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85-508: Manakkudavar (c. 10th century CE) was a Tamil scholar and commentator known for his commentary on the Tirukkural . His is the earliest of the available commentaries on the Kural text, and hence considered to bear closest semblance with the original work by Valluvar . He was among the canon of Ten Medieval Commentators of the Kural text most highly esteemed by scholars. He was also among

170-455: 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

255-468: 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

340-484: 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

425-759: 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

510-587: 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

595-409: 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

680-469: A distant cloud in the sky," which is evident in the Book of Inbam where earthly love is lauded. According to Gopalkrishna Gandhi , the Book of Inbam helps date the Kural literature since it "describes the hero as a one-woman man and concubines are absent. This is in conformity with Valluvar's views on personal morality." While the work of Confucius shares many of its philosophies with the first two books of

765-607: 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

850-518: 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

935-535: 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

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1020-606: 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 Inbam (Kural book) Inbam is the Tamil word that corresponds to the Sanskrit term 'kama', and pāl refers to 'division'. It is one of the four mutually non-exclusive aims of human life in

1105-647: 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

1190-610: 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

1275-463: 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

1360-438: 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

1445-412: 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

1530-495: Is also said that "Manakkudi" is also the name of his clan. He lived around the 10th century CE. He was the oldest of the ten medieval commentators. Manakkudavar's mentioning of several earlier interpretations in various places in his commentary, including his explications to couplets 17 and 389, reveals that there were several earlier commentaries on the Kural literature before his time, which are now completely lost. In spite of his erudition, Mannakkudavar sounds very humble throughout

1615-457: 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

1700-425: Is considered the cornerstone against which other commentaries are compared to find variations in them. Researchers have found as many as 16, 20, 120, and 171 variations in the ordering of the Kural couplets by Pari Perumal, Paridhi, Parimelalhagar, and Kaalingar, respectively, with respect to the commentary by Manakkudavar. The later commentators not only changed the original ordering of the couplets, but also changed

1785-563: 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

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1870-405: 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

1955-409: 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,

2040-410: 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

2125-511: 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

2210-771: 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 ,

2295-459: Is nothing which can be said to be obscene or vulgar. It is a very fine section. I have translated that section in full." In 2019, an exclusive English translation of the Book of Inbam in modern verse was made by Pattu M. Bhoopathi. In 2023, Meena Kandasamy translated the Book of Inbam into English from a feminist 's perspective under the title The Book of Desire , claiming it "the only thing you can actually read to your lover in bed" and calling

2380-467: Is partly due to the lack of any introductory texts in his commentary. There is no information about his parents either. Manakkudavar is believed to have been born in Manakkudi, from which he came to be referred to as "Manakkudiyaar", and later as "Manakkudavar". Since there are several towns in Tamil Nadu bearing the name "Manakkudi", it is difficult to pinpoint which of these towns was his home town. It

2465-495: Is rational and significant." 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

2550-409: 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

2635-848: 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

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2720-666: The Indian philosophy called the Puruṣārthas , the other three being aṟam ( dharma ), poruḷ ( artha ), and veedu ( moksha ). The concept of inbam is found in some of the earliest known verses in the Vedas , Upanishads , and epics such as the Mahabaratha . Although inbam sometimes connotes sexual desire and longing in contemporary literature, the concept more broadly refers to any desire, wish, passion, longing, pleasure of

2805-582: The Kamasutra text. However, modern scholars such as M. V. Aravindan oppose this idea of comparing Kural's Book III with Kamasutra. The Book of Inbam follows the earlier bardic agam genre of the Tamil literary tradition, wherein the human emotional states and attitudes are classified with natural features of the Tamil regions —a unique feature of the Sangam poetry derived from the Tolkappiyam —wherein

2890-640: The Naladiyar and Nanmanikkatigai , to exemplify. In various places, such as couplets 29, 269 and 274, Manakkudavar also cites various stories and incidents from ancient Indian epics such as Mahabharata and various Puranas . For instance, he cites the Puranas and ancient maxims In his explanations to couplets 28, 284, 778, and 1198. He explicates the distinct meaning of difficult words found in such couplets as 125, 154, 211, 340, 350, 548, 580, 649, 674, 715, 731, 1135 and 1324 to simplify comprehension. To elucidate

2975-612: The Sangam practice that divides the land into said five divisions. Kaalingar and Mosikeeranar divide Book III into three parts: masculine sayings (Chapters 109 to 115), feminine sayings (Chapters 116 to 127), and common sayings (which includes both masculine and feminine sayings; Chapters 128 to 133). While some of the medieval commentators consider couplets 6, 7, 9, and 10 of Chapter 115 as feminine sayings, Kaalingar considers these as masculine ones and goes on to elaborate accordingly. Pari Perumal divides Book III into three, likening it to

3060-599: 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

3145-419: The five Tamil landscapes , known as tinai , are compared to the human states of emotions: It is generally accepted by scholars that of all the three books of the Kural, the Book of Inbam is where the poetic genius of Valluvar attains its greatest height. This is possibly because the traditions of early classical literature of the Sangam poetry continue to remain strong in the domain of "pleasure." Unlike in

3230-442: The senses , the aesthetic enjoyment of life, affection, or love, with or without sexual connotations. The term also refers to any sensory enjoyment, emotional attraction and aesthetic pleasure such as from arts, dance, music, painting, sculpture and nature. Inbam in its sanskritized form kama is common to all Indian languages. Inbam is considered an essential and healthy goal of human life when pursued without sacrificing

3315-491: 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

3400-402: The Book of Inbam is "a poetic picture of eros , of ideal love, of its dramatic situations." The Kural differs from every other work in that it follows ethics, surprisingly a divine one, even in its Book of Love. According to Albert Schweitzer , while the laws of Manu still just tolerates world and life affirmation alongside their negation, the Kural treats world and life negation "only like

3485-481: 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

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3570-474: 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

3655-450: The Kural text first came to print in 1812, becoming the first book ever published in Tamil, Manakkudavar's commentary did not appear in print for the next one hundred years. It was Parimelalhagar's commentary, which first appeared in print in 1840, that was published widely until then. It was only in 1917 that Manakkudavar's commentary for the first book of the Kural text was published by V. O. Chidambaram Pillai . Manakkudavar commentary for

3740-461: The Kural text into five iyals attributed to the moods of five divisions of the Sangam landscape , known as thinai , namely kurinji (mountainous landscape), mullai (forest and pastoral landscape), marudam (agricultural plains and valleys), neidhal (coastal landscape), and paalai (desert landscape). However, several modern publishers do not strictly follow these divisions while publishing Manakkudavar's commentary, and instead structure

3825-458: The Kural text, the subject of conjugal love expounded by the Book of Inbam is entirely absent in the work of Confucius. Of the three books of the Kural, the Book of Inbam has the fewest translations available. The chief reason behind this was that many translators, particularly non-Indian translators, had long mistook the content of the book for something similar to Vatsyayana's Kamasutra and considered it inappropriate to translate after studying

3910-551: The Kural's approach of the subject differs entirely from the Kamasutra, which is all about eros and techniques of sexual fulfillment. With a virtuous attitude, the Book of Inbam remains unique as a poetic appreciation of flowering human love as explicated by the Sangam period 's concept of intimacy, known as agam in the Tamil literary tradition. In the words of Zvelebil, while Kamasutra and all later Sanskrit erotology are sastra s, that is, objective and scientific analyses of sex,

3995-632: The Kural. Nevertheless, several later scholars of the nineteenth century realized that the Book of Inbam is only a poetic expression of the emotions involved in conjugal human love and started translating it too. For example, Pandurang Sadashiv Sane , a twentieth-century Marathi translator of the Kural, said, "The translation of this book is available in Hindi with the name of 'Tamil Veda', but it includes only two sections: 'Dharma' (Arattuppal) and 'Artha' (Porutpal). The third section discussing 'Kama' (Kamattuppal) has been dropped. Actually in this section there

4080-696: 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

4165-521: The Tirukkural appears in the Book of Inbam, where "the teacher, the preacher in Valluvar has stepped aside, and Valluvar speaks here almost the language of the superb love-poetry of the classical age": In the words of Pattu M. Bhoopathi, "[i]t is not the word, or the phrase or the meter that essentially contributes to the grandeur of the presentation of the situational sequence but the echoed voice,

4250-433: The Tirukkural. Note that the ordering of the verses and chapters as set by Parimelalhagar, which had been followed unanimously for centuries ever since, has now been accepted as the standard structure of the Kural text. Being the earliest available commentary of the Tirukkural, Manakkudavar's work is considered to bear the closest semblance with the original work of the Kural text by Valluvar . Thus, Manakkudavar's commentary

4335-442: 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

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4420-942: 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

4505-581: The commentary according to Parimelalhagar's divisions. Manakkudavar is also known for his style of reordering the couplets within the chapter in order to keep together the couplets that closely resembled in meaning. This is adopted by later commentators, chiefly Parimelalhagar who additionally imparts new perspectives to Manakkudavar's elaborations. The word arrangement of Manakkudavar is often considered by modern scholars to be better than that of Parimelalhagar. According to P. S. Sundaram , Manakkudavar's "division of words makes better sense without any sacrifice of

4590-486: The cornerstone and guide for other medieval commentators, including Parimelalhagar, cannot be overstated. Manakkudavar appears to be the first commentator to divide all the three books of the work into subdivisions known in Tamil as iyals . He briefly and lucidly explains the significance and essence of each subdivision and each chapter within a given subdivision. According to Selvakesavaraya Mudaliyar in his work Tiruvalluvar , Manakkudavar originally divided Book III of

4675-952: 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

4760-647: 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

4845-422: The emotions gone through by a man and a woman when they fall in love with each other. It covers the emotions of love both in the pre-marital and the post-marital states. With 25 chapters, the Book of Inbam is the smallest of the three books of the Kural text. As with Books I and II of the Kural text, the author did not group the chapters under any subdivisions. However, the ten medieval commentators , who were

4930-450: The entire Kural text was first published in 1925 by K. Ponnusami Nadar . However, there are sources that claim that the first to publish Manakkudavar's commentary were Thiruvenkatavan University, Shrilashri Thampiran Vidhwan D. Pattuswami Odhuvar, and Palaniappa Pillai, all of whom published independently of each other. Manakkudavar's commentary on the Kural text remains the second most popular, next only to that of Parimelalhagar. It remains

5015-485: The first to write commentaries about the Tirukkural, divided the Book of Inbam variously between two and three portions. For example, while Parimelalhagar 's division consists of two parts, other medieval scholiasts have divided the Book of Inbam into three portions. Parimelalhagar's two-part division includes Kalavu and Karpu . However, Manakkudavar goes to the extent of dividing the book into five: Kurinji , Mullai , Marudham , Neidhal , and Paalai , in accord with

5100-408: The five ancient commentators whose commentaries had been preserved and made available to the modern era , the others being Pari Perumal , Kaalingar , Paridhi , and Parimelalhagar . The commentary of Manakkudavar remains the second most popular commentary on the Kural text, next only to that of Parimelalhagar. Little is known about Manakkudavar in comparison with other medieval commentators. This

5185-471: 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

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5270-699: 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

5355-430: The influence of Sanskrit works. He readily expresses his hesitations wherever he appears doubtful about his interpretation. In certain places where Valluvar has employed "intentional discrepancies," Manakkudavar clarifies the "discrepancy" by pointing the connection with other couplets elsewhere in the work. Only in few places, such as couplets 2, 401 and 802, does Manakkudavar cite other ancient didactic works, including

5440-432: 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

5525-406: 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

5610-580: 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

5695-405: The metrical requirements." Manakkudavar also clears any apparent ambiguity that may arise while connecting the substance of different couplets. For instance, he clarifies the seemingly contradicting thoughts in couplets 382 and 428 by explaining how they are intricately related. The following table depicts the variations among the early commentators' ordering of, for example, the first ten verses of

5780-544: The mood and the articulation that suggestively individuates the situational element of the love or the lover in each of the couplets." He further states, "Here in Kamattupal Valluvar intuitively anticipates much earlier in time the Keats' concept of 'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever'." The subject of pleasure that the Book of Inbam deals with is often compared by scholars chiefly with the Kamasutra . However,

5865-458: The next reference point to understand the Kural text after Parimelalhagar's commentary and the second most analyzed Tirukkural commentary, chiefly by those who is critical of Parimelalhagar's commentary. According to M. S. Purnalingam Pillai , Manakudavar's commentary "shows a knowledge of the Tamilian traditions, manners, customs and civilisation, and the arrangement of the verses in each chapter

5950-537: 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

6035-583: The ordering of the chapters, chiefly in Book I of the Kural text. The modern chapters 10, 13, 17, 18, and 19 appearing under the subsection "Domestic virtues" of the Kural text appear as chapters 26, 27, 30, 31, and 32, respectively, under the subsection "Ascetic virtues" in Manakkudavar's commentary. Similarly, the modern chapters 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, appearing under the subsection "Ascetic virtues" appear as chapters 19, 20, 10, 16, 17, 18, respectively, under

6120-494: The other three goals of aram or dharma (virtuous, proper, moral life), poruḷ or artha (material prosperity, income security, means of life) and veedu or moksha (liberation, release, self-actualization). In spite of the Tamil term inbam referring to pleasure, Valluvar preferred to call the book Kāmattuppāl rather than Inbattuppāl in line with the trivarga of the Puruṣārtha. The Book of Inbam talks about

6205-539: 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,

6290-470: 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

6375-483: The subsection "Domestic virtues" in Manakkudavar's work. The following table lists the variations between ordering of chapters in Book I by Manakkudavar (the oldest of the Medieval commentators) and that by Parimelalhagar (the latest). Spelling, homophonic, and other minor textual variations between Manakkudavar and Parimelalhagar commentaries are found in several verses such as couplets 139, 256, 317, and 445. Although

6460-851: The substance of certain couplets, he further elaborates on the synonyms of the key terms found in couplets 4, 431, 637, 725, 762, 897, 944, 1183, 1208, 1234 and 1313. In instances such as couplets 275, 306, 856, 1043, 1129, 1144, 1154 and 1233, he offers linguistic and grammatical explanations. In couplets such as 130 and 134, he provides the reader with the very essence of the thought that the couplet attempt to convey. Manakkudavar has also employed contemporary colloquial dialect and proverbial sayings in such couplets as 118, 329, 405, 812, 915, 1057 and 1194. In instances such as couplets 327, 429, 586, 631, 941, 945, 1179 and 1323. In very few places, Manakkudavar's explanations appear less satisfactory compared with other commentators, as those instances in couplets 21, 153 and 591. The fact that Manakkudavar's commentary served as

6545-409: The two other books of the Kural text, in the Book of Inbam Valluvar falls in line with the established poetic tradition of the Sangam love anthologies in terms of style, diction, and structural unity. According to T. P. Meenakshisundaram , every couplet of the Book of Inbam may be considered a "dramatic monologue of the agam variety." According to Czech Indologist Kamil Zvelebil , true poetry in

6630-528: The two previous Kural books on virtue and polity. Many of the early European translators, including Constantius Joseph Beschi , Francis Whyte Ellis , William Henry Drew , and Edward Jewitt Robinson had this misconception. For instance, Drew remarked, "The third part could not be read with impunity by the purest mind, nor translated into any European language without exposing the translator of it to infamy." Later Western translators such as Satguru Sivaya Subramuniya Swami , too, avoided translating Book Three of

6715-437: 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

6800-526: 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

6885-449: The writing of his commentary on the Kural literature. Manakkudavar belonged to the Jain community. This is revealed in various places in his commentary, such as his explanations given to couplets 1, 3, 268, 352, 377, 398, 429, 622, 627, and 1103. Manakkudavar's commentary features a simple and lucid flow of language. Scholars consider his commentary as following the Tamil culture without

6970-534: 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,

7055-600: 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

7140-614: 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

7225-451: 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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