Tolkāppiyam, also romanised as Tholkaappiyam (Tamil: தொல்காப்பியம் , lit. "ancient poem"), is the oldest extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. The surviving manuscripts of the Tolkappiyam consists of three books (Tamil: அதிகாரம், romanized: Atikāram, lit. 'Chapter or Authority'), each with nine chapters (Tamil: இயல், romanized: Iyal), with a cumulative total of 1,610 (483+463+664) sutras in the Tamil: நூற்பா, romanized: nūṛpā, lit. 'verse' meter. It is a comprehensive text on grammar, and includes sutras on orthography, phonology, etymology, morphology, semantics, prosody, sentence structure and the significance of context in language. Mayyon as (Vishnu), Seyyon as (Murugan), Vendhan as (Indra), Varuna as (Varuna) and Kotṟavai as (Devi or Bagavathi) are the gods mentioned. The Tolkappiyam is difficult to date. Some in the Tamil tradition place the text in the historical Pandya kingdom Second tamil sangam, variously in 1st millennium BCE or earlier. Scholars place the text much later and believe the text evolved and expanded over a period of time. According to Nadarajah Devapoopathy the earliest layer of the Tolkappiyam was likely composed between the 2nd and 1st century BCE, and the extant manuscript versions fixed by about the 5th century CE. The Tolkappiyam Ur-text likely relied on some unknown even older literature. Iravatham Mahadevan dates the Tolkappiyam to no earlier than the 2nd century CE, as it mentions the Tamil: புள்ளி, romanized: Puḷḷi, lit. 'Point resp. Virama' being an integral part of Tamil script. The puḷḷi (a diacritical mark to distinguish pure consonants from consonants with inherent vowels) only became prevalent in Tamil epigraphs after the 2nd century CE. According to linguist S. Agesthialingam, Tolkappiyam contains many later interpolations, and the language shows many deviations consistent with late old Tamil (similar to Cilappatikaram), rather than the early Tamil poems of Eṭṭuttokai and Pattuppāṭṭu. The Tolkappiyam contains aphoristic verses arranged into three books – the எழுத்ததிகாரம், Eḻuttatikāram, 'Letter resp. Phoneme Chapter', the சொல்லதிகாரம், Collatikāram, 'Sound resp. Word Chapter' and the பொருளதிகாரம், Poruḷatikāram, 'Subject Matter (i.e. prosody, rhetoric, poetics) Chapter'. The Tolkappiyam includes examples to explain its rules, and these examples provide indirect information about the ancient Tamil culture, sociology, and linguistic geography. It is first mentioned by name in Iraiyanar's Akapporul – a 7th- or 8th-century text – as an authoritative reference, and the Tolkappiyam remains the authoritative text on Tamil grammar.
Etymology The word Tolkāppiyam is an attribute-based composite word, with tol meaning "ancient, old", and kappiyam meaning "book, text, poem, kavya"; together, the title has been translated as "ancient book", "ancient poem", or "old poem". According to Kamil Zvelebil – a Tamil literature and history scholar, Tamil purists tend to reject this Sanskrit-style etymology and offer "curious" alternatives. One of these breaks it into three "tol-kappu-iyanratu", meaning "ancient protection [of language]". An alternate etymology that has been proposed by a few purists is that the name of the work derives from the author's name Tolkāppiyan, but this is a disputed assumption because neither the author(s) nor centuries in which this piece of work was composed are known.
Date The dating of the Tolkappiyam is difficult, much debated, and it remains contested and uncertain. Proposals range between 5,320 BCE and the 1th century BC. The tradition and some Indian scholars favor an early date for its composition, before the common era, and state that it is the work of one person associated with sage Agastya. Other Indian scholars, and non-Indian scholars such as Kamil Zvelebil, prefer to date it not as a single entity but in parts or layers. The Tolkappiyam manuscript versions that have survived into the modern age were fixed by about the 5th century CE, according to Zvelebil. Scholars reject traditional datings based on three sangams and the myth of great floods because there is no verifiable evidence in its favor, and the available evidence based on linguistics, epigraphy, Sangam literature and other Indian texts suggest a much later date. The disagreements now center around divergent dates between the 3rd century BCE and 8th century CE. The datings proposed by contemporary scholars is based on a combination of evidence such as:
comparison of grammar taught in Tolkappiyam versus the grammar found in the oldest known Tamil-Brahmi and old-Tamil inscriptions comparison of grammar taught in Tolkappiyam versus the grammar found in the oldest known Tamil texts (Sangam era); this evidence covers items such as phonemic shapes, palatals, and the evolution in the use of compounds comparison of grammar taught in Tolkappiyam versus the grammar taught and found in the oldest known Sanskrit texts; this includes tracing verses and phrases found in the Tolkappiyam that borrow, translate or closely paraphrase verses and phrases found in the works of ancient and influential Sanskrit scholars such as Panini, Patanjali, Manu, Kautilya, Bharata and Vatsyayana. comparison of poetry and prose rules taught in Tolkappiyam versus the actual early Tamil poetry and prose Prakrit and Sanskrit loan words (vadacol), and inconsistencies between the sutras of the Tolkappiyam
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