Bibliographic record

Open Library records Tamil humanism, the classical period (Jaffna College, 1972; 57 p.). No independent public monograph scan is hosted yet.

How to read

Ancient Tamil Poet-Educators follows below as the on-site classical-humanism reading. Prefer the journal scan when a citation looks uncertain.

Tamil Humanism, the Classical Period

Bunker Memorial Lectures / Jaffna College humanism theme (1972). Independent monograph scan not found; on-site reading is the Tamil Culture essay Ancient Tamil Poet-Educators (Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 273–285), re-OCR’d from IA leaves 2099–2111 and lightly corrected against the scan.

Contents

1. Publication note
2. Ancient Tamil Poet-Educators

Publication note

1972 Jaffna College / Bunker Memorial Lectures humanism theme. Full lecture text is not yet publicly digitised; the related journal essay below develops classical Tamil humanism.

Ancient Tamil Poet-Educators

Xavier S. Thani Nayagam · Tamil Culture, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 273–285

The role of the poet as educator of groups of disciples as well as of the community in general corresponds to a society in which kingship prevails, and the chieftaincies and clans have been welded into feudal monarchies. With the evolution of a chieftaincy into a larger political unit embracing other chieftaincies, an additional dignity is attached to the singer of praise the range of whose vision and whose gifts have to be broader and more elevated than those of the bard. Political and social life are developed on a larger scale and with a more extensive and variegated background. The problems which confront the king and his administration as well as society are much more complex and include moral and ethical values involving inter-action between individuals and groups. The inflow of wealth into the capital cities and the seaports makes the problem of wealth and poverty, of taxation, trade, war, peace and good government, subjects of reflection on the part of the poets who have become the friends and counsellors of kings. Thus, from the panegyric role of the bard, emerges the poet of a complex and wealthy stage of society, relinquishing popular entertainment and education to the bard, but retaining for himself and developing those aspects of formal teaching which were contained among the bard’s functions.

The increase of wealth and splendour at the court, the higher and more universal values with which the poet deals, his cultural activities at courts, and his friendship with the royalty of the land and his interventions with kings on behalf of his friends confer on the poet an aristocratic standing even though the poet is almost entirely dependent on royal patronage.¹

The poems which describe the rule in the Tamil monarchies show that kingly society was developed on a money economy and that there was wealth and affluence in the royal household. The forest defences, the regular armies and provisions made for the elephants, the horses and chariots of warfare, the different parts of a palace and their costly appointments, the gold and silver vessels in which food and drink are served, and the imported articles of ornamentation in the royal households are evidence of the economic prosperity which marks the poetic stage of culture, a correlate of an aristocratic tradition of education. The organisation of clan has given place to the feudal monarchy and the bard’s functions in tribal forays are taken over by a formal war-drum, enthroned in the palace, the sounding of which summons a regular army in the hour of danger.

The Tamil kingdoms during the poetic period are predominantly agricultural, commercial and militaristic.² The Tamil kings encounter their rivals not only on land but also on sea, and navies and naval battles are recorded in the poems.³ Nedunceralatan, victorious alike on land and sea, is said to have taken into custody a group of Roman soldiers, probably stationed in a territorial concession near Cochin, and released them only after the payment of a ransom.⁴ This period (first century A.D.) is also the period of the largest volume of trade of the Tamil kingdoms with the Roman Empire. From the Tamil country the Roman Empire received spices, fine muslins, pearls and beryls and in exchange for these commodities Tamil India received gold and silver, wine, coral, crude glass, lampstands and gold and silver vessels.⁵ Hence there was a surplus economy and a progressive growth of cities, not only of the inland capitals like Karur and Kudal (Madurai), but also of the many sea-port towns which were important in the sea-trade, for instance, Musiri, Tondi, Korkai, Kaveripattinam, sea-ports on the western and eastern coasts of Southern India which were nourished by secondary industries and foreign trade. Thus more people were released for occupations other than primary production, and thus opportunities were created for the introduction and development of formal education. Though Tamil society continues to cherish the values of a warrior society and even voluntary suicide by fasting to death is undertaken to vindicate a point of honour in the same manner as the religious suicide of the Jains,⁶ there is an insistence on intellectual perfection and a moral enrichment and an uninhibited development of music and other arts in addition to the warrior ethics and arts of the bardic period. From the warrior ethics developed gradually more universal values. For instance, the Kosar, a fierce and warlike tribe, are said to be as true to their word as are their arrows to hit their targets.⁷

What are the differences in function which appear between the categories of bard and of poet? The bard is a peripatetic with his troupe and his family whereas the poet journeys alone; the bard and his troupe entertain, act plays, sing, praise and dance and use musical accompaniment, whereas the poet instructs and counsels as one having authority, scholarship and learning with an unaccompanied technique of poesy; the bard is the voice of the community, whereas the poet goes under his own name and his poems are mostly personal, expressive of his own relations with his patron and his own reflective thoughts; the bard is more the entertainer of the people and of the court while the poet is found mostly in the court and in gatherings of poets of his own standing and learning; the bards sing panegyrics, martial exhortations and heroic verse, while the poet’s preoccupations even when praising a king’s valour are with human conduct and ethics and morals; the bard may be found in the battlefield during this period to exhort the troops to bravery, but the poet has no place in the battlefield except as a peacemaker or through excess loyalty to a king or chief who is his valued friend. The Tamil names for a bard and his troupe were derived from roots which are associated with music, drama and dance, while the name for a poet is associated with a word which signifies general knowledge, reasoning and learning.⁸

That the period represented by the anthologies was truly a poetic stage of culture and education is admirably illustrated by comparing it with the subsequent epoch of the longer poems, the Silappatikaram–Manimekalai period when the place of the poet has been almost taken by the religious teacher and the philosopher. The poet seems to vanish from the foreground and it is the philosopher who uses the language and the conventions of poetry. But during this poetic stage, the number of poets and the range of their activities more than amply illustrate the formal function of education which they performed among their groups of disciples and the informal education which they imparted as the moral guides, informal law-givers and counsellors of society. K. N. Sivaraja Pillai has distributed the four hundred and fifty-nine Tamil poets of the earlier anthologies over ten generations extending from 50 B.C. to 200 A.D., which gives an average of about forty for each generation of twenty-five years. From the several allusions to gatherings of poets at the courts and the institution of poesy as the educational technique of the age, we may rightly infer that the average of forty poets for each generation represents but a very small number among their contemporaries whose works have perished.⁹

An analysis of these poets and poetesses according to their places of origin shows that they belonged to various cities, townships and villages of the Tamil kingdoms, and an examination of the occupational and social groups to which they belonged shows that the poets and poetesses came from royalty, from agricultural and merchant classes and from various trades and crafts. Of the one hundred and forty-seven different poets in the Purananuru anthology alone, about fifteen are women and fourteen are kings.¹⁰ This and other anthologies include princesses and men and women of different groups, such as the mountain and marauding clans, as well as medical men, mathematicians, astronomers, carpenters, blacksmiths and potters. Avvai, the most renowned of the poetesses, moves about royal courts and is as much the friend of kings and chiefs, their counsellor and as powerful a teacher of Tamil society as any of her poet contemporaries. The names and occupations of the poets and poetesses of the Tamil country show that learning and poesy were not restricted to any particular sex or occupation and that poetic composition was indulged in not only by professional poets but also by others who found in poetry an accepted form of expressing their knowledge, their thoughts and their emotions.

The bards and poets by their frequent visits to kings and chiefs all over the Tamil country brought about a certain cultural, language and literary uniformity within the Tamil kingdoms, and contributed not a little to political stability, unity and understanding between various Tamil kings and chiefs. Further their frequent allusions to cities, festivals, friendly meetings of kings, to celebrated patrons and to famous battles established a sense of tradition and history within the Tamil country.

Tamil society had its own religions. The anthologies contain references to the worship of Murugan, Siva, Visnu and other lesser deities, but the priests of the religions at this stage do not appear to have formulated even formal systems of religious education. Probably a strong current of Saivaite philosophy and personal devotion (bhakti) to the God of one’s choice was existent, but, unlike the North Indian society, Tamil society included no dominant priestly caste or organised monasticism to impart even an “official” religious education. Neither did Tamil society have a revealed book or revealed scriptures to establish ethical and moral norms. The poetic period in the Tamil country was like the poetic period in Greece, and the poets themselves, and not priests, were the teachers of ethics and morals.¹¹

The social standing of the poets in the Tamil country is shown by the numerous examples of poets who refuse to be slighted by kings and curse kings and chiefs and rebuke them should they fail to confer on them the regard, patronage and gifts which are their due.¹² A poet who is slighted by a king hastens to another chief famous for his gifts, returns with an elephant received as a gift from the chief and ties the elephant to a tree in the defence-thickets of the king who slighted him, an act tantamount to an insulting declaration of war.¹³ Another poet discriminates between two princes whom he meets, embraces one and does not embrace the other. On being asked by the prince who was slighted why he should have treated him so, the poet replies:

This other prince belongs to a family which, if the chief were away from home, has conferred gifts to us (poets) through their women-folk who would even adorn themselves for the occasion; but you belong to a family which has shut its door in our face. Since then we have avoided your hills.¹⁴

The poet Kapilar, a great friend of Pari, a patron chief of bards and poets, advises the kings who besiege his mountain fortress that it cannot be taken by elephants and armies. They might capture it if the kings went dancing and singing with bardic troupes following them.¹⁵ A poet’s praise is accounted worthy of heaven while his curse results in an entire town ending in ruins so that the town remains only a memory and a name.¹⁶ Something of the fierce moralising of the Hebrew prophets and their championship of social justice and truth is seen vested in the Tamil poets, and this is no surprise, since it is the prophetic function of original shamanism which appears developed among the Hebrew prophets while the poetic function of the shaman is found developed in Tamil society.

The social prestige of the Tamil poets is again evident in the manner in which they are received and feasted at courts, and in their frequent interventions in political affairs, often counselling against war either because of its baneful effects or because of the power of the enemy, sometimes urging Tamil unity against non-Tamil foes, or a confederation of two or more kings, or dissuading unjust taxation or pleading on behalf of rebel sons and subjects and innocent victims condemned to torture.¹⁷ The kings had their assemblies of counsel and government, but the poets enjoyed an advisory and teaching capacity even more than they. The following poem which urges the minor king Pekan to return to his lawful wife whom he had condemned to a life of loneliness is a subject about which four celebrated poets have sung poems upbraiding Pekan and interceding on behalf of his lawful queen, Kannaki, that he might live with her again. Arisil Kilar is persuasive even in his imperious manner:

Be thy rare gems and treasures what they may,
We seek not these, O Pekan, great in war,
When with our little lyre, in tender strains,
The fruitful fields of thy good land we sing,
If pleased thou boon on me bestow, O King,
Thy spouse, erewhile with choicest gems adorned
Now suffers bitter grief because no love is hers.
Let her this night perfume her tresses bright
Like pea-fowl’s plumes upgathered by the wind,
And wreathe her brow with fragrant blooms—
Yoke to thy mighty car thy swiftest steeds.¹⁸

Another poet dissuades a king from a heavy taxation of agriculturists. As the economy became diversified and as foreign trade brought greater wealth, rulers seem to have overlooked agrarian welfare. The poet points out that even “the victory of the army that is engaged in a last-ditch combat is the result of the efforts of the army of the plough” and adds:

If thou has marked and known this well:
Reject the wily counsels of malicious men,
Lighten the load of those who till the soil,
The dwellers in the land protect. If thou do this
Thy stubborn foes shall lowly bend beneath thy feet.¹⁹

There occur in the Purananuru anthology accounts of close friendship between kings and poets. Some of them even choose to die of voluntary starvation together with their royal friend when he decided upon that warrior manner of death.²⁰

Learning and poesy were transmitted at this stage by formal discipleship. The titles of some of the poets in the colophons indicate that they were renowned teachers and had famous disciples.²¹ Two aspects of learning were said to make the complete man, kalvi, the positive, personal effort at learning and apperception, and kelvi, the student’s acceptance of instruction imparted by another. The word kelvi, literally “hearing”, shows the oral and aural origin of learning, and even the most learned poets are praised by their contemporaries because of their twofold competence, their learning and their having heard instruction from learned men.²² Both personal effort and learning by hearing learned men are of little value unless the learner acquires the ability to impart his learning by clear, coherent, logical discourse and convince his hearers in the assembly of learned men (avai) or in the assembly of the king’s advisers. The ideal of the poetic stage of education is a preparation for prominent civic life and the scene of intellectual activity shifts from the village community centre (manram) to the royal courts and assemblies of learned men. The life of learning is for the purpose of service to the community, and if time is expended in the acquisition of wealth it is in order that that wealth may serve those who are in want and that hospitality may be increased.

Though about twenty-two poetesses are counted among the four hundred and fifty-nine persons whose poems are found in the anthologies, no system of formal instruction is outlined for women. There is no strict segregation of the sexes, and courtship and mixed dances are described as popular, and women accoutred with daggers are found serving even in war-camps.²³ The ideal which is constantly kept before women in the Ancient literature is that of the chaste, loyal and loving wife. In a culture in which plants and flowers acquired a high degree of symbolism, chastity and marital love and loyalty are symbolised by the whitest and most fragrant of indigenous flowers, the mullai (jasmine). Poetic conventions in the Tolkappiyam and in the anthologies have young women trained in aristocratic fashion and amidst aristocratic surroundings by an elderly nurse (sevili) with the companionship of a maid (toli) who are both experts on the depths of love psychology plumbed by the Ancient Tamil poets.

The universal value of formal education is stated in an oft-quoted poem in which formal education is taken for granted as the basis of self-realisation and recognition by the world:

It is good to learn though it may involve a humble discipleship, humble service and paying an emolument. A mother among her many children is apt to like him most who is distinguished (by learning); among a group or class the king is apt to follow the counsel not of the eldest but of him who is well instructed, and even among those (Aryans) who preserve a fourfold division of society, suppose one of a lower caste were to be known for learning, one of a higher caste would be compelled to respect him (or seek his help).²⁴

The education and learning which are referred to in this poem and understood in the anthologies is not religious education even when learned men are known as “resplendent men”.²⁵ It is a learning which perfects the learner and equips him for this life and for an honoured place in the assemblies of learned men and of the elders of a locality. It is no world-denying learning but one which affirms the world, its joys, and finds a self-sufficiency in human powers. It has a great love for children and for the home and knows little of a state of homelessness.²⁶ It is an education which equips the learner for courtship, marriage and a life of altruism. A great hero of the period, Ay, a warrior chief and patron of bards and poets is praised because he does not do good for “mercenary motives, in order to win praise in this life or happiness in the next”, or because of the example of wise men but because good should be accomplished for its own sake. A. C. Bouquet has no grounds whatsoever to assume that “self-forgetful service of others” is in origin a Christian idea.²⁷ Altruism and “living not for self but for others” is recommended because of its own intrinsic worth and not for any future reward or for the benefit of a future birth.²⁸ Albert Schweitzer has pointed out the discovery of this ethic of goodness and benevolence in the Tirukkural, but it occurs even earlier than the book of gnomic verse and is an active and creative concept among a people whose literary records testify to a humanism, an optimism and an altruism which are the fundamental characteristics of ancient Tamil culture as yet uninfluenced in the main by the priestly and monastic cultures from Northern India.²⁹

In order to assess this Tamil humanism one has to consider the entire complex of attitudes prevalent and fostered in Tamil society, and the abstractions and universals which comprise the conscious and unconscious metaphysic of the age as expressed in the anthologies. The love poetry and the panegyric poetry show the range of psychological insight of the poets themselves and the Tolkappiyam is probably derived from one of the several compendia which existed as aids to the study of the phonetics, grammar, prosody and the conventions and psychology which were to guide poetic compositions. Life is considered pleasant and joyful, and death a sad ending; there is no attempt to obtain release from life except to vindicate honour and bravery and the love for a husband who has passed away; there is a note of nostalgic sadness in the poems about senescence and old age; liberality and ethical goodness are indulged in without motives of expiation and penance; rebirth is seldom spoken of in the earlier poems but the life after death is represented as an abode of permanent happiness for the good and permanent suffering for the wicked; happiness in the future world is conceded only to those who by their bravery and altruism have established their glory in this world;³⁰ love and courtship, marriage and children are considered necessary modes of human fulfilment and perfection of personality; and the norms and ideals of statecraft, ethics, truth, justice, equity, gratitude and love which run through the anthologies and the Tirukkural seem to make by comparison Kautilya, Manu and Vatsyayana small, exclusive and petty in the ideals and concepts they teach of moral and ethical goodness.³¹

The following poem tersely expresses certain dynamic and creative thoughts underlying the poetic period:

Does this world really exist? If it does, it is because therein live persons who if they came by even Indra’s nectar would not consume it selfishly alone; they bear ill-will towards none; they fear not nor quail before what others fear; they waver not. With ideals of striving not for their own good but for the good of the rest of men they live—hence one may believe the world exists.³²

This development of secular poetic thought was not to blossom forth immediately into a full and pure philosophy as it did in Greece. The political movements in India and Ceylon and international trade were bringing Indian kingdoms and foreign countries into very close relationship, and the political and commercial routes were also the highways along which Vedic Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism and Ajivikism travelled to the Tamil kingdoms. The Silappatikaram, Manimekalai and the Tirukkural represent an age of philosophic thought, religious and secular and of inter-cultural contacts and inter-cultural conflicts.

Notes

1. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 71–130. Page 124: “The poet is looked upon as the guest-friend of his patron, even at times when he is utterly dependent on him.”
2. S. Krishnaswami Aiyengar, The Beginnings of South Indian History, p. 59 ff., Modern Printing Works, Madras, 1918; id., Ancient India and South Indian History and Culture, Vol. I, p. 435 ff., Vol. II, p. 668 ff., Oriental Book Agency, Poona, 1941.
3. E.g. Puram., 66, 126, 130.
4. See K. N. Sivaraja Pillai, The Chronology, op. cit., p. 117.
5. See Mortimer Wheeler, Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers; J. M. Casal, Fouilles de Virampatnam–Arikamedu, Librairie Klincksieck, Paris, 1949; Pierre Meile, “Les Yavanas dans l’Inde Tamoule,” in Mélanges Asiatiques, pp. 85–123, 1940–1942.
6. Puram., 65, 66, 236.
7. Puram., 169; Kur., 15, 73.
8. Compare panan, kuttan, virali with pulavan.
9. K. N. Sivaraja Pillai, The Chronology, op. cit., p. 192; S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, “History of Tamil Language and Literature,” in TC Vol. III (1954), p. 346 ff.; S.I.S.S.W. Publishing Society, Lectures on Purananuru (Tm).
10. See sources cited in note 9.
11. See W. Jaeger, Paideia, op. cit., p. 148: “In the age of the Presocratics, the poet was still the undisputed leader of his people; and he was being joined by the lawgiver and statesman. There was no change in this situation until the rise of the sophists…”; cf. W. A. Smith, Ancient Education, Philosophical Library. The following article by an eminent Hindu scholar is important confirmatory evidence of the conclusions reached in these pages with regard to early Tamil religion: Swami Vipulananda, on the development of Tamilian religious thought, in TC Vol. V (1956) number 2, p. 254 ff.
12. Puram, 196, 205–211.
13. Puram, 162.
14. Puram, 151.
15. Puram, 109, 15–18.
16. Puram, 27 and 202. In Puram, 72 the young sovereign who has composed the poem swears that should he fail to achieve victory against the other kings who have joined against him, may he turn out to be an unrighteous sovereign whose subjects curse his cruelty, and may his territory be forever forsaken by the band of illustrious poets headed by Mankudi Marutan.
17. See e.g., Puram, 43–47, 58, 92, 95, 97, 102, 104, 109, 110, 143–145, 212–213, 246, 336. Cf. Patir., passim re gifts given to poets.
18. Puram, 146. The translation is by G. U. Pope in IA. See also 143–145 and 147.
19. Puram, 35.
20. Puram, 214–223.
21. The titles added to the names indicate and differentiate between the more celebrated and the less celebrated poets and sometimes show the lineage of discipleship and special teaching functions.
22. See Puram, 26, 12; 53, 12; 72, 13. See Tirukkural, chapters on learning.
23. Mullaippattu (Ten Idylls) 45–49; e.g. Puram, 116; Nar., 159, 331; Aham, 190.
24. Puram, 183.
25. E.g., oliyor in Puram, 39.
26. The anthologies of love poetry and the Tolkappiyam amply demonstrate this humanism. See, for instance, Puram, 188.
27. Comparative Religion, op. cit., p. 147.
28. Puram, 134, 138, 20 ff.
29. Albert Schweitzer, Indian Thought, op. cit., p. 200 ff.
30. Puram, 50, 14, 18; also see 18, 13; 21, 13; 24, 34; 135–6; 165; 174; 179, 9; 206, 8.
31. Albert Schweitzer, ibid., p. 201: “What a difference between the Kural and the Laws of Manu which originated some four centuries before it! In the latter under the dominance of the Brahmanic spirit, world and life affirmation is still just tolerated alongside world and life-negation. In the Kural world and life-negation is only like a distant cloud in the sky.”
32. Puram, 182. See Aham, 55. High ideals are constantly emphasised. See simile in Puram, 69, 5.