Libby app c/o Markham Library — reminder to pick up physical copy.

On the train ride to work

Started reading this today. Like most books on Sangam poetry, the first chunk of the book is a bunch of academics talking about how politically charged Tamil studies is. There's not a lot of new experts — it's the same names I see from the 70s and onwards. The last 10 years have been exciting in terms of archaeological digs and new findings. I'm not sure the old guard are updating their thinking with new findings. Of course, I am also biased with my views.

The intro to this book has some cool ideas:

• Sangam is a Jain/Buddhist term, so the idea of calling it a Tamil sangam would have been a Bhakti era response to the religious sangams from earlier
• First mention of Sangam Tamil is from Andal and TGS (link to Thirugnasambandar wiki)
• The first two sangams, mythologized as having taken place way back in the day and lasting thousands of years with thousands of poets in lands that don't exist anymore south of continental India, were presided over by Shiva and his son Murugan. With the rise of Tamil identity and Saivism as its presiding religion from the Bhakti movement onwards, there is a Hindu washing of Tamil history
• The myths of older kingdoms hint at some cultural history (is that the right word?) or lost history of a major catastrophic event like a tsunami that might have killed and displaced Tamil people
• Tholkappiyan is ~2000 years old but references older texts that are lost
• Tholkappiyar could have been a Jain (not much more is said about this)
• Akam and puram is way more nuanced than just interior and exterior
• I'm not doing this justice, but the thinai ('physiographical regions in which love poems are set') named Palai is my new favourite. Bias alert: I thought I remembered it as being desert, but this author explains it as 'wilderness and dried up Kurinji and Mullai land during hot summers.' There is no desert proper in the Tamil lands. Palai is used to denote 'the lover's departure and travel through wilderness in search of wealth, education or adventure'
• I need to look up what orientalism is to understand what anti-orientalism is

I liked this poem: Nattrinai 336

On the train from work and then to work in the morning

Still on the introductions. Looks like 25% of the book is context building. I'm grateful because as a fan of Tamil, I don't know so much, including reading and writing past a preschool level.

• Caught off guard on the evolution of Tamil studies: Tamil scholars from precolonial/colonial days were heavily Saivite, and the Jain/Buddhist inclusion in Sangam poetry — or even the secular nature of most of the writing — meant that they didn't pay attention to Sangam poetry. This sounds like it makes sense, but we know that Sangam poems mostly mention what we recognize as Hindu deities, so I'm not so sure about this claim.
• The author claims that Hindu scholars — I guess the ones with access to education in those times were predominantly Brahmins — had a bias toward Sanskrit and Brahmin-centric or Vedic-centric thought. They preferred the idea of all Indian languages coming from Sanskrit, but it was the colonizers that shed light on pre-Vedic (I like to use the term Vedic rather than Aryan) goings-on in Tamil country.
• I don't agree with this entirely. With the discovery of Troy and other ancient civilizations, European thinkers definitely had a selfish motivation to be founders of a new civilization. I don't think it was the pursuit of truth that shed light on ancient Tamil civilization. That said, I agree that introducing the idea of an academic vs sacred approach to education helped a lot. Indians tend to sacralise things too much, and it strays away from truth, more into feeling. The European Enlightenment probably helped minds stray away from biblical dating and 'truths' into actual truth-seeking.

The author heaps a lot of praise on ML Thangappa, who translated most of the poems in this collection. I'm keen to find a biography on this man or his other translated works.

The rest of the book is the collection of selected poems. I understand why akam poetry has such strict guidelines now. The poems don't feel like poems the way I'm used to reading or how I write poetry. I try to wrap a thought with words that conjure a certain feeling. These poems are feelings — the words used to convey the feelings are just placement markers to take you to the place where you felt this way. It's a map of human emotions. No wonder Tamil poetry uses landscapes.