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The Tolkappiyam is a work on the grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
 of the Tamil language
Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
 and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature
Tamil literature

Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years....
. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram. Each of these books is further divided into nine chapters each. Based on linguistic and other evidence, it has been dated variously
Date of the Tolkappiyam

The dating of the earliest Tamil language grammatical treatise Tolkappiyam has been debated much and it is still imprecise and uncertain and has seen wide disagreements amongst scholars in the field....
 between the eighth century BCE and the 3rd century BCE.






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The Tolkappiyam is a work on the grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
 of the Tamil language
Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
 and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature
Tamil literature

Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years....
. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram. Each of these books is further divided into nine chapters each. Based on linguistic and other evidence, it has been dated variously
Date of the Tolkappiyam

The dating of the earliest Tamil language grammatical treatise Tolkappiyam has been debated much and it is still imprecise and uncertain and has seen wide disagreements amongst scholars in the field....
 between the eighth century BCE and the 3rd century BCE. Some modern scholars prefer to date it not as a single entity but in parts or layers. There is also no firm evidence to assign the authorship of this treatise to any one author.

Etymology of the name

There are two different etymologies proposed. One of them proposes that the name Tolkappiyam is derived from the combination of the two words Tol and kappiyam. Tol means ancient and Kappiam means literature. Another proposes that it is derived from the author's name Tolkappiyar. The latter seems more likely as there is a long tradition in the ancient Tamil milieu of naming treatises, especially grammatical ones, after the author. For example, Kakkaipatiniyam after Kakkaipatini, Avinayam after Avinayan, Vayppiyam after Vayppiyan. (See: "Maraintu Pona Tamil Nulka?", Mayilai Cini. Venkatacami). Moreover there are attested poets from the same era with names containing kappiyan as in Kappiyarruk Kappiyanar (Kappiyanar from Kappiyaru) the author of one of the decads in Patirruuppattu.

Tolkappiyar was the author of the Tamil
Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
 grammatical work of Tolkappiyam
Tolkappiyam

The Tolkappiyam is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram....
. There is no evidence available for his existence or of the precise period he might have lived. Tolkappiyam is attributed to him by convention. Tolkappiyam sets out the syntactic rules and of Tamil and its use in prose and poetry.

Overview

Tolkappiyam, deals with orthography
Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Orthography is derived from Greek language ????? orth?s and ???fe?? gr?phein ....
, phonology
Phonology

Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also has a phonology in the sense of a sound system....
, morphology
Morphology (linguistics)

Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of structure of words . While words are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, it is clear that in most languages, words can be related to other words by rules....
, semantics
Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning in communication. The word is derived from the Greek language word s??a?t???? , "significant", from s??a??? , "to signify, to indicate" and that from s??a , "sign, mark, token"....
, prosody
Prosody

Prosody may refer to:* Prosody , the study of rhythm, intonation, stress, and related attributes in speech* Prosody , the study of poetic meter...
 and the subject matter of literature. The Tolkappiyam classifies the Tamil language into "sentamil" and "kotuntamil". The former refers to the classical Tamil used almost exclusively in literary works and the latter refers to the dialectal Tamil, spoken by the people in the various regions of ancient Tamilakam
Tamilakam

may refer to:*historically, the 'Ancient Tamil country' of the Old Tamil period, as distinct from the many kingdoms that existed within its boundaries....
..

Tolkappiyam catergorises alphabet into consonants and vowels by analysing the syllables. It grammatises the use of words and syntaxes and moves into higher modes of language analysis. The Tolkappiyam formulated thirty phonemes and three dependent sounds for Tamil.

Dating of the Tolkappiyam

The dating of the earliest Tamil
Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has Official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore....
 grammatical treatise Tolkappiyam
Tolkappiyam

The Tolkappiyam is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram....
 has been debated much and it is still imprecise and uncertain and has seen wide disagreements amongst scholars in the field. It has been dated variously between 800 BCE and 10th CE.

While most of the antediluvian datings which stem mostly from a descriptive commentary in an 8th century work called Iraiyanar AgapporuL, about the existence of three Tamil Academies, which have been rejected as being devoid of any evidence, the genuine disagreements now center around widely divergent dates lying between the third century BCE and 10th CE
Common Era

Common Era, abbreviated as CE, is a designation for the calendar system most commonly used in the Western world, and also internationally, for numbering the year part of the calendar date....
. Some modern scholars prefer to date it not as a single entity but in parts or layers which are estimated as written between the third century BCE and the fifth century CE. There is also no firm evidence to assign the authorship of this treatise to any one author. The most proiminent dating of Tolkappiyam is 500 BCE by the worldwide recognised Iravatham Mahadevan

Authorship

Not much is known about who the author was or when he lived. Traditionally, it was thought that there could have been only one author but given the fairly long time it seems to have taken for the final redaction of the book to become available, it is reasonable to ascribe the work to multiple authors. Zvelebil speculates that the final redaction may even have been the work of a systematised school of grammar than the work of individuals.

Many authors however, ascribe the work to Jaina
Jainism

Jainism is one of the oldest Indian religions that originated in India. Jains believe that every soul is divine and has the potential to achieve God-consciousness....
 traditions and the earliest of the possibly many authors, who has been identified as Tolkappiyanaar to a heterodox Jaina order. Some authors have also speculated that Tolkappiyanaar might have been a Brahmin belonging to the village of kappiya. Vaiyapuri Pillay has suggested that Tolkappiyanaar may have belonged to a heterodox Jaina grammatical tradition called aintiram(a view which other scholars like Burnell, Takanobu and Zvelebil share) and that he was a native of Tiruvatankotu in present day Southern Kerala
Kerala

Kerala is a Indian Union States and territories of India located in the southwestern part of India. With an Arabian Sea coastline on the west, it is bordered on the north by Karnataka and by Tamil Nadu on the south and east....
.

Commentaries

Starting the 11th-12th CE, several commentaries came to light. Of these, the one by Ilampuranar dated to the 11th or 12th CE is considered one of the best and most comprehensive. This was followed by a commentary dateable to 1275 AD by Cenavaraiyar which however, dealt only with the Collatikaram. A commentary by Peraciriyar which is heavily indebted to the Nannul
Nannul

Nannul is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language derived from Tolkappiyam. This was written by Pavananthi Munivar around 13th century....
 followed. This commentary which can be dated to the 12th or 13th CE, if not later, frequently quotes from the Dandiyalankaram and Yapparunkalam, the former being a standard medieval rhetorica and the latter being a detailed treatise on Tamil prosody. Naccinarkiniyar's commentary, which can be dated to the 14th if not 15-16th century follows. Naccinarkiniyar, himself being a scholar of both Tamil and Sanskrit quotes from Parimelalakar's works. Teyvaccilaiyar's commentary follows in the 16th or 17th century. Finally, the latest available commentary, that of Kallatar comes to light. Of these commentaries, those of "Ilampooranar", "Deivachilaiyaaar" and "Natchinaarkiniyar" is regarded highly and the triumvarate are also called "Urai-asiriyargal".

Chapters


Tolkaappiyamexcerpt
Tolkaappiyamexcerptarticulatoryphonetics
The Tolkappiyam consists of three books each of which is divided into 9 chapters. The books are called atikarams (Sanskrit:adhikara). The three books are

  1. Ezhuththathikaaram
  2. Sollathikaaram
  3. PoruLathikaaram


Ezhuththathikaaram

Ezhuththathikaaram is further subdivided into the following 9 sections - Nuul Marabu, Mozhi Marabu, PiRappiyal, PuNaRiyal, Thokai Marabu, Urubiyal, Uyir Mayangial, PuLLi Mayangial and the KutriyalukarappunaRiyal.

Nuul Marabu - This section enumerates the characters of the language, organises them into consonants, vowels and diacritic symbols. The vowels are sub classified into short and long vowels based on duration of pronunciation. Similarly, the consonants are sub classified into three categories based on the stress.

Mozhi Marabu - This section defines rules which specify where in a word can a letter not occur and which letter can not come after a particular letter. It also describes elision
Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphony effect....
, which is the reduction in the duration of sound of a phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
 when preceded by or followed by certain other sounds. The rules are well-defined and unambiguous. They are categorised into 5 classes based on the phoneme which undergoes elision.

  1. Kutriyalukaram - the (lip unrounded) vowel sound u
  2. Kutriyalikaram - the vowel sound i(as the vowel in 'lip')
  3. Aiykaarakkurukkam - the diphthong
    Diphthong

    In phonetics, a diphthong, or , is a contour vowel?that is, a unitary vowel that changes vowel quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a glissando of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held s...
     ai
  4. Oukaarakkurukkam - the diphthong au
  5. Aaythakkurukkam - the special character (aaytham)


PiRappiyal - This is a section on articulatory phonetics
Articulatory phonetics

The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians attempt to document how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures....
. It talks about pronunciation methods of the phoneme
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
s at the level of diaphragm, larynx
Larynx

The larynx , colloquially known as the voicebox, is an organ in the neck of mammals involved in protection of the vertebrate trachea and sound production....
, jaws, tongue position, teeth, lips and nose. The visual representation of the letters is also explained.

PuNaRiyal - This section talks about the changes to words due to the following word i.e. it specifies rules that govern the transformations on the last phonem of a word (nilaimozhi iiRu) because of the first phonem of the following word (varumozhi muthal) when used in a sentence.

Thokai Marabu

Urubiyal - This section talks about the word modifiers that are added at the end of nouns and pronouns when they are used as an object as opposed to when they are used as subjects.

Uyir Mayangial

PuLLi - Pulli concept is one of the distinguishing feature among the Tamil characters. Although it is not unique and brahmi also has pulli. It is distinguished by placement . According to tolkappiam which talks about pulli and its position, that is on top of the alphabet instead of side as in Brahmi. This is also one of the characteristics of Tamil brahmi according to Mr. Mahadevan. The first inscription of this type of pulli is in vallam by pallvas dated 7-8th century AD by Mahendra varman pallava. KutriyalukarappunaRiyal

Sollathikaaram

Sollathikaaram deals with words and parts of speech. It classifies Tamil words into four categories - iyar chol(Words in common usage, thiri chol(words used in Tamil literature), vata chol(words borrowed from Sanskrit), thisai chol(words borrowed from other languages. There are certain rules to be adhered to in borrowing words from Sanskrit. The borrowed words need to strictly conform to the Tamil phonetic system and be written in the Tamil script.

The chapter Sollathikaaram is sub divided into the following 9 sections - KiLaviyaakkam, VEtRumaiyiyal, VEtrumaimayangial, ViLimaRabu, Peyariyal, Vinaiyiyal, Idaiyiyal, Uriyiyal and the Echchaviyal.

KiLaviyaakkam- KiLaviyaakkam literally translates to word formation. This section deals with gender
Gender

Gender comprises a range of differences between man and woman, extending from the biological to the social. Biologically, the male gender is defined by the presence of a Y-chromosome, and its absence in the female gender....
, number
Number

A number is a mathematical object used in counting and measurement. A notational symbol which represents a number is called a Numeral system, but in common usage the word number is used for both the abstract object and the symbol, as well as for the numeral for the number....
, person
Person

The term person in common usage means an individual human being. In the fields of law, philosophy, medicine, and others, the term also has specialised context-specific meanings....
 etc. VEtRumaiyiyal

VEtrumaimayangial

ViLimaRabu

Peyariyal - This section deals with noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
s.

Vinaiyiyal - This section deals with verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
s.

Idaiyiyal

Uriyiyal - This literally translates to the nature or science of qualifiers and deals with adjective
Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
s and adverb
Adverb

An adverb is a part of speech. It is any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentence s and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives....
s.

Echchaviyal

PoruLathikaaram

The Tolkappiyam is possibly the only book on grammar that describes a grammar for life
Life

Life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit certain biological processes such as chemical reactions or other events that results in a transformation....
. PoruLathikaaram gives the classification of land types, and seasons and defines modes of life for each of the combinations of land types and seasons for different kinds of people. This chapter is subdivided into the following 9 sections - AkaththiNaiyiyal, PuRaththiNaiyiyal, KaLaviyal, KaRpiyal, PoruLiyal, Meyppaattiyal, Uvamayiyal, SeyyuLiyal and the Marabiyal.

AkaththiNaiyiyal - This section defines the modes of personal life i.e. life of couples.

PuRaththiNaiyiyal - This section defines the modes of one's public life.

KaLaviyal -

KaRpiyal

PoruLiyal

Meyppaattiyal

Uvamayiyal - The name Uvamayiyal literally translates to the nature or science of metaphor
Metaphor

Metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. It is a figure of speech that compares two or more things without using the words "like" or "as." More generally, a metaphor describes a first subject as being or equal to a second object in some way....
s.

SeyyuLiyal - This section deals with a grammar for classical Tamil Poetry based on principles of prosody
Prosody

Prosody may refer to:* Prosody , the study of rhythm, intonation, stress, and related attributes in speech* Prosody , the study of poetic meter...
.

Marabiyal

See also

  • Date of the Tolkappiyam
    Date of the Tolkappiyam

    The dating of the earliest Tamil language grammatical treatise Tolkappiyam has been debated much and it is still imprecise and uncertain and has seen wide disagreements amongst scholars in the field....
  • Aindra school of Sanskrit grammar
    Aindra school of grammar

    The Aindra school of Sanskrit grammar is one of the eleven schools of grammar mentioned in Panini's Ashtadhyayi. It is named after Indra in allusion to Indra, the king of Gods in Hindu mythology....


Footnote


External links