A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.44

c12.44

Of the social and economic conditions of the age, the cultural ideas and ideals accepted and cherished by the people, of the institutions and activities which embodied and sustained them, the literature of the Śangam gives an unusually complete and true picture. The most striking feature in the picture is its composite character; it is the unmistakable result of the blend of two originally distinct cultures, best described as Tamilian and Aryan; but it is by no means easy now to distinguish the original elements in their purity. Some of them may be recognized, however, to have clearly originated in Northern India and made their way into the South during the period of its aryanization and later. The stories of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa were well known to the Tamil poets, and episodes from them are frequently mentioned. The claim of each of the three Tamil kings to have fed the opposing forces on the eve of the Great Battle has been noted already. The destruction of the three metallic forts of the Asuras (Tripura) by Śiva, king Śibi giving away the flesh of his body to save a dove that was pursued by a vulture, and the struggle between Krishna and the Asuras for the possession of the sun, are among other legends alluded to by the authors. The presence of a great fire underneath the ocean, Uttara-kuru (the northern country) as a land of perpetual enjoyment, Arundhati as the ideal of chastity, the conception of the threefold debt (riṇatraya) with which every man is born, the beliefs that the cakora bird feeds only on raindrops, and that raindrops turn into pearls in particular circumstances, are instances of other Sanskritic ideas taken over bodily into the literature of the Śangam period. The Tolkāppiyam is said to have been modelled on the Sanskrit grammar of the Aindra school.