Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c23.s27.t4: 4.24.4 Facilitating factors for spread of literacy in early Tamil society
Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c23.s27.t4
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4.24.4 Facilitating factors for spread of literacy in early Tamil society
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Apart from political independence and the use of the mother-tongue, there were also several other factors facilitating the spread of literacy in early Tamil society. Of the factors which will be briefly discussed here, the first three were inherent features of early Tamil society and the next three were new elements from outside which influenced the spread of early literacy in the Tamil country.
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(i) *The presence of a strong bardic tradition
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Bards were so much respected in early Tamil society that they could move from court to court across the political barriers even when the princes were at war. The oral bardic tradition which must have been rich and expressive even in the pre-literate era, flowered into the written poetry of the Caṅkam Age with the availability of writing under the active patronage of the Tamil princes, chieftains and nobles.
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(ii) *The absence of a priestly hierarchy
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There was no priestly hierarchy in early Tamil society with vested interest in maintaining the oral tradition or discouraging writing after its advent.¹ Learning does not seem to have been the prerogative of any particular class like the scribes or priests. This is clearly shown by the wide diversity in the social status of the nearly five hundred poets of the Caṅkam Age, among whom were princes, monks, merchants, bards, artisans and common people.² Quite a few of them were women. We have earlier noticed the evidence of the inscribed sherds for widespread literacy in the rural areas and among the common people.
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¹ It was the presence of such a priestly hierarchy in early Brahmanical Hinduism in North India that prevented Sanskrit from being recorded in inscriptions for about four centuries after the introduction of the Brāhmī script. Prakrit inscriptions are available from the time of Asoka in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. The earliest Sanskrit inscription of consequence is the rock inscription of Rudradāman dated in the middle of the 2nd century A.D. (*EI*. VIII: pp. 36-49).
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² For a list of names of the Tamil Caṅkam poets, see *Caṅka kāla pulavarkaḷ* (ed. S. Balasaranathan 1986). Many of the names of 494 poets listed here carry prefixed attributes giving their place names and particulars of professions, e.g., Maturai Aṟuvai Vāṇikaṉ Iḷavēṭṭaṉār, indicating that the poet hailed from Madurai and was a cloth merchant by profession.
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(iii) *A strong tradition of local autonomy
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Reference to self-governing village councils like *ampalam*, *potiyil* and *maṉṟam* in Caṅkam literature and to merchant guilds (*nigama*) in the Tamil-Brāhmī records show that there was a long tradition of strong local self-government in the Tamil society. In such an environment, literacy would have received special impetus as it would serve to strengthen local self-government institutions and merchant guilds.
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(iv) *The spread of Jainism and Buddhism
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As mentioned earlier, knowledge of writing was brought to the Tamil country, as to the rest of South India, in the wake of the spread of Jainism and Buddhism to these regions. As protestant movements against Vedic Brahmanical Hinduism, these faiths kept away from Sanskrit in the initial phase and conducted their missionary activities in North India in the local Prakrit dialects. The monks followed the same tradition in the Tamil country, learning the local language and, in the process, adapting the Brāhmī script to its needs. They had no vested interest in maintaining the oral traditions nor any bias against writing down their scriptures in the local language. As a result of this attitude, the Jaina scholars (and to a lesser extent, the Buddhist scholars) made rich contribution to the development of Tamil literature during the Caṅkam Age and for centuries thereafter. A similar development did not take place in Upper South India in the early period presumably because Prakrit was already the language of administration and public discourse in the region. The monks who were familiar with Prakrit had perhaps no opportunity or incentive to change over to the local languages in this region.
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(v) *Foreign trade
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The Tamil country, with its long coastlines, carried on extensive trade during the Caṅkam Age with Rome and the Mediterranean countries in the west and with Sri Lanka and Southeast Asian countries in the east. Trade with Rome brought in not only wealth (as attested by numerous Roman coin-hoards in the Tamil country) but also early contacts with other literate societies using alphabetic scripts. Recent excavations of Roman settlements on the Red Sea coast of Egypt have brought to light a few inscribed sherds with Tamil names written in the Tamil-Brāhmī script of about the 1st century a.d.¹ An ancient papyrus document written in Greek and datable in the 2nd century a.d. in a museum at Vienna has been identified as a contract for shipment of merchandise from Muciri to Alexandria.² While the document itself is not in Tamil, one can infer from it the milieu of advanced literacy in the Tamil society whose merchants could enter into such trading contracts.
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¹ See section 1.13.9 (ii).
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² See section 4.20.4 (iv).