SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 21 of 99

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

______, authored by Tolkappiyar is the earliest Tamil literature.

(a)Narrinai
(b)Tolkappiyam
(c)Kalittogai
(d)Ettutogai

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Tolkappiyam is the earliest surviving work in Tamil, and it carries its author's name — Tolkappiyar, exactly as the stem states.

It is not poetry but a treatise on grammar and poetics, in three books: Ezhuttatikaram on letters and sounds, Sollatikaram on words, and Porulatikaram on subject matter.

Author named, earliest work, single-author treatise — option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Narrinai — Narrinai is one of the eight Sangam anthologies of the Ettuttokai, a collection of akam (love) poems by many different poets rather than a work by Tolkappiyar.
(c)
Kalittogai — Kalittogai is another of those eight anthologies, composed in the kali metre, and is again a multi-poet collection of later date.
(d)
Ettutogai — Ettutogai is not a single book at all — it is the Eight Anthologies as a group, and both Narrinai and Kalittogai are members of it.

Concept

Sangam literature has two halves that students routinely blur.

One is the poetry — the Ettuttokai (Eight Anthologies) and the Pattuppattu (Ten Idylls), gathered from many poets.

The other is the grammar, and there the Tolkappiyam stands alone: the oldest extant Tamil text, and the work that fixes the akam (inner, love) and puram (outer, public and heroic) conventions the poets then follow.

The date of Tolkappiyam is disputed among scholars, and this stem sidesteps that entirely: it hands you the author and asks only for the title.

Key facts

Tolkappiyam, attributed to Tolkappiyar, is the earliest extant work in Tamil.
It is a treatise on grammar and poetics in three books: Ezhuttatikaram, Sollatikaram and Porulatikaram.
Its Porulatikaram sets out the akam and puram conventions of Sangam poetry.
Narrinai and Kalittogai are two of the eight anthologies that make up the Ettuttokai.

Study next

The eight anthologies of the Ettuttokai and the ten idylls of the PattuppattuThe Tamil epics Silappadikaram and Manimekalai and their authorsAkam and puram as the organising categories of Sangam poetry

Common traps

Treating Ettutogai as a book with an author.
Confusing the earliest Tamil work (Tolkappiyam, a grammar) with the earliest Tamil epic (Silappadikaram).

SSC pairs a Tamil title with its author, and a wrong option offered is often the right author of a neighbouring text.

Also asked 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, GA Q14 (who wrote Silappathikaram, with Tolkappiyar offered among the options).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.