Tamil: Naalaayira Divya Prabandham

[kichenas at math.umn.edu]

My congratulations to this team effort to make the Prabandham
available in electronic format. It is nice that, with this and the
effort in Koeln, an important part of Tamil literature is becoming
available to scholars. This is all the more important since we now
know that indology cannot ignore Tamil sources anymore.

The next obvious inclusions would be

(1) Inclusion of any Sangam works not already available;

(2) The 12 TirumuRai, which, together with the Prabandham, 
and are relevant to the emergence of Bhakti in India. Note that
the TEvAram represents an important stage in the development of 
Indian classical music.

(3) The epics, first and foremost Kampa-rAmAyaNam, together
with SilappadikAram, Ciivaka-cintAmaNi, MaNimEkalai.
SilappatikAram contains of course a great deal of musicological material.

Grammatical texts and works of the mediaeval and modern periods might be
considered next.


                                Satyanad Kichenassamy
                                School of Mathematics
                                University of Minnesota
                                kichenas at math.umn.edu