A History of Indian Literature, Volume X: Dravidian Literature, Fasc. 1: Tamil Literature PDF
Preview A History of Indian Literature, Volume X: Dravidian Literature, Fasc. 1: Tamil Literature
A HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE KAMIL VEITH ZVELEBIL TAMIL LITERATURE OTTO HARRASSOWITZ • WIESBADEN A HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE EDITED BY JAN GONDA VOLUME X Fasc. 1 1974 OTTO HARRASSOWITZ . WIESBADEN KAMIL VEITH ZVELEBIL TAMIL LITERATURE 1974 OTTO HARRASSOWITZ . WIESBADEN A HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE Contents of Vol. X Vol. X: Dravidian Literatures Fase. 1: K. V. Zvelebil Tamil Literature G. L. Hart Relations between Tamil and Classical Sanskrit Literatures R. E. Asher Malayalam Literature K. Mahadeva Sastri Telugu Literature H. M. Nayak Kannada Literature J. Filliozat/F. Gros/ Scientific Literatures in Dravidian J. R. Marr and others Languages © Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1974 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Photographfsche und photoraechanische Wiedergabe nur mit ausdrticklicher Genehmigung des Verlages Gesamtherstellung: Allgauer Zeitungsverlag GmbH, Kempten Printed in Germany- ISBN 3 447 01582 9 DEDICATION I am indebted to all my Tamil friends and colleagues who have helped me during the past three decades to understand Tamil culture and literature. "The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it," said Dr. S. Johnson. I dedicate this book to Tamil poets and writers, past and present, who enabled the Tamil people both; and to the Tamil people themselves. Wassenaar, Nederland, 31. 12. 1973 Kamil V. Zvelebil CONTENTS Note on transliteration and pronunciation 1 Introduction 2 1. The solitary stanza 7 1.1. Classical Tamil poetry of the two superanthologies 7 1.1.2. The Bardic Corpus 9 1.1.3. Beginnings of Tamil poetry 11 1.1.4. The anthology-poems and the songs 12 1.1.5. The structure of the Tamil bardic poems 26 1.1.6. Language and prosody 31 1.1.7. Poetics and rhetorics 34 1.1.8. The bardic poet 42 1.1.9. The achievement of classical Tamil poetry 44 1.1.10. Late classical poetry 47 1.2. Medieval anthologies and occasional stanzas 51 1.3. Pre-modern and modern poetry 58 2. The literature of devotion 88 3. Didactic heresy 117 4. The epic poetry 128 4.1. The Jaina cycle 131 4.2. The Buddhist cycle 140 4.3. Hindu epics 142 4.4. Christian epics 159 4.5. Muslim epics 162 4.6. Modern Tamil narrative poetry 162 4.7. Tamil puranas 170 5. Pirapantam 193 5.1. Older and traditional genres 194 5.2. Late and non-traditional genres 220 6. Literature in prose 231 6.1. The fonts of prose 231 6.2. Foreigners 234 6.3. Printing and journalism 236 6.4. Subrahmanya Bharati; V. V. S. Aiyar 239 6.5. Short forms 242 6.6. Novel 267 6.6.1. Beginnings 267 6.6.2. Interlude 273 6.6.3. Historical novel 274 6.6.4. Didactic novels 276 VIII 6.6.5. The contemporary situation . , 277 6.6.6. Realistic and regional writings. Naturalism 278 6.6.7. Interest in social change 282 6.6.8. Autobiography and documentary writing 283 6.6.9. Male-female relationship 286 6.6.10. Experimental novel 291 7. Dramatic writing 294 Index 299 Kamil Veith Zvelebil TAMIL LITERATURE NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND PRONUNCIATION The transcription used for Tamil words in this book is a strict transliteration as a system adopted by the Madras University Tamil Lexicon. The only exception are names of modern and contemporary Tamil writers (and their literary heroes) where I follow in addition their own anglicized spelling, e.g. Subrahmanya Bharati (Cuppiramaniya Parati), Jeyakanthan's heroine Ganga. The following Roman letters are used for the Tamil characters: Vowels Short Long a a i i u u e e o 5 ai au Consonants Lips Teeth Ridge behind Hard Soft upper teeth palate palate Stops P t t c k Nasals m n n n fi n Liquids r 1 1 r i Semivowels V y The Tamil long vowels are, unlike their English diphthongized counterparts, simply long vowels. Final—ai is pronounced approximately like—ey. Tamil has two series of consonants unfamiliar to English speakers: the den- tals t, n and the retroflexes t, n, 1, 1. The dentals are pronounced with the tongue at the teeth, the retroflexes are produced by curling the tongue back towards the roof of the mouth (cf. the American pronunciation of girl, sir). In the middle of words, long consonants occur frequently. In transliteration, they are indicated by double letters (cf. pattu, Nakkirar). English has long consonants between words, e.g. in hot tea, or Mac Kinley.
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