Page:Status of Women in Tamilnadu during the Sangam age .pdf/8

Rh Illuminative exposition of the Philosophy has been frequently sought after, by scholars of India as well as foreign.

Under the convention governing this Endowment I am obliged to deliver the lectures in English, even though Tamil would have been the appropriate medium. However I shall be supplementing my English talk with a few relevant quotations from the Tamil classics.

The subject of my talk today and tomorrow is "The status of women in Tamil Nadu during the Sangam age." You are all aware that the matter has already been thoroughly discussed by many scholars, and much light has been focussed on the social conditions of women during the Sangam period.

I hope my sense of humility will not be misunderstood if I may disclose to you that I myself had been interested in this study for a pretty long time, in fact from the days I had been an undergraduate in the Government Arts College, Madras. I am happy to state that during my teenages, I was inspired to compose a poem on the Rights of Women," and I am gratified to mention that among the competitors drawn from three Universities, I won the distinction of being awarded the first prize for the poem.

My interest in the conditions and welfare of women of Tamil Nadu was kept sustained by the valuable and close contacts I had with one of the greatest of scholars of all time Thiru. Vi ka. and the distinguished poet, Baāratidāsan who was at once a visionary and a revolutionary.

I should like to take this opportunity to acknowledge with love and respect, that the greatest source of inspiration in my literary pursuits had been my mentor, Dr. M. Varadarajanar. It was a unique experience for me to find that all these three distinguished men of letters possessed a very tender heart, towards women and advocated the enthronement of women as goddesses of the earth. As a