Mahadevan says that D-evas-ena, the author of Darsan-asara, a Prakriti work written in 853 A.D. has mentioned that Vajranandi, the pupil of P-ujyap-ada, founded the Dravida Sa.mgha in Madurai in 468- 469 A.D. The Dravida Sa.mgha was so famous that it has been referred to in the Kannada inscriptions from Karnataka. Mahadevan's speculation that the legends relating to the three successive Tamil Sangams (literary academies) at Madurai are probably based on later recollection of the name. Dravida Sa.mgha deserves a further probe by Tamil scholars. That many of the outstanding authors like Tolk-appiyar, Tiruvalluvar, I.la.nko and Tirutthakkathevar were Jainas is also a significant point.
The Sangam society as reflected in its poetry (ca. First-Third Centuries A.D.) was free from hierarchy of any kind, social or cultural. The poets, who wrote these poems, came from all sections of the society, princes, Brahmins, farmers, merchants, workers and women. This is no surprise. Mahadevan says that the Early and Late and Va.t.te.luttu inscriptions depicted a high literate society, literacy of very popular and democratic character. It was free from elitism. Literacy was widespread covering almost all the regions, urban and rural, as evidenced by the inscribed pottery obtained during the excavations and explorations. The number of such finds is much more than elsewhere in the country. The author states, "the pottery inscriptions are secular in character and the names occurring in them indicate that common people from all strata of Tamil society made these scratchings and scribblings on pottery owned by them; on the other hand, inscribed pottery excavated from Upper Sou! th Indian sites are all in Prakrit and mostly associated with religious centres like Amaravathi and Salihundam."
How did this happen? The author has a very convincing reason for this that cannot be bettered. The mother tongue (Tamil) was the vehicle of social transaction between all sections of the people. Literacy can be "meaningful and creative", only if the society conducts its activity of any nature in its own mother tongue. The political independence of Tamil country was also one of the important factors for the popular literacy ratio in this region. The Upper South India was under the Nanda-Maurya domination and the administrative language was Prakrit, the language of the Northern rulers and the local ruling elite. The common people were alienated and they had no participatory role in the Government. Mahadevan's brilliant analysis of the situation is one of the crowning achievements of this book.
Copying of cave inscriptions by the author and his team (1992). (go the website - mathy)
Nothing has been written until now, on Tamil Epigraphy, so rewarding and communicating, as this book is. It is a comprehensive in-depth treatise, in which a multi-disciplinary learning of an awesome dimension is much in evidence. Mahadevan brings to bear upon this book, running to 719 pages, his rare insights, cool objectivity, immense patience, intense and rigorous scholarship, backed by a thorough knowledge of Sanskrit, Tamil and Prakrit.
The book, jointly published by Cre-A, Chennai and the Sanskrit Department of Harvard University, U.S., (the first ever book Harvard has issued on Tamil Studies) would go a long way in establishing the historicity and antiquity of Tamil, in the context of the earliest inscriptions found in this ancient language.