Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/17

Rh no Tamil literature before the ninth century A.D. But the fact appears to be that all that was original and excellent in the literature of the Tamils was written before the ninth century, and what followed was, for the most part, but a base imitation or translation of Sanscrit works. From a careful study of ancient Tamil poems, I am led to think that some of the earliest works were undoubtedly composed more than two thousand years ago, and that the Tamil people acquired wealth and civilisation at this early period by their commercial intercourse with foreign nations such as the Arabs, Greeks, Romans and Japanese. With the advance of their material prosperity, there was a sudden stimulus to their literary activity. The Augustan period of Tamil literature was, I should say, in the first century of the Christian era; and the last College of poets was then held in Madura in the Court of the Tamil king Ugra (the Terrible) Pandya. The works of not less than fifty authors of this period have come down to us. These poets were of various castes, various religious persuasions and belonged to different parts of the Tamil country. Some were Nigranthas, some Buddhists, and some of the Brahminic faiths. There were kings, priests, merchants, doctors, farmers, and artizans among their number. Amidst the gloom and uncertainty in which the ancient history of the country is shrouded, the works of so many authors of one age throw a flood of welcome light.

The information afforded by these poems, regarding the religious and social customs of the Tamil people, would alone guide us to fix the probable date of this literature in the earliest centuries of the Christian Era. For, we find from them that there were Buddhists in the Tamil country, but they had set up no images of Buddha and had no priests; there were Nigranthas who called the Buddhists, heretics, but who had not commenced the worship of their Saints or Tirthankaras; there were temples dedicated to Siva, Vishnu and Subramanya, but there were also other shrines in which the worship of Indra and Baladêva was continued; there were Brahmins who wore the sacred thread and called themselves the “twice-born” but neither kings nor merchants sought this