Professor
Maraimalai has asked me to write regarding the position of Tamil as a classical
language, and I am delighted to respond to his request.
I
have been a Professor of Tamil at the University of California, Berkeley, since
1975 and am currently holder of the Tamil Chair at that
institution. My degree, which I received in 1970, is in Sanskrit, from
Harvard, and my first employment was as a Sanskrit professor at the University
of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969. Besides Tamil and Sanskrit, I know the
classical languages of Latin and Greek and have read extensively in their
literatures in the original. I am also well-acquainted with comparative
linguistics and the literatures of modern Europe (I know Russian, German, and
French and have read extensively in those languages) as well as the literatures
of modern India, which, with the exception of Tamil and some Malayalam, I have
read in translation. I have spent much time discussing Telugu literature
and its tradition with V. Narayanarao, one of the greatest living Telugu
scholars, and so I know that tradition especially well. As a
long-standing member of a South Asian Studies department, I have also been
exposed to the richness of both Hindi literature, and I have read in detail
about Mahadevi Varma, Tulsi, and Kabir.
I
have spent many years — most of my life (since 1963) — studying Sanskrit.
I have read in the original all of Kalidasa, Magha, and parts of Bharavi and
Sri Harsa. I have also read in the original the fifth book of the Rig
Veda as well as many other sections, many of the Upanisads, most of the
Mahabharata, the Kathasaritsagara, Adi Sankara’s works, and many other works in
Sanskrit.
I
say this not because I wish to show my erudition, but rather to establish my
fitness for judging whether a literature is classical. Let me state
unequivocally that, by any criteria one may choose, Tamil is one of the great
classical literatures and traditions of the world.
The
reasons for this are many; let me consider them one by one.
First,
Tamil is of considerable antiquity. It predates the literatures of other
modern Indian languages by more than a thousand years. Its oldest work,
the Tolkappiyam,, contains parts that, judging from the earliest Tamil
inscriptions, date back to about 200 BCE. The greatest works of ancient
Tamil, the Sangam anthologies and the Pattuppattu, date to the
first two centuries of the current era. They are the first great secular
body of poetry written in India, predating Kalidasa’s works by two hundred
years.
Second,
Tamil constitutes the only literary tradition indigenous to India that is not
derived from Sanskrit. Indeed, its literature arose before the influence
of Sanskrit in the South became strong and so is qualitatively different from
anything we have in Sanskrit or other Indian languages. It has its own
poetic theory, its own grammatical tradition, its own esthetics, and, above
all, a large body of literature that is quite unique. It shows a sort of
Indian sensibility that is quite different from anything in Sanskrit or other
Indian languages, and it contains its own extremely rich and vast intellectual
tradition.
Third,
the quality of classical Tamil literature is such that it is fit to stand
beside the great literatures of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Chinese, Persian and
Arabic. The subtlety and profundity of its works, their varied scope
(Tamil is the only premodern Indian literature to treat the subaltern
extensively), and their universality qualify Tamil to stand as one of the great
classical traditions and literatures of the world. Everyone knows
the Tirukkural, one of the world’s greatest works on ethics; but
this is merely one of a myriad of major and extremely varied works that
comprise the Tamil classical tradition. There is not a facet of human
existence that is not explored and illuminated by this great literature.
Finally,
Tamil is one of the primary independent sources of modern Indian culture and
tradition. I have written extensively on the influence of a Southern
tradition on the Sanskrit poetic tradition. But equally important, the
great sacred works of Tamil Hinduism, beginning with the Sangam Anthologies,
have undergirded the development of modern Hinduism. Their ideas were
taken into the Bhagavata Purana and other texts (in Telugu and Kannada as well
as Sanskrit), hence they spread all over India. Tamil has its own works
that are considered to be as sacred as the Vedas and that are recited alongside
Vedic mantras in the great Vaisnava temples of South India (such as Tirupati).
And just as Sanskrit is the source of the modern Indo-Aryan languages,
classical Tamil is the source language of modern Tamil and Malayalam. As
Sanskrit is the most conservative and least changed of the Indo-Aryan
languages, Tamil is the most conservative of the Dravidian languages, the
touchstone that linguists must consult to understand the nature and development
of Dravidian.
In
trying to discern why Tamil has not been recognized as a classical language, I
can see only a political reason: there is a fear that if Tamil is selected as a
classical language, other Indian languages may claim similar status. This
is an unnecessary worry. I am well aware of the richness of the
modern Indian languages — I know that they are among the most fecund and productive
languages on earth, each having begotten a modern (and often medieval)
literature that can stand with any of the major literatures of the world.
Yet none of them is a classical language. Like English and the other
modern languages of Europe (with the exception of Greek), they rose on
preexisting traditions rather late and developed in the second
millennium. The fact that Greek is universally recognized as a classical
language in Europe does not lead the French or the English to claim classical status
for their languages.
To
qualify as a classical tradition, a language must fit several criteria: it
should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on
its own not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and
extremely rich body of ancient literature. Unlike the other modern
languages of India, Tamil meets each of these requirements. It is
extremely old (as old as Latin and older than Arabic); it arose as an entirely
independent tradition, with almost no influence from Sanskrit or other
languages; and its ancient literature is indescribably vast and rich.
It
seems strange to me that I should have to write an essay such as this claiming
that Tamil is a classical literature — it is akin to claiming that India is a
great country or Hinduism is one of the world’s great religions. The
status of Tamil as one of the great classical languages of the world is
something that is patently obvious to anyone who knows the subject. To
deny that Tamil is a classical language is to deny a vital and central part of
the greatness and richness of Indian culture.
(Signed:)
George L. Hart
Professor of Tamil
Chair in Tamil Studies
George L. Hart
Professor of Tamil
Chair in Tamil Studies
