Debunking the Tamil & Sanskrit Fault-Line

Deconstructing the False Narrative of De-linking the Literature of Tamil Classical Tradition from the Literature of the Bhakti Movement Abstract Dravidianist and pro-missionary scholars have done their best to sell the narrative of a “radical shift” of the alleged ‘secular’ nature of classical Tamil poetry into the alleged ‘Brahmanical’ religious fervour reflected in the literary works of the Bhakti movements of the Azhwars and Nayannar-s. Such claims have been brought into question by scholars like Ganapathy Subbiah who have pointed out the shift in the concept of Godhood and the continuity of numerous tropes between these two phases of Tamil literature. Another important link between the two phases can be illustrated by problematizing the periodization and the very basis of the so-called “Medieval Indian Literature”. The conspicuous coinciding of the periods of the European Medieval age and of what has been dubbed as “Medieval Indian Literature” (usually purported to be roughly from CE 500 till about 1500 CE) by several scholars of literary history, including Sahitya Akademi’s project of constructing A History of Indian Literature in multiple volumes appears to be presumptuous in the light of the data available on Indian literatures extent from the period and beyond. The destabilization of already accepted ‘norms’ for a periodization and chronology of “Medieval Indian Literature” subverts the whole approach, hitherto the dominant one, towards Tamil literature of yore presented as a binary model of ‘classical’ and ‘medieval’. This exercise attempts to do the same by focusing on the interconnections, dynamics and mutual reception between 1) what has been known as “Ubhaya Vedāntam”, 2) the poetry of the Nayannar-s and 3) the classical Tamil poetry by bringing into close scrutiny crucial qualifiers such as ‘medieval’, ‘classical’, ‘secular’, ‘religious’ etc. whose primary function has so far been classification – the one all-pervading instrument of western scholarship in literary historiography; and offering a fresh Swadeshi perspective of all things literary in the Indic cultural domain. This study will also have significant ramifications in highlighting the pan-Indian, pan-Hindu links running across Vedic literature and classical Tamil literature in the process of untangling the obscurantist knots put in place by divisive, prejudiced pseudo-scholarship of Dravidian identity politics. Keywords: Chronology, Periodization, Ubhaya Vedāntam, Dravidian, Swadeshi, Pan-Hindu Introduction The fanciful axiom which the Dravidianist and pro-Christian missionary scholars assert in the field of “classical” Tamil (and in turn, Indian) literature is that there existed a noumenal, ‘tabula rasa’-like state of the literary canon of the ancient Tamils. This presumption has provided them the point of departure to peddle a fiction which in time would bring about another axiomatic idea for their distorted, politically intended, divisive narrative of South Indian history: that the “obsession” with religious devotion – bhakti – is nothing but a Brahmanical injection into the pristine, liberal, “secular” literary tradition of the Tamil people. This they have sought to achieve by means of devising a special periodization of the Tamil and Indian literature that suits their speculative theoretical framework. Thus, the Dravidianist and pro-Christian missionary (and others either openly or covertly aligned with their political agendas; such as subaltern studies scholarship) narrative is false on two accounts: firstly, it is based on a fictitious version of history unsupported by hard data and evidences; and secondly, an innovative accusatory narrative of Brahmins diluting a “pristine, indigenous Tamil culture” has been spawned by the former flawed historical narrative. A close reading of the literary works of Nayanmar and Azhwar saints vis-à-vis Sanskrit literature offered in the present exercise will reveal the shaky grounds of the claims by Dravidianist/missionary/subaltern studies scholarship. The methodology followed herein is based on a close historiographical examination of the several attempts of periodization of Indian literature, since an important link between the two phases of supposedly “secular pristine Tamil literary tradition” and bhakti-literature in Tamil can be illustrated by problematizing the periodization and the very basis of the so-called “Medieval Indian Literature”. The conspicuous coinciding of the periods of the European Medieval age and of what has been dubbed as “Medieval Indian Literature” (usually purported to be roughly from 500 CE till about 1500 CE) by several scholars of literary history, including Sahitya Akademi’s project of constructing A History of Indian Literature in multiple volumes appears to be presumptuous in the light of the data available on Indian literatures extant from the period under consideration and beyond. The destabilization of already accepted ‘norms’ for a periodization and chronology of “Medieval Indian Literature” subverts the whole approach, hitherto the dominant one, towards Tamil literature of yore – which has been presented as a binary model of ‘classical’ and ‘medieval’. This exercise attempts to do the same by focusing on the interconnections, dynamics and mutual reception between 1) what has been known as “Ubhaya Vedāntam”, 2) the poetry of the Nayannar-s and 3) the classical Tamil poetry by bringing into close scrutiny crucial qualifiers such as ‘medieval’, ‘classical’, ‘secular’, ‘religious’ etc. whose primary function has so far been classification – the one all-pervading instrument of western scholarship in literary historiography; and offering a fresh Swadeshi perspective of all things literary in the Indic cultural domain. This study will also have significant ramifications in highlighting the pan-Indian, pan-Hindu links running across Vedic literature and classical Tamil literature in the process of untangling the obscurantist knots put in place by divisive, prejudiced pseudo-scholarship of Dravidian identity politics. In doing so, the present exercise will try to build up a comprehensive Purva-paksa of the methods adopted by the scholars in Dravidianist/pro-Christian missionary/subaltern studies quarters constructing a literary historiography of Tamil and Indian literary tradition; as well as offer some directions in the Uttara-paksa. Historiography, Periodization, Chronology: Tools for Subverting Truth The opening chapter of the late Professor Sisir Kumar Das’s magnum opus A History of Indian Literature (500-1399), published by the Sahitya Akademi (India’s national academy of letters) lays out the framework and the rationale of the periodization of Indian literature followed in the ambitious work on literary historiography of India. It states: “The medieval period of Indian literary history stretches over a very long time beginning from the seventh century to the close of the eighteenth century. Like all periodizations it is undoubtedly imprecise, but not altogether arbitrary. The rationale for choosing the seventh century as the take-off point is that a group of devotional poets, known as Alwars and Nayanmars, emerged around this time in South India. They created a new literature which is distinct from the classical traditions, whether of Sanskrit or of Tamil. This is a breakthrough in Indian literary history.” (Das 2005) The above quote makes two things clear: firstly, the seventh century has been taken as the point of departure for the construction of an alleged “medieval period” of Indian literary history; and secondly, it offers the emergence of the Alwar and Nayanmar saint-poets at around that time in the Indian history as the reason for such a choice of periodization, claiming to have identified a break from the “classical” traditions of both Sanskrit and Tamil literature in the “new”, “distinct” literary creations of the Alwars and Nayanmars. The seventh century is a conspicuous coincidence, for a choice of the starting point in the “medieval period” in Indian literary history, with the beginning of the medieval period in Europe, which is taken by most historical accounts around the same time – sometimes a century or two earlier. It was the time when Europe was going through enormous social and political upheaval as it was striving to recuperate from the blow given to its social, political, religious and economic organisation by the sacking of Rome in 410 CE at the hand of the Visigoths. In the seventh century itself, the Byzantine Empire had to face a series of setbacks as a result of Islamic expansionism by a reinvigorated and united Arab caliphate. This century has thus left deep scars in the psyche of Europe, and as a result, on the entire Judeo-Christian world. Consequently the duration of fifth to seventh centuries CE happened to have been the period during which some crucial paradigm changes had taken place in the European civilizational context, and so scholars of European history locate the starting point of the Medieval Age in Europe within that period. This paper contends that in taking the sixth and seventh century as the point of departure for a narrative of the conveniently-termed “medieval period” of Indian literary, the Sahitya Akademi and the scholars associated with its project of constructing a purportedly comprehensive account of Indian literary history have either inadvertently or consciously borrowed the chronological model of European history, even though the driving forces of human

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