Guest guest Posted January 11, 1997 Report Share Posted January 11, 1997 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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