Age of "sangam" literature
  • According to Dr.Mu.Manickam (quoting Neelakanda sastri and other
    scholars), the upper limit is not more than first century when lower
    limit is fixed as 3rd century (from cirupaanatrupadai)

    I have spoken to few other scholars who do not take tholkappiyam
    beyond 500 BC.

    Vedas are considered to be atleast 1500 BC.(Dr.Romila thappar)

    So we have a 1000 year span between vedic period and Tholkappiyam in
    which there are no literary evidence. But there are other evidences
    in terms of rock art, excavations etc

    Can somebody try to fix adichchanallur, lalgudi finds,, naarthamalai
    finds into their respective periods ?

    And what tholkappiyam says about society religion etc is even more
    interesting....
  • I am not a great scholar and do not know anything about tamil
    litrature...

    but
    > Vedas are considered to be atleast 1500 BC.(Dr.Romila thappar)

    Is it true? NASA and many other scholars have convincing evidences
    that Mahabharatha happened before 3000BC. BhagatGita is during this
    era. Krishna says he is 'Rig vedam' among vedas in Gita....then
    obviously veda's should be even more older than 3000BC...

    Then how come Romila tapar or any one say Vedas are from 1500BC....

    Cho in his "Hindu Maha Samudram" says, no one is clear about the date
    of vedas and each one had their own opinion. So during their bargain
    everyone came to conclusion like, unakkum vendam enakku vendam..oru
    3000 varursham vechikalamnu...they narrowed down on 1500BC...

    Interestingly, in "Thennattu Porkalangal" Appadurai says that the poet
    of "Purananuru"(am I correct? nyabagam illa) who speaks about the
    chera king who provided food to the Kurukshetra Army during the war is
    a contemprory of Mahabaratha time and so sanga ilakkiyam are as old as
    5000 Years. He goes a step ahead and says, that time only Tamil was
    the language used throughout India and Sanskrit came only after
    that...due to Aryan invasion...

    evanga arasiyalla nammala manda kaya vekkarangappa...
  • You are right in satish. I think we need to take 1500 BC as the lower
    limit.

    I know this is not a topic which can be conclusive, but I am interested
    more in knowing the time between vedas and tholkappiyam.

    Most scholars I read do not take sangam beyond 500 BC.
    Perunchotrudhiyan is the pandiyan king you are talking about. But I
    think associating him with mahabharatha etc could be a later thought. I
    am not sure
  • > Can somebody try to fix adichchanallur, lalgudi finds,, naarthamalai
    > finds into their respective periods ?
    Adichchanallur is the very old than the period what you are discussing
    their species itself is somewhat different from us. They had elangated
    cheek etc,

    I am is very sure that their period will be =>1000 above 1500 BC.

    If needed I can search and give the entire article for you.
  • Dear Sathish,

    > 5000 Years. He goes a step ahead and says, that time only Tamil was
    > the language used throughout India and Sanskrit came only after
    > that...due to Aryan invasion...

    But, this above is true. You may heard of Harappan civilisation[Indus
    vally civilisation] that was 4500 years ago. We have
    material/archeological evidence for that. Then Arians came through
    the kaiibar and bOlan passes. That place is still protectedly
    existing in the Indus vally of Pakistan.

    The people lived there are Tamilians called thravidans

    actually Tamilians are falsely pronounciated[maruvu] by Arians as

    thramilans->then ->thravidans

    Do you know there are 64 thravidan languages branched out of Tamil.
    Still one thravidan species existing in the Paluchisthan of
    pakisthan. They are living as nomads. They speak one of the 64
    languages.
  • Dear Mr Ganesan
    I would strongly condemn such use of language in this forum You are entiltled to your opinion ut there is a way to voice it I am going to delete your message from the archives and expect an apology to Gokul failing which we will have to request you to leave us
  • Mr Sri thanks,

    Mr Gokul Ji - I do not have any objection to ask
    apology from you. Sorry for the same.

    I do not want to go out from this GREAT member group.
  • Dear Amarambedu Ganesan,

    This mail of yours deserves appreciation. But my
    experience and request for you is that if anything is
    said in soft and good words will definetly reach more
    and more minds. Even like minded people cannot support
    the theories said in an offensive and unacceptable
    language.
  • Dear friends,

    Quite interesting subject. Thanks to Gokul who started.

    Reg date of Mahabharatha war, kindly refer the following website - page no.26 (it is in pdf format otherwise I would have pasted the whole chronolgy)

    http://sanskrit.gde.to/articles/Kalanirnayam.pdf

    Whether it is acceptable or not, the gentlemen who wrote this must have worked hard.

    Let the orguement continue,

    Dhivakar
  • > If needed I can search and give the entire article for you.

    Please send the link. The old article I read was from frontline and it
    did not talk about the people or species
  • >
    > http://sanskrit.gde.to/articles/Kalanirnayam.pdf
    >
    > Whether it is acceptable or not, the gentlemen who wrote this must
    have worked hard.

    What an interesting link ! Thanks a lot.
  • Dear Gokul,

    It came as a series of articles in Hindu newspaper[Hard copy]. It was
    the salient findings of archeologist Mr.Sathyamurthi and others.

    They found mudhumakkal thazhies, in which they found the complete
    sketetons, skulls etc, By examining the bones of face they found
    elangated cheeks and which of the very ancient race and they called
    that as 'thravidan+ " race. So, they are the ancesters of
    thravidans. They found lot many things which reveals about the
    civilisation of that time.

    I will search in Hindu's site and if I could find those series of
    articles I will respond you with the links.
  • Dear Gokul,

    Some how I found a old article from my collections[Hard copies]. This
    article came in the 27th November 2004th issue of 'thErAnathi'
    monthly ilakkiya ithazh, published by Kumutham publications.

    Athichchanallur: murkkalath thamizh nAgarIgam
  • Yes,

    perumbalana thazigalil muzhumaiyaana elumbukkuudukal kitaiththullana.
    sila thazhigalil elumbukkoottin pakuthigal mattumthaan
    kaanappadukirathu. intha elumbukkoodugalin aaivu mudivukal ingu
    vazhntha makkal niinda thaadaiyai utaiyavargal enRu therivikkirathu.
    eliyat smith enbavar ingu vazhntha makkal aalpain inaththin oru
    pirivinaraana aarmiiniya makkal enak kooriyullar. thravida inaththin
    oru kalavaik kuuRaaga intha aarmiiniya inakkuuRu karuthappadukirathu.

    Page 30 of the same.

    ......................................................................
    ......................................................................
    pudaippu siRpaththin vari vadivam sinthu samaveli paanai oodugalil
    kaaNappadum siRpa vari vadiva ooviyangaLukku nigaraga uLLana. ithuvum
    kitaikkappeRRulla paanaigalin vakaikalum aathissanallur
    kalassaraththin thozhil nutpa melaNmaiyaik kattuvathaga ullana
    enkirar saththiyamuurthi.

    ......................................................................
    ......................................................................
    atakkam seyyappatta itangal kitaiththullathaal pakkaththileye
    manitharkalin vazhvidangalum kitaikka vaaippukaL uLLana. aneegamaga
    athu thamiraparanikku inthappakkam irukkalam. intha varutam athaik
    kaNdupitikkaveendum ennum thittaththudan irukkiroom[said in the year
    2004].................................................................
    .................................................................enkir
    aar saththiyamuurthi.

    page 31 of the same.
  • > Dear Sathish,
    >
    >
    > The people lived there are Tamilians called thravidans
    >
    > actually Tamilians are falsely pronounciated[maruvu] by Arians as
    >
    > thramilans->then ->thravidans
    >

    Dear VV,

    Dont want to get into the Aryan-Dravidian myths because people are
    not ready to accept that it is a myth. The points laid out by
    Mr.Ganesan, though not good in presentation aspets, are very valid
    and true.

    Aryans didnt call tamilians as Dravidians. First of all there is no
    Aryan race or dravidian race at all.

    Dravidian was coined by the Europeans from the inscriptions of
    Ashoka. In Ashoka's incriptions the souther countries or rather te
    people were misspelt as tramilars or something similar. (pathi
    tamizh karangalukke zh solla theiryathu. north indians.a kekanuma).
    So the european scholars used their best intellignece and creativity
    to coin a race called Dravdian and since in Sanskrit, all the noble
    wise men were called Arya, they framed a race of north indians as
    Aryans.

    So the first usage of the word Dravidian is from Ashoka's
    inscription and not that Aryans called tamilians so..
  • Hi,

    There are several theories of prevalence of Tamil in
    ancient India.

    [1] Several people have claimed to have successfully
    deciphered Indus Valley inscriptions as proto-Tamil. I
    bought 2 books on this on the Book Exhibition. 1 of
    the books claim to talk about bilingual rings, coins
    etc., with Indus script and Tamil Brahmi script on it
    from Srilanka! I will try to send some insights on
    this soon.

    [2]The Satavahana kings have issued coins in which one
    side of it is written in Tamil. These kings belong to
    the era of the last Cankam - there is enough evidence
    that the Brahmi script evolved in Tamilnadu and spread
    to the north!

    [3]Tamil Kings are mentioned by Ashokar himself.

    [4]There is mention of Nava Nandars etc., in Cankam
    literature. There are simillar other mentionings.

    [5] There are some groups in Yahoo ( Tolkappiam in
    particular) that is trying to establish that the
    ancient Indian language was proto-Tamil ( you can call
    this in any name if you dont like Tamil to be elevated
    to that level! ) which was an evolute of Sumerian
    spoken in Indus valley itself ) RigGrit ( the language
    of Rig Veda ) and Tamil evolved. Other languages were
    evoled from them much later. Some of the evidences
    posted there have word to word equivalence to ancient
    Tamil and very surprising! take a look at them if you
    have time!

    [6] Books such as Periplus of the period of the Christ
    give exact names and details of the ports in
    Tamilnadu, they also talk about other ports. The whole
    of India was known as Tamilnadu then.

    [7] I read somewhere that genetically the Indian race
    is same. There is no aryan blood in our veins!

    We are all one nation and one ethenic group. The
    aryan/dravidan theory is a dead theory. Let us be
    proud of our nation and work for its progress.
  • Dear Mr Sri/ VV Ji/ Gokul Ji/ Satish Ji,
    Please lookinto this URL, Sure, we may get some answer
    which we are debating from last week,

    cut and paste this URL:

    http://www.intamm.com/culture/hara.htm#Harappa And Tamil Culture

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