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99-540: The Purananuru ( Tamil :  புறநானூறு , Puṟanāṉūṟu , literally "four hundred [poems] in the genre puram"), sometimes called Puram or Purappattu , is a classical Tamil poetic work and traditionally the last of the Eight Anthologies ( Ettuthokai ) in the Sangam literature . It is a collection of 400 heroic poems about kings, wars and public life, of which two are lost and a few have survived into

198-455: A Tamira Samghatta ( Tamil confederacy ) The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BCE contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Southworth suggests that the name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "our own speech". Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ , with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and " -iḻ " having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests

297-468: A lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes . Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person , number , mood , tense , etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination , which can lead to long words with many suffixes, which would require several words or

396-484: A , as with other Indic scripts . This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi , to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a ) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama , but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without

495-759: A 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in Tamil Nadu , Puducherry , (in India) and in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Maharashtra , Gujarat , Delhi , Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and

594-522: A battlefield; vaakai, when the king is victorious; paataan, when the poet praises the king on his victory; and kanchi, when the poet sings on the fragility of human life. The Purananuru does not, however, follow this system. The colophons accompanying each poem name a total of eleven thinais. From the subject matter of the poems they accompany, each can be said to represent the following themes: The Kaikkilai and Perunthinai are traditionally associated with akam poetry. In Purananuru, they occur in

693-587: A classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Singapore. The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate the Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamil Sangams , which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these Tamil Sangams

792-475: A date of between 200 BCE to 150 CE for the period of these poems. This is further strengthened by the mention of a reference to Ramayana in poem 378, and a reference to Maurya in poem 175, which indicates a late date of about 187 BCE. A combination of these two considerations would indicate a composition date range during the 2nd century BCE. The text has several mentions of Vedas and Rituals based on Vedas. According to Purananuru poem 362, Vedas are said to be

891-409: A derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < * tav-iḻ < * tak-iḻ , meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature. The Tamil Lexicon of University of Madras defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests

990-522: A difficult sacrifice is completed, may we always see you in your high and perfect state, offering hospitality! Purananuru poem 166 Translated by George L. Hart According to Hart and Heifetz, several poems in Purananuru talk about the God of Death, the death of kings, the helplessness of widows, youth versus old age, memorial stones and death rituals. After the death of a king the people and poets scold

1089-473: A great text which ultimately speaks righteousness and does not speak about materialism or heartlessness . There were many Kings who performed several Yagams ( Velvi ) in Ancient Tamilakam. Some of the famous kings are Karikala Cholan , Palyagasalai Muthukudumi Peruvazhuthi and Rajasooyam Vetta Perunarkilli . Each Purananuru poem has a colophon attached to it giving the authorship and the name of

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1188-538: A king of the early common era Tamil country had a role to play in the battle of the Mahabharata epic. Based on this one poem, there have been attempts at dating the Purananuru poems to around 1000 BCE or older. Each Purananuru poem has a colophon attached to it giving the authorship and subject matter of the poem, the name of the king or chieftain to whom the poem relates and the occasion which called forth

1287-447: A luscious draught. When grieved, we patient suffer; for, we deem This much-praised life of ours a fragile raft Borne down the waters of some mountain stream That o'er huge boulders roaring seeks the plain Tho' storms with lightning's flash from darkened skies. Descend, the raft goes on as fates ordain. Thus have we seen in visions of the wise! We marvel not at the greatness of

1386-607: A number of apparent Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew dating to before 500 BCE, the oldest attestation of the language. Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BCE to 700 CE. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil-Brahmi . The earliest long text in Old Tamil

1485-518: A number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic. Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with

1584-405: A poem of mourning include Catullus 's Carmen 101 , on his dead brother, and elegies by Propertius on his dead mistress Cynthia and a matriarch of the prominent Cornelian family . Ovid wrote elegies bemoaning his exile , which he likened to a death. In English literature, the more modern and restricted meaning, of a lament for a departed beloved or tragic event, has been current only since

1683-535: A relative parallel to Tamil, even as Tamil has undergone some changes in modern ways of speaking. According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil) was created by Lord Shiva . Murugan , revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya , brought it to the people. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the Proto-Dravidian language , which

1782-465: A sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following morphemes : போக pōka go முடி muṭi accomplish Elegy The Greek term ἐλεγείᾱ ( elegeíā ; from ἔλεγος , élegos , ‘lament’) originally referred to any verse written in elegiac couplets and covering

1881-647: A small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults. Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada , the United States , the United Arab Emirates , the United Kingdom , South Africa , and Australia . Tamil is the official language of

1980-610: A subject of study in schools in the French overseas department of Réunion . In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the Government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations, Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India , Abdul Kalam , who

2079-463: A variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil . These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese , Dutch , and English. In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on

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2178-438: A vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives . Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology . In addition to

2277-468: A wide range of subject matter (death, love, war). The term also included epitaphs , sad and mournful songs, and commemorative verses. The Latin elegy of ancient Roman literature was most often erotic or mythological in nature. Because of its structural potential for rhetorical effects, the elegiac couplet was also used by both Greek and Roman poets for witty, humorous, and satirical subject matter. Other than epitaphs, examples of ancient elegy as

2376-412: Is Malayalam ; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect, the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally Kannada is also relatively close to the Tamil language and shares the format of

2475-457: Is based on the dialect of Jaffna . After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava . The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels , 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam . The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel

2574-526: Is described in commentaries as a general thinai used for poems that cannot be classified in any other manner but, in the context of Purananuru , is used almost exclusively for didactic verse and elegies or laments for dead heroes. Purananuru songs exhibit a unique realism and immediacy not frequently found in classical literature. The nature and the subject of the poems indicate that poets did not write these poems on events that happened years prior, rather they wrote (or sang) them on impulse in situ . Some of

2673-690: Is diverse. Of its 400 poems, 138 praise 43 kings – 18 from the Chera dynasty , 13 Chola dynasty kings, and 12 Early Pandya dynasty kings. Another 141 poems praise 48 chieftains. These panegyric poems recite their heroic deeds, as well as another 109 poems that recount deeds of anonymous heroes, likely of older Tamil oral tradition . Some of the poems are gnomic in nature, which have attracted unrealistic attempts to read an ethical message, states Zvelebil. The poetry largely focuses on war, means of war such as horses, heroic deeds, widowhood, hardships, impermanence, and other effects of wars between kingdoms based along

2772-563: Is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam . Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam , with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu , col , poruḷ , yāppu , aṇi . Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry. Tamil words consist of

2871-405: Is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic . In grammar, the most important change

2970-409: Is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example,

3069-410: Is in koṭuntamiḻ , and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' koṭuntamiḻ , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai . In Sri Lanka, the standard

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3168-511: Is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name is found in Tholkappiyam , which is dated as early as late 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription , inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by Kharavela , the Jain king of Kalinga , also refers to

3267-771: Is not always consistently applied. ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to Latin script , and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English. Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs. /f/ , /z/ , /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. Tamil has two diphthongs : /aɪ̯/ ஐ and /aʊ̯/ ஔ ,

3366-409: Is the Tolkāppiyam , an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BCE. Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature . These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE. The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil , which

3465-848: Is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia , along with English, Malay and Mandarin. A large community of Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka. There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in Réunion , Guyana , Fiji , Suriname , and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only

3564-546: The Himalayas of "immeasurable heights", Shiva , Vishnu , the four Vedas , the Ramayana , rivers, and other aspects. Among the eight Sangam anthologies, Purananuru and Pathitrupathu are concerned with life outside family – kings, wars, greatness, generosity, ethics and philosophy. While Pathitrupathu is limited to the glory of Chera kings in 108 verses, Purananuru contains an assortment of themes in 397 poems. Of

3663-431: The Purananuru content is organized in the following way (poem sequence number in brackets): The collected poems were composed by 157 poets, of which 14 were anonymous and at least 10 were women poets. Some of the authors of the poems, such as Kapilar and Nakkirar, have also written poems that are part of other anthologies. There seems to be some definite structure to the order of the poems in Purananuru . The poems at

3762-511: The Purananuru poems eulogize war and describe "loyalty, courage, honor" as the virtues of warriors. In contrast, Sivaraja Pillai cautions that the historical and literary value of Purananuru poems may be limited because the poems were not a perfect work of art but one of compulsion from impoverished poets too eager to praise one king or another, seeking patrons through exaggeration and flattery rather than objectivity. The Purananuru poems use words, phrases, and metaphors, including references to

3861-599: The University of Madras , was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. A strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamil Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil. It received some support from Dravidian parties . This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain. According to

3960-491: The 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai , a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak

4059-614: The Death of His Father), written between 1460 and 1470 by Jorge Manrique . "Elegy" (French: élégie ) may denote a type of musical work, usually of a sad or somber nature. A well-known example is the Élégie, Op. 10, by Jules Massenet . This was originally written for piano, as a student work; then he set it as a song; and finally it appeared as the "Invocation", for cello and orchestra, a section of his incidental music to Leconte de Lisle 's Les Érinnyes . Other examples include Gabriel Fauré 's Elegy in C minor (op. 24) for cello and piano,

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4158-532: The Indian state of Haryana , purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab , though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi , in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamil as the medium of instruction . The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamil language by

4257-474: The Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India . It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore . Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala . It was once given nominal official status in

4356-623: The Naṭukal of Athiyamān Nedumān Añci , it is decorated with peacock feathers and toddy is kept nearby. Example:- Situation in Cermeation ground Across it spreads the jungle. Upon it thick spurge grows. There in broad daylight the owls cry out and demon women open their mouths wide. The cremation fires glow and clouds of smoke cover that fearful burning ground. Hot, white ashes on the earth littered with bones are quenched by tears of lovers, weeping, their hearts full of longing. It has seen

4455-696: The Tamils who settled there 200 years ago. Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in Canada and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the Parliament of Canada . Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as

4554-523: The analogy of a poet receiving royal gifts and that worn by the relatives of the poet as being unworthy for their status, to the event in the Ramayana, where Sita drops her jewels when abducted by Ravana and these jewels being picked up red-faced monkeys who delightfully wore the ornaments. U. V. Swaminatha Iyer (1855-1942) resurrected the first three epics and Sangam literature from the appalling neglect and wanton destruction of centuries. He reprinted

4653-406: The ancient Tamil grammatical treatise Tolkappiyam also classifies puram (objective) poems into seven thinais based on the subject of the poems. These are vetchi, when the king provokes war by attacking and stealing the cattle of his enemy; vanchi, when the king invades the enemy territory; uzhingai, when the king lays a siege of the enemy's fortress; thumbai, when the two armies meet on

4752-442: The ancient language ( sankattamiḻ ), a modern literary and formal style ( centamiḻ ), and a modern colloquial form ( koṭuntamiḻ ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ . In modern times, centamiḻ

4851-942: The approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages. In 2004, a number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware urns dating from at least 696 BCE in Adichanallur . Some of these urns contained writing in Tamil Brahmi script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin. Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in Keezhadi . These were sent to Beta Analytic in Miami , Florida , for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating. One sample containing Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions

4950-524: The back of every human being, all the people living in this world as they go away, but no one has ever seen it turn its back and go away. Purananuru poem 156 Translated by George L. Hart The earliest reference to the Epic Ramayana in Tamil literature is found in the Purananuru 378, attributed to the poet UnPodiPasunKudaiyar , written in praise of the Chola king IIamchetchenni . The poem makes

5049-458: The beginning of the book deal with the three major kings Chola , Chera and Pandya of ancient Tamil Nadu. The middle portion is on the lesser kings and the Velir chieftains, who were feudatories of these three major kingdoms, with a short intervening section (poems 182 - 195) of didactic poems. The final portion deals with the general scenery of war and the effect of warfare. The final portion of

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5148-1018: The branch that overhung the stream while those upon the bank stood wondering; I threw the waters round, and headlong plunged dived deep beneath the stream, and rose, my hands filled with the sand that lay beneath! Such was my youth unlesson'd. 'Tis too sad! Those days of youth, ah! whither have they fled? I now with trembling hands, grasping my staff, panting for breath, gasp few and feeble words. And I am worn and OLD!" Thodithalai Vizhuthandinar, Purananuru, 243 (Translated by G. U. Pope , 1906) .. நீயே வடபால் முனிவன் தடவினுள் தோன்றிச் செம்பு புனைந்து இயற்றிய சேண் நெடும் புரிசை உவரா ஈகைத் துவரை யாண்டு நாற்பத்தொன்பது வழிமுறை வந்த வேளிருள் வேளே விறல் போர் அண்ணல், தார் அணி யானைச் சேட்டு இருங்கோவே! ஆண்கடன் உடைமையின் பாண்கடன் ஆற்றிய ஒலியற் கண்ணிப் புலிகடிமாஅல்! .. Excerpts of புறநானூறு 201, பாடியவர்: கபிலர், பாடப்பட்டோன்: இருங்கோவேள், திணை: பாடாண், துறை: பரிசில் .. Irunkovel "You, whose ancestors appeared out of

5247-427: The context of the familiar puram landscape of warfare. Thus songs 83, 84 and 85 are classified as belonging to the kaikkilai thinai , which denotes unrequited love, and describe a noblewoman's love for King Cholan Poravai Kopperunarkilli. Similarly, songs 143 to 147 are classified as perunthinai or perunkilai thinai , which denotes unsuitable love, and deal with King Pekan's abandonment of his wife. Pothuviyal

5346-403: The corpse and later burnt, after all the rituals they plant a Naṭukal for the king and decorate it. Naṭukal is a memorial stone dedicated to the honorable death of a hero in battle. Naṭukal has several mentions in this text and explains when was it erected. After a great King or warrior dies his body is burnt, and then they erect a hero stone for him as a memorial. Avvaiyar in poem 232 describes

5445-1003: The dialect of Madurai , and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear " akkaṭṭa " meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect , Kongu Tamil , Madras Bashai , Madurai Tamil , Nellai Tamil , Kumari Tamil in India ; Batticaloa Tamil dialect , Jaffna Tamil dialect , Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada . The dialect of

5544-647: The district of Palakkad in Kerala has many Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in

5643-513: The eulogy are also found. It is from these colophons and rarely from the texts of the poems themselves, that the names of many kings and chieftains and the poets patronised by them are gathered. The task of reducing these names to an ordered scheme in which the different generations of contemporaries can be marked off one another has not been easy. To add to the confusion, some historians have even denounced these colophons as later additions and untrustworthy as historical documents. A careful study of

5742-404: The first 266 poems. The commentator Nachinarkiniyar , of the eleventh–twelfth century Tamil Nadu, has written a complete commentary on all the poems. I am the soul Not food is the soul of life Nor water is the life's soul It is the king who is the life of this wide expanse of the earth Therefore this is the duty of the kings with armies stocked with mighty spears: To know: I am

5841-471: The formal ancient Tamil language. While there are some variations from the Tamil language, Kannada still preserves a lot from its roots. As part of the southern family of Indian languages and situated relatively close to the northern parts of India, Kannada also shares some Sanskrit words, similar to Malayalam. Many of the formerly used words in Tamil have been preserved with little change in Kannada. This shows

5940-512: The glory of The king Perunarkilli who performed the great Vedic ritual called Rajasuya and compares him to three main ritual fires performed by the twice born Brahmins. Example:- A chieftain performing Vedic Sacrifices. You who are descended from men renowned for their superb learning, men who performed to perfection all twenty-one kinds of sacrifice, who confirmed the truth, never thinking it false, who understood lies that resembled truth, thus defeating those who would contend with

6039-547: The god of death who takes the life of the generous kings, women beat their breasts and their bangles break into pieces. According to several poems mention that people were commonly burnt in the cremation ground, Tamils also believed in re-birth and only good deeds would lead them to a better life in their next birth. It also claims that Indra who holds the Vajrayudam welcomes the soul of a Great king Ay Andiran as he did good deeds. There are several mentions of pinda offered to

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6138-750: The great; Still less despise we men of low estate. Kaniyan Pungundranar , Purananuru, 192 (Translated by G.U.Pope , 1906) இனி நினைந்து இரக்கம் ஆகின்று: திணி மணல் செய்வுறு பாவைக்குக் கொய் பூத் தைஇ, தண் கயம் ஆடும் மகளிரொடு கை பிணைந்து, தழுவுவழித் தழீஇ, தூங்குவழித் தூங்கி, மறை எனல் அறியா மாயம் இல் ஆயமொடு உயர் சினை மருதத் துறை உறத் தாழ்ந்து, நீர் நணிப் படி கோடு ஏறி, சீர் மிக, கரையவர் மருள, திரைஅகம் பிதிர, நெடு நீர்க் குட்டத்துத் துடுமெனப் பாய்ந்து, குளித்து மணல் கொண்ட கல்லா இளமை அளிதோதானே! யாண்டு உண்டு கொல்லோ தொடித் தலை விழுத் தண்டு ஊன்றி, நடுக்குற்று, இரும் இடை மிடைந்த சில சொல் பெரு மூதாளரேம் ஆகிய எமக்கே? தொடித்தலை விழுத்தண்டினார், புறநானூறு, 243 The Instability of Youth "I muse of YOUTH!

6237-699: The hill country . Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century CE. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century CE. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar , Mysore , Mandya and Bengaluru . There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , Mauritius , South Africa , Indonesia, Thailand, Burma , and Vietnam . Tamil

6336-432: The introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the syntactic argument structure of English. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiran Vanakkam , thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The Tamil Lexicon , published by

6435-428: The king and his believed powers over the climate and environment (rains, sunshine, successful crops), the ancient Tamil belief in the power of women's purity, namely karpu (chastity), Belief in establishing righteousness by performing Yagams and considering Brahmins pure cause they recite the holy Four Vedas and the ancient system of caste (kuti, kudi) that existed in Tamil kingdoms. According to Hart and Heifetz,

6534-435: The king or chieftain to whom the poem relates, Poem 15 written by Nettimiyar sings the grace of a King Muthukudumi Peruvazhuthi who performed several Vedic Sacrifices known as "Yagam" and gives him an epithet name "Palyagasalai" (lit. "Many Yagams or Vedic Sacrifices"), the poet praises him as he performed several Yagams according to the 4 esteemed Vedas by pouring ghee and other sacrificial elements. In poem 367 Avvaiyar sings

6633-430: The king, emphasized the purity of women and placed limitations on the rights of widows. Further, the compilation suggests that the ancient Tamils had a caste system called kuti . The anthology is almost entirely a secular treatise on the ancient Tamil thought on kingship, the constant state of wars within old Tamil-speaking regions, the bravery of heroes and the ferocious nature of this violence. According to Amritha Shenoy,

6732-461: The latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items. Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class , number , and case , verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Indo-Aryan languages . Much of Tamil grammar

6831-426: The life of a pigeon, look at these children; they are so naïve of their plight that they have stopped crying to look at the swinging trunk of the elephant in amusement. Have pity on them..." The almost impressionistic picture the poem paints cannot be anything but by someone who is witness to the events present in the poem. Many other poems also suggest that Cholas come from a heritage who sliced their own flesh to save

6930-473: The life of a pigeon. Such mentions make scholars debate that Cholas have claimed them selfs as the descendants of King Shibi Chakravarthy  – a legendary hero who self-sacrifices his body for saving a dove's life. The second poem by Mudinagarayar addresses the Chera king Uthayan Cheralaathan and praises him for his feeding the armies at the Kurukshetra war . This is an obvious anachronism suggesting

7029-432: The literature present in the palm leaf form to paper books. He published Purananuru for the first time in 1894. Ramaswami Mudaliar, a Tamil scholar, first gave him the palm leaves of Civaka Cintamani to study. Being the first time, Swaminatha Iyer had to face many difficulties in terms of interpreting, finding the missing leaves, textual errors and unfamiliar terms. He went on tiring journeys to remote villages in search of

7128-481: The lyrical "I" to describe their own personal and mournful experiences. They tell the story of the individual rather than the collective lore of his or her people as epic poetry seeks to tell. By the time of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others, the term had come to mean "serious meditative poem": Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with reference to

7227-632: The meaning "sweet sound", from tam – "sweet" and il – "sound". Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages , a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent . It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue ). The closest major relative of Tamil

7326-1067: The missing manuscripts. After years of toil, he published Civaka Cintamani in book form in 1887, followed by Silappatikaram in 1892 and Purananuru in 1894. Along with the text, he added abundant commentary and explanatory notes of terms, textual variations and approaches to explaining the context. யாதும் ஊரே; யாவரும் கேளிர்; தீதும் நன்றும் பிறர் தர வாரா; நோதலும் தணிதலும் அவற்றோரன்ன; சாதலும் புதுவது அன்றே; வாழ்தல் இனிது என மகிழ்ந்தன்றும் இலமே; முனிவின்,     இன்னாது என்றலும் இலமே; 'மின்னொடு வானம் தண் துளி தலை இ, ஆனாது கல் பொருது இரங்கும் மல்லல் பேர் யாற்று நீர் வழிப்படூஉம் புணை போல், ஆர் உயிர் முறை வழிப்படூஉம்' என்பது திறவோர் காட்சியின் தெளிந்தனம் ஆகலின், மாட்சியின் பெரியோரை வியத்தலும் இலமே; சிறியோரை இகழ்தல் அதனினும் இலமே. கணியன் பூங்குன்றன், புறநானூறு, 192 The Sages To us all towns are one, all men our kin, Life's good comes not from others' gifts, nor ill, Man's pains and pain's relief are from within, Death's no new thing, nor do our bosoms thrill When joyous life seems like

7425-458: The modern age in fragments. The collected poems were composed by 157 poets, of which 14 were anonymous and at least 10 were women. This anthology has been variously dated between 1st century BCE and 5th century CE, with Kamil Zvelebil , a Tamil literature scholar, dating predominantly all of the poems of Purananuru sometime between 2nd and 5th century CE. Nevertheless, few poems are dated to the period of 1st century BCE. The Purananuru anthology

7524-570: The most famous example is Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (1922). In the Islamic world—namely Shia Islam, the most famous examples are elegies written by Sachay Bhai on the Battle of Karbala . Elegies written on Husayn ibn Ali and his followers are very common and produced even today. In Spain, one of the capital works in Spanish is Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre (Stanzas About

7623-537: The old aspect and time markers. The Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows

7722-500: The one ancient work of six sections and four divisions, focused on Righteousness, never swerving from the well-chosen words of the Primal Being with his long, matted hair! You glow in your black antelope skin from dry forest land, needed for the ritual, worn over the thread around your shoulder! Your beloved wives, worthy of your high station, flawlessly faithful, free of harshness, renowned for their virtue, donning

7821-519: The original 400 poems, two have been lost, and some poems miss several lines. There are 400 poems in Purananuru including the invocation poem. Each poem measures anywhere between 4 and 40 lines. Poems 267 and 268 are lost, and some of the poems exist only in fragments. The author of 14 poems remains unknown. The remaining poems were written by 157 poets. Of the poets who wrote these poems, there are men and women, kings and paupers. The oldest book of annotations found so far has annotations and commentary on

7920-399: The poems are conversational in which the poet pleads, begs, chides or praises the king. One such example is poem 46. The poet Kovur Kizhaar addresses the Chola king Killivalavan to save the lives of the children of a defeated enemy who are about to be executed by being trampled under an elephant. The poet says, "… O king, you belong to the heritage of kings who sliced their own flesh to save

8019-402: The poet. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone or absent and future. A famous example of elegy is Thomas Gray 's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750). In French, perhaps the most famous elegy is Le Lac (1820) by Alphonse de Lamartine . In Germany,

8118-501: The purposes of the anthologist who collected these poems and the historian's attempts to arrive at a continuous history. There have been unsuccessful attempts at dating the poems of Purananuru based on the mention of the Mahabharata war. A more reliable source for the period of these poems is based on the mentions one finds on the foreign trade and presence of Greek and Roman merchants in the port of Musiri (poem 343), which gives

8217-418: The rivers Kaveri , Periyar and Vaigai . The Purananuru is the most important Tamil corpus of Sangam era courtly poems, and it has been a source of information on the political and social history of ancient Tamil Nadu . According to Hart and Heifetz, the Purananuru provides a view of the Tamil society before large-scale Indo-Aryan influences affected it. The life of the Tamils of this era revolved around

8316-403: The sacred ornaments, their foreheads small, their hips and thighs large and wide, of few words and rich abundant hair, request their ritual responsibilities! Whether in settled land or jungle, omitting none of the fourteen sites, you pour out more ghee than there is water, sacrifice more times than there are numbers, spread your fame wider than the earth, and at the great moment when

8415-428: The sacrificial fire-pit of a northern sage who ruled Tuvarai that contained huge forts made of copper you whose lineage goes back 49 generations Oh king who is victorious in battles Oh great Irunkovel! who possesses garlanded elephants Its time to man up to you responsibilities and your duties to poets Oh Pulikadimal wearing a thick garland! .. Excerpts of Purananuru, 201, Poet: Kapilar , Chief who

8514-478: The sixteenth century; the broader concept was still employed by John Donne for his elegies written in the early seventeenth century. That looser concept is especially evident in the Old English Exeter Book ( c.  1000 CE ), which contains "serious meditative" and well-known poems such as " The Wanderer ", " The Seafarer ", and " The Wife's Lament ". In those elegies, the narrators use

8613-453: The soul! — Purananuru 186 , Translator: Kamil Zvelebil The Purananuru poems deal with the puram aspect of the Sangam literature, that is war, politics and public life. Many poems praise kings and chieftains. Some of the poems are in the form of elegies in tribute to a fallen hero. These poems exhibit outpourings of affection and emotions. Purananuru is notable for three features:

8712-539: The southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada . Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka , Thailand , and Egypt . The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature , consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later,

8811-470: The standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script , which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit, Prakrit , and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology, remains, but

8910-422: The synchronisation between the kings, chieftains and the poets suggested by these colophons indicates that this body of literature reflects occurrences within a period of four or five continuous generations at the most, a period of 120 or 150 years. Any attempt at extracting a systematic chronology and data from these poems should take into consideration the casual nature of these poems and the wide difference between

9009-403: The tender sadness still returns! In sport I moulded shapes of river sand, plucked flowers to wreathe around the mimic forms: in the cool tank I bathed, hand linked in hand, with little maidens, dancing as they danced! A band of innocents, we knew no guile. I plunged beneath th' o'erspreading myrtle's shade, where trees that wafted fragrance lined the shore; then I climbed

9108-479: The text explains the aftermath of the war and dead scenes. Some parts of the text mention kingdoms trying to stop the war by sending a Brahmin as an envoy to the war field, the Brahmin utters a few words to the warriors in the camp which stops the war. Just as the akam (subjective) poems are classified into seven thinais or landscapes based on the mood of the poem, the Tamil prosodical tradition mentioned in

9207-437: The vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu , India, and the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia , Singapore , and among diaspora communities . Tamil has been recognized as

9306-526: The word for "here"— iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore , inga in the dialects of Thanjavur and Palakkad , and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka . Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli , Old Tamil iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in

9405-534: Was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004. The socio-linguistic situation of Tamil is characterised by diglossia : there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status , a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example,

9504-600: Was claimed to be dated to around 580 BCE. John Guy states that Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt. In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BCE with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. There are

9603-614: Was most likely spoken around the third millennium BCE, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India, but it has also been related to the Harappan civilization . Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BCE–700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). About of

9702-448: Was sung: Irunkovel Tamil language Sri Lanka Singapore Malaysia Canada and United States Tamil ( தமிழ் , Tamiḻ , pronounced [t̪amiɻ] ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia . It is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India , along with Sanskrit , attested since c. 300 BCE. The language belongs to

9801-451: Was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil ( கில் ), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ṉ ( ன் ). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa ( கின்ற ) – which combined

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