Which one of the following statements about Tolkappiyam is not correct?

Correct — D, It was composed by Panini. The question asks for the statement that is NOT true, and this is it. The Tolkappiyam is a Tamil work, traditionally ascribed to Tolkappiyar; Panini wrote the Ashtadhyayi, the grammar of Sanskrit, several centuries earlier and in an entirely different language tradition. Attaching Panini to a Tamil text is the single false claim among the four.

• (a)It is a treatise on grammar. — True, so it cannot be the answer to a 'not correct' item. The Tolkappiyam is the oldest surviving Tamil grammar, covering letters and sounds, word formation and the conventions of poetry.
• (b)It was composed between first to fourth century CE. — True on the usual reckoning. Scholars place the surviving text in the early centuries of the Common Era, with earlier layers, and this dating is what the paper follows.
• (c)It was part of the Sangam corpus. — True. The Tolkappiyam is counted with the Sangam corpus and is the theoretical companion to the Sangam poems, setting out the akam and puram conventions those poems follow.

The Tolkappiyam is the oldest extant work in Tamil and a grammar in the widest sense — three books on orthography and phonology, on morphology, and on poetics and subject matter. Its third book codifies the akam (inner, love) and puram (outer, war and public life) division that organises Sangam poetry, so it functions as the rulebook for the literature around it.

The item works by pairing three safe statements with one that swaps in a famous name from another tradition. Panini belongs to Sanskrit grammar and to the north-west; Tolkappiyar belongs to Tamil and the far south. Any question that hands you a well-known author attached to a text from a different language is asking whether you can keep the two traditions apart.

• The Tolkappiyam is traditionally ascribed to Tolkappiyar, held to be a pupil of the sage Agastya.
• Panini's Ashtadhyayi is the Sanskrit grammar, in roughly 4,000 sutras, from about the fourth century BCE.
• The Tolkappiyam's three books are Eluttatikaram, Sollatikaram and Porulatikaram.
• Its Porulatikaram sets out the five tinais, the landscape settings of Sangam love poetry.

• A 'not correct' stem — three true statements and one false one, so the instinct to tick what you recognise is exactly wrong.
• Confusing Tolkappiyar with Thiruvalluvar, who wrote the Tirukkural.

As authorship, as dating, or as which anthology a Tamil text belongs to — the Tolkappiyam turns up in all three forms.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ashtadhyayi, a grammar of Sanskrit, was composed by

  • (a)Patanjali
  • (b)Panini
  • (c)Katyayana
  • (d)Tolkappiyar

  Answer(b) Panini — Katyayana wrote the Varttikas on it and Patanjali the Mahabhashya commentary.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The akam and puram division of Tamil poetry is set out in which text?

  • (a)Tirukkural
  • (b)Silappadikaram
  • (c)Tolkappiyam
  • (d)Manimekalai

  Answer(c) Tolkappiyam — its third book, the Porulatikaram, codifies the akam and puram conventions.