Page:Tamil studies.djvu/429

402 eighth century of our era,' while yet in another place he writes that his date 'may reasonably be assigned to the tenth century. Thus the age of Manikka Vachakar reinains still unsettled. It is not intended to waste some more ink and paper by launching into any elaborate discussion or by seriously attempting to refute their arguments, but to briefly indicate certain grounds for a correct determination of his date.

(1) The traditional order of enumerating the four famous Saiva saints—Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikka Vachakar and the position assigned to Tiruvachakam and Tirukkovai in the Saiva tirumurais seem to support the view that the last mentioned poet-saint li ved later than Appar. And this theory is confirmed by the fact that Manikka Vachakar and Kalladar have described in their works a considerably larger number of Siva's sports than that referred to by Appar or Sambandar, who must have visited Madura—the far famed capital of the Pandyas and a stronghold of Saivism in the South.

(2) As a rule the best annotator would quote illustrative passages from the contemporary writers or from those who preceded the author whose work he annotates. The commentator of Manikka Vachakar's Tirukkovai – Perasiriyar, Nacchinarkiviyar or whoever he might be-cites authorities from Iraiyanar's Agapporul, Tolkapyam, Kural, Kalittogai, Appar's Tevaram and Naladiyar. Since the authors of all these works had lived long before Manikka Vachakar, he must have understood that Appar was his predecessor.

(3) In his Koil-padigam Manikka Vachakar speaks of