The Pure Tamil Movement
Introduction
As we saw from the writings of several European thinkers in the previous chapters, a common picture of India starts to emerge by the nineteenth century; namely, that the Indian Subcontinent is comprised of a number of races and nations, differentiated from each other through religion and language. Two of the most prominent among these are the Aryans and the Dravidians. The Tamil nationalists seem to have adopted the basic descriptive framework put forward by these Europeans regarding the Aryans and Dravidians and the relationship between them in their writings. So far, a brief overview is given of the intellectual and political background behind one dimension of the Dravidian movement, namely, the Saivite religious nationalism of a select group of Saiva Vellala nationalists.
The nation-language-religion framework utilized by European thinkers, as well as their descriptions of the Aryan and Dravidian people, were structured by their Christian cultural background. Since the Tamil nationalists did not share this cultural background, how could they have understood the descriptive framework utilized by the Europeans? If it is indeed the case that the Tamil intellectuals reproduce European descriptions without understanding the cultural framework that produced them, there is the possibility of incoherence and distortion when the Tamil intellectuals reproduce the descriptions and concepts they adopted from European thinkers. I address these questions by analyzing the writings of MaraimalaiAdigal, one of the most prominent Saiva Vellala intellectuals of the twentieth century. Out of all the Saiva Vellala intellectuals of his time, he has written most extensively about the Dravidian nation, and about how Saiva Siddhanta constitutes the Dravidian nation. But before the ideas of Maraimalai Adigal are examined, let’s look at a brief historical sketch of Saiva Siddhanta to the reader.
Historical Sketch of Saiva Siddhanta
On the basis of inscriptional and archaeological evidence, scholars trace the beginnings of Saiva Siddhanta to central India, sometime in the eighth century. Sometime around the tenth to eleventh century it migrated to Tamil Nadu. Based on inscriptional evidence, it appears to have been brought to Tamil Nadu by the rulers. Raja RajaCholā used the Saiva Agamas to construct Saiva temples. The Saiva Agamas are the oldest textual corpus in the Saiva Siddhanta tradition. The primary focus of the Agama texts is rituals directed toward Siva, especially temple rituals. The Saiva Siddhanta Agamas articulate the practice of nyāsa, where Saiva mantras and an image of Siva is used to accomplish the goal of becoming a Siva. Even though Saiva Siddhanta began in central India, by the thirteenth century it had become well established and localized to Tamil Nadu, and gradually waned from the northern regions of India. It is important to keep in mind that, well before the arrival of Saiva Siddhanta, Tamil Nadu had a long history of Saivite traditions. It is well renowned for a series of Tamil bhakti poetry or devotional literature known as the Tirumurai, written by 63 renowned bhakti poets known as the Nāyanārs.
The coming of Saiva Siddhanta into Tamil Nadu, is marked by the writings of the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta texts, known as the MeykandarSastras, written by Tamil Saiva Siddhanta gurus or intellectuals who trace their lineage back to the guru Meykandar. There is some dispute as to whether the Tamil Saiva Siddhantin gurus prior to the nineteenth century considered the Tirumurai as part of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition in addition to the Agamas and the Vedas. Nonetheless, the fourteenth-century Saiva Siddhantin intellectual, UmapatiSivacharya, considers the Nayanars as part of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition in his works Thirumuraikānta Puranam and Cekkizhār Puranam. Unlike the Tirumurai, which contains emotionally charged poetry expressing love toward Siva, the MeykandarSastras are more philosophical, and are concerned with knowledge about Siva.
According to the scholar Karen Pechilis Prentiss, one of the main points of difference between the Sanskrit-based (based on the Vedas and Agamas) Saiva Siddhanta tradition and the regional Tamil Nadu variant was that the latter were more concerned with jnana (knowledge), and the former put more emphasis on rituals. Regardless of the differences between the original Saiva Siddhanta tradition and the regional Tamil variant, there is no evidence that the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta intellectuals prior to the nineteenth century were claiming that Saiva Siddhanta was the religion of the Tamil nation, nor that they were trying to create a pure Tamil Saiva Siddhanta devoid of Sanskrit and Brahmin influence. This lends more credence to the claim that the idea of a Tamil nation and Tamil religion was absent in Tamil Nadu prior to European contact.
In summary, the name Saiva Siddhanta translates to end of knowledge in Siva. The entire Saiva Siddhanta tradition can be defined as a set of practices with a goal of attaining knowledge of Siva.
Maraimalai Adigal: A Biographical Sketch
The focus of the rest of this dissertation will be on the ideas of MaraimalaiAdigal. We will examine his understanding of the concepts of religion and nation and the manner in which he formulates the relationship between the two, and to language as well. In the process, the following questions will be answered: Is Adigal’s understanding of the nation-language-religion framework different from that of the European thinkers? If yes, then in what manner does he transform or distort the original framework? And what does this distortion reveal about the native cultural framework? His writings on Saiva Siddhanta will then be analyzed in order to answer two questions: What makes Saiva Siddhanta into a religion for Adigal? What role does Saiva Siddhanta play in making the Tamil-speaking populace a nation? We will begin with a brief biographical sketch of MaraimalaiAdigal, and then move on to an analysis of Adigal’s pure Tamil movement.
Maraimalai Adigal (1876–1950) was born in Nagapattinam, a coastal town in Tamil Nadu. Nagapattinam was settled by the Portuguese and later the Dutch colonizers. An interesting fact about Nagapattinam was that it was one of the early hubs of Christian missionary activities in South India. It was in the Wesleyan Mission High School that MaraimalaiAdigal studied up to his secondary school exams. Adigal later taught in the Madras Christian College from 1898 to 1911 as a Tamil professor. As one can see, from a very young age, Adigal was exposed to Christian missionaries and their writings, which would have a profound impact on his intellectual life later on. It was also during this period that he became heavily involved in intellectual activities relating to Saiva Siddhanta. He became the editor for a Tamil Saiva Siddhanta journal called Siddhanta Deepika, which was started by his friend and fellow SaivaVellala J.M. Nallaswami Pillai. He also founded a Saiva SiddhantaMahaSamajam (big organization) in July 1905.
In addition to his exposure to Christian missionaries, during his time in Madras, Adigal was attracted to philological studies on Indian culture and civilization, which would also have a profound impact on his intellectual life and activities as a Dravidian nationalist and revivalist ideologue. It was probably in those philological studies that he was first exposed to the idea that language, race, and nation were inextricably connected.
In addition to European influences, Adigal was a staunch follower and admirer of the nineteenth century Saivite saint known as Ramalinga Swami (1823–74). A salient difference between Ramalinga Swami and Adigal was that, even though Ramalinga Swami is known as a radical reformer today, his criticism of Brahmins was limited to specific rituals and caste practices. Unlike Adigal, he did not say that Brahmins were a foreign nation. Nor did he claim that Saiva Siddhanta or Saivism was a Dravidian religion. It was clear that Ramalinga Swami was not a nationalist ideologue. This difference between MaraimalaiAdigal and Ramalinga Swami highlights the extent to which Adigal had imbibed the conceptual framework used by the European missionaries and Orientalists to study India.
Why a Pure Tamil Movement?
How did Maraimalai Adigal understand the relationship between language and religion? And how does he perceive the role language plays in making a group of people into a nation? Even though Adigal did not explicitly answer these questions, his writings provide us with clues about how he connected language with religion and nation. Comparisons between Adigal and the European intellectuals’ writings regarding the nation-language-religion relationship also gives us further clues on answering the above two questions. However, the purpose of this exercise isn’t about Adigal and his understanding of the language-religion-nation concept triad, but what his understanding of those concepts reveals about the cultural topoi he was utilizing.
Adigal can fairly be described as the father of the pure Tamil movement. He put great emphasis on using a Senthamizh (pure Tamil) dialect, devoid as much as possible of Sanskrit words. For Adigal, preserving the Tamil language in its pure form was essential to preserving the Tamil culture. Before delving into Adigal’s writings about the importance of preserving Tamil in its classical form and how that enables the preservation of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition, it is important to recognize that Adigal wanting to keep Tamil free of Sanskrit influence was also a way of challenging what he saw as the Brahmins’ dominant position in Tamil Nadu society at that time. Adigal’s essays about the importance of preserving the purity of Tamil language are littered with criticism about Brahmins’ social status and their behaviour towards other jatis. In the essay Thamizhōda Pira mozhikalappu (mixing of other languages in Tamil), for example, Adigal makes a connection between Tamil Brahmins supposedly putting more emphasis on mastering and using Sanskrit (as opposed to their native language), to the Brahmins’ social status, citing behaviours such as not socializing or dining with other jatis, as indicative of the Brahmins regarding the rest of the Tamil population as their social inferiors.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the idea of an Aryan and Dravidian nation with their own respective religions had become entrenched among Tamil intellectuals. In the essay ThanithamizhMatchi (The Greatness of Pure Tamil), Adigal links the Tamil Brahmins’ practice of mixing Sanskrit words in their literature with Brahmins trying to impose their intellectual hegemony on the Tamil people by promoting their Brahmin religion. Here, MaraimalaiAdigal is treating Sanskrit not just as a language known and used by Brahmins, but also links Sanskrit to the Brahmin religion in a very specific way. He equates the entry of Sanskrit words into the Tamil language with the imposition of Brahmin religion on the Tamil people. Thus, the preservation of pure Tamil was very much about the preservation of the Dravidian religion.
Besides his opposition to the supposed Brahmanical intellectual and political dominance of that time, the main reason MaraimalaiAdigal cites for keeping Tamil pure is the preservation of Tamil culture and traditions. Adigal is right in a very trivial sense when he says we need to protect our language in order to protect our culture. After all, the title of the most ancient Tamil grammatical treatise, Tolkappiyam, means protection (Kappiyam) of the ancient/venerable/hoary: to protect the language from deterioration. This statement is the central rationale that Adigal uses in his writings when discussing the need to preserve Tamil in its pure ancient form. Adigal focuses on three dimensions of Tamil language: phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, and the deterioration of these three dimensions because of the influence of Sanskrit on Tamil language. This leads us to three important questions: What is Adigal referring to when he talks about the deterioration of a language? How does the mixing of languages lead to such deterioration? Finally, how does Adigal connect the state of the Tamil language with the state of Tamil culture and traditions, specifically Saiva Siddhanta?
The obvious trivium that anybody can observe is that every language has borrowed from and mixed with other languages. It seems to be the natural course in the development of any language. Adigal himself states that ”any cultured language cannot exist without mixing with other languages”. He goes on to admit that, since ancient times, other languages have mixed with Tamil, and casts doubt on whether or not there was a time when Tamil was pure and untouched. When in the natural course of development Tamil absorbs words from other languages, such words become Tamilized and fit into the phonetic structure of Tamil, and Adigal doesn’t have a problem with that.
While Adigal considers it natural for languages to mix, he does consider it problematic when certain scholars and writers unnaturally force Sanskrit or English words into the Tamil language. As Adigal writes, it is not so much the entry of other words into Tamil language that is the problem; that is a natural process. His problem is with what he describes as the unnatural forcing of foreign words into Tamil. By unnatural forcing, he means the inserting of words and phrases that not only does not fit into the phonetic, but also the grammatical structure of Tamil. In his essays on Tamil language, Adigal argues for the superiority of the grammatical structure of Tamil to Sanskrit. For example, in the essay Pazhan Kaala AryarumThamizharum (Ancient Aryans and Tamils), Adigal mocks the fact that Sanskrit and Hindi assign genders to inanimate objects and calls it illogical and unnatural. He also claims that the basic vowel and consonant phonetic structure of the other Indian languages, including Sanskrit, emerged from Tamil, while emphasizing that Sanskrit’s ‘sister’ languages, such as Greek and Latin, don’t have this phonetic structure.
Adigal points out languages such as Ancient Greek and Latin, which have died out of use because of their flawed structure and the less-civilized state of the people who spoke that language. He praises the fact that Tamil has survived for so long, and explains that this is not only because of the highly civilized state of the Tamil people, but also because the language itself has had very few alterations and changes when it comes to importing words from other languages. For Adigal, because of the richness of Tamil language, it is not lacking in anything and doesn’t require words from other languages.
This richness includes both the wide range of vocabulary as well as the way in which the structure of the language is more attuned to the sounds of nature. Adigal uses a story to illustrate his point about Tamil’s affinity to nature: In the story, a Sanskrit scholar who claims that Sanskrit is the root of the sounds used in all language is challenged and defeated by a Tamil scholar named Poondi Ranganatha Mudaliyar, who recites a poem from the SitrambalaKovai to demonstrate sounds not derived from Sanskrit. The Sanskrit scholar then remarks that the sounds he heard in this language are sounds that he recalls from his birth, thus showing how close the sounds of the Tamil language are to nature. Another example used by Adigal to demonstrate Tamil’s affinity to the sounds of nature is the sound ‘om’ known as the Omkara mantra. Adigal asserts that om is the first sound of nature, and that this sound first attained a linguistic form in Tamil, and that two of the Tamil vowels directly emerge from the ‘om’ sound. Adigal uses the ancient Tamil grammar treatise, the Tolkappiyam, to praise the nuanced grammatical and phonetic structure of the Tamil language, the categorization of the alphabets, and various sounds.
The Tolkappiyam also analyses how phonemes in Tamil language are combined to create morphemes. Finally, Adigal’s essays on Tamil language cites both the ancient literary works of the Tolkappiyam and the Tirukkural as examples of the richness of the Tamil vocabulary to comprehensively cover all aspects of human life – from birth to romance to death. From these writings, it is clear that the problem Adigal is wrestling with is not so much the addition of Sanskrit words, but the alteration of Tamil grammar and phonology, and the replacement of Tamil vocabulary with Sanskrit vocabulary. If, as Adigal claims, the original Senthamizh language is richer than Sanskrit in these dimensions (phonology, grammar, and vocabulary), then the alteration of these as a result of Sanskrit influence will diminish the richness of the Tamil language.
There are some important facts regarding the literature and grammar of other South Indian languages, such as Kannada and Telugu, that lend greater weight to Adigal’s case about preserving Tamil in its classical form.
Unlike the other south Indian languages, Tamil literature served as its own foundation in terms of subject matter, ideas, and poetic structure ’’;’’e.g. Sangam poetry. Moreover, unlike the other South Indian languages, the metalanguage [the technical terms used to describe the grammatical structure of the language] of Tamil has been Tamil, not Sanskrit. The Tamil grammatical treatise out of which Tamil grammar developed, the Tolkāppiyam, is its own foundation, and not derived from Sanskrit grammar. Thus, Tamil language is the only Indian language which can divest itself of Sanskrit words and still stand on its own. No wonder Adigal uses the analogy of a person with missing limbs that requires prosthetics to function, when comparing languages which have borrowed from other languages– insisting that Tamil borrowing from Sanskrit would be like the Tamil language cutting off its own limbs and using a prosthetic in its place.
The early Tamil poetry of the Sangam age revolved around two topics: akam and puram. Although the literal translation of akam and puram is inner and outer, akam poetry deals with the subject of love while puram deals with the subject of war. Akam describes romantic/erotic love, and the various circumstances and situations in which romantic love develops. The subject of the war poetry is a kingly or princely hero fighting a war against another king. Traditionally, the Tamil poet (like his predecessors) had to follow the age-old rules of poetic conventions, such as stereotyped language, rhetorical and poetic properties, and traditional themes.
In the case of the early Sangam-era poetry, each poem was structured hierarchically based on what Zvelibil calls ”form-meaning composites”. Out of these form-composites, the two most important ones were tinai (setting) and turai (situation). The themes of love and war are associated with certain land types, called tinai. There are different kinds of love described in Tamil poetry, each linked to a specific land type. For example, separation and pining of lovers is associated with the desert. While two lovers facing suffering and obstacles to their love because they come from different tribes is associated with the mountains. Patiently waiting for a lover is associated with the forest. Thus, Tamil classical poetry associates particular behaviours to specific regions. Furthermore, tinai not only refers to the land types, but also the romantic and warlike behaviour associated with each land type. Love is also subdivided into well-matched and ill-matched love. The lovers should be well matched in terms of lineage, age, wealth etc. Examples of ill-matched love are situations where the man’s love becomes obsessive, or when a young man desires an older woman.
Both these kinds of love are associated with specific tinai or land types. A curious feature of Tamil linguistics is that appropriate love behaviour also falls under the term illakkanam, which generally means grammar. In addition to eluttu (basic ‘signs’ of language; sounds and letters), and col (‘words’), the ancient Tamil grammatical treatise known as the Tolkāppiyam also includes a chapter on porul, which can be translated as the subject matter of the poetry, and focuses on the concept of tinai. Thus, grammar becomes a broad term that refers to a set of rules that structure and govern any cultural phenomenon and practice, according to various contexts.
In Tamil, the word illakanam shares a close affinity in meaning to the word ozhukkam. Ozhukkam can be loosely defined as the adherence to proper conduct or behaviour in various contexts, which includes the practice of or adherence to a tradition, Saiva Siddhanta being one such tradition. In Tamil, understanding and properly adhering to the grammatical rules of a language becomes an important part of properly following and practicing a tradition. For Tamil grammarians, poetic structures and the construction of poetic metres is supposed to be able to convey the appropriate courtship practices/behaviours as well as the romantic experiences associated with each land region.
These behaviours are classified according to the goals to attain in life: Aram (dharma), porul (wealth), inbam (pleasure) with anbu (prema/love) being the foundation of all three goals. Another reason chosen to discuss Zvelebil’s writings about the love poetry of the Sangam age in detail is that Zvelibil clearly traces continuity in key concepts between the love poetry of the Sangam age to the Saiva bhakti poetry which succeeded it. Like Adigal, he too points out that traditions and concepts outlined in the Tolkāppiyam and the Tirukkural seem to be incorporated into bhakti, such as vegetarianism, non-killing, and arul. The love poetry of the pre-Saiva age contains practical insights into the relationship between husband and wife, family, within the community and finally ruler and his people. Man is shown as improving at these things, developing in dharma until he reaches the final goal which is arul. Through following dharma he is able to attain arul, which is held to be synonymous with knowledge. The subject of arul will be dealt with greater depth in the section on religion, but suffice to say it is either translated as compassion of, or as a gift from the gods.
Arul is the final goal of the bhakti traditions, and is seen as the path to happiness. The central theme of bhakti itself is devotion or love (anbu) toward a deity and cultivating that love is what the bhakti tradition is all about. The concept of anbu is a central theme in Sangam romance poetry as well. There is in fact a direct connection between the idealized love of the akam (love) genre in the early classical poetry, and the eternal love between the soul and the Lord. Even sexual or erotic love is not a hindrance to bhakti, but often a precondition. Thus, it would be accurate to say that the Saivite bhakti poetry and the love poetry of the classical age are part of the same Tamil literary tradition, since bhakti poetry carries forward many of the themes first introduced in classical poetry, most importantly the concept of anbu, which is central to bhakti traditions.
It is at this point that I come back to the question of how the purity of Tamil language impacts one’s access to Tamil culture and traditions, since all of Adigal’s essays about Tamil language automatically lead to discussions about Tamil poetic literature, specifically Saivite poetic literature, which was MaraimalaiAdigal’s primary concern. One obvious answer to this question would be that, with the disappearance of Senthamizh (pureTamil) one would not be able to understand the meaning of these texts (though many of the old Saivite and Sangam-era poetry has been translated into modern Tamil and English).
However, Adigal does not seem to be concerned with the intelligibility or the translatability of these texts. When talking about these Saiva bhakti poems, Adigal is primarily occupied with the emotions they evoke and the experience they bestow on the bhakta who chant and sing these hymns. For example, in the essay Siva Linga Unmai (The Truth of Siva Linga), Adigal describes the poems and hymns from Tamil bhakti poetry, like the Tevāramand the Thiruvāsagamas superior to Sanskrit slokas, because it causes the bhakta’s insides to melt with love for God. Likewise,when discussing the wisdom of the Saiva Siddhanta acharyas, Adigal focuses on their visions of Siva that manifested before them and the inbam (ananda) they experienced as a result of those visions, rather than on any doctrines or beliefs they espoused. The Saiva bhakti tradition itself (including the poetic literature and practices, such as going to the temple) is described as a tool with which to direct one’s thoughts and emotions toward the form of God. Thus, the impetus for preserving classical Tamil takes on a greater scope than making Sangam and bhakti literature intelligible; it is also about retaining the emotion and bhakti inherent in the language of the poetry. Accurate translations, while capturing the meaning of the texts, cannot capture the richness of the emotional and experiential content that the original poetry evokes.
At this point I have explored one of the two problems that I raised at the beginning of this section, namely, how MaraimalaiAdigal related language to religion. Through this process, we have a clearer understanding of why he wanted a pure Tamil language. Comparing the writings of European intellectuals with the Tamil ones makes it clear that both sets of intellectuals were grappling with a different set of problems when it comes to the role of language in religion. Among European intellectuals, the search for a pure language emerges as a theological problem, including the works of scholars whom Adigal was directly influenced by, such as Robert Caldwell. The assumptions made by the Europeans arriving in India were guided by a coherent theological framework. This framework came with certain assumptions, and at the same time provided them with a way to systematize their observations. Within this theological framework, language is not only the medium of communicating God’s will, but also the medium of interpreting God’s will. The language spoken by God to Adam was thought by some to convey the will of God perfectly without distortion. The language programs of Church fathers like Origen and Augustine aimed to correct and rectify Latin so that it came as close as possible to the original divine language. Spanish theologian Raymond Lull attempted to recreate this perfect language through a universal mathematics of combination consisting of universal ideas to communicate the word of God. Trying to find this original language of revelation becomes an important problem, since the distortion of the original language resulted in the corruption of the Ur-religion into many false religions and the fracturing of a united human race into many nations.
The Tamil intellectuals also placed importance on preserving their native Tamil language in its pure classical form without the admixture of Sanskrit and other languages. According to MaraimalaiAdigal, the maintenance of Senthamizh is necessary for the survival of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition. However, his rationale for maintaining the Tamil language in its pure form differs from that of Christian theologians who wanted to recover or recreate the Adamic language. For Christian theologians such as Dante and Raymond Lull, having access to the primordial language of humankind meant having access to the uncorrupted revelation of God. MaraimalaiAdigal’s concern was that the bhakti poetry of the Saiva Siddhanta tradition would lose its ability to evoke certain emotions if the grammar and phonology of classical Tamil became altered.
In the same vein, one can observe cultural differences between European intellectuals/Christian theologians and MaraimalaiAdigal when it comes to their conceptualization of the relationship between nation and religion.
….To be Continued
Feature Image source: Source: wikimedia.org
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author. Indic Today is neither responsible nor liable for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in the article.
