Manuscript, print and memory: relics of the Caṅkam in Tamilnadu

The ancient Tamil poetic corpus of the Caṅam ("The Academy") is a national treasure for Tamilians and a battle-ground for linguists and historians of politics, culture and literature. Going back to oral predecessors probably dating back to the beginning of the first millennium, it has had an extremely rich and variegated history. Collected into anthologies and endowed with literary theories and voluminous commentaries, it became the centre-piece of the Tamil literary canon, associated with the royal court of the Pandya dynasty in Madurai. Its decline began in the late middle ages, and by the late 17th century it had fallen into near oblivion, before being rediscovered at the beginning of the print era. The present study traces the complex historical process of its transmission over some 2000 years, using and documenting a wide range of sources, in particular surviving manuscripts, the early prints, the commentaries of the literary and grammatical traditions and a vast range of later literature that creates a web of inter-textual references and quotations. Contents 13 Preface 7 List of Abbreviation 9 I Introduction 17 1 Sources, Methods and Aims 17 2 The Corpus 22 2.1 Its Constitution 22 2.2 Its Fate 31 3 Research History and Programme 42 3.1 The Tamil Renaissance 43 3.2 Tamil Manuscripts 51 II The Manuscripts 58 1 Surviving Caṅkam Manuscripts: Descriptive Catalogue 58 1.1 Libraries of Origin 59 1.2 Manuscript list 60 1.3 Manuscript Catalogue 66 2 Manuscripts Reported in Catalogues and Editions 103 2.1 Catalogues 104 2.2 Manuscript Descriptions in the Editions 115 3 Colophons and Library Information 138 3.1 List of Available Colophons 139 3.2 Scribal Colophons and/or Information on Title Pages 144 4 Summary: Age and Distribution of the Remaining Witnesses 154 III Transmissional History 162 1 The Invocation Stanzas (kaṭavuḷ vāḻttu) 162 1.1 Kuṟuntokai 1 162 1.2 The Series by Pāratam Pāṭiya Peruntēvaṉātr 165 2 Traditional Colophons 176 2.1 Eṭṭuttokai 177 2.2 Pattupāṭṭu 182 2.3 Information from the Traditional Colophons 191 3 Mnemonic Stanzas 193 3.1 Eṭṭutokai (14 Verses) 195 3.2 Pattupāṭṭu (19 Plus 12 Verses) 214 4 The Caṅkam Legends 232 4.1 Introduction 232 4.2 The Preamble to Nakkīraṉ and Its Late Metrical Echo 234 4.3 Academicians Infiltrating the Saiva Canon 251 4.4 Siva’s Sports in Maturai 263 4.5 The Tiruvaḷḷuvar Branch 290 4.6 Legend Merging into “History” 301 5 Reception in the Grammatical Tradition 311 5.1 The Legend Reflected in the Commentaries 312 5.2 The Corpus Reflected in the Commentaries 323 Appendix 1: Tables of Quotations from the Poetological Commentaries 334 Appendix 2: The Distribution of Quoted Poems in Poetological Commentaries 339 Appendix 3: The Distribution of Quoted Poems in Grammatical Commentaries 346 5.3 Glimpses from Discussions of Literature 361 Coda: The Maturaic Cokkanātar Aruḷiya Tamiḻ Viṭutūtu 367 6 Summary: The Rise and Fall of a Canon 370 IV The Editing Process 375 1 Notes on the Development of the Tamil Script 378 2 The Path from Palm-Leaves to Paper to Printed Editions 383 3 The Early Caṅkam Editions 402 4 Case Studies: The Kuṟuntokai, the Naṟṟiṇai and the Akanāṉūṟu 406 5 Later Caṅkam Editions 420 Appendix: Manuscripts Containing Exegetical Material 422 6 Summary: Decipherment, Standardisation, Popularisation 425 V Conclusion: The Restitution of a Canon 428 Literature 434 List of Acknowledgements for the Illustrations 449 Index 450 The ancient Tamil poetic corpus of the Cankam is at the same time a national treasure and a common battle ground for linguists and historians alike. Going back to oral predecessors from about the early first millennium, it became part of a canon, slowly fell into near oblivion and was finally rediscovered and printed in the 19th century. The present study follows up the complex historical process of its transmission through 2000 years