News & Notes
Demystifying Tamil texts

Appreciation of Tamil texts, a novice
friendly ten-hour web series by the erudite professor S. Raghuraman, helped to
demystify and reintroduce the beauty and relevance of iconic ancient Tamil
texts. A thorough overview of 2500 years of Tamil legacy was split into the
ages such as Sangam, Epic, Ethics, Medieval or Bhakti and Contemporary age
until Subramania Bharati.
A welcome burst of positivity during
lockdown led us down the proverbial rabbit hole, organised by Upasana Arts and
supported by Arts Council UK. Appreciation of Tamil texts is a part of
Upasana’s larger project Ojas, which takes pride in making cultural
heritage more accessible along with a focus on reconnecting with
your roots through holistic education and an enhanced understanding of
Bharatanatyam practice and performance.
With the hope of
spreading positivity to as many as possible, we reached out to the bustling
dance fraternity including the networks of ABHAI and Prayathnam and within two
days received more than 250 registrations from cities in India, such as
Madurai, Coimbatore, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and Rajkot, and from countries
across the globe from the US, UK, Europe, Singapore and Australia. As one can
imagine, we had to overcome many initial technical hiccups from malfunctioning
laptops to disconnected time zones, until we finally decided that all the
recorded sessions would be rigorously edited and uploaded in Upasana Arts’
YouTube channel, to be disseminated to eager rasikas. To accommodate visual
learners and support the nuanced teaching style, detailed notes were collated
and circulated with questions being regularly clarified. Jayanthi Sivakumar, a
participant from the UK observes, “It’s been a pleasure to hear the scholar S.
Raghuraman share his expertise on ancient Tamil literature and its relation to
dance. His explanation was clear, simple and easy to understand. All thanks to
him for bridging the gap and reinstating the pride in our heritage.”
Feedback clearly
suggested that given the complexity of the content, it was beneficial that
recordings be available to replay multiple times, cross refer and loop back to
different sessions. Participants who were keen to have live virtual face time
with sir were invited across two different days to accommodate
international time zones.
The professor’s
innate style managed to simplify and deconstruct the most complicated content
with beautifully illustrative examples and relatable citations across various
artistic disciplines like music, dance, drama, cinema, and literature along
with detailed historical, cultural, social, philosophical and psychological
contexts. He patiently covered concepts with his wit as he often repeated
himself with the knowing smile of an experienced teacher. Referring to his
classes, vidushi S. Sowmya recounts, “Asking Sir a doubt was like asking a
veteran to teach Sa Pa Sa!” His own personal academic rigour and
eclectic interests helped frame our learning within a wider context,
establishing and reiterating that Tamil was not only an ancient and
comprehensive language system with technical rigour and maturity in all
linguistic aspects like grammar, phonetics, prosody and poetics, but also that
Tamil texts were a true fount of knowledge in subjects like literature,
politics, geography, commerce, arts, science, sociology and psychology. An
understanding of the Sangam texts such as Tolkappiam, Meipattiyal and Silappadikaram, reflects
not only Tamil’s antiquity, butalso their relevance to this day.
It is impressive
that a text like Tolkappiam from 7th century BC is so
scientific, methodical and timeless that its syntax and grammar rules are
followed to this day in linguistics. Tolkappiam is not only
systematic and comprehensive but also unique in its insightful understanding.
It expounds that every Sangam poem is based on the speaker, the listener, and
the context, each leading to a nuanced narration and consequent reaction.
It is interesting
that for a book on grammar, it even includes a seminal chapter on human
emotions and rasa theory, Meipattiyal. Sringaram alone is detailed
as an independent chapter with four types and is further segmented as
‘kalaviyal’—love before marriage, and ‘karpial’—love after marriage, with each
having a possibility of twelve stages.
The depth of Sangam
texts reflects how arts, ideology and society, were far beyond the reaches of
present understanding. For instance, the Koothanool by
Sattanar (Tolkappiar’s contemporary) uniquely defines emotions based on the
gunas—rajas, tamas and satvik. The Panchamarabu from the 5th
century CE speaks of: aan kai: male hand (gestures); penn kai: female hand;
pothu kai: neutral hand; and alli kai: eunuch hand.
Literatures
like Silappadikaram are classic ethnographic records of Tamil
Nadu, a window into the wider socio-political-economic context of the
first century, along with its flora and fauna. Silappadikaram’s third chapter
of Pugar canto, Arangetru Kathai, and Achiar
Kuravai from Madurai canto, are seminal texts in the
traditional Dravidian dance and music system respectively, and to
this day inspire engagement, research and study.
An interesting
session on music in Silappadikaram brought together the
husband-wife expert duo of Vanathi and S. Raghuraman in exploring vidwan S.
Ramanathan’s research. Additionally, the dancers— Anjana Anand shared her
firsthand experience of translating the Silappadikaram, and
Sreelatha Vinod shared her experience of working with Sir as mentor to
perform Silappadikaram for Natyarangam’s Kavya Bharatham
festival in 2003 at Narada Gana Sabha in Chennai.
Curious about
legacy and heritage, even as early as 5th century CE, the bhakti movement
established autonomous research institutions called ‘ghatika’ in Kanchipuram
with the primary purpose of collating past literature and publishing a
commentary to make it accessible. Their rigorous, deep-rooted and advanced
research methodology led to the discovery, collection and codification of
Sangam texts and a commentary was written for Tolkappiam and Silappadikaram after
1000 years. This is an artistic legacy to be acknowledged and be proud of.
This project
undertaken by Upasana Arts brought together a discerning group and a benevolent
teacher to revel in the pure joy of learning.
DEEPA GANESH
(Bharatanatyam
dancer, teacher and Artistic
Director of Upasana Arts)