The Colas c12.4

c12.4

To trace fully the elements of pre-Aryan Tamil culture that survived into historical times would involve an extensive application of comparative methods to the literature of the Śaṅgam age, such as cannot be undertaken here. These survivals are seen sometimes to exist by the side of the newer practices; just as the electric train and the country cart are both seen in use today, so in the *Maṇimēkalai* we see the prevalence side by side of no fewer than five modes of disposing of the dead which included cremation, exposure, and burial with and without urns.⁵ Other instances show evidence of a conscious effort to blend the new with the old, and dovetail into one another modes originally distinct and self-contained. It is well-known that the earliest Dharmasūtras⁶ mention eight forms of marriage as part of the Aryan code; these eight forms are mentioned in the Sūtras of the *Tolkāppiyam*⁷ and the *Iṟaiyanār Kaḷaviyal*, and much ingenuity is spent in accommodating them to Tamil forms. The Tamils had a relatively simple conception of marriage; they recognised the natural coming together of man and woman (*kāmakkūṭṭam*), and the slight differences in the manifestation of love, perhaps ultimately traceable to differences in the physical conditions of the different parts of the country. These they recognised as the five *tiṇais*. They had also names for unilateral love, *kaikkiḷai*, and abnormal love—*perundiṇai*. Into this scheme the eight Aryan forms are squeezed with results not altogether happy.⁸ The five *tiṇais* are treated as varieties of Gāndharva, and the Āsura, Rākṣasa and Paiśāca forms are grouped under *kaikkiḷai*—courses not very satisfactory in themselves. But the attempt to impound the remaining Aryan forms, Brāhma, Prājāpatya, Ārṣa and Daiva under *perundiṇai* is even less happy, and shows that the synthesis was not easy or natural. But the most tangible result of the meeting of the Tamil and the Aryan is the tremendous richness and fecundity that was imparted to the Tamil idiom thereby, and the rise of a literature which combined a good deal of classic grace with vernacular energy and strength. This is the literature of the Śaṅgam Age.