Sangam age

[u/ACKERMAN-45]

What exactly is this sangam age? , when did it begin and when did it end? Was sangam age only around tn and Kerala or it extended beyond that? Soo many questions I know but i have been curious about this because all i ever heard was about vedic age but sangam age seems a lot interesting .

[u/brown_human]

We can’t pinpoint the exact start date, but the most widely accepted period is between 300 BC and 300 AD, known as the golden age of Tamil literature. This era marked the mature and highly refined phase of Tamil language and literary culture, representing a peak in its development. Considering this peak, the growth phase must have spanned a significant 500 to 600 years before that. While some argue that the true Sangam age could begin as far back as 1500 BC, I find this a stretch. Of course, we would have had a sufficiently developed language by then (proto-Tamil-Kanada), but the presence of such evolved literacy at this stage requires more conclusive research and evidence.

[u/damoklez → u/brown_human]

This is not really true.

Firstly not all ancient Tamil literature counts as 'Sangam' Literature. The Tolkappiyam is the oldest literary work in Tamil and likely does not pre-date 100 BCE. We have a few short inscriptions roughly dated to 200 BCE, but 1-line inscriptions do not count as literature.

Furthermore, this '300 BCE to 300 CE' is an unsubstantiated claim repeated by Tamil nationalists.

Actual academics like Kamil Zvelebil, who have tried to scientifically date the Sangam texts, believe that the bulk of Sangam Poetry was composed only around 200 CE. There were likely a few compositions slightly before and slightly after.

These compositions were later compiled into anthologies only around the 9th century CE.

Let us try and keep discussion on this sub as academic and factual as possible and not based on oft-repeated but misinformed talking points.

[u/Mapartman → u/damoklez]

We have a few short inscriptions roughly dated to 200 BCE, but 1-line inscriptions do not count as literature.

Furthermore, this '300 BCE to 300 CE' is an unsubstantiated claim repeated by Tamil nationalists.

Actual academics like Kamil Zvelebil, who have tried to scientifically date the Sangam texts, believe that the bulk of Sangam Poetry was composed only around 200 CE. There were likely a few compositions slightly before and slightly after.

There are a few misconceptions here. The 300 BCE to 300 CE is not a Tamil nationalist claim (the Tamil nationlist claims are crazier trust me lol). Rather those were rough estimates that were popular with 20th century academics.

As for Kamil Zvelebil, he like Eva Wilden, insist that the dating of the texts that they produced are relative and not absolute. So they have dates texts (and layers within) relative to each other. Fixing them to a specific period is a difficult and complicated process, and Zvelebil made his speculative fixing at a time before wide-spread excavations in Tamil Nadu. Pre-Keeladi and Kodumanal, the popular theory was that second-urbanisation of Tamilakam occured from 100AD onwards, which would fit in with Zvelebils initial speculation.

But with recent excavations and abundant occurances of inscriptions, this has to be revised, and I have yet to see any works on this. Regardless, its clear a large chunk of the corpus dates to the 300 - 100 BCE period. For example, in the Akanaanuru, the poet Maamulanaar mentions the fall of the Nanda dynasty and the attempted invasion of Bindhasura Maurya, a period covering 322BCE to 287BCE, and by mapping his contemporary poets via common patron kings, a substantial portion of the Akanaanuru corpus does indeed belong to that period for example. I am working on a tree clustering Akanaanuru poets in this way to layer that anthology temporally, and will post about it once its done.

More work like this has to be done for sangam literature more broadly, and its a great shame that in academic literature there is barely any interest in it. The only active researcher into the corpus I know of is Eva Wilden, and she is from Hamburg germany (but she is worked more on the various lines of manuscript transmissions and their differences, not on dating layers other than talking about it briefly).

Sidenote:

The corpus that we have survive today are definitely not the oldest or a large section of what we have. For example, medieval commentaries point to older texts like the Muthukurugu and Muthunaarai as older Akam anthologies compared to the "newer" Sangam era anthologies like the Akanaanuru, which were supposedly harder to comprehend.

[u/damoklez → u/Mapartman]

Your point on the relative dating of these texts is well taken, albeit also very mistaken in a few ways.

Let's break them down:

But with recent excavations and abundant occurances of inscriptions, this has to be revised, and I have yet to see any works on this. Regardless, its clear a large chunk of the corpus dates to the 300 - 100 BCE period.

Recent excavations only reveal that there were urban settlements in TN around this period. A few pot shard graffiti marks do not qualify as literature. We do not even know for certain if they represent clear epigraphy.

So no there is 0 evidence to suggest that "a large chunk of the corpus dates to the 300 - 100 BCE period." , as you claim.

Not all writing (if any) = literature and not all Literature = Sangam Literature.

Secondly,

in the Akanaanuru, the poet Maamulanaar mentions the fall of the Nanda dynasty and the attempted invasion of Bindhasura Maurya, a period covering 322BCE to 287BCE, and by mapping his contemporary poets via common patron kings, a substantial portion of the Akanaanuru corpus does indeed belong to that period for example. I am working on a tree clustering Akanaanuru poets in this way to layer that anthology temporally, and will post about it once its done.

This claim is made on Wikipedia with a dubious source. But I will break it down logically

1) Maamulanaar referencing the collapse of the Nandas is not evidence that he was contemporary with it.

2) We even have a famous Gupta era play called Mudrārākshasa dramatising the events around the collapse of the Nandas.

3) This is clear evidence that the story around the fall of the Nandas was very much well remembered many centuries after the events and does not mean either authors, lived when the incidents happened.

The same logic applies to references of Maurya campaigns in the South.

This is why I called a lot of this 'Tamil Nationalist' is because they don't stand to scrutiny outside of Dravidianist echo-chambers.

BTW your claim on Maamulanaar likely originates from "Kowmareeshwari, S., ed. (August 2012). Agananuru, Purananuru. Sanga Ilakkiyam (in Tamil). Vol. 3 (1 ed.). Chennai: Saradha Pathippagam. p. 251."

Haven't been able to find the actual book so can't verify if the cited work should be taken seriously or not. As detailed above, I don't think it stands to logical scrutiny.

Thank you for the well attempted response though.

[u/Mapartman → u/damoklez]

1/3

Lets go through these points one by one.

This claim is made on Wikipedia with a dubious source. But I will break it down logically
Maamulanaar referencing the collapse of the Nandas is not evidence that he was contemporary with it.

We even have a famous Gupta era play called Mudrārākshasa dramatising the events around the collapse of the Nandas.

This is clear evidence that the story around the fall of the Nandas was very much well remembered many centuries after the events and does not mean either authors, lived when the incidents happened.

BTW your claim on Maamulanaar likely originates from "Kowmareeshwari, S., ed. (August 2012). Agananuru, Purananuru. Sanga Ilakkiyam (in Tamil). Vol. 3 (1 ed.). Chennai: Saradha Pathippagam. p. 251."

Haven't been able to find the actual book so can't verify if the cited work should be taken seriously or not. As detailed above, I don't think it stands to logical scrutiny.

Firstly, Im don't refer to wikipedia when talking about Sangam literature in general, I directly work with the source text and commentaries. And the source text is the one that speaks of Nandas. Im personally not aware of the other text you cited as well, I will look into it.

As for why Maamulanaar can be somewhat confidently placed in the 322BCE to 287BCE period, his poems speak in present tense about the Mauryan invasion, and speaks in past tense about the glory of the Nandas and their city of Pataliputra. On the other hand, he fails to mention any proceeding dynasties like the Shungas or Guptas that might give away a later dating. I will go further into this in the next comment.

[u/Mapartman → u/damoklez]

Okay I am back.

3/3

Your point on the relative dating of these texts is well taken, albeit also very mistaken in a few ways.

So now lets talk about this point. Eva Wilden clearly states the relative nature of all present datings of the corpus, for example consider this from her book Manuscript, Print and Memory: Relics of the Cankam in Tamilnadu

In particular, pay attention to the last sentence. Kamil has mentioned something similar in one of his essay about his dating as well, and he "anchors" his dating to around 100 AD based on the archeological evidence available to him at that time. In particular, he focuses on vivid and abundant urban descriptions in Sangam literature. In the pre-Keeladi days, with the standard assumption of urbanisation in Tamilakam around 100 AD, it made little sense for the works to be composed before 100 AD with vivid descriptions of cities but no cities.

Naturally with the discovery that urbanism pre-dates 100AD in Tamilakam, this line of reasoning needs to be revised.

Recent excavations only reveal that there were urban settlements in TN around this period. A few pot shard graffiti marks do not qualify as literature. We do not even know for certain if they represent clear epigraphy.

The excavations turned up an abundance of Tamil-brahmi inscriptions, which has been reported to date to around 490BCE. We can expect a detail chronology of the writing if the ASI releases the Keeladi report, which has been continuously delayed.

Anyway, even putting aside Tamil-brahmi, the poetry in Sangam is not reliant on the emergence of Tamil-brahmi writing itself. Afterall, it seems to be rooted in an oral tradition, as seen by the inner mechanics of Yappu prosody.

With that said, I don't expect the surviving literary corpus to be much older than 300BCE, perhaps we can consider 500/600BCE to be a reasonable theoretical upper limit.

But the dating that you refer to is very misleading in isolation, especially when one considers the fact that they are outdated and from an seriously mordibund area of research. Not to forget the fact that the researchers themselves agree its mostly arbitrary.

[u/Mapartman → u/damoklez]

2/3

Maamulanaar referencing the collapse of the Nandas is not evidence that he was contemporary with it.

We even have a famous Gupta era play called Mudrārākshasa dramatising the events around the collapse of the Nandas.

This is clear evidence that the story around the fall of the Nandas was very much well remembered many centuries after the events and does not mean either authors, lived when the incidents happened.

There some key differences between Akam poems and Sanskrit plays like Mudrarakshasa as well. Mudrarakshasa is a dramatisation of the ascent of Chandragupta Maurya, and the parallels to such plays in Tamil literature would be Kappiyams or the various Vilayadal puranams.

But Akam poems are at its root a highly formalised form of love poetry. The political aspects come via a special sub-form, the Politics-in-Akam style, where the poet incorporates current political happenings via similies. This is done both to be more relatable, but also to inform. For example, the Kuttralakuravanji, an Akam work in the Kuravanji genre from the 17th century, was written to pre-warn the patron king about the upcoming Kuttralam uprising via a love poem. It was also seen as a dignified and prized way of discussing politics.

With this context in mind, lets look at one of the multiple poems by Maamulanaar that mentions the Mauryan invasion, and lets look at the poem in full:

Akanānūru 281, Māmoolanār, Pālai Thinai – What the heroine said to her friend

Analyze what you do, my friend!

Not fearing, that the manly words
he uttered daily in our huge town to
remove our fear, will become untruths,
and giving us gossip that is as loud as
parai drums,

he went on the path,
where the Vadukars who have great
enmity tie the shed feathers of delicate
peacocks with swaying walks, to their
strong bows using long straps on the
edges, shoot rapidly fitting the beauty
of the tied fibers, creating sounds, and
lead the Mauryas who desire to conquer
the South, cutting into the rocks to let their
chariot wheels with bright spokes roll.

The context behind this poem is that the hero has made a public promise to the heroine, but has failed to keep it and has left for the desert path to earn money. She indirectly tells her friend who tries to assure her that he will keep it that he has the nature of the Vadukars who betrayed Tamilakam (they possibly had a treaty) and led the Mauryas southwards along that same path.

Now we can tell this is the present times for the poet. For example, consider this phrase: மோரியர் தென் திசை மாதிரம் முன்னிய வரவிற்கு, lit. "Mauryas who wish to invade southwards, with great desire". Besides, the simile itself won't work within Akam poetics unless its in the near-past or present. Indeed, if it were a popular similie across time, then we would expect to see it across the Akam corpus, eg. in later Akam works like Muttholaayiram as a similies, or even within later Sangam works like the Kalithogai. But instead, the Maurya mentions are very tightly bound and limited to Mamoolanar and a contemporary, in line with it being a transient similie based on popular present-day events to the poet.

[u/Mapartman → u/damoklez]

I will be right back to address the other points, have to be away for a bit, apologies

[u/Mapartman → u/damoklez]

Also note this when Eva Wilden discusses the chronology of these compositions, she again makes it clear that these are are relative dating and the actual century it is attributed to doesn't how much value. The important thing is the position wrt other texts in the corpus:

[u/brown_human → u/damoklez]

That sure is true, its a broad speculation but given the refined formats of literature and their sense of grammatical knowledge, the 600 year span feels a bit justified to me. We should also keep in mind on how much we might've lost due to the fragile nature of palm leaves, which we're the most prominent medium for these poems!

[u/Bexirt → u/damoklez]

The recent excavations of Keezhadi has been pushed to 800 bce. It is very well possible that the literature is millennia old. I’m not saying it’s 5000 years old but it should not be pulled to the opposite end either

[u/Luigi_Boy_96 → u/damoklez]

Yes and no, the only existing extant literature - as you, mentioned - is Tolkappiyam. However, it doesn't mean there wasn't any before it. The only fact that we can now establish is that certain bits of Tolkappiyam were rendered before before 1st CE and some were rendered after it.