Essays of U V Swaminatha Iyer Tradition and Modernity in Tamil Literary Culture

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Essays of U Ve Sa The Man who Revived Ancient Tamil Literature

Translated by Prabha Sridevan and Pradeep Chakravarthy

New Delhi: Niyogi Books 2022

Dr U V Swaminatha Iyer (1855-1942) is a personality who is in every sense a man of his times. He lived before the Pure Tamil Movement and the Dravidian Movement reshaped the cultural and political landscape of the Tamil region and therefore was able to make a remarkable contribution to the study of Tamil Literature. He was trained in Sanskrit and Tamil, a bilingual skill which is utterly absent in the "scholarly" tradition today. Like Hindi in the North which almost at around the same time, Tamil too was caught up in a battle that ultimately decided the shape structure and morphology of the language and some scholars call that identity battle the beginning of the Tamil Modernity. 

The book begins with the line: "Tamil is a classical language spoken by more than 80 million people across the world." The bland statement hides an important claim :classical status for a living language which in itself is problematic. What deserves attention is the place of "classical" languages in the literary cultures of the world. If we take Latin as an example it is well known that almost all the major European languages inherited their grammar script and to a large extent their literary models from Latin and after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD these were adopted or refashioned and repurposed for writing vernacular languages, the vulgate tongue. Therefore the classical status of a language is not predicated merely on its "antiquity".  In the case of Tamil and other languages as Sheldon Pollock in his now classic work, Language of the Gods in the World of Men, the literary forms and grammatical structures evolved within what he calls the Sanskrit Cosmopolis. The use of Sanskrit language and Grantha script by powerful dynasties like the Cholas and the Pandyas shows that ninetieth century and early twentieth century preoccupation with a politicized linguistic consciousness did not influence the literary and scribal culture of the early medieval age.

This book consists of 29 essays written by U V Swaminatha Iyer and were originally published in Tamil literary magazines that had wide circulation in Mylapore, Egmore, Mambalam and other parts of Madras city: Ananda Vikatan.Along with Pratapa Mudaliar who is remembered for writing his Autobiography and is a precocious venture into scriptal consciousness, Iyer also wrote his autobiography after he retired from Presidency College. The collection of essays in this book are largely autobiographical and detail his life as a scholar in search of a "lost heritage", the Lost Literature of Tamil. It is a pity Umberto Eco had not heard of Dr U V Swaminatha Iyer when he wrote the Name of the Rose. Iyer hunted, searched, copied, edited and published Tamil literary classics and today the claim of Tamil being a Classical Language is largely substantiated by the body of early texts that he discovered and published.

Swaminatha Iyer was the protege of Meenakshi Sundaram Pillai under whom he studied Tamil and who gave him the name Swaminatha. The Tiruvadurai Adheenam hada rich collection of Tamil Manuscripts, a Scriptorium rich in documents collected over several centuries. With the intervention of Tyagaraja Chettiyar, Iyer got the post of Tamil Pandit in Kumbakonam College and from this point onwards he began the task of collecting Tamil Manuscripts. Jiva Chintamani, a Jaina work was the first major work and it was followed by the discovery and publication of Purunanurru, Silapadikaram, Manimekkalai and other works. As the essays in this book describe in the imitable style adopted by this great savant his search took his to temples, houses of descendents of Tamil scholars, Saivite Mutts and culturally influential people. Access was not easy and there was competition. However the single minded devotion was crowned with success and with the advent of Print, Swaminatha Iyer was able to bring the literary past of Tamil Language to a wider audience. It must be said that in this task Damodaram Pillai (1832-1901) Armugha Navalar also helped in the endeavor of rediscovering the lost literary heritage. 

Were the classics of Tamil literature which today are glossed under the rubric Sangam Literature really lost. Are there no mention of these works during the early medieval period. Did the transition from palm leaf as a medium of record keeping and manuscript preservation play any role in the disappearance of these works. David Shulam in his outstanding work Tamil A Biography has provided just the answer. Unfortunately given the deep and unseemly crust of identity politics in which Tamil Studies exists today  books like the one by Sridevan and Chakrvarthy will remain rare. The authors have done a splendid job in providing lucid translations of the essays of this great savant.

R Nagaswamy Archaeologist, Historian and Public Intellectual A Tribute

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The death of Dr R Nagaswamy, the doyen of Tamil Archaeologists and Epigraphists is a great loss to the world of medieval studies in general and Tamil History in particular. The importance of Nagaswamy lay in his fearless and at times extremely sophisticated exposure of the identity politics driven scholarship that clogs the academic space in  the region today. Partly the identity politics in the Tamil cultural sphere revolves around the contentious issues of Language Culture and  Heritage. Nagaswamy was the only scholar who could effectively challenge the fake racial narrative of Dravidianism because he was well versed both in Tamil and Sanskrit. Perhaps he was the last Historian who could read the inscriptions of Rajaraja I in the Rajarajesvara Temple straight off the wall and he could as easily read the Sanskrit inscriptions on the walls of the Chidambaram Temple. This linguistic facility to read the languages and scripts of Tamil Nadu made him reject the pieties of the antiquity of the Tamil language.

Nagaswamy was not convinced that the Harappan Script was the ancestor of the Tamil script and though a prominent IAS Officer advanced the claim of reading several pictographs on the Harappan seals as variants of Tamil phonemes, Nagaswamy took the politically dangerous road of opposing the bogus identity politics driven research which was expedient. This did not mean that he did not take the early Tamil classics seriously. It is worth recalling that the marine exploration off the coast of Nagapattinam of the ancient site of Puhar was launched when he was the Director of the Department of Archaeology. Unlike the situation today, fifty years backs Archaeology was still a rational discipline which was practiced within reason and respected the protocols of research and verification. 

Nagaswmay founded the journal Damilica which had acquired a world wide reputation. I remember reading this journal which was printed on map litho paper when I was pursuing my PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Inscriptions which were of particular importance were edited and published. And sometimes, as in the case of the famous Jambai Brahmi Inscription differing interpretations were possible. Nagaswmay discovered and published the Puzhankuruchi Inscription and that was a landmark discovery. He started a series entitled Tamil Mavattu Kalvettukal, Tamil District Inscriptions and more than eight districts were fully covered in this new series begun by Nagaswamy. And after he left the office of Director State Department of Archaeology this series like Damilica fell by the wayside. Nagaswamy was keen to see that the McKenzie  Manuscripts were made available to the world of scholarship and he encouraged his Department to edit the volumes and after the study of Taylor in the late nineteenth century we have Nagaswamy's contribution. To say the he enriched the world of scholarship would not be an understatement.

Nagawamy spent the decades after he retired from service exploring the Saiva Agamas. Generally neglected as historical sources, Nagaswamy identified the Maukuta Agama as the possible inspiration for the great temple of Rajaraja I at Tanjavur. Unfortunately most scholars in Tamil Nadu today can neither read Tamil or Sanskrit and consequently the quality of scholarship has declined sharply. 

Towards the end of his life, Nagaswamy took upon himself the onerous task of exposing the Sanskrit basis of Tamil literary creations. Though historians like George Hart and David Shulman have argued that Tamil is deeply indebted to Sanskrit and vice versa, the pulavars generally prefer to see an autonomous origin of the Tamil Language and Script. In their imagination the Indus Valley looms large.

Nagaswamy was a true bhakta and wanted to see the wealth of Temples preserved and protected. The Tiruchendur Temple Incident happened during his time and I am not aware of what his stand was. And given the circumstances it would have been dangerous for him. However, Nagaswamy played an important role in helping India recover the Sriviliputtur Bronzes from UK and the repatriation was on the basis of his expert testimony given in the London Court. More importantly, the judgement has set a precedent based on which India under Prime MInister Narendar Modi has successfully repatriated more than 250 pieces of stolen art.

Nagaswamy was a true scholar and the world of medieval history stands impoverished with his death.