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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c12.s4: The Tamil Classics

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c12.s4

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The Tamil Classics

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A South Indian classic of this period which may be compared to the finest romances of Sanskrit literature and which enables us to feel a bit of the secular interests of Hindu India is the Tamil work, the *Maṇimekhalāi*. The kind of Buddhism propagated in and through it appears to have no reference to the *Mahāyāna* system associated with Āryadeva or Nāgārjuna. The romance is evidently *Hīnayāna* in general features.

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The *Maṇimekhalāi* may perhaps be placed in the first or second century A.C.¹⁰

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¹⁰ S. K. Aiyangar: "The Buddhism of Manimekhalai" in *Buddhistic Studies* (Calcutta 1931) pp. 10, 13, 16.

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South Indian culture was Brahmanized, *Piṭakized* and Jainized in succession. The Sanskritization of Tamil culture proceeded step by step.

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A prosperous epoch of Tamil literature in Southern India may be taken to have been synchronous with the Empire of the Guptas in Northern India, i.e., the age of Kālidāsa, the *Purāṇas* and the *Mahābhārata*. A Tamil classic, the *Kurāl* by Tiruvallu, which in certain sections, reads almost like the *Gītā*, may be referred to this era. This work, recognized as it was by the third Tamil Sangam, deserves a careful analysis by students of social philosophy.

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People have detected the ideas of the *Angas* and the *Āgamas*, i.e., Jainism in this Tamil classic (300 A.C.). On the other hand, it exhibits indebtedness to the Kauṭalyan *Arthaśāstra*, coincidences with the *Kāmandakīnīti*, *Manu Samhitā* and the *Mahābhārata* (*Bhīṣma Parva*).¹¹ Be this as it may, this book of verses, complete as it is in 1330 aphoristic stanzas, is divided into three parts according to *trivarga*, i.e., *dharma*, *artha* and *kāma*. We can then establish to a certain extent a psychological affinity between this South Indian moralist and Bhartrihari, the author of three *śatakas* or centuries of verses, namely, *Śringāraśataka* (on love), *Vairāgyaśataka* (on dispassion), and *Nitiśataka* (on morals and propriety). And in any case the student of positivism can find in this eclectic work a clue to some of the solid foundations of Hindu social life in southern India in the early centuries of the Christian era. It is worth while to observe that *porul* which corresponds to *artha* commands greater attention of the author than the other two interests. Indeed, we may take it almost as a *Kāmandakīnīti* in Tamil.

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¹¹ S. K. Aiyangar: *Some Contributions of South India to Indian Culture* (Calcutta 1925) pp. 125-29, 401; V. V. Aiyar: *The Kural or the Maxims of Tiruvalluvar* (Eng. transl.), Shermadevi, 1935.

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