aaNdaaL and sangaththamizh

[Guest guest]

This posting is a followup to Sri Sadagopan's posting on

sangaththamizh referred to by aaNdaaL.

 

(before I proceed, I must request the list members not to consider

this article as scholarly by any means, though Sri Sadagopan has been

kind enough to have honoured me. I have a degree in Mechanical

Engineering and not in sangam literature:-)

 

To my knowledge, the author of tholkaappiyam has not established

vishnu parathvam in any strict sense of that concept. The third

section of the book - poruLadhikaaram - is considered to have several

interpolations, according to most scholars.

 

paripaadal is a particular type of prosody, which is also the name

given to the compilation of works that were written in that style.

Only a fraction of that compilation survives today. If one is inclined

to believe the chronology accepted by modern thamizh scholars,

paripaadal is dated somewhere in the 3rd to 7th century AD period. If

one has to agree with the same thamizh scholars (and not the

traditional guruparampara prabhavams), the aazhvaars came after this

period. paripaadal is considered part of the sangam thamizh literature

and scholars such as Kamil Zvelebil believe that paripaadal must be

towards the very end of the sangam period. Except for majority of

paripadal and thiru muruku aaRRuppadai, rest of the sangam works are

secular in nature. paripaadal verses are either about maal (vishnu), or

murukan (subrhamanya), or about the river vaikai.

 

tholkaappiyam merely identifies maal (azhagiya singar apparently spent

half of today's discourse on just this word [maalE maNivaNNaa], which

I unfortunately missed) as the God of forest land. The word 'maayan'

(meaning black as well as one with magical powers) and His

identification with the people of the forest land - the cowherds -

links Him directly to Lord Krishna. sangam literature is full of

mention of his consort nappinnai and the famous episode of Krishna

conquering 7 bulls and marrying her (a distinctly Dravidian concept).

aazhvaars and aaNdaaL are the only ones who seem to talk about

nappinnai and this episode.

 

As eloquently presented by Sri Sadagopan, the poems extolling

thirumaal in paripaadal, starting from the anonymous invocation,

establish vishnu parathva etc. However what is puzzling me is that no

traditional Sri Vaishnava acharya quotes from this work in any of the

commentaries (can any one confirm this? I don't claim to have

exhaustive knowledge of the various eedu). However, parimElazhakar, a

Sri Vaishnava scholar (who is more famous for his commentary on thiruk

kuRaL) who lived in Kanchipuram has written a (very cryptic)

commentary to this work which is available in fragments. In this

commentary, parimElazhakar provides quotes from the divya prabandham.

It is therefore quite possible that some of the aazhvaarkaL were

inspired by the paripaadal verses. After all, aaNdaaL borrowed the

very exact words 'kanRu kuNilaay eRindhaay kazhal pORRi' from

silappadhikaaram 'kanRu kuNilaay kani udhirththa maadhavan'. (kuNil =

stick)

 

Besides paripaadal (where incidentally, you will find more verses in

praise of murukan (subrahmanya), which would then indicate that sangap

pulavarkaL also established the subrahmanya parathva!), there do occur

several statements here and there (in particular in mullaith thiNai

verses in akam genre, and a few in puRam sporadically) in sangam

literature praising vishnu. They cannot, imo, be taken to prove vishnu

parathva or that the early sangam poets were all pure vaishnavas, and

only the later day ones veered away from the true path.

 

I am in the process of collecting portions in the sangath thamizh that

extol vishnu. Unfortunately, I do not think I will be able to complete

this project in the near future. If and when I complete that, I will

post them in this group.

 

Unlike the learned Sri Putthoor KrishNaswamy Iyengaar (whose

contribution to the Sri Vaishnava cause is immense), I believe that

'sangath thamizh' was used by aaNdaaL to refer to 'quality thamizh'.

Just as the term 'vedas' now refers to any work that is holy (thamizh

christians call their bible as vEdham), sangath thamizh refers to high

quality thamizh. Refer to auvaiyaar asking Lord Vinayaka: "sangath

thamizh moonRum thaa".

 

--badri