Digital Rare Book:
THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EARLY TAMILS
Based on the Synchronistic Tables of their Kings, Chieftains and Poets appearing in the Sangam Literature.
By K.N.Sivaraja Pillai
Senior Lecturer in Tamil, University of Madras
Published by University of Madras - 1932

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Book Extract :
SINCE the work now presented to the reader rests solely on the strength of the Synchronistic Table accompanying it, I consider it necessary to prefix a few remarks bearing on the undertaking and execution of such a work, remarks for which I have not been able to find a place in the body of the book itself.

The History of the Tamils, their language, and their literature cannot be said to have even started its existence, for the sufficient reason that a correct chronological frame-work to hold together and in right order the many facts enshrined in their ancient Sangam Literature has not yet been got at. Various have been the attempts made till now to utilize the facts gathered from that Literature for edifying narratives, descriptions and exhortations; but a genuine history, none of these, it must be regretfully acknowledged, has boon able to evolve. Lacking the indispensable initial time-frame, the so-called histories of Tamil Literature and the long-winded introductions to the various editions of the Tamil Classical poems remain to this day inane and vapid of real instruction, in spite of their tedious parrot-like repetitions of fictions and facts culled from tradition and the poems themselves. The learned authors of these dissertations have been only trying to make bricks without straw, or rather to raise a structure with only bricks without the connecting mortar of Chronology. This lack of a scientific chronology is, however, due not to any paucity of relevant materials in which the Sangam Literature is apparently rich but to a failure to apply to them the correct mode of manipulation their valuation and arrangement. Taking this view of the matter I nerved myself to the task of testing whether the early poems of the Tamils when subjected to modern methods could be made to yield the secret of their chronology or should be allowed to lie mute, as of yore, or worse still, to mumble out their incoherences, here and there, in the triad of collections to which a late literary but unhistorical systematist has so kindly consigned them. In entering on this new and difficult piece of work I had no reason to be buoyed up by any strong hope of success, so divergent and even conflicting being the views of scholars about the Tamil Sangam and its Literature and so hopelessly disarranged the literary remains. And immediately after I sat down and began preparing the Synchronistic Table a revered scholar, with another friend, one day happened to step into my room and, learning what I was engaged in, lost no time in throwing a plentiful douche of cold water on the scheme, urging that he himself had been engaged more than once in a similar undertaking, but each time had to give it up as a fruitless venture in sheer vexation of spirit. This warning coming from a scholar of his standing and that at the very threshold of my efforts naturally had the effect of very nearly wiping out even the little hope I had behind the back of my mind. Still realising the traditional overpartiality of some of our scholars for traditions as a class I persuaded myself that the scholar referred to must have weighted his barque with a little too much of unnecessary traditional lumber to have thus sent it to the bottom before reaching its destination. A ray of hope thus gleamed through this idea and accordingly I persisted in my work and went on verifying the various literary references and jot ling down the names for the projected Table. If past failures are but stepping-stones to future success, I thought that this particular scholar's discomfiture should put me doubly on my guard against the intrusion of legendary matter and unverified traditions amongst the facts of the Table and so vitiating their positive testimony. I resolved also to keep clear before my mind the distinction between facts and our interpretation of facts, between objective data and subjective constructions. Despite all these resolves, however, I should confess that my first Table, true to the forewarning I had already received, turned out badly; nor could the second fare any better, though much superior to its predecessor in its close-jointed character and freedom from extraneous and irrelevant matter. The Table herewith presented is the result of my third attempt and I trust that the sacrifice of two of its fellows has added strength to it. Unlike its predecessors this Table has stood all the criticism i have been able to bring to bear upon it and hence on this frame I proceeded to distribute the various facts and events of Early Tamil Literature and weave a connected narrative for the period covered by it. Now that the Table and its interpretation are placed before Tamil Scholars, old and new, it is for them to pronounce whether these lay the foundation-stone for a real 'Beginning of South Indian History' based on the earliest literary documents available in Tamil, or, these too should go the way of the previous attempts in the field.

Image:
The Hindu Saint Manikkavacakar
India, Tamil Nadu, early 12th century
Sculpture
Copper alloy

Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art