accurate to say that the Tamils are so endowed with intelligence that they will learn the Sinhalese language and wield it with the facility of a mother-tongue even better than the Sinhalese themselves. This is a very unscientific conjecture entirely unsupported by facts. The Tamils can never acquire the same command of Sinhalese as those to whom Sinhalese is the mother-tongue, unless they are prepared to change their mother-tongue. There are very, very few people in the world who are able to think, speak and write two languages with the same equal facility. "And what guarantee is there that even -¥MARIO PEI, The Story of Language, New York, 1940, p. 1047

"A trace of foreign accent is present in about 99% of cases where Bre on one linguistic background tries to speak another

TAMIL CULTURE.REFERENCE TO. CEYLON 361 if they. sell their birthright, origins, religion, names and antecedents will not prevent discrimination should Govern- ~ ment or society choose to discriminate against them ?

Some Ways and Means

There are ways and means by which individuals may promote Tamil Culture, either Singly or in a body. It would not be wrong to say that the State and the Universities receive their tone and their standards also from the society which they represent, so that the higher the standards of society, the higher is the standard of cultural patronage by the State and of efficiency at the University. Here are some ways and means by which the objectives of a cultural revival may be achieved:

A. Active support should be given to associations

dedicated to the study and promotion of Tamiliana. 2. Tamil society should set the highest standards in this revivalist and progressive movement. Awards (cash, medals, books) should be offered for creative work and for translations.

3. Libraries and Museums should be established as means of adult education and films should be made of the Tamil heritage. The project of the Jaffna Library merits the support of the entire country.

4. A comprehensive Tamil-Sinhalese-English Dictionary and a Tamil Encyclopaedia for Ceylon should be compiled. '

5. Basic research should be undertaken by cultural associations so that the significance and import of Tamil

"Pagel: © |

"It has been fully established that a change in language on the

part of an individual is attended by corresponding changes in

gestures, facial expression, carriage, even humour and taboos.

This is readily observable in the case of bilingual speakers when

they pass from one language to the other."

customs and habits and way of life may be popularised among the Tamil-speaking people.

6. Teachers of Tamil should be well-qualified and be lovers of Tamil literature that enjoy Tamil poetry in their leisure. A new orientation in the prescribing of books of study and in their teaching is necessary if Tamil children are to love their language and enjoy poetry and the Tamil Arts as the expression of life and experience, and wield their language for intelligent and effective citizenship.

The writing of poetry should receive especial attention, since poetry, more than any other Fine Art, is a powerful vehicle for the transmission of a people's ideals, history and language.

7. Tamil monuments in Ceylon should be better studied and preserved. If the State for some reason or other, has not hitherto prepared specialists in Tamil archaeology or Tamil history, it should be the duty of the Tamil Cultural Association to request the State to do so. The University, the Department of Archaeology, the Public Museums should have scholars well versed in Tamiliana.

Scholarships may be offered to deserving students by the Tamil-speaking public.

8. Tamil studies should be made to show the points,of contact and elements common with Sinhalese Culture so as to promote understanding and national solidarity.

9. The Tamil classics should be translated into Sinhalese and books on Tamil Culture be written in English and Sinhalese for the promotion of international harmony.

10. The contribution in thought, in literature, in art made by the Tamil-speaking people should be made known through translations in the principal languages of Europe and Asia, because that contribution is part of the world's heritage. In the past, for political and religious reasons, Tamil studies had enthusiastic students in Portugal, Holland, France and England. In the future, it will be the duty of Tamils themselves to give their treasures to their fellowmen, and a few Tamil scholars at least should learn Hindi, Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian for this purpose.

11. Culture is dependent for its origin and its development on geography and on the land. Tamil Culture has had always an intimate communion with the land

as is to be seen from the earliest Tamil poetry down to our own day. The tendency of people to flock to the towns should be arrested, for extreme urbanization and the consequent change means death to a culture such as ours. One cannot be opposed to change or to the absorbing of elements that are conducive to cultural progress. But the process of change should not involve the ceasing of a vital internal development. The Tamil-speaking people should co-operate in colonisation programmes and revive the agricultural bias of their social structure. 12. Every Tamil-speaking citizen should make his own contribution to this cultural movement, by study, by doing promotional work, and by material assistance. Many associations and authors fail to give of their best for want of adequate finances.

Unto the Last

These, ladies and gentlemen, are some of the measures that we may adopt in order that we may reacquire our Culture for ourselves and our generation, and that we may leave it to those who follow us, richer and nobler, if possible, than we found it. There is no doubt that the task of nation-building is not a light one, and that the problems that beset us are many and varied. While other bilingual states are parts of continents and have large territories contiguous to them, Nature and history and a common patrimony intend us to be one nation in our Island home. Because Tamil is the mother-tongue also in other countries, no Tamil-speaking Ceylonese has ever ceased to think of this Island but as his home, his country and his motherland. For two thousand years and more, our two major nationalities have lived together, and there is no reason for not hoping that Sinhalese Culture will be a source of inspiration and strength to Tamil Culture and that Tamil Culture will be a source of inspiration and strength to Sinhalese Culture. The great Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam in a speech that inaugurated the national movement in this country saw the vision of a future Ceylon which because of progress and leadership would serve as a beacon light to the rest of Asia. Asia today throbs with the consciousness of a new hope and destiny, and within the framework of a new world, our country situated in the centre between East and West has the new opportunity to evolve a life of its own, her own democracy, by learning from the experience of other nations on either side of her but by solving her own problems in the manner best suited to her own national genius.

If I have ventured to suggest to you a few measures for the continued preservation and development of Tamil Culture, I have done so in the spirit of a student. The history that I have outlined, the language in which our mothers sang to us when rocking our cradles, the words that have become dear to us by traditional usage and the phrases that have become consecrated in our prayers at home or at common worship, the literature that has formed, nurtured and elevated us and offered us the ideals which we cherish, these are some of the factors that contributed to the Tamil-speaking peoples existing as a nationality upon this Island. One is not less a Ceylonese for being loyal to Tamil Culture or to Sinhalese Culture.

While it is true that a culture may not be created artificially, it is equally true that it is in the power of men to contribute to the causes and work at those conditions necessary for a flowering of culture, and it is also in the power of men to combat those intellectual errors and the emotional prejudices which stand in the way of such conditions. The survival and the continued growth of Tamil Culture is, therefore, in our hands.

It is selfless and noble to dedicate one's time and energies under God to one's Culture and one's Country. The Tamil sage implied that Tamil Culture is the dearest possession of the Tamil people for the preservation of which no sacrifice would be great enough, not even life itself:

(Tamil verse — see scan.)

Notes

Footnotes remain noisy in OCR; prefer the scan for citation. Selected bibliographic anchors:

1. An address delivered under the auspices of the Tamil Cultural _ Society, Colombo on August 2nd, 1955. 5 8 .

2. See Articles by Swami Gnana Prakasar in Tamil Culture, Vol. 1 (1952) Nos. 1—4.

3. W. GEIGER, The Mahavamsa, p. 165; Pp. 264f., Colombo 1950. wr H. BUTTERFIELD, History and Human Relations, p. 158ff., London, 1951. 4 DE QUEYROZ, The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon, p. 241, Colombo, 1930; S. G. PERERA, The Jesuits in Ceylon, passim, Madura, 1942; See G. SCHURHAMMER, Ceylon sur zeit des konigs Bhuvaneka Bahu und Franz Xavers, 2 Vols.; Leipzig, 1928; and Die Zeitge- nossischen Quellen zur ge

4. Dj = Colombo, sa (Copy seen in the Museum Library of

5. On place names, see B. J. PERERA, Some observations on the study of Sinhalese place names in The Ceylon Historical Journal, Vol. II (1953) pp. 241—250; page 244: “Tamil place names are found mostly along the sea-coast and in the Anuradhapura, Chilaw and Puttalam districts. Though there are no native Tamils living along the sea-coast south of Colombo, the Tamil origin of most of the present inhabitants there is seen f

6. in literature produced many centuries before the opening up of plantations and show that the Tamil element in the composition of the Sinhalese is far greater than is usually conceded. Ranmalaya, Kotmale and Gilimale are some of the examples.” I am indebted to my colleague, Mr. K. Nesiah for the above reference. C. E. GODAKUMBURA, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, The Dravidian Element in Sinh

7. K. KANAPATHI PILLAI, Ceylon’s Contribution to Tamil Language and Literature in University of Ceylon Review, Vol. VI, No. 4 (1948) ; Articles by K. P. RATNAM and K. K. NADARAJAH in the Ceylon Tamil Festival Volume (Tamil), Jaffna, 1951. - 9

8. A. L. KROEBER, Anthropology, p. 226—227, New York, 1948.

9. Consult A. SIEGFRIED, Switzerland, A Democratic Way of -Life, London, 1950. 10

10. Page 254: “Linguistic intolerance is manifested in the aversion to other languages than one’s own. As a student of linguistic sociology : puts it, ‘To the naive monoglot, objects and ideas are identical with and inseparable from the particular words used to describe them in the one language he knows; hence he is inclined to consider speakers of other languages as something less than human, or at least foreign and hos

Indian Thought and Roman Stoicism

Re-OCR’d from Internet Archive page images (Tamil Culture, Vol. X No. 3, July–Sept. 1963, pp. 1–36; IA leaves 3717–3752) and lightly edited for readability. Hyphenation rejoined; obvious character errors corrected against the scan. Prefer the scan for disputed footnotes.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Synthesis in Education
3. Stoicism and Later Times
4. Tamil–Roman Trade
5. Cosmopolitanism
6. Human Brotherhood
7. The Wise Man
8. Conclusion

Introduction

Xavier S. Thani Nayagam · Tamil Culture, Vol. X No. 3 (July–September 1963), pp. 1–36 When Indian thought is compared with early Western philosophy, the Orphic and Pythagorean schools, Platonism, Epicureanism, neo-Platonism, and Stoicism, are those most mentioned.? In these comparisons it is not the metaphysical speculations of Indian philosophy, but the religious mysticism, the belief in metempsychosis, the ethical codes, the ascetic discipline, and vegetarianism, which were commonly stated as offering similarities and as worthy of notice. Lately, however, the mass of Indian metaphysical speculation and even significant legends have received from a widening circle of Western critics a more accurate and comparative interpretation than they used to receive, say, at the time of Lord Macaulay or John Ruskin. It is hardly necessary to remind you of Macaulay’s famous Minute on Education (1835), in which with characteristic rhetoric, he asserted, in opposition to those who would favour the continuation of the traditional learning of India, that “a single shelf of a good European Library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”, and asked facetiously 1 RADHAKRISHNAN S., (Ed.) History of Philosophy Eastern and Western, 2 vols, London, 1953., RADHAKRISHNAN S., East and West, Some Reflections, London, 1955; Eastern Religions and Western Thought, 2nd ed. Oxford, 1940. ZIMMER HEINRICH, Philosophies of India, London, 1952. “whether when we can patronise sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance at public expense medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns 30,000 years long, and geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.”? John Ruskin, in an inaugural lecture delivered at the Kensington museum a hundred years ago (1858), said that Indian Art, in spite of its delicacy und refinement, never represented a natural fact, but dealt in distorted and monstrous forms: “1¢ will not draw a man but an eight-armed monster; it will not draw a flower, but only a spiral or a zig-zag.’’® Today the statements of Macaulay regarding Indian Science and thought, and of Ruskin regarding Indian Art, are statements which are recalled merely to show the change which has occurred among cultured persons in the West regarding things Indian. There is no great need any more even for the spirited and eloquent presentations of the foundations of Indian culture which Sri Aurobindo made in the twenties of this century.* This change has been brought about gradually by the persevering labour of Western Indologists during the last hundred years and more. and by the popularisers who have made use of their research. Max Miiller, Hermann Oldenberg, * THOMSON EDWARD and GARRAT, G.T, Rise und fulfilment of British Rule im Indw, London, 1934. ’ The Two Paths. * Sri) AUROBINDO, Foundations of Indian Culture, Pondicherry, 1959. W. E. Hopkins, Berriedale Keith, Julien Vinson, Rhys Davids, Heinrich Zimmer, Louis de la Vallée Poussin, Jean Filliozat, Pierre Meile, Louis Renou, J. Gonda, Giuseppe Tucci, M. B. Emeneau, Thomas Burrow, A. L. Basham, and Kamil Zvelebil are representative names of western scholars, both dead and living, whose works continue to present Indian culture and Indian thought in reasonable perspective. Several other names too could be mentioned; and yet Henry Maine and his “nothing moves in the world which is not Greek in origin”, still continues to be quoted; and Werner Jaeger in the last decade stated, in spite of so much literature on India, that one does wrong to ascribe the word “cuiture” to the Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, because while these do not have a single word for real culture as an ideal to be striven after, it is only the Hellenocentric world which possesses it.® There is greater evidence available today to illustrate that the development of cultures, howsoever ancient, was hardly achieved in isolation, or by cultural mutation. The Greek genius did not bloom suddenly in the Eastern Mediterranean according to an Aristotelian concept of creation, ex mthilo sut et subjecti. The Greek phenomenon of the pre-Christian era is explained in part as the Indo-Aryan phenomenon of the pre-Christian era in the Indo-Gangetic plain is explained in part, by anterior migrations, existing religious cults and oral literatures, and by the influences exerted on incoming groups by civilised peoples _already in possession of the land. 5 JAEGER WERNER, Puideia, Ideals of Greek Culture, Translated from the German, Vol. I. p. xvii, Oxford, 1946.

Synthesis in Education

Because of new and expanding lines of communication which have been opened, our mid-century tends more towards synthesis than analysis and modern educational objectives and methods seem to promote the tendency to find interrelationships and interdependence. The fragmentation of History like the fragmentation of the other Arts and Sciences, necessary, perhaps, because of the time-space limitations of the human mind, promotes an uneven emphasis and an imbalance which only synoptic and synthesising surveys may rectify. It was Alfred North Whitehead who observed. “a\ well-planned university course is a study of the wide sweep of generality”, a generality which draws principles and power from a variety of concrete details.® The thinkers, creative writers and poets of this mid-century represent this synoptic and synthesising trend, a trend already desired twentyfour centuries ago by Alexander ‘the Great in founding Alexandria. In an historic address at a banquet of reconciliation which took place at Opis, after his -Macedonian troops had mutinied because of the favour he had shown his Persian troops, Alexander called for a union of hearts (homonoia) and a joint commonwealth of peoples of the world. Alexandria which he founded became a commercial and intellectual centre of the Hellenic world where the East and the West met.’ ® Aims of Education. 7 BARKER ERNEST, Art. “ Stoicism” in Ency. of Soial Sciences, Since then, the idea of a synthesis of world thought came into prominence now and then; it was prominent especially in the writings of a great educational thinker and pedagogue, John Amos Komensky (Comenius) (1592—1671), who outlined the plans for a University of the world to be located in England, where instruction undertaken in an artificially constructed international language would include pan-sophia, pandogmatica, and pan history. Pandogmatica was to contain the ‘quintessence of authors” from age to age and from Jand to land.* Today, it should be hardly considered scholar. ship to compile the history of University education and ignore Taksasila, Nalanda and Kancipuram; to discuss the nature of epic poetry and ignore the Mahabharata the Ramayana, and the Silappatikaram; to write on the history of the scientific study of politics beginning with Machiavelli and yet not to mention the older Arthaégastra, to analyse mysticism and forget the Tamil bhakti poets; to explain methods of Scholasticism and fail to mention altogether Samkara and Raméanuja; to teach of architecture and by pass the Moghuls; to teach the history of sculpture and ignore the Nataraja bronze which in spite of its four arms, pace Ruskin, or was it because of them, Auguste Rodin and Ananda Coomaraswamy were convinced, synthesised the highest achievement and total exploitation of sculptural possibilities ° 8 CURTIS, 8.3. and BOULTWOOD,. M.EA., A Short Mistory of Educational Ideas. p. 186 ff London, 1953. *See ZIMMER HEINRICH Pazilosophies of India, p. 28 ff. op. cit.

Stoicism and Later Times

Stoicism in our times is a name given to an attitude of mind as well as to a system of Philosophy which originated in Greece and was later expounded in Rome. As an attitude of mind denoting patient endurance it may be met anywhere. As a system of philosophy, some of its principal tenets seem similar to beliefs also obtaining in. antiquity both in China and India. These similarities do not argue any identity of origin, or even identical sources of influence, but only demonstrate that the solutions to the problems of the practical aspects of life are limited in number and range, that philosophers are fairly well distributed in the civilized world and that similar social conditions in widely. distant areas may create similarity in thought. Within India itself, the isolated life of ascetiés, the control and extinction of desire, the indifference to pain and pleasure, the search for mental calm or ataraxy, the theistic and monistic order and harmony verified in the universe, and the human participation of divinity, buddhir buddhimatam asmi tejas tejasvinam aham I am the intelligence of the intelligent, I am splendour of the splendid,}° are possible fields of comparison with Roman Stoicism. Roman or later Stoicism is claimed to be the greatest system of organised thought which the mind of man built up for itself in the GraecoRoman world. Because of its way of looking at ” BG. VII. the world and at the problems of life it is still said to possess a permanent interest for the human race, and a permanent power of inspiration. Stoicism influenced the evolution of Roman jurisprudence, especially of the lex naturalis and the lex gentium and contained in germ the origins of international law. It furnished considerable proof and expression to the growth of natural theology and the thesis of the anima nuturaliter christiana. Stoic ideas influenced Grotius (1583— 1645) and Pufendorf (1632—1694) in the seventeenth century to formulate principles of international law, and it humanised the thinking of Erasmus and Montaigne as well as of the French Enlightenment.?? In the Arab world thinkers like Al Farabi (c. A.D. 870—950) and Ibn-Sina (980—1037) profitted by concepts they found in Stoic theology and ethics.2% Such Stoic ideas of permanent interest need to be known wherever they may exist, and therefore, I propose to discuss two or three elements which may be termed “Stoic” as they are found in the Latin and Greek literature of Rome, and in the classical literature in Tamil, ascribed to the same first two centuries of the Christian era. The comparison between these two literatures is made more resourceful and apperceptive because of similar political and commercial factors which contributed to the widening of horizons in the two areas and because of the two-way trade GILBERT MURRAY, Stoic, Christian and Humanist, p. 89 ff. 2nd ed. London, 1950. 19 SVARLIEN OSCAR, An Introduction to the Law of — Nations, Mcgraw-Hill, New York, 1955. 18 See R. WALZER, Islumic Philosophy in History of Philosophy Eastern and Western, op. cit. ; 8 . TAMIL CULTURE then obtaining between the Tamil country and the Roman empire.'* TAMIL ROMAN TRADE — Of the countries and peoples mentioned in the Tamil classics of this period as being engaged in active commerce with the Tamil country, there is mention either explicit or implied of North Indian kingdoms, of Ceylon, of Burma, and of Kedah in Malaya, but the Yavanar a general term used for peoples from the Mediterranean seaboard, occurs oftener than the names of other non-Indian foreign peoples. The wealthy quarters of the Yavunar to be found in Tamil harbour cities are explicitly mentioned in the Tamil classics while other foreigners are classed together as “multilingual groups.” Valiant and hardlooking Yavanar clothed in leathern jackets .are found as bodyguards in palaces and war-camps of Tamil kings; they also guard the city of Maturai and are employed as engineers operating defence, machinery. Impressive Yavana ships, very large ones even as the classical geographers observe, and the “Greek ships from Egypt” as the Periplus notes, arrive churning the waters of the harbour of Musiri on the west coast, unload their cargoes especially of gold and silver, and return westwards with the pepper which brought excessive profits to Roman traders. Bronze Roman lamps bearing the figure of a swan or of a woman burn in the palaces of royalty; and 14 See E.H. WARMINGTON, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, Cambridge, 1928. WHEELER MORTIMER, R.E., Rome beyond the Imperial frontiers, London, 1954. FILLIOZAT JEAN, Les Relations Extérieures de l'Inde, Pondicherry, 1956. - Yavana wine is drunk from Yavana goblets of gold, refilled by bangled damsels. Yavana contingents are stationed to protect Yavana trade. One such contingent is located near a harbour in which the Peutinger tables have marked a temple dedicated to Augustus-templum Augusti.*5 The number of ships sailing to Southern India from Alexandria and the Red Sea ports increased appreciably during this period. Archaeology. the insignificant tiny areas which have been dug. takes the evidence further and confirms the literary evidence. Sherds of wine amphorae made in Arezzo or in Puteoli near Naples found among the basement ruins of an ancient storehouse near Pondicherry, on chemical analysis were found to contain the residue of a popular Grecian resin wine, the inferior quality meant for export.. The gold of Rome mentioned in the Tamil poem has been found in abundance in hoards and in single specimens in the South of India and in coastal Ceylon and of these impressive finds, all first-century coins which are of Augustus (B.C. 63—A.D. 14) and Trajan (A.D. 53—117) not associated with later coinage, have been found only in the South. Sufficient Roman coinage found in the Tamil areas is preserved in museums, but an equal amount or more of the finds has also gone into the jewellery of women living near the ancient harbours of the Southern coast. Fragments of Roman lamps, a great attraction to the Tamil % THOMSON J. OLIVER, History of Ancient Geography p. 298 ff. Cambridge. 1948 MEILE PIERRE, Les Yavanas dans l'Inde Tamoule in Journal Asiatrque, 1940, pp. 85—123. T. 21—2 poets, have also been found along with Roman and native pottery.’® The literary evidence for this flourishing trade from the Roman side is remarkably revealing. The classical geographers have known the harbours of these three kingdoms as their knowledge has been continually increasing since the time of Megasthenes, (fl. 305 B.C.). The Naturalist, Pliny (A.D. 23—79), the Periplus Maris Erythraci (1st cent. A.D.) and Ptolemy (2nd c. A.D.) mention at least forty harbours, towns, rivers and emporia along this southern coast, names most of which can he identified as those mentioned also in contemporary Tamil literature. Some of these prosperous towns and harbour cities are compared in beauty and resource to the heroines of love poetry. “You are as rich and resourceful as Kuala Lumpur and Penang” might sound strange in love poetry today, but that is how the Tamil poet looked on his beloved drawing his comparisons from the pleasures: and comforts that cities like Musiris and Tyndis and Khaberts emporion could provide.?’ The classical geographers know of the three Tamil kingdoms (Pandyan, Céran, Colan), their capital cities, and the source of their wealth ; they know other smaller dynasties and clans, Atoi, Batoi, Kareoi, Toringoi; they know of 1% FILLLOZAT J&AN, Les relations extericures de l'Inde op. cit. ° WHEELER MORTIMER, Rome beyond the Imperial frontiers, op. cit. 17 THANL NAYAGAM, XAVIER. S., Nature in Tamil Poetry, Singapore, 1963. : Ceylon and the sailings from Ceylon to the South Indian coast, and mention in detail the merchandise which the Romans sought from the Tamil emporia such as fine textiles, pearls, beryls, pepper, cinnamon and other spices and perfumes.?® Tamil trade appears to have been even more voluminous with the Orient, with the Gangetic regions, the Malayan Archipelago and with China. The Romans and Arabs headed directly to the Tamil ports using the trade winds, and the Southern harbours were emporia from which Roman goods were transhipped to further East, and SouthEastern and Eastern goods, such as silk from China and tortoise-shell from Malaya, transhipped to the West. The Periplus is emphatic in assigning an important role to these emporia in the trade with the Ganges region and the Golden Chersonese or the Malay peninsula: “There are imported into these places everything made in Damirica; what is brought at any time from Egypt comes here, together with most kinds of all the things that are brought from Damirica and of those that are carried through Paralia.”'® WA close analysis of the information available from the classical geographers and writers shows that they knew more of the Tamil country than has been conceded hitherto by those who have interpreted them without examining the evidence of the Tamil sources. See Mc. CRINDLE. J W. Ancient India as described by Ptolemy, London, 1885 and The Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraean sea, Calcutta, 1879; VINCENT, W. The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, 2 vols., London, 1807; VINCENT, W: The Voyage of Nearchus and the nertplus of the Erythraean Sea, Oxford, 1809; R.C. MAJUMDAR, The Classical accounts of India, Calcutta, 1960. . % W.H. SCHOFF, The Perrplus of the Erythraean Sea p. 46, New York, 1912. See PAUL WHEATLEY, The Golden Chersonese, University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1961. Later sources, Chinese, Arabic and European, point to the .continuity of this centralised trade which developed because of a favourable geographical position, and the availability of merchandise coveted in East and West. The trade in spices left certain Tamil names in Greek and Latin such as zingibert, zinpiberi for ginger from incivér, and piper for pepper from pippali. Another Tamil word for pepper used at this period, Aav7. once the chief ingredient of Tamil culinary art, is left with us in curry and rice said to be according to one school of modern philosophers India’s greatest contribution to world civilization} Huge barns along the Tiber erected in A.D. 92 stored this pepper, and the problem of exchange and the drain of Roman gold and silver into India worried Pliny who with Stoic austerity wishes to know who was the first to introduce this pungent spice to augment an already existing appetite, obtaining an unsavoury condiment all the way from India. The derivation of the Latin word for pear] (margarites) is not certain but the pearls of the Gulf of Mannar and of Korkai (Kolkhoi) were put to most extraordinary uses around the Mediterranean. , You will remember the pearl which Cleopatra dissolved in vinegar in order to drink, as well as the dinner of a certain Clodius who gave each guest a pearl to swallow, and Nero throwing precious stones and pearls to the people and hanging his first beard "oe with pearls for veneration at the Capitol. / Lollia Paulina, wife of the Emperor Gaius had 30 million of ses RENOU, L. La Geographie de Ptolomee, l’Inde, Paris, sesterces worth of pearl ornaments; and Roman ladies had pearls on their fingers, toes, ears, sandals and shoes so that the rattling of pearls could be heard as they walked.?° The Tamil kingdoms provided the bulk of luxury articles the use of which the Roman Stoics and the early Christian writers deprecate with vigour. In examining Roman relations with India one is surprised at the association famous Roman Stoics have with the Greek and Latin evidence concerning [ndia. Seneca (4 B.C.—A.D. 65), the best representative of Roman Stoicism of the first century, whose furniture included five hundred tripod tables embellished with legs of ivory imported most probably from India, wrote a book on India which has not reached us; and Flavius Arrianus (circ. 90—175) the most eminent Stoic of the first half of the second century, who has preserved the discourses of Epictetus, is also the one who wrote the Jndika, and preserved the fragments of Megasthenes, Eratosthenes and Nearchus. Eratosthenes, the: librarian in Alexandria from about 234 to 196 B.C. who preferred to divide men rather into good and bad than into Greeks and barbarians, is the earliest of the classical geographers of India. Posidonius (about 135—51 B.C.) who instructed Cicero and the Roman circles in a modified Stoicism who was a geographer as well, suggested, anticipating Columbus by sixteen centuries, that sailing from Spain one might strike India.?? % WARMINGTON, E.H. The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, op. cit. 167 ff. THOMSON, OLIVER, J; History of Ancient Geography op. cit. See also TARN, W.W. The Greeks in Baciria and India, 2nd ed, Cambridge, 1951. . The outline of mutual trade given above is a useful background to understand the sense of universality which is a dominant and characteristic element in Roman Stoicism and the Tamil thought of this era. It is of interest to note that while Grecian contacts with India occur through the overland route and are confined most to Northern India, the Roman contacts occur mainly by the sea route and during these first two centuries of the Christian era are predominantly with Southern India.

Cosmopolitanism

“t.. ' ‘One of the contributions made by the Stoics to Western thought, significant for our century, is the inclusion of all men within an ethic of universal brotherhood, and within the bonds of a direct altruistic relationship of man to man. Nea Plato’s ideal and actual states, and Aristotle’s reports of Hellenic attitudes, the idea of a cityrepublic (the polis), isolated in its setting, rigorous in its maintenance of a ruling class, exclusive and selective in its citizenship and expressive of Hellenic or Athenian superiority in respect of the harbaroi, governed political thought and government. The ideal city of Plato was to be located about ten miles from the sea and away from the highroads so that its citizens might not suffer ideologically by contact with foreigners, and the government of the city might not become corrupt by the preference of foreign settlers for their own laws.?2 The inferior classes set % PLATO, The Laws, 704—707, ARISTOTLE, Politics, VII, 4—6. On Stoic reactions see BARKER EARNEST, Greek Political Theory, 4th ed. London, 1960; SINCLAIR, T. A. A History of Greek Political Thought, Londan, 1959. permanently apart for crafts and agriculture were denied the rights of full citizenship and of education; there were those born to rule and others born to obey; slaves were denied the capacity for virtue, and women were denied even academic equality with men; and the foreigner was generally looked upon as unequal in culture and refinement compared with the Greek. Aristotle whose views of the barbaroi are only in partial agreement with Plato’s, says: “ The Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their own country; but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home, thereby, implying that there are two sorts of nobility and of freedom, the one ahsolute. the other relative” (Politics, 1, 6). In the Greek world there was another trend Jess exclusivistic, and that was traced to the Sophists, but assumed a supreme importance with the decline of the city sight and as Alexander’s concepts of empire gained adherents. As early as the fifth century B.C. Antiphon, the sophist, repudiated the distinction between nobleman and slave and between Greek and barbarian as unnatural. This was the attitude of: the Cynics as well, but the philosophers of the Porch, whose most important exponents were not Athenians and who had no loyalty to Attica, made it a fundamental principle of their system. Zeno had the same attitude as the Cynics, and said: ‘“ why should I be proud of Attica with its worms and its slugs?” In his Ideal State, a book lost to us, Zeno is said to have visualised the world as TARN, WILLIAM and GRIFFITH, G.T. Hellenistic Civilization, London, 1959. one great city where all were citizens bound together by a law of love. This concept of the cosmopolis has received more tributes than any other Hellenistic concept, and has formed the foundation of the Stoic sense of universality. The temper of these foreign Stoic teachers who came from the periphery of the Hellenistic world, was the same as that of Meleager, the father of the Greek anthology, a Syrian from Gadara educated in Tyre: “What is the wonder if [ am a Syrian? There is one motherland, stranger, in which we all dwell, and that is the Cosmos: there is one Father of whom we are all begotten, and He is the void.” The Stoics were prepared to overlook differences of race, of colour and of class in one great osmic unity, and these equalising principles acbsire great practical import. within the Roman mpire, comprising as it did a wide range of ethnic and culture groups over a distended geog-. raphical area, and a wider world made familiar to it through commerce. The Latin poets of the Empire .at the same time that they are patriotic and crown Rome with their tributes and laurels as the goddess of the earth, are yet sensitive to this new universal outlook and introduce new sentiments of solidarity and unity in mankind and in the cosmos. Slavery becomes so mitigated that manumission and _ self-purchase cMeates a new wealthy class of those who had once been slaves.?2 The statesmen-philosophers like Seneca % Very few books were available in Malaya on the Romans, their culture and civilisation, at the time of the composition of this lecture. and Marcus Aurelius are very explicit on the dual citizenship which they professed, one of Rome and the Roman Empire, and the other of the world at large. Seneca (4 BC—AD. 65) says in words which seem deliberately chosen to contradict the earlier views of Plato and Aristotle: “no man is nobler than his fellow, even if it happen that his spiritual nature is better constituted and he is more capable of higher learning. The world is the mother of us,. all, and the ultimate origin of each one of us can be traced back to her, whether the steps in the ladder of descent be noble or humble. To no one is virtue forbidden; she is accessible to all; she admits everyone, she invites everyone in; free men and freedmen, slaves, kings and exiles. She regards neither birth nor fortune; the man alone is, all she wants.” Epictetus, (c. 90) the lame slave and philosopher says: , “Nature is wonderful and full of love for aJl creatures.” And Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121—180): “My nature is rational and social, and my city and my country, so far as I am Antonious is Rome, but so far as I am a man, is the world.”?4 These Stoic teachings caused the recognition of the equality of all men, gave equal legal status to men and women, conferred human % These and similar texts may be found in SCHWEITZER ALBERT, £thics and Civilizution. See ARNOLD VERNON, Roman Stowcism, London, 1911; BEVAN EDWYN, Stoics and Sceptics, ZELLER D., The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, Oxford, 1892; BARROW, R.H. The Romans, (Penguin). I. 2l—3 is TAMIL CULTURE rights on the slave and humanised the institution of slavery though not abolishing it. The Christian writer, Lactantius, finds it worth stating that the Stoics mode if possible for ‘‘women and slaves to become philosophers.” During the comparable period, there were different systems of thought within India providing their own answers to the problems concerning which the Stoics speculated or provided practical answers. Of these systems, the best known is the stream of Brahminic thought, the recorded literature of whichis the earliest which India has to offer. By this time, Brahminism had developed a literature which was very exclusivistic in its concept of group life. Though Vedic and post-Vedic Monism should have developed into an all-embracing ethic of love, the Arthasastras and Dhurmasastras basing their stratification of society on colour and _ caste imposed limits on the education of the masses, denied Vedic learning to the éudras. and were in theory less flexible in their laws than the ideal and actual states contemplated by Plato and Aristotle. Brahminie law literature also defined the area between the Himalayas and the Vindhyas, “where the black antelope roams” as the sacred land of the Aryas, the karmabhumi, within which one would have to be born or teborn to be saved. 75 , ‘ 9% See MANU, 156. MANU, X, 102, 103; APASTAMBA, 1, 2, 7, 20, 21; MANU, IL, 22. Vusisthadharma, I, 12—13. “Some (declare the .country of the Aryas to be situated) between the rivers Ganga and Yamuna, Others (state as) an alternative that spiritual pre-eminence (is found) as far as the black antelope grazes.’ See HOPKINS E. W.., Ethics of India, p 52 ff., Yale University Press, New Haven, 1924. R.C. MAJUMDAR, Hinduism, a retrospect and a re- While Brahminie social thought bears some resemblance to the excluvism of the city republics of Greece, the social thought of the ascetic schools bears resemblance to the cosmopolitanism of the Stoics. Jainism, Buddhism and Ajivikism seem to be older in their traditions than the age of their known founders, and point to the existence of non-Vedic systems and _ ascetic schools which developed contemporaneously with Brahminic thought. The ascetic religions were missionary religions, especially Buddhism, which embarked on a missionary programme, one of the most thorough and intelligent in the history of religions in Asia. ' Brahminic and Buddhist social thought is contained in priestly or monastic religious literatures. But the earliest Tamil literature is a secular literature, and Tamil society is one in which the poets and thinkers have the prestige which the Brahmins have in Aryanised society and the monks have in states which foster Jainism and Buddhism.?* There is no monism or mysticism of identity with the Primal origin - of Being or ethical pluralism evident in this literature; the reasons for universal brotherhood are drawn merely from the nature of man (the phusis and natura of the Stoics), and from a rationalistic and humanistic unity to be found in Nature and the Cosmos. For a Tamil poet in the first or second century A.D. to have said almost like Seneca or Marcus Aurelius: view, in Group prejudices tn Indw, a sympostum, Vora and Company, Bombay, 1931, p. 72. KANE P.V., History of Dharmugastra, Vol. {f, Part II, p. 110 ff. Poona, 1946. *% See MEILLE PIERRE, Littérature Tumoule in , Hist. des littératures I, Ency. de la Vléiade. “Every country is my country and every man is my kinsman,” seems remarkable indeed.?7 The motive to embark on a life-long education of the self, a process so clearly outlined-in Confucius and in Plato and revived in our times under the total concept of Adult Education is stated in this literature to be man’s citizenship of the world. Since every country and every city is his own, he ought therefore to continue to learn about them all his life. A more suitable motto for education for membership in the world community would be hard to find in antiquity than the verse: “Yatanum nadamal uramal en oruvan santunayum kallatavaru.” *° The broader solidarity in cosmopolitanism is generally strengthened by the loyalty to a particularistic national society, and in Tamil thought a triple loyalty is implied, one to a particular Tamil kingdom, the second to a citizenship in the pan-Tamilism of three kingdoms; and a third, the citizenship of the word. There is no slighting of the foreigner ; foreign countries are merely those where the language differs, and the multilingual foreign groups of the harbour cities are mentioned with deference. The references to the few and small vedic communities in different parts of the country are always courteous even when their peculiarities are mentioned. One cannot help concluding that 37 THANI NAYAGAM. XAVIER S. Ideal of the Expanding self in Annals of Oriental Research of the University of Madras, Vol. XVII (1960—61). % Tirukkural. 397. the political and commercial importance of the Tamil states and their harbour cities and capitals during the first two centuries of the Christian era, and urbanisation and frequent travel have developed this sense of universality.

Human Brotherhood

Human Brotherhood is a concomitant concept of universality, either as its cause or as its result. The stratification of society, the institution of slavery and the total dedication to the city-state, were the main obstacles to the notion of human brotherhood in Greece in the same manner that particularistic racial and religious sentiments and laws governing Sudras and foreigners were the main obstacles to the development of human brotherhood in the society where ‘Aryan law was paramount. It has been the tendency among some scholars to rationalise the caste system of India and justify it by a great number of arguments and after-thoughts which do not bear scrutiny, as it has been the fashion for certain classical scholars to mitigate the . nature of slavery in Greece. Those of us who are unable to be so romantically inclined towards these institutions, accept slavery in Greece as slavery and caste in India as caste. ?° There was always in India a current of opinion which was hostile to caste restrictions. Of this antagonism we have adequate evidence in the Buddhist books as well as in Vaisnava and Saiva literature. The Buddhist books, however, are those most eloquent in repudiating ** See SHARMA, RAM SHARAN, Sudras in Ancient India, Delhi, 1958. 22 TAMIL CULTURE colour and caste prejudices, and these prejudices must have been insupportable to those discriminated against judging from the trend of the argument in the Nikayas. The Buddhist books consider caste prerogative based on birth and colour as the greatest social evil with which they have to contend, and open the doors of asceticism to men and women and lay following to all groups without distinction. Rhys Davids has considerable evidence to support him when in one of his erudite and searching introductions to the Suttas, he says, ‘‘Had the Buddha’s views on the whole question won the day and widely shared as they were by others, they very nearly prevailed—the evolution of social grades and distinctions would have gone on in India on lines similar to those it followed in the West. and the caste-system of India would never have been built up.” #° Some of the arguments used in the Nikayas against caste prerogatives are most amusing as when it is said oxen are not classified by their colour but by their strength and activity, and so, too should honours be conferred on men according to ability, and if a sudra were wealthy, the brahmins would be there to serve him. *: It all sounds so much like the arguments used in this twentieth century by platform orators in India in the reform and self-respect movements. The concept of human brotherhood gained adherence in India not so much on account of % RHYS-DAVIDS, Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, p. 141. 1 Anqgutlara, I, 162, See MALALASEKARA GP. and K.N. JAYATILLEKE, Buddhism and the Race Question, Unesco, 1958. the--universalistic. implications of. metaphysical postulates, but because faced with the doctrine of varna both those who suffered its disabilities as well as those who rebelled at its deficiencies as a social doctrine were compelled to define human rights and human equality. This situation seems to have arisen in Tamil society for its thirikers-to reiterate human equality and state that birth equalises all men and that social differences are due to occupations. Jainism and Buddhism which were gaining adherents and the -inter-religious tolerance of a Hyde-Park corner kind then obtaining in the Tamil country, were additional factors in the increase of the sense of cosmopolitanism. The structure of Tamil society was very different from what the brahminic books on politics and ethics were advocating in other territories. There were no _ distinctions and disabilities arising from caste divisions, and education and perfectibility were open to all groups. No one was considered a “ moving burial ground”, and no occupation was considered too low or too manual as to deny to those engaged in it the possibility of advancement in virtue. The poets and poetesses and bards of both sexes who move with kings without losing the common touch, as moralists, counsellors, royal messengers and teachers, come from a great many occupational groups; kings, queens, ministers, landlords, chieftains, astronomers, teachers, arithmeticians, merchants, and actors and blacksmiths. And their literature is a literature of the people, not of an aristocracy or of an élite. There is a unity seen in the cosmos of sentient and non-sentient being, but that unity is of a naturalistic kind and not the theistic or panth- eistic unity of Stoicism.

The Wise Man

Stoicism is again noted for hypostatising its ideals of life in the ideal of a Wise Man—the sapiens. Various moral and political philosophers, have portrayed the ideal who embodies in himself the spirit and the qualities which they hold desirable for their particular society and age. Thus Plato draws the picture of the philosopher—statesmen in ‘his various dialogues, Aristotle, the picture of the ideal ruler and the ideal citizen, and Confucius the qualities of the chün-tzu. 32, The Stoics more than any other school of western ethics pointed to their ideal, the Wise Man, an ideal, which precisely because it was ideal, embodied a great many virtues, attitudes and dispositions hardly ever to be realised in the one and the same person, an 2 WALEY ARTHOR, The Analects of Confucius, p. 34 ff. London, 1956. The Wise Man from India in the person of the yogi has been an attraction in the West ever since the days of Alexander and the ten Yogis whom he interviewed because they had incited a rebellion against him. Plutarch recounts how ten of these gymnosophists gave their characteristic short and pithy answers. The first was asked whether he thought the living or the dead to be the more numerous. He answered “ The living for the dead are not.” The second was asked “which breeds the largest animals, the sea or the land?”. He answered “the land for the sea is only a part of it.” The following eight too gave similar answers, and Alexander sent them away with gifts instead of putting them to death. Gymnosophists seem to have been included in the embassies sent to Rome, and the Christian writers like Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria know a little about Brahmins and Gymnosophists and their doctrines and mode of life. anomaly of which their critics did not hesitate to ridicule them. Though it was held by them that the Wise Man was rare, and Seneca even describes. him as rare as the phoenix and honestly disclaims any corresponding character as being verified in his own self, the Stoics of the Roman principate generally affirm the existence of many Wise Men. The Stoic sapiens was to foster a mental calm even in the face of trouble and disaster and crush desires; was generally supposed to be aloof and remote so as not to become immersed in public affairs or civic strife, and instead devote his time to the cultivation of his mind and his virtues. Cicero who is far more precise concerning public and private duties, belongs to an earlier age, and though influenced by Stoicism and had Stoic teachers, does not identify himself as a Stoic. To Tamil thought more than to any other section of contemporary Indian thought, the ideal of a Wise Man of human proportions with human qualities was fundamental. He may not have any of the thirty-two great marks, or the numerous smaller marks which designate the superman or Mahapurusa of other traditions. He may not be endowed with the physical qualities of the magnanious man of Aristotle. In fact, there is an explicit warning not to confound physical appearance with personality or wisdom though pleasant looks and family upbringing are useful. He was the sanr6n, a word - derived from a root signifying fullness and completeness, so that he was not merely the Wise Man or desirable man as implied in the T. 21—4 etymon of sapiens, but the Complete or Perfect man, well made and full of those qualities, intellectual, moral, emotional and aesthetic which signify all-round robust goodness. It is because these complete men exist that the world becomes a livable place; if their greatness were to diminish, the world would cease to exist. One does not acquire grey hairs in a hurry when several such wise men live in one’s vicinity. The Tamil Wise Man is not to be an anchorite or a recluse or a muni like the ideal of the ascetic schools, or live in the world in splendid isolation or in magnificent detachment. He is to live fully his days of courtship and of married life rejoicing in the laughter and the love of his children and of friends. His aim should be the development of individual excellence by a complete dedication to his social and civic duties. In no section of Indian thought does life with a social reference obtain such measured consideration. Any attempt to describe in brief a personality profile of the Wise or Complete Man of the Tamil books must seem as despairing as summarising the features of the Wise Man of the Stoics, because of the numerous virtues which the Tamil is called upon to exercise’ in the complex situations of his daily life as a lover, a husband, a parent, a citizen and a friend. The almost unattainable character of the Wise Man could make the Stoics as well as the Tamil philosophers persistent in refusing to accept in concrete anything short of the Ideal in every character placed before them: “No, not that, not that; the one we have dreamed of is fairer far than that, more magnificent and wonderful. Earth has never seen him, or at best it saw him but for a moment, and he was gone.”23 ALTRUISM AND CULTURE Certain individuating characteristics of the Tamil Wise Man refute the pessimism, negativism, and fatalism sometimes attributed to Indian thought in general. The basis of his life should be altruism, that is, informed by the ideal to live not for self but for others. He is one who would not consume selfishly and alone even the nectar of immortality. His acquisition of wealth is merely to serve as a means to provide for social and educational opportunities for the less fortunate, to be philanthropic and to acquire the pleasure which comes from hospitality. Even marriage is conceived primarily as a joint partnership which facilitates the joint provision of entertaining friends and strangers and offering a limitless hospitality. His altruistic life is not motivated by “mercenary motives” of rewards possible in another life; even if there were no other life he would have to be benevolent, for it is the right life and the humanism proper to a Wise Man. He must find his “good” and the right in the performance of his duty, and in the concept of justice. Humanism and optimism are two of his important characteristics. The Stoic and the Tamil agree that in the service of his fellow men they must be prepared to sacrifice their health, their possessions, their lives; to be forgiving to enemies. But there is one thing that the Stoic should never sacrifice, S BEVAN EDWYN, Stoics and Sceptics, op. cit, p. 57 ff. his own eternal calm. Therefore, pity to the Stoic in the sense of a painful. emotion caused by the sight of others suffering is actually a vice. The most a Stoic may do is to feign pathy, but he must take care not feel it. /He may sigh, says Epictetus, provided the sigh does not come from his heart./ The Tamil Wise Man’s philosophy of ‘indifference to pain and pleasure and the cultivation of tranquillity in the face of. disaster is for personal discipline, but his equanimity is reconciled with sympathy for the sufferer in the Greek and derivative sense. Pity is not only encouraged, but positive and expansive love and benevolence as the fountain of all service is prescribed, and a sincere moistening of the eyes is explained as the indication of true and overwhelming sympathy within. There is a difference between Epictetus and Tiruvalluvar in their ideals of the Ideal Man. Albert Schweitzer in surveying the world’s ancient literatures for ethical values, was quick to perceive the contribution which Tamil thought had to make by emphasising this ethic of love. Of the Tirukkural, a codex of gnomic verse which epitomises the ethical Tamil thought of this period, he says that its ethics is more advanced than that of Brahminism, Buddhism, and Bhagvadgita) Hinduism. ' “Tike the Buddha and the Bhagavad- Gita, the Kural desires inner freedom from the world and a mind free from hatred. Like them it stands for the commandment not to kill and not to damage. It has ap- propriated all the valuable ethical results of the thought of world and life negation. But in addition to this ethic of inwardness there appears in the Kural the living ethic of rn “With sure strokes the Kural draws the ideal of simple ethical humanity. On the most varied questions concerning the conduct of man to himself and to the world its utterances are characterised by nobility and sense. There hardly exists in the literature of the world a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty wisdom.”>¢ % Indian thought and its Development p. 203, London 1991. The following are some of the books which will be found helpful in studying the Indian religions and ethics of the period and in the interpretation of the pertinent texts. ADIKARAM, E.W. Eurly history of Buddhism in

• Ceylon, Ceylon, 1946 APTE, V.M. Soctal and religious life in the Grhyasutras, Bombay, 1954. BASHAM, A.L The Wonder that was Ind1a, London, 1961.; BHANDARKAR, R.C. Vatshnavism, Satvism and other minor religious systems, Strassburg, 1913, Poona 1928; DUTT, NK. Origin and growth of caste in India, Vol. I (C. B.C. 2000—300) London. 1931; DUTT, Sukumar, FHurly Buddhist monachism, 600 B.C.—100 B.C, London, 1924; ELIOT, C. Hinduism and Buddhism, re-issue 3 vols. London, 1957, (first published 1921); FICK, Die sociale Ghederung im Nordéstlichen Indien zu Buddhas zeit, Kiel, 1897 (English translation by S. MAITRA, The Social organisation 1n North-East India in Buddha's time, University of Calcutta, 1920); FORMICHI, C. JI penstero reliqioso nell’ India prima del Buddha, Bologna, 1925 (French translation by F. HAYWARD revised by author, Paris, 1930); GHURYE, G.S. Caste and class in India, Popular Book Depot, Bombay, 1950; GUERINOT, A. La religion Djaina, histoire, culte, coutumes, institutions. Paris, 1926; HOPKINS, Washburn E. The religions of India, Yale, 1895; JOLLY, J. Hindu law and custom. Translated by S.K. Das from the German edition of 1896, Calcutta. 1928; OLDENBERG, H. Ancient India, Second ed. Chicago, 1898; OLDENBERG, H. Buddha: Seine Leben, Seine Lehre, Seine Gemeinde Berlin, 1890. English translation Buddha: his life, his doctrine His order., London, 1892; RENOU, Louis, Religions of Ancient India, University of London, 1953; RHYS DAVIDS, T.W. Buddhism, London, 1917; RHYS DAVIDS, T.W. Buddhist India, London, 1903 (reprint) Bombay, 1955; RHYS DAVIDS, T.W. Early Buddhism, London, 1908; SCHUBRING, W. Die lehre der Jatnas, Leipzig, 1935; trans. The doctrine of the Jainas, Banaras, 1962 ; TUCCI, G. What the Tirukkural embodies is the rationalisation and synthesis of the wisdom and ideals of the earlier Tamil literatur¢é which is contemporary with the writings of “eee of Epictetus, of Pliny, of Arrian and of Marcus Aurelius. The Stoics agree far more with the Buddhist ideal of ataraxy than with that of the Tamil. The former two tend to a detached intellectualism at the expense of the emotional and the aesthetic life, but in the third, the emotional and aesthetic aspects of personality are important means of self-realisation. Though altruism is his great ethical characteristic, it is his culture which enables the Tamil Wise Man to develop the marks of gracious living and the sentiments and attitudes which make him a pleasant member of society. While the word sanr6n denotes completeness, tHe world for culture (panpu) denotes quality or the effort to obtain quality by constant striving and fertilising, and has the same sense as when Cicero derives culture from agriculture, the cultores agri. Culture in Tamil thought is a quality which should be found in the sovereign, in the lover, in the parent and in the child. It includes in its code a humaneness towards all human beings and towards all life, including animals and even plants. Persons endowed even with the sharpest intellects are not cultured but just timber if they Il Buddhismo, Foligno, 1926. VALLEE POUSSIN Louis de la, Le dogme et la philosophie du Buddhisme. Paris, 1930 (with bibliography); VALLEE POUSSIN Louis de la, La morale Bouddhique, Paris, 1927; WILLIAMS, W. Monier, Buddhism and its connection with Brahminism and Hinduism and tts contrast with Christianity, John Murray, London, 1890; WILLIAMS, W. Monier, Religious thought and life in India, John Murray, London, 1883; ZAEHNER, R.C. Hindu and Muslim Mysticism, London, 1960. , possess not the humane feelings common to common humanity. Familiarity with persons of culture produces increasing joy like that which familiarity with the classics engenders. Culture includes the humanism of interest in man; it includes the tolerance and forbearance of dissentient views with the patience of Mother Earth who sustains and supports, and harms not those who dig, and scope and tunnel her. To forgive enemies is culture, but to forgive friends is a higher culture. To return good to those who have been bad to you is culture. To be accessible and friendly with the lowly is culture. Culture includes the learning which considers itself inadequate, the service which expects no reward, the greatness which ever is humble, the largeness which forgives, the gentlemanliness which never inflicts pain, the purity of intention and the spotlessness of mind which are born of truth and justice, and the expansiveness which comes of not harbouring petty thoughts resulting in the shrivelling of personality. Culture is fostered by learning, by the critical search for knowledge in books, by association with the learned, by the art of conversation which includes as well the art of listening, by the eloquence which should be able to express lucidly one’s subtlest thoughts, and by friendships which provide the opportunity to give and to receive. Culture includes the humanism which enjoys humour and laughter. “To those who are unable to laugh it is pitch dark even amidst the blaze of noon.”35 Culture is fed on ideals— 36 Tirukkural 999. The following books give accounts of Tamil Literature and its characteristics : the man without ideals is a corpse. Culture, cannot be an ideal which “ only a Hellenocentric world possesses.” In this comparable period, there is a literature in Tamil on friendship which bears comparison with Cicero, on eloquence with Cicero and Quintilian, on morality with the writings of Seneca, and a love poetry not less interesting than Catullus but much more impersonal and universal in its appeal.

Conclusion

These comparisons of Indian thought with Roman Stoicism may be made not only in the domain of ethics but also in several other fields. Three great books of Indian ethical thought illustrate three great traditions, and point to a certain unity as well as diversity within the complex systems which come under Indian thought. They are the Bhaguvad Gita, the Dhammapada, and the Tirukkural; the first theistic and incorporating several traditions, the second representing the “sramanic” tradition of asceticism and Buddhist in inspiration, and the third humanistic, representative of a poetic tradition, and of a society in which priests and monks have as yet no traditional social functions. These three books are in three different languages, CASIE-CHITTY, SIMON, Tamil Plutarch, Colombo, 1946; JESUDASON, C. & H., History of Tamil Literature, Calcutta, 1961; KANAGASABAI PILLAI, V. The Tamils Erghteen hundred years ago, Madras, 1904 (reprinted Madras, 1959); SESHA IYENGAR, T.R. Dravidian India, Madras, 1925; SIVARAJA PILLAI, K.N. Chronology of the, early Tamils, Madras, 1982; SRINIVASA IYENGAR, P.T., Htstory of the Tamils from the earliest times to 600 A.D., Madras, 1929; TAMBYAH ISAAO, T. Psalms of a Sativa Satnt, Luzac, London, 1926. Sanskrit ‘and Pali and Tamil, and while the two are representative of the Northern traditions in religion and ethics, the third is representative of the Southern tradition.?® I believe that what I have said will also indicate that it would be hardly valid to generalize on Indian thought on the basis of any single Indian literature, classical or modern, or on the basis of one single tradition, or region or religion. Literary evidence, both classical and modern, elements Dravidian and Aryan, philosophies of the North and of the South, and the beliefs and values of the masses preserved in popular cults and folk literature, all contribute to our study of Indian thought. This lecture has been mainly concerned with one tradition, and that tradition links up the past and the present through a living language and literature which have maintained an unbroken recorded continuity at least for the last twenty-three centuries, a continuity not verified in the fortunes of many of Tamil’s ancient contemporaries. That recorded tradition opens up new perspectives of relevance when connected, as it seems most reasonable to do, with earlier oral traditions and with the Indus Valley Culture and its monuments of the second and third millenia before the Christian era. a + Spe ey ee See eer eee 36 The attempt to trace all Indian thought to Sanskritic sources still persists even among a section of scholars whose knowledge of the Tamil language might suggest a more accurate interpretation. What grounds might Prof. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri have for the following statement made in his mature years: “ All these literatures owed a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch alone raised each of the Dravidian languages from the level of a patois to that of aed idiom" (A History of South India, 2nd ed. p. ; During its long history, the Tamil tradition has come to include the main currents of Indian religious and philosophical thought, while preserving its identity unchanged by the political upheavals which occurred in the territory north of the Tamil borders. Saivaism, Vaisnavism, Buddhism, Jainism, [slam, Christianity and Roman Catholicism have all of them great literary works in Tamil. Throughout the larger portion of its history, it has had the advantage of contact with a great classical dead language and a great classical literature in Sanskrit, as Latin had in Greek. Unless the evidence of the Indus Valley, of the TZolkappiyam, of the love and bhakti poetry in Tamil, of the siddhanta philosophy, of the ethical verse, of the epic poetry and of the fine arts and crafts of the South, enter into the syllabuses and studies of Indological research, a more accurate and balanced presentation of Indian thought than that which obtains now will not be possible. It would be true to say, that since the last war, there is a marked decrease in the tendency to build Indological interests on IndoKuropean language and racial affinities as the sole or main determinants or as inspirational motives. Nor is an indefinable attitude of selfefficiency or an esoteric Boston Brahminhood now assumed by those who study the Vedas and the Upanisads. But “the too exclusive examination of India from the Indo-European standpoint” still continues. The term “Indian Studies” is itself so comprehensive that hardly any University would be able in its teaching and research to cover every field of study which may be included in : \ the term. Consequently certain fields have necessarily to be selected for special study taking into consideration such facts as the needs of the country and of society, the availability of funds, the demand for such studies, and the contribution that has to be made along with other departments to the implementation of the declared policy of sustaining and fostering the cultures and languages of the component groups of the nation. To scatter energies over a wide field is no help in the slow building up of ordered knowledge, and in the establishing of our own traditions which should supplement and dovetail the work of similar departments in South East Asia and in the world. In Departments of studies of this kind, there is a tendency to a static antiquarianism and to a conservatism which have to be counterbalanced by a consciousness of the importance of the present and by a vision of the future. Modernization of courses should maintain teaching continually revised; and creative teaching should beware of “inert ideas”, that is “ideas which are not tested or utilised or thrown into fresh combinations.” Extending the frontiers of knowledge, a phrase which reveals the adventure and the joy of discovery incidental to University research in an atmosphere of academic freedom, is a vital function of a University. A Department of Indian Studies with specialist courses in Tamil Studies, (and Tamil studies to include courses in Dravidology and Sanskrit), should be able to restore to Indology some of the equipoise it needs, and exploit the possibilities of new discoveries and approaches available to Indian Studies in South East Asia. We cannot just afford to continue repeating what Coedès and Krom and Stutterheim and Winstedt have stated. There are considerable new areas which remain to be studied, and these require in a Department both the energy and enthusiasm of youth as well as the breadth and depth and the richness and ripeness which comes with experience and the years. New areas exist in the interpretation available to Indian Studies by the close collaboration possible in this University with Malay, Islamic and Chinese Studies. New areas exist for Indian Studies as defined in this University, in the history and culture of Malaya, in Sumatra, in the Dieng Plateau of Java and in Bali, amid the ruins of Mison and Po-Nagar and in Oc-eo in Vietnam, in Angkor Vat and Angkor Thom in Cambodia, and in the speech and literature and the monuments of Thailand. We might even go further in this adventure and study Chinese thought and literature and uncover sources and similarities yet unknown, or travel further North to find resemblances with the tanka in Japanese poetry and with Zen Buddhism. The scope is great and the opportunities are many. Let us hope and trust that this University will be rich in the utilisation of these opportunities while fulfilling its role as a centre of learning in South East Asia.*

• Inaugural lecture delivered at the University of Malaya on Dec. 14, 1962.