Tamil Country Research Articles

Book Review: Slavery in the Tamil Country: A Historical Overview, Social Movements in India Vols. I & II, the Village Gods of South India, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions

Book Review: Slavery in the Tamil Country: A Historical Overview, Social Movements in India Vols. I & II, the Village Gods of South India, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and its Healing Traditions

Circulation and the Historical Geography of Tamil Country

Tamil country, in the southeastern portion of peninsular India, has been an identifiable cultural region for almost two millennia. Tamil literary productions dating from the early centuries of the Christian era to the present time speak of Tamilakam (the land, or the abode, of Tamils)—setting out its boundaries by reference to mountains, rivers, and the sea, but making few distinctions within this macroregion and not specifying what lay beyond it. This paper is an attempt at more precise definition of the nature and development of this cultural region and its changing structure, by means of consulting a variety of evidence and by using the concept of “circulation.”

Circulation and the Historical Geography of Tamil Country

Circulation and the Historical Geography of Tamil Country

Territory, Social Structure, and Settlement Dynamics in Tamil Nadu Before 1800 A.D.

Territory, Social Structure, and Settlement Dynamics in Tamil Nadu Before 1800 A.D.

The Avvai of the Sanģam Antholoģies

There is perhaps no writer held in greater esteem in the Tamil country than the poetess Avvai or Auvai, as her name is given in the old commentaries and in a poem of the Sangam age.1 The editor of a selection of poems from those traditionally ascribed to Avvai says that the poetess was an incarnation of the goddess of learning, while the writer of the foreword to his book says the joy of her presence is with us in the world to-day. An editor and annotator of a philosophical work ascribed to her writes in much the same strain, remarking that the work in question is the fruit of the penance of the whole Tamil country.

An Indo-Aryan Language of South India: Saurāṣṭra-bhāṣā

Since 1880 more than forty publications have been registered in Madras as “Saurāshtranā, the language noticed but not described under the name Paṭṇūlī in the Linguistic Survey of India, vol. vs., 2, pp. 447–8. It is spoken by more than a hundred thousand persons who play an important part in the textile industry of Madras and form a considerable element in the population of Madura and of other towns and localities in the Tamil districts. The great majority of them (89,000 out of 104,000) speak Tamil as a second language. Thurston's Castes and Tribes of South India, vol. vi (1909), gives an account of them in the article “Patnūlkārans”, and for the present purpose it is only necessary to say that according to their own tradition their original home was Surāṣṭra. In A.D. 437–8, as is recorded by a Mandasor inscription, the guild of silk-weavers who had migrated to Mandasor from Lāṭa-viṣaya erected a temple to the Sun (paṭṭavāyir udāraṃ ṥreēṇībhītair bhavanam atulaṃ kāritam), which they repaired in A.D. 473–4, the date of the inscription. It is a reasonable conjecture that they were ancestors of the present Saurāshtrans of South India. The inscription presents them as a self-contained community, in which learning and the martial arts as well as industrial skill were represented, and it may well be that Vatsabhaṭṭi, who composed the epigraphic poem, was himself a member of the ṥrēṇi. They may be supposed to have resided in Mandasor for a time. But long before the place was captured by the Muhammadans in the early fourteenth century the modern Saurāshtrans according to the tradition migrated to the Yādava capital Dēvagiri (Daulatābād). Subsequent migrations led them first to Vijayanagar, and finally into the Tamil country which is now their home. This account of their migrations is said to be preserved in a set form of words used in their marriage ceremonies. That they must have come under Telugu influence is plain from the considerable Telugu element in certain publications. The language which they brought from Lāṭa or Surāṣṭra may therefore have come successively under the influence, first and for a very long time, of Rājasthān forms of speech, and then of Marathi, Telugu and Tamil.

The Government Museum, Madras

UNDER the superintendence of Dr. F. H. Gravely, an important extension to the Government Museum, Madras, has been completed and opened to the public, following the plans of the late R. Dann, consulting architect to that Government. The new building has provided accommodation for the staff of curators, the block which they formerly occupied being now given up to the zoological collections. But its main function is to give suitable expression to the evolution of the decorative motives of the architecture of the magnificent temples of South India. For the Tamil country, these changes form an interesting and logical sequence. The temples of other parts of India differ from those of Tamil origin, and although the development of their architecture is not yet fully understood, attempts have been made in the new building to indicate the succession of changes. A short account of these arrangements, based upon Dr. Gravely's address at the opening ceremony, which was performed by His Excellency the Governor of Madras, Lord Erskine, appears in the July number of the Museums Journal (40, 109; 1940).

ECONOMICS OF GRAPEVINE CULTIVATION

The cultivation of grapevine was introduced in Tamil country forty years ago. Rev. Larney was the first to introduce it in Panjampatti village in the Madura district. The cultivation of vine gradually spread from one village to another and now nearly eighty acres are under this crop in several villages in Madura and Trichy districts. The cultivation aspect of it has already been dealt with in an article published in the Madras Agricultural Students' Union Journal, Vol. XI. 1923.

The Agastya Selection of Tamil Saivite Hymns

Tevaram , a condensed and figurative expression, means “a garland of verse addressed to God”, with the added idea that devotion is the “thread” on which the several “flowers” or verses are strung. It thus forms a very fitting title for the devotional songs of the three saints, Appar, Sundarar, and Sambandar, the greatest of the sixty-three exponents of the Śaivite religion in the Tamil country.