Between preservation and recreation: tamil traditions of commentary.

Ann selby, Martha

Between Preservation and Recreation: Tamil Traditions of Commentary. Edited by EVA WILDEN. Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient Collection Indologie, vol. 109. Pondichery: INSTITUT FRAKAIS DE PONDICHERY / ECOLE FRAKAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT. 2009. Pp. xiv + 319.

Devoted to different aspects of Tamil commentary, this exceptional collection of essays is the result of a workshop organized by the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient in 2006, in honor of Pandit T. V. Gopal Iyer (1926-2007). Editor Eva Wilden's gracious preface marks out the parameters of the book, followed by Sascha Ebeling's warm tribute to the phenomenal abilities and accomplishments of this legendary teacher and scholar, whose self-dictated biography in Tamil (1-11) and in English translation (13-21) follows Ebeling's tribute. Wilden has also usefully included Gopal Iyer's curriculum vitae as well as a comprehensive bibliography, a truly astonishing list of publications by this generous and versatile scholar.

In Wilden's introduction she points out the fact that, even though the beginning of the Tamil exegetical tradition is usually dated at the eighth century with NakIciran's famous commentary on the Iraiyanar Akapporul, a late classical work on poetics, by the time of Nakkiran "we are already faced with a fully developed specimen of commentarial idiom and technique" (p. 37). In her careful and sensible remarks, she notes that "we can safely speak of a tradition" (p. 38), and she also stresses our enormous and almost absolute "dependence on the testimony of the commentaries" (p. 42). Wilden also discusses some socio-historical aspects of the commentaries, especially their concerns with morality, the sexuality of young girls, and the fear of inconvenient pregnancy not sanctioned by marriage; in other words, what happens in commentarial writing when "poetic behavior or norms deviate from worldly norms" (p. 43).

In "A Survey of Classical Tamil Commentary Literature," Thomas Lehmann defines the time span of this literature "as 1100 years, spanning from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries C.E." (p. 55), with half of the one hundred extant commentaries composed during the "golden period" of the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, when the great commentators such as Parimelalakar and Naccinarldciniyar were productive, writing "not just one but several commentaries on primary works of different liter- ary genres" (p. 56). Lehmann identifies four different commentarial genres (p. 56), with each genre employing "different commentarial or compositional methods of strategies for expounding ... primary texts," each with "its own context, cause and time of original, and its own chronological develop- ment," indicating, finally, that there are four genres but also four traditions (p. 57). Lehmann asks probing questions about the changes in "intellectual milieu" across time, making note of the rise of the grivaishava commentaries in the twelfth century, marked by the composition of Tirulcurukai Nan Pillan. written at some point between 1100 and 1150, the "first religious commentary in the Hindu tradition not written in Sanskrit" (p. 62). Lehmann points out that the rise of the literary commentarial tradition, also a twelfth-century phenomenon, may have been influenced by the rise of the nighatgus, or "synonym dictionaries," since these early commentaries were basically annotative in character (p. 63). Lehmann adds that it is "very likely that the writing of literary commentaries took place in analogy or imitation [of] the writing of the grivaishava commentaries" (p. 64), and because of the valorization of direct experience of Siva, the "taboo against the composition of commentaries in the gaiva bhakti tradition was in effect until the nineteenth century, when the first commentary on a Tirumurai text was composed ... in 1834" (pp. 65-66).

This is an excellent reference piece, even though the tables embedded in the article proper are somewhat confusing--Lehmann might have refined his thinking on these a bit--but the chronological tables listed as appendices (pp. 68-70) are very useful. They provide chronologies of all available pre-nineteenth-century commentaries, categorized according to Lehmann's generic categories.

In -The Metagrammatical Vocabulary inside the Lists of 32 Tantrayuktis and Its Adaptation to Tamil: Towards a Sanskrit-Tamil Dictionary," Jean-Luc Chevillard explores how Tamil authors translated San- skrit tantrayukti categories and terminology into Tamil "during one of the stages of the gradual growth of Tamil technical literature" (p. 71). He defines and analyzes various translation strategies. Chevil-lard's analyses are astute, trustworthy, and judicious, especially in his remarks on the dating of the Tolkappiyam--Chevillard is the only scholar I know of who has the breadth and wherewithal to make these assertions. Although the problem of dating the Tolkappi)'am is by no means put to rest, Chevil-lard moves us closer. He also offers his observations on the fluid and fixed nature of the Tolkappiyarn (p. 92), and, in passing, works out text chronologies via the tantrayukti lists in the Tolkappiyam and other later grammars and manuals on poetics. Chevillard could have been more expansive: the material as presented is very dense, and more interpretation and guidance through this valuable material would have been welcome. Chevillard also provides an interesting discussion on the term tantira (Sanskrit tantra) in early Tamil sources, and notes that it does not make an appearance until the Cilappatikaram (pp. 101-2). He then circles back to the matter at hand and ends with a summary of four discrete translation strategies (pp. 112-15).

In "Tolkappiyam: A Treatise on the Semiotics of Ancient Tamil Poetry," G. Vijayavenugopal's aim is "to trace and reconstruct the theory of 'grammar' of [the] Tolkappiyam and to argue that it really is a grammar for the understanding [of] the body of literature called the can/cam poems ..." (p. 133). Rather than excluding poetry as beyond the pale of grammatical norms, Vijayavenugopal states that instead the author of the Tolkappiyam "points out several poetic deviations or usages found only in poetry in all the parts of his grammar quite within his theory of grammar" (p. 136). He provocatively concludes that the name of the text does not refer to the text itself (i.e., the "Old Composition"), but in fact refers to its subject matter, "Old Literature" (p. 143).

In her excellent article on the relationship between canonization and commentarial production, Eva Wilden asks two basic but essential questions: "Which literature in Tamil ought to be regarded as classical? Which texts were valued; which were the most widely circulated?" (p. 145). After a very careful consideration of the legend of the founding of the Tamil catikams, Wilden remarks on the claims made "for antiquity and excellence, leading to the first outlining of a canon" (p. 150). Wilden also states that there is "every reason to call this the first renaissance of Tamil, to use a word which has been reserved so far for the events of the late nineteenth century" (p. 150; Wilden is referring to the so-called "discovery" and resulting flourishing of philological and commentarial activity at the turn of the twentieth century). Like the preceding authors in this volume, Wilden also emphasizes the fact that "the Tamil tradition itself sees poetics as a part of grammar and thus as a section of the same transmissional strand" (pp. 150-51 n. 17). Wilden concludes that the commentators' "references to texts and the quotations from texts give us an idea of the literary universe the commentators were moving in" (p. 158).

A. Dhamotharan's contribution, "The Style of the Commentary on the Iraiyandr Kalaviyal," discusses the prose style of Nakkirar's famous commentary on the text, and how this skilled commentator employed a technique adopted from verse composition, antciti natai, to prevent interpolations, preserve the sequence of sentences and meaning, and aid in the memorization of the text (p. 167). This is the only article in the volume in Tamil, aside from Gopal lyer's biographical essay.

Martine Gestin's article, "A Brilliant Gloss for Tamil Social History: Pre-marital Courtship and Marriage at the Time of Nakkirar," is well intentioned but naive, and seems very much out of place in this collection. Essentialism rears its ugly head throughout the article, in her characterization of "the whole production of Ancient India" as "impregnated with an elitist, anti-materialistic, and universalistic spirit" (p. 184) or her assertion that literary texts are somehow representations of an "ageless imaginative world" (p. 196). Such assertions make it very difficult to take Gestin seriously. Her discussion of "bride-price" is interesting, but Gestin takes the Tamil expressions for it, such as mulai-vilai, far too literally: these are idioms, after all. Gestin also writes at great length about "the gift of the virgin," which is simply not applicable in most cankam contexts, for in this poetic world the couple have physically consummated their relationship in the kuriiici landscape. Gestin appears to be applying ideas from other textual and anthropological worlds to this one, and her analyses fail because of it. She discusses poetic tropes, conventions, and sequences as if none of these were "fictive," which is disturbing. Elopement, for instance, is a poetic convention in the world of the carikam texts: there is nothing in these texts that suggests that elopement was ever ritually sanctioned in any way whatsoever, and to think of it as such is quite a stretch. She also attempts to relate dharma- and kama-Ristra categories to Nakkirar's commentary. which is interesting as an exercise, but bears little fruit.

T. V. Gopal lyer's article examines how the fourteenth-century commentator NaccinArIcIciniyar rectifies seeming "contradictions" in literary works to literary norms set out in the Tolkeippiyam, and how Naccirarkkiniyar also "rescues" carikam heroes and heroines from moral error by interpreting questionable scenes in more flattering ways. Naccinarklciniyar also intervenes when a "poet's esteem" might seem compromised (p. 232). It is very interesting and instructive to watch how a learned commentator makes sense out of textual inconsistencies.

T S. Gangadharan's article is devoted to an exploration of Parimelalakar's commentary on the Tirukku rat. Gangadharan provides a fascinating discussion about textual integrity and organization, highlighting the Tirukkurars arrangement of chapters--and verses within chapters--according to Parimelalakar's "logic." This prolific commentator's goal appears to have been to bring out the "maximum signification" of each verse "in accordance with the heading of the respective chapter" (p. 241). Gangadharan also provides a short but enlightening sample glossary of simple and compound words in the Tirukkural, giving us a sampling of the precision of Parimelalakar's understanding, as well as the elegant brevity of his style (pp. 250-51).

S. Rajeswan tackles the question of authorship of the 150 verses of the carikam anthology Kalitto-kai. She presents new manuscript evidence that, at the very least for the', alai section of the anthology, indicates that there are eleven authors for the pa/ai poems, leading Rajeswari to conclude that "the rest of the four kalis might have been made by many poets, too- (p. 262). R. Varadadesikan's article provides a chronological synopsis of Vaispava literature over the past two millennia, especially in regard to the matzipmvalam commentaries of the eleventh to fifteenth centuries.

In the final article of this volume Sascha Ebeling begins with an examination of the relationship between Tamil texts and commentaries, and then moves on to the focus of his essay, a close look at "what happened to the Tamil philological commentary, the ural, during the nineteenth century" (p. 282), opening with a valuable discussion of the terms nal ("book," "text") and mcdam ("root text") in relation to the urai ("commentary"). Ebeling describes the "social logic" of commentarial practice and its role in the establishment of "textual communities," as commentaries work to "empower" both text and author (p. 290). He also examines the rise of print culture in the Madras Presidency in the nineteenth century, the resulting transformation of the Tamil commentary in the age of the printing press, a growing "philological awareness" (p. 301), and the rise of the figure of the "pandit-publisher" (p. 306).

The book's only overall flaw is that the English is not well edited. Since most of the essays are of a technical nature, this volume is most definitely for specialists only, but it should be read by Sanskritists, too: there is much in it for any Indologist interested in commentaries, their fascinating histories, and the evolution of technical prose genres.

MARTHA ANN SELBY UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN