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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The following pages were inspired by reading a slender book by one of my esteemed Tamil teachers, Mahavidvan M. V. Venugopala Pillai, Tamiḻ anrum inrum (“Tamil Then and Now”), Madras, 1967. Venugopala Pillai, born on 8 August 1896, died on 2 February 1985.
1 Cf. Zvelebil, K., “The Earliest Account of the Tamil Academies”, IIJ, XV 2 (1973) 109–35.Google Scholar
2 Akam: one of the two principal modes of classical Tamil lyrical poetry; the poetry of the “interior”, of the heart; love-poetry.
3 Lit., “The Collection of Short [Stanzas]”.
4 Talaivyiṉ kūntal iyaṟkai;maṇam uṭaiyatu (Dr. U. V. Swaminatha Iyer's, ed., p. 8).
5 There are two modern available translations of this stanza into English. An earlier one, by John R. Marr, reads, “O bee, fair of wing, ever in search of flower-garlands / Tell me not what I fain would hear, but what you really saw. / Among all the flowers you know is any more fragrant / Than the tresses of my lady of the close-set teeth? / Graceful as the peacock she dwells, rich in love with me!” - A more recent one, by M. Shanmugam Pillai and David E. Ludden: “O bee / with your hidden wings: / you have lived a life in search / of honey. / So tell me truly / from what you have seen: / among all the flowers you know, / is there one that smells more sweet / than the hair of this woman, / with her peacock gait, / and close-set teeth, / and ancient / eternal / love ?”
6 Kuṟiñci conehead, Strobilanthes, a plant typical of the South Indian mountains; mountainous region; a subtype of akam poetry, the poetry of the lovers’ trysts in the mountain-region.
7 E.g. in Kuṟun 116:1–4, 199:3–4, 270:8, 272:8, 312:8 where we find such descriptions as 
“fragrant soft tresses” or 
“fragrant dark tresses”, in 
95, 137, 143, 250, 270, in 
113, in Kalittokai 43:23. The phrase 
katuppu seems to have been a stereotyped formula.
8 First ed. by Tāmōtaram PiỊỊai, 1883, reprinted 1889; next ed., S. 
PiỊỊai, 1916; another ed., K. V. Kōvintarāja Mutaliyār and M. V. Vēṇukōpāla PiỊỊai, 1939; another ed., South India Saiva Siddhanta Works, Madras, 1953Google Scholar (reprints 1958, 1960, 1964). The name 
as an author is not found either in the treatise itself or in the commentary on it by Nakkīrar. It occurs only in IỊampūraṇar's commentary on the Tolkāppiyam 1429, where the commentator explicitly says 
9 E.g. 
Cf. Sanjeevi, N., Research Tables on Sangam Literature (in Tamil), University of Madras, Madras, 1973, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar
10 Published first by 
PiỊỊai in 1868; subsequently, in 1872 by P. K. Cupparāya Mutaliyār, and in 1911 by Vidvan Ramaswami Naydu. A new edition by S. Rajam, Madras, 1957. )
11 Paṇṭitar, Cuvāmināta ed., 
1911; 
peruntiraṭṭu, Madras, 1961, p. 401.Google Scholar
12 1st ed., U. V. Swaminatha Iyer, 1906; 2nd ed. 1927; 3rd ed. 1972.
13 Cf. 
52.106–07; the words of Nakkirar, num 
are well-known, and have become a proverbial expression of critical freedom and human courage vis-à-vis divine intervention. See further.
14 This is of course not the end of the story; the growth and distension went on; various Nakkīrars were all fused and projected into one person - a poet, a scholar, a commentator, the president of the Academy, a devotee of Śiva, a devotee of Murugan - and a cluster of legends was arranged around this composite, fused and totally unhistorical Nakkīrar. Let me stress at this point that a critical and non-jingoistic history of Tamil literature must as of today distinguish among five poets/scholars hiding under the name of Nakkirar at least: (1) the early old Tamil (“bardic”) poet, author of the lyrical poems in the anthologies and of Neṭunalvāṭai (c. A.D. 215); (2) the devotee of Murugan, a Tamil Brahmin author of 
(c. A.D. 260 if not later); (3) the devotee of Śiva, the author of nine shorter poems included in the 11th 
(c. A.D. 850–950); (4) the commentator on 
AkapporuỊ (c. A.D. 700); (5) the author of a Sanskrit nikaṇṭu.
15 In a poem of 16 lines, dedicated to the temple of Tirupputtūr, the reference to the caṇkam and Tarumi is found in two lines. The temple in question is about 38 miles southeast of Madurai. The famous 
of literary connections is not far away; about seven miles to the east lies 
sacred to Murugan. Gauri tāṇḍava is the dance which Śiva is believed to show to Śivakāmi in this place.
16 Let us recall that the reference says, 
“having entered the assembly as a poet of excellent poem(s)”.
17 Cf. such phrases as kappal 
“to embark” or karai 
“to land”.
18 Appar's younger contemporary, 
may have referred to such ad hoc meetings of poets and/or scholars at Madurai when he spoke of maturai-t-tokai in Tiruppācuram 54.11; the term means simply “the collection (or assembly) of (or at) Madurai”, and may refer either to the poets, or to the compilation of the anthologies (tokai). For the whole problem, cf. Zvelebil, K. V., Tamil Literature, Leiden/Köln 1975, pp. 55–61.Google Scholar
19 For further details, cf. Zvelebil, K. V., Tamil Literature, Leiden/Köln, 1975, pp. 273–5.Google Scholar For a recent discussion of Neṭunalvāṭai, cf. Samuel, John G., “The Nature of Erotic Poetry as Revealed in Neṭunalvāṭai”, Journal of Asian Studies (Madras) 1, 2 (03 1984) 111–26.Google Scholar
20 For the joint creation of author and recipient cf. Mukařovský, J., Kapitoly z české poetiky I, p. 96,Google Scholar from Slovo a slovesnost, Praha, VI, 1940:Google Scholar “the creation of poetry came to be regarded as a co-creation of the author and the recipient, not any more as an unrestricted self-expression of the author or, on the contrary, as an automatic reaction to a social requirement” (translation from Czech by KVZ).
21 For such and similar reinterpretation of ancient Tamil culture within the context of modern and contemporary Tamil and Dravidian nationalism cf. Arooran, K. Nambi, Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism 1905–1944, Madurai, 1980,Google Scholar and Ryerson, Ch. A., “Meaning and Modernization” in Tamil India: Primordial Sentiments and Sanskritization, Ann Arbor, 1984Google Scholar (degree date 1979). This second work should be read with caution since its author's knowledge of Tamil seems to be rather limited; it contains many small errors and misstatements. Moreover, its style is frequently rather bad journalism than good scholarship, cf. p. 196 where the author describes the well-known Tamil politician M. Karunanidhi: “Lithe and handsome, he has an almost feline grace that reminds one of a small but dangerous panther.” This in a Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia University (beside the fact that Mr. Karunanidhi is far removed from reminding anyone but Mr. Ryerson of a “dangerous panther”).