Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

The Ancient Tamil Civilisation

By V. Narayanan, M.A., M.L.

Modern writers on the history of South India are fond of pointing out the existence of a Tamil civilisation independent of the Aryan civilisation in the region south of the Vindhyas. They have mainly relied on the following evidence for their theses: -

    1. The peculiarities of the Tamil language as seen from the earliest extant Tamil poems.
    2. The classification that is made in those poems of the five Thinais and of Aham and Puram.
    3. The references to the products of the Tamil country by the geographers of Greece and of Rome.
    4. The references about the region south of the Vindhyas in Vedic literature.
    5. The differences in the forms of worship as found in the Aryan Vedas and the Dravidian Agamas.

But these studies of the characteristics of the Tamil civilisation are vitiated at the outset by the assumption that there was a Dravidian culture and a Dravidian race independent of the Aryan culture and the Aryan race. It is important to note that there is no reference in Sanskrit works to Dravida as opposed to Arya. The five Dravidas known to Sanskrit writers are five sections of a group of the Aryan people; the early foreign writers of Greece and of Rome refer to the whole of India as one unit, and if they refer to Tamilakam it is only as a name of a division of the country, just like a reference to Bengal as the ‘Ganges’ and to Ceylon as ‘Taprobane.’ I shall now deal with the five classes of evidences seriatim.

Firstly, as to the peculiarities of the Dravidian language and of the Tamil language: No systematic study was made of the words or of the grammatical forms prevalent in early Tamil. A systematic attempt made in this direction by the late Mr. R. Swaminatha Ayyar. The evidence that he had gathered and published serves to show that the peculiarities of the Tamil language as regards grammatical form and construction are common to the Prakrit languages, and that the vocabulary of earlier Tamil bore close affinities to the vocabularies of the Vedas and the earlier Prakrits which prevailed in the Punjab regions. Much emphasis is laid by modern writers on the scanty references in Vedic literature to gold, ivory and pearl; and inferences are drawn that these were therefore the special products of the Tamil country. But these inferences are based on the mistaken notion that the Vedas embodied the entire civilisation of the early Indians. The Vedas and especially the Mantra and the Brahmana portions were manuals prepared for use by the adherents of a special school of worship. There are indications in these compilations which point out that these Mantras and Brahmanas were not written for the occasion but were selections from the earlier poets which were considered of special efficacy when used as magical incantations at Fire oblations. A later attempt in the same direction is by the Sutrakaras who selected passages from these compilations for use on the occasions of the several ceremonies prescribed by them for the householder. Although the selected pieces (which are arranged in the order in which they are to be used at the rituals) contain occasional references to followers of other schools of worship, those references themselves indicated that the dissentients also belonged to the same race and spoke the same language and were brought up under the same cultural influences. It will be as vain a task to re-construct the ancient Aryan civilisation from the Vedic Mantras and Brahmanas as to attempt re-constructing the ancient Tamil civilisation from the eight anthologies and other relics of early Tamil literature. Both the Vedas and the Sangam works are anthologies, and anthologies with definite purposes. The Vedas were compilations from the earlier Vedic poets of passges which in the opinion of the compilers had value as magic. The Sangam works were anthologies from earlier Tamil poets made by grammarians in support of their own theory of the Thinais. Just as in the Vedic Mantras there are indications that offerings were not always made to the deities through Fire, there are indications in the Sangam works that the early Tamil poems did not necessarily conform to the Procrustean doctrine of Thinais; but naturally because of the object these anthologists had set before themselves, one cannot expect much evidence about matters not falling within their Scope.

Thirdly, references to gold, ivory and pearl would naturally be few in the Vedic mantras; but it is important to note that it is not merely the enemies of the Vedic school but their friends also that are described as having plenty of ivory, pearl and gold, If the products were peculiar to the Tamil country, how is it that the words for ivory and elephant are derived from Sanskrit? If ivory was known to the Greeks by the Sanskrit name Ibha-danta, then it must either be a North Indian product, or the Tamil and the Sanskrit words for ivory must have been the same even in those early days. In other words, advocates of the theory of an independent Tamil civilisation are faced with a dilemma. They have to face the Scylla of identity in language or the Charybdes of identity in one important characteristic of civilisation (namely, the articles of value). The word for pearl another instance, Of Course it is easy to say that the Sanskrit word Mukta came from the Tamil word Muttu; but such an answer is unconvincing. Pearl was apparently called Mukta because it did not grow in bunches, but grew separately, a single pearl in an oyster. That the word Mukta or Muktaphala was used in Sanskrit in distinction with the bunches or Kulas of fruits is seen from the nomenclature for single verses and for bunches of verses linked together. The former is called a Muktakam and the latter Kulakam. The same nomenclature is copied by Tamil grammarians; and one is familiar with Kulai, the Tamil form of the Sanskrit word Kula for bunches. As regards gold, references in Sanskrit indicate the several varieties of gold that were current in Northern India in the early days; and the names of these varieties themselves indicated the sources from which gold came. Many of these sources are to be found in Northern India, Similarly, elephants were also classified according to places or forests wherefrom they were obtained, and the names of these places indicate that elephants were not peculiar to South India alone.

Next, the absence of numerous references to the regions south of the Vindhyas in early Vedic literature proves only that the Fire Cult was confined to a particular region in North India. In fact, references are similarly very few as regards large portions of the country north of the Vindhyas. The region ofthe Uttara Kurus was held particularly sacred by the followers of the Fire Cult, as many of the elaborate sacrifices and rituals were conducted in that region. It is therefore natural to expect more frequent references to that region than to the other regions of India in Vedic literature.

The two forms of worship, one of offering sacrificial oblations through Fire and the other of worshipping images, have been in existence in India side by side from very early ages. Worship of God through images seems to have appealed more to the popular imagination, while the worship through Fire was confined to a small group of persons who had specialized in the rituals elaborated in the Mantra and Brahmana manuals. In course of time the popular Agamic cult also came under the control of a special priesthood who performed elaborate rituals prescribed in the Agamas. That the Agamas existed in the early days, although they were considered heterodox by the Vedic school, is seen by the discussion of their evidentiary value by the Sutrakara Badarayana. The distinctions between the Vedic and the Agamic rituals are also to be seen in the daily life of the people. To the follower of the Vedic school the natural way of the disposal of the dead would appear to be to offer the dead body as an oblation to the gods through Fire, while to the follower of the Agamic school burial would be a natural way of disposing of the dead. Worship of the departed ancestors would take the form of the offering of funeral oblations through Fire or through a Brahmin, who was considered to be an incarnation of Fire; while ancestral worship would take the form of erection of memorials and statues to the departed which could be worshipped in accordance with the Agamas in the same form as the Icons of the several deities. Agamas existed in Sanskrit from the earliest times, and it would be idle to contend that they were translations of Agamic works in Tamil or in other Dravidian languages. Similarly, in the earliest Tamil poems now extant, we find indications not only of Agamic forms of worship but also of the Vedic sacrifices. From the discovery of old burial urns in certain deserted places in South India, it would be rash to draw the inference that the earliest civilisation of the Tamils knew of only one way of disposing of their dead: nor does the absence of such burial urns in Northern India prove conclusively that the whole of Northern India had adopted the Vedic method of disposing of their dead. It may be that the ravages of time are much more complete in Northern India than in the South. It is interesting to note that a Kula or group of statues of ancestors, earliest in point of time, has been discovered only in Northern India.

I have endeavored to show that the evidences from which modern historians of South India reconstruct with the aid of their imagination an independent Tamil civilisation are, all of them, inconclusive; that they have no evidentiary value at all, because of the places whence they are culled; and that, on the other hand, the very sources of these ‘evidences’ contain indubitable proofs of an identity of culture throughout India.

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