CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 38 of 120

Correct — A, A work of grammar. The Tolkappiyam is the oldest surviving Tamil grammar and the oldest surviving work in Tamil of any kind, attributed to an author known as Tolkappiyar. It is built in three books. The Eluttatikaram deals with letters and sounds, the Sollatikaram with words and their forms, and the Porulatikaram with subject matter — and it is that third book that makes the text far more than a manual of correct speech. In treating what a poem may be about, it sets out the whole Tamil poetic scheme: the division of poetry into aham, the inner life of love, and puram, the outer world of war and public conduct, and the five tinais or landscapes, each with its own hills, forests, farmland, seashore or wasteland, and each carrying the emotional mood proper to it. Because it prescribes that scheme, the Tolkappiyam is read as the foundation of the Sangam corpus rather than merely as a description of it.

• (b)A Tamil poem in praise of Rajendra Chola. — Wrong genre and wrong millennium. Court panegyric in Tamil belongs to the imperial Chola centuries, and its famous specimens are the parani and ula poems — the Kalingattupparani, for instance, celebrates the Kalinga campaign of Kulottunga I. The Tolkappiyam predates the imperial Cholas by a very long way and praises nobody.
• (c)An ancient didactic work in Tamil. — The most respectable wrong answer, because that description fits a real and famous class of Tamil texts — the Padinenkilkkanakku, the eighteen minor works, of which the Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar is the greatest. Those teach conduct; the Tolkappiyam teaches how the language and its poetry are constructed.
• (d)A drama composed by a Chera King. — This is a scrambled memory of the Silappadikaram, which tradition ascribes to Ilango Adigal, said to be a Chera prince. Even that is an epic rather than a drama, and it has nothing to do with the Tolkappiyam.

Tamil is the only classical Indian language with a continuous literary tradition reaching back to the early historic period, and the Tolkappiyam stands at the head of it. Its date is genuinely disputed — proposals run from a few centuries before the common era to about the fifth century CE, and the text as we have it may well have grown in layers — but its position is not. Everything that survives of Sangam poetry, the eight anthologies called Ettuttokai and the ten long poems called Pattuppattu, is read through the categories the Tolkappiyam lays down, and later Tamil grammars such as the Nannul are written in conscious relation to it.

The item is a category question rather than a content question: it asks what kind of book this is, and the four options offer four different kinds — grammar, panegyric, didactic verse and drama. Each wrong option names a genre that really exists in Tamil, which is what makes the question fair rather than trivial. The reliable hook is the name itself. Tolkappiyam is built from tol, meaning ancient or old, and kappiyam, a composition — an old book, and by tradition the oldest. If a student holds only one thing about Tamil literature, it should be the pairing of the Tolkappiyam as the oldest grammar with the Tirukkural as the great didactic text, because those two account for a large share of everything the examiners ask. Note that option (a) is printed with a full stop, as are all four options in this item; that is the paper's own styling and has been left as printed.

• The Tolkappiyam is the oldest extant Tamil grammar and the oldest extant Tamil text, attributed to Tolkappiyar.
• It has three books — Eluttatikaram on letters and sounds, Sollatikaram on words, and Porulatikaram on subject matter.
• The Porulatikaram sets out the aham and puram division of Tamil poetry and the five tinais or poetic landscapes.
• Sangam literature proper consists of the eight anthologies, Ettuttokai, and the ten long poems, Pattuppattu.
• The Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar is the best known of the Padinenkilkkanakku, the eighteen minor didactic works.
• The Silappadikaram is ascribed by tradition to Ilango Adigal, said to be a Chera prince; it is an epic, not a drama.

• Treating the Tolkappiyam as a Sangam poem; it is the grammar and poetics within which those poems were composed.
• Confusing it with the Tirukkural, which is the didactic classic rather than the grammatical one.
• Reading the Silappadikaram as a drama rather than an epic, and its author as a reigning Chera king rather than a prince of the line.

As a text-to-genre identification, or as a match list pairing Tamil works with their type or their authors.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The division of Tamil poetry into aham and puram, and the scheme of five poetic landscapes, is set out in which one of the following works?

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

  Answer(b) Tolkappiyam — specifically in its third book, the Porulatikaram, which deals with the subject matter of poetry.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tirukkural of Tiruvalluvar belongs to which category of Tamil literature?

  • (a)Grammar
  • (b)Court panegyric
  • (c)Didactic verse
  • (d)Devotional hymn

  Answer(c) Didactic verse — it is the most celebrated of the Padinenkilkkanakku, the eighteen minor works on conduct.