TokAppiyam

[N. Ganesan]

("N. Ganesan" <GANESANS at CL.UH.EDU>) avez écrit :
> A tolkAppiyam poruL atikAram sUttiram says:
>
>" nATaka vazakkin2um ulakiyal vazakkin2um

> pATal cAn2Ra pulan2eRi vazakkam
> *kaliyE paripATTu Ayiru pAvin2um*
> uriyatu Akum en2man2Ar pulavar. "
>
>This tol. rule essentially says love poems must be written
>in either kali or paripATTu meter and this custom is followed by
>poets before him.
>
>This contradicts with S. Vaiyapuri Pillai's theory that
>tol. was written after Sangam poetry were composed.
>

J-L. Chevillard wrote:
<<<
To add other elements to the total sum
of evidences and learned opinions, I will today
quote prof. George L. Hart III's viewpoint,
as it appears on page 10 in his 1975 book (PAT):
"The poems of Ancient Tamil, their milieu
 and their Sanskrit counterpart"
 University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-02672-1

"The _Tolkaappiyam_, a treatise on grammar and poetic convention,
 is generally said to have been written even before the anthologies.
 This claim, if true, would make that work of great importance
 in this investigation. However, Mahadevan has shown
 that the writing system described by the _Tolkaappiyam_,
 and specifically the part that calls for putting a dot (_puLLi_)
 over a letter to indicate that it is not followed by the vowel _a_
 (as a _virAma_ in Sanskrit), was not used until several centuries
 after the period of the anthologies. In other words, parts
 of the _Tolkaappiyam_ are quite late, though some parts
 may be as early as has been generally claimed. Unfortunately,
 since it is quite impossible to separate the early parts
 of the _Tolkaappiyam_ from the later parts, that work
 cannot be relied upon for historical data on the period
 of the anthologies" (PAT, p.10)
>>>>

>From I. Mahadevan, Orthographic sytems in early Tamil writing,
JIAS, 8, 1, 1990, p. 42
 "The silver portrait coins of the Satavahanas issued in
  second century A.D. with bi-lingual legends provide us
  with fairly firm dating for the use of puLLi. The lead
  coins of the Andipatti hoard (Mohandas 1968) and the cave 
  inscriptions (Anaimalai, Aivarmalai, etc.,) using puLLi
  broadly belong to this period."

>From I. Mahadevan, Recent trends in early Tamil epigraphy,
JIAS, 13, 1, 1995, p. 24 (On Vasisththiputra Satakarni (160 AD))
  "These features are all characteristic of the Tamil-Brahmi
   script, especially the puLLi known from the days of the
   TolkAppiyam, and also occuring in a number of Tamil-Brahmi
   cave inscriptions from about the second century A,D."

Is it possible that earlier inscriptions the puLLi is left
out just as in the practice of writing on palm leaves?
In any case, puLLi is found from 2nd century A.D.

I still subscribe to K. Zvelebil's opinion from 1970s to date
that Ur-tolkAppiyam was written around "150 B.C. (and
posssibly earlier?)". But some portions of the tol. 
could have been inserted even as late as 5th century A.D.

Regards,
N. Ganesan