Download Two Decades of Tamil Studies: 1950

Two Decades of Tamil Studies: 1950 -1970
Xavier S. Thani Nayagam
Journal of Tamil Studies, Volume 1 No. 1, April 1969
"..if Tamil Studies is to obtain the place it deserves in humanistic curricula in universities abroad and in comparative
studies so that these studies can make their contribution to the theoretical development of the disciplines involved,
Tamil Sociology contributing to world sociology, Tamil history contributing to world history, Tamil literature
contributing to world literature, Tamil music enriching world music, and the study of Tamil humanism contributing
to the study of Man so that from the particularistic and the unique we may also understand the universal elements in
human experience, it is essential that the most important research in quality and volume, be done in those areas
where Tamil speakers live and where native university Departments of Tamil exist..."
Once again the opportunity is presented to introduce to the world of learning and to the Tamilspeaking peoples of the world, a new periodical on Tamil Studies. The opportunity arose earlier
when the quarterly journal Tamil Culture was launched in 1952, with the first editorial entitled "
This Quarterly Review ".
Between 1952 and 1966, twelve volumes of the periodical were published, the first three
volumes as a personal enterprise, and the remaining nine volumes as the organ of the Madras
Academy of Tamil Culture. The Editorial Board of Tamil Culture and the scholars who
contributed articles, are to be congratulated on the set of twelve magnificent volumes which
contain such a wide range of studies on linguistic, literary, historical, philosophical and other
themes, as make these volumes indispensable works of reference to scholarship in Tamil Studies
as well as in South Asian Studies.
In spite of its excellence and its world-wide distribution, Tamil Culture remained until the last
year of publication a compromise between severe academic requirements and academic
popularisation, since it sought to satisfy the research worker in Tamil Studies as well as the
Tamilophile whose access to the Tamil heritage is only through the medium of English. It
popularised two words which express the separate areas in which it aimed at creating interest,
namely Tamilology and Tamiliana.
During the years of publication, Tamil Culture functioned as a catalyst for Tamil scholars from
all over the world, and created the atmosphere and the academic fellowship and friendships,
whereby the formation of the International Association of Tamil Research and the holding of its
International Conferences were made possible.
At the First International Conference of Tamil Studies held in Kuala Lumpur (1966), scholars
discussed informally the need for a periodical which would meet the growing requirements of the
academic world and its growing interest in Dravidian Studies in general and Tamil Studies in
particular. As a result of further discussions during the Second International Conference of Tamil
Studies held in Madras (1968), and the enthusiastic response to such a proposal from an
international Board of Editors, the Journal of Tamil Studies is launched as a half annual review
with the hope that it might be published quarterly as soon as circumstances permit.
A Bright Picture
The introductory article of the first volume of Tamil Culture contained the following paragraphs
"Nearly every generation during the last one hundred years has had a few men in South India and
Ceylon who realised the unique features of the Tamil language and literature and endeavoured to
have their enthusiasm shared by others. A good number of these men were foreigners whose
appreciation of Tamil culture was all the more note-worthy because of their scholarship in Latin
and Greek, and their acquaintance with European Culture. The judgements of Walter Elliot,
Ellis, Gover, Winslow, Caldwell, Pope, Vinson, have been of a most enlightening nature even
though they did not have the benefit of recent editions and critical studies ; but the complaints
they voiced in their day concerning the neglect of Dravidian culture in general and Tamil culture
in particular, may very well be made even today.
So little has been accomplished in the meantime ; so vast is the field that is offered for research
and study. Dr. G. U. Pope wrote thus in 1910 of British neglect of Tamil Literature :
"Although the very ancient, copious, and refined Tamil language is inferior to none, it is
regarded by most people as the (probably barbarous) vernacular of a people living somewhere in
a remote district of Great Britain's imperial possessions. Neither does our Indian Government nor
do our Universities fully recognize the value of Tamil Literature ; and so those who spend their
lives in the study of the great South Indian classics must resemble man seeking for pearls under
water."
One wonders if these words may not be applied here in India and Ceylon to the neglect that
Tamiliana and Tamilology suffer at the hands of those whose duty it is to protect and develop
them.
There was a number of Tamils themselves who proficient in the English language and familiar
with European thought, sought through translations and critical studies to interest the rest of the
world in their own literary and cultural heritage. Kanagasabai Pillai's The Tamils - Thousand
Eight Hundred Years Ago, Isaac Tambyah's Psalms of a Saiva Saint, Gnana Prakasar's
unfinished Lexicon, the various issues of that excellent journal The Tamilian Antiquary, not to
mention the scholars of the South like P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar and J. M. Nallasamy Pillai, have
reminded students at home and abroad of the hidden wealth that yet remains to be discovered in
Tamildom.
Our Universities, particularly those of Annamalai and Madras, have periodically published
works that are most useful to foreign students interested in Tamil studies. But it will not be
sufficient to consign Tamil studies only to Universities. Private institutes and private agencies
must as well take up the diffusion of. Tamil Culture. And that diffusion cannot hope to achieve
success unless the centres of Tamil research set before, themselves the highest standards of
scholarship. The more such scholarship embarks on comparative studies, the greater will be its
benefit to the world at large."1
Seventeen years after, in 1969, it cannot be said that the place of Tamil Studies has remained
static. A great number of circumstances, national and international, have contributed to an
awareness, both extensive and deep, of the importance of Tamil Studies in Indological Studies
and in South Asian as well as South-East Asian Studies. The post-war development of Asian
Studies in non-Asian Universities has been beneficial also to Tamil Studies, and the broadening
of the scope of the Humanities and of the Social Sciences and the implementation of
recommendations made. by Indianists, has given the occasion for scholarly research in many
fields which are new to Tamil Studies.
During the last two decades, Institutes of Indian Studies under foreign initiative have been
founded in India, and South Asian institutes have been founded abroad, and these give adequate
importance to Dravidian Studies as well as to Tamil Studies. More Universities in South Asian
programmes include Tamil language, and Tamil literature either in the original or in translation.
The development of Tamil Studies both at home and abroad has been marked by publications of
outstanding research and pioneering material, and two International Conferences have gathered
together numerous scholars in Tamil from institutions which hitherto were not known to have
established interests in Tamil fields. Various Foundations during the last two decades have been
liberal in their sponsorship of scholars and scholarship in the Tamil areas.
The development and expansion of Tamil Studies in the last two decades presents a bright
picture of planned progress. That picture is made all the more bright by the prospects of an
International Institute of Tamil Studies proposed at the Twelfth General Conference of Unesco
which invited member states to associate themselves in the creation and membership of an
International institute of Tamil Studies.
New Area Centres and Institutes
Sanskritic studies which earlier did not pay adequate attention to Dravidian, have during the last
two decades made considerable advance in recognizing the utility and the place of Dravidian
languages and culture in a more equitable understanding of both Ancient and Modern India.
In the understanding of the Dravidian element in Indo-Aryan and the Aryan element in
Dravidian, eminent Sanskritists have led the field during the last two centuries. Various
publications of Professor Jean Filliozat, Professor F. B. J. Kuiper, Prof. M. Mayrhofer, the
articles and the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary and its supplement published in collaboration
by Professor Thomas Burrow and Professor Murray B. Emeneau (1960 and 1968), and the work
of other Indianists in the U.S.A. and in Western and Eastern Europe, have rectified to some
extent the earlier imbalance which marked Indological programmes of study. The rectification of
that imbalance and new incentives to development have been provided institutionally through the
new centres for South Asian Studies and the Institutes of Indian Studies.
The French Institute of Indology in Pondicherry which was inaugurated in 1954 has a
programme of far reaching research in Tamilology of both geographical and historical
dimensions. By its location, and the prospects of Auroville in its vicinity, and by its orientation
towards studies in the area of the historical and cultural relations between South East Asia and
South India, the Institute promises to continue giving a new impetus to Tamil Studies. The
programme of the Ecole francaise d'Extreme Orient has been linked through the initiative of
Professor Jean Filliozat with the programme of the French Institute of Indology in Pondicherry
and with the courses in Indology at the College de France.
Among the Institute's present plans of research are the illustration and the comparison of Tamil
iconography with puranic literature,and enquiry into popular and rural cults. The Institute's
publication of translations of the Sivagamas and of other religious classics, provides primary
source material for scholars since the publications illustrate and explain sculptural and
epigraphical data in South East Asia and even in China. The Institute's programme of compiling
a series of dictionaries based on historical meanings is another branch of enquiry which is new to
Tamil Studies.
While concentrating on a programme of historical studies in religion and literature, the French
Institute has had authoritative scholars' working in South India in the fields of sociology,
anthropology, and geography the published results of whose findings are authoritative works on
their subjects.2
The French contribution to the development of Tamil Studies is the happy outcome of a long
period of political patronage and cultural interest fostered by the colonial power and French
missionaries, but the development of Tamil Studies in the United States of America is almost
entirely a development occasioned by World War II and the expansion of American commitment
in the non-Western world. Tamil Studies is one of the many fields of studies which have
received notice after the Report of the Committee on Indic and Iranian Studies was issued in
1951 by a joint committee of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science
Research Council.3 The report under the title " Southern Asia Studies in the United States : A
Survey and Plan " called for development in eight categories :
1. grants-in-aid to University Centers of Southern Asia Studies ;
2. provision of scholarships for graduate study, field research, and summer study
3. establishment in India of an American Institute of South Asian Studies ;
4. funds for monograph publication ;
5. support of a Quarterly Accessions List of Southern Asia material acquired by the Library of
Congress ;
6. a conference on Southern Asia Studies in undergraduate education ;
7. a conference on library services for Southern Asia Studies ;
8. establishment of a committee on Southern Asia Studies.
Professor W. Norman Brown says that this report was given a good deal of circulation and had
much influence in quarters that counted, and that within ten years after its issuance every item in
the plan had been put in execution.4
For about a hundred years earlier eight American universities had Chairs which were filled by
Sanskritists who taught the ancient and classical languages of India, (Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit)
but among which they did not include Tamil. The major change from pre-war South Asia studies
lay in emphasis upon modern languages and social science subjects.
Both as a geographically widespread Indian language, and as the language of groups of ethnic
and sociological interest, Tamil came to be studied in the U.S.A. essentially as a tool for field
work. It also shared the grants for the study of modern languages made by the National Defence
Education Act of 1958. The first South Asian language and Area Programme was established at
the University of Pennsylvania in 1947.
By 1964 there were South Asia programmes at the Universities of Arizona, California
(Berkeley), Chicago, Cornell, Duke, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin, as well as at
Claremont, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, Rochester and Syracuse. Today Kansas State
University, Colgate University and Wesleyan University should be added to the list.
This list does not include the many Universities which include some aspects of Tamil Literature
and Culture in their Asian literature programmes, and the many undergraduate colleges like
Oberlin, Sweet Briar, Manhattan, Wake Forest, Elmira College, and several others which have
introduced some syllabus or other on India. The American universities have distributed the
languages of India among themselves. Tamil language finds a place in the teaching programmes
especially of the universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Kansas State, and in the rotating
summer school.
The federal government was very liberal during and after the war in its grants for the study of the
non-Western world. In 1949 Under Public Law 79-584 (Fulbright Act) Faculty members and
students were able to visit the Tamil districts for study and research. In 1960, the Library of
Congress was authorized under Public Law 83-480 to use counterpart United States funds lying
in India to purchase all publications in India. In 1962, under authorization of Congress and
administration by the Library of Congress, Public Law 83-480 funds lying in India were also
made available to provide thirteen University libraries in the U.S.A. with all publications
appearing in Tamil.
The development of the South Asian programmes in universities assumed new proportions and
co-ordinated the research of several scholars in different branches of Tamilology by the
incorporation of the American Institute of Indian Studies with its headquarters in Poona and a
sub-office in Madras. This Institute created in 1961 by fifteen American Universities has now
about twentyfour member Institutions. The Institute not only promotes and assists research on
India, but also encourages the further spread of Indian Studies in American education. A number
of Fellows who are specialists in the branches of Humanities and Social sciences related to
Tamilology, and other younger scholars working on doctoral dissertations, have been enabled to
spend a period of field work in Tamil districts. Research workers in the Tamil area have included
such names as R. E. Frykenberg, Burton Stein and Eugene F. Irschick.
The American foundations have had their share in promoting study and scholarship in the Tamil
districts. The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Rockefeller Foundation since 1947, the
Ford Foundation especially in 1960 and 1961, and the Asia Foundation in India, Ceylon, and
Malaya, have been liberal in their grants both in the U.S.A. and in the Tamil-speaking areas to
develop Tamil and foreign scholars and scholarship, especially in the social sciences and on
contemporary subjects.
The last two decades has also witnessed institutional importance given in Western Europe to
modern developments in Tamil speaking-areas. Apart from the traditional seats of learning
where Tamil studies in some branch or other have had a place (London, Oxford, Cambridge,
Leyden, Uppsala), the Südasien Institut in Heidelberg has a multidisciplinary programme which
includes various aspects of Tamil Studies and the teaching of Tamil at different levels. The
University of Bonn, and the University of Stockholm are among the European institutions which
have recently introduced Tamil.
In Eastern Europe too, a. number of Tamilologists have appeared during the last two decades and
have acquired an international reputation in one or other aspect of Tamil Studies. The efforts of
Prof. Kamil Zvelebil in creating both scholarly and popular interest in Czechoslovakia and in
other countries in Dravidology and Tamil literature have won for him international recognition in
the field. The work of the Leningrad and Moscow scholars, together with the pupils of Dr. Arno
Lehmann make Eastern Europe conspicuous among areas which contribute to Tamil Studies.
There are other countries like Australia, Canada, South America, Israel, Italy, Japan and the
Philippines where the interest is just in its first and incipient stages.
While reviewing the advance during the last two decades of Tamilology abroad, one is also
encouraged by the advance made in the countries in which Tamil is a regional language or is
spoken as the language of a large group.
Within Tamil Nadu itself, the universities and institutions have had new incentives to research
and teaching with Tamil becoming the official language of the State and its use increasingly as
the medium of instruction at university stage. A new university has been founded in the historic
centre of Tamil learning, Maturai ; and a Department of Tamil at the University of Kerala. New
Departments or quasi-departments of Tamil have been created at the several new colleges
founded in Tamil Nadu and at the Universities of Karnataka, Bangalore, Mysore, Osmania,
Tirupathi and Delhi, and posts for instruction in aspects of Tamil Studies have been instituted
elsewhere.
The research programmes developed by Professor M. Varadharasan, and Professor K. K. Pillai at
Madras, by Professor T. P. Meenakshisundaram at Annamalai and by Professor V. I.
Subramoniam at Kerala, and the comparative literature research initiated in Delhi under
Professor K. Arumugam call for especial notice.
The Sahitya Akademi has provided for the exchange of literary information between the
linguistic groups of India, and the Government Bureau of Publications, Madras, has published in
Tamil translation several books of international importance in various branches of University
studies. Ceylon has now three University Departments of Tamil (Peradeniya, Colombo,
Vidhyodhaya), two of which have been created recently, and instruction in Tamil at the
University is to be made available in Tamil even in Science, Engineering and Medicine. To this
period also belongs the creation of the University of Malaya's Department of Indian Studies with
its south east Asian orientation, its emphasis on Tamil Studies, and its schedule of publications.
New Developments
The major development in Tamil Studies has not merely consisted in the creation of new
institutes and university departments and language and area centres and thus brought more men
and material into the field, but the studies themselves have been broadened in their scope and
new dimensions have been added as a result of multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary
involvement.
There was a time when Tamil courses were confined to the study of language and literature, but
during the last two decades as a result of the development and expansion of the social sciences,
Tamil social history, Tamil culture and civilization, cultural anthropology, folk literature,
Dravidian linguistics, the Tamil fine arts, religion and philosophy have been so integrated into
syllabuses as to revitalise and expand Tamil Studies and bring them in line with developments in
university curricula, and give the opportunity to the undergraduate for a more liberal education.
While on the one hand specialization in various disciplines has advanced the frontiers of the
discipline and illuminated the forgotten periods and neglected areas, the dynamic relation
between research and teaching is bringing about genuine integration between disciplines and is
moving away from conventional and compartmentalized presentation.
Thus literature programmes are illustrated by anthropology and history, and even by music and
art and other ancillary subjects. Tamil Studies in any branch concerned with the past and the
present continue to develop by programmes which achieve integration in the minds of the
students, even if integration is not achieved in the minds of the teachers themselves. This
integration helps students to respond intelligently to a world of political and cultural pluralism.
Developments have been especially noticed in language study and in the preparation of teaching
material for Tamil. Nearly every university which has some involvement in Tamil, embarks on
Dravidian and Tamil linguistics, structural, historical and comparative, and it is in this field more
than in any other, the majority of foreign scholars have been involved.
Foundations and University Grants Commissions have been most responsive to this field, and
have provided for basic research within India itself. The Centre for Advanced Linguistics at the
Annamalai University, and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Kerala, have
provided the impetus for far flung research and for the creation of local scholars. It is in
Linguistics and in the teaching of the spoken language for practical purposes that the American
and the Russian scholars have also been noticeably engaged.
Another trend in Tamil Studies during the last two decades has been the importance and
emphasis given to modern history and contemporary aspects of society. This trend towards
modernity in Tamil studies is the result of the postwar interest in contemporary history, in
political science and in cultural anthropology originating in the U.S.A.
The Tamil-speaking groups have been involved in political movements which have attracted the
attention of students of Indian and Ceylonese politics, and in the face of social change the forces
of conservatism in the Tamil districts provide engaging material for the social scientist. The
modern man is not so preoccupied with the distant past ; he seeks his roots in the near economic
past, and for present problems he seeks an explanation from the last two or three centuries and
not from the classical age.
This attitude is specifically an attitude introduced by changing patterns of scholarship, and hence
in history as in sociology, the near past of the Tamil country and of the Tamil speaking people,
and the contemporary scenes have become matter for exploration in archives, in newspaper
offices, in modern literature, as well as in surveys and interviews. Tamil migrants groups in
Malaya, Mauritius, Fiji, and the Carribean are becoming increasingly subjects of study by
sociologists and anthropologists.'
Modernisation has also pleasantly affected the teaching of literature in the Tamil medium.
Twenty years ago, the thought of introducing twentieth century literature into University
Honours courses would have been abhorred in traditionalist circles in the Tamil country. Even
Bharati was then not considered a fit subject for study or topic of lectures in Academe. The idea
of lecturing on a contemporary novelist like Kalki would have been anathema. But today even
twentieth century literature is included in courses of study and if literary criticism has not
developed, it is not because the will to entertain it is lacking.
The study of Carnatic music by Western musicologists and instruction in this discipline made
available at Colgate University and Wesleyan University are again recent introductions in the U.
S. A. Yehudi Menuhin's visit to Madras, and the sponsorship of the musical arts by Unesco, have
initiated a series of exchange visits by Carnatic musicians to the western hemisphere, and by
western musicologists to the home of Carnatic music. It has been estimated that in the U. S. A.
alone, there are about thirty scholars actively involved in the study of Carnatic music at research
level.
The permanent record of the development of research in Tamil Studies are to be had in the
unpublished theses available in University libraries, and in the published works and articles
which have been made available to a larger section of scholars. The results of research unless
published and circulated as widely as possible can benefit at the most the institution where it is
carried out, and the few scholars who may be able to obtain them in microfilm where such
facilities exist. The volume of research has appreciably increased during the last two decades
particularly in the Universities of Tamil Nad and Kerala, as a result of the postgraduate
fellowships granted by the University Grants Commission and enlightened guidance and
leadership, but several of these dissertations remain unpublished for want of funds (Singaravelu,
Progress in Tamilology)
Certain books published in the earlier period of Tamil Studies remain as landmarks and are
epoch making in the history of Tamil Studies. Such a book is each of Karl Graul's Bibliotheca
Tamulica, (1854), Robert Caldwell's Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian
family of Languages, (1856), G. U. Pope's Tiruvaçagam (1900), Kanagasabhai' s The Tamils
Eighteen Hundred Years Ago (1904), P. T. Srinivasa Aiyangar's History of the Tamils from the
Earliest times to 600 A .D. (1929), K. N. Sivaraja Pillai's Chronology of the Early Tamils (1932),
Nilakanta Sastri's The Colas (1935).
Similarly, during the last two decades, a number of erudite books and articles of comparable
usefulness have appeared which are sufficient documentation of the new trends, advances and
gains made in Tamil Studies and provide guidance for future work and development. These
works cover a wide range and include texts, translations, indexes to classical works, dictionaries,
linguistic research, historical and literary and sociological studies.6 The quality of these
publications and their originality of interpretation are the best assurance that Tamil Studies will
continue to develop pan passu with the development of studies related to other languages and
literatures.
The Future
If this brief survey of developments in Tamil Studies errs on the side of optimism, it is partly due
to the memory of the earlier neglect of Tamil and Dravidian which has been pointed out in one
way or another by Ziegenbalg, by Beschi, by Karl Graul, by Pope, by Max Muller, by Charles
Eliot, by Popley, by Heinrich Zimmer, by Mircea Eliade and by many a perspicacious and
discerning British or French civil servant or missionary, or native humanist like Sri Kantha or
Ponnampalam Arunachalam. Compared to the state of Tamilology in the forties, the picture in
the sixties is undoubtedly bright and encouraging.
But the lustre does not seem so extraordinary when one considers the many fields in which
progress is possible, the many fields which suffer neglect, the many changes which. are
necessary in orientation and methodology, and when one despairs of the glorification of
mediocrity, the seductive verbalism, and the exaggerated and uncritical praise of the past which
hinders progress among a section of publicists. The Unesco sponsored Institute of Tamil Studies
is well timed and the vision of the one individual who thought of it, pursued his idea in spite of
pessimistic prophecies, planned it and secured the necessary collaboration and sponsorship in the
places which matter, is a theme for the future historian of Tamil Studies.
Foreign universities give a certain preference to Tamil Studies within the range of Indic studies
because of the intrinsic values, the combined antiquity and modernity of Tamil literature and
culture, and the geographically widespread dispersion of the people who speak it.
But if Tamil Studies is to obtain the place it deserves in humanistic curricula in universities
abroad and in comparative studies so that these studies can make their contribution to the
theoretical development of the disciplines involved, Tamil Sociology contributing to world
sociology, Tamil history contributing to world history, Tamil literature contributing to world
literature, Tamil music enriching world music, and the study of Tamil humanism contributing to
the study of Man so that from the particularistic and the unique we may also understand the
universal elements in human experience, it is essential that the most important research in quality
and volume, be done in those areas where Tamil speakers live and where native university
Departments of Tamil exist.
The interest in the world abroad has to be a consequence of the interest at home, and the source
material which can be utilised by foreign scholars should be provided by and large by native
scholars, though there will be constant exchange of information and mutual help between native
scholarship and foreign scholarship. A people or a culture deserves study not only because it has
contributed values to human happiness and knowledge in the past, but also because its
achievements in the present and its role in the future are considered important ; otherwise it
becomes only a matter of antiquarian interest.
Academic learning, teaching and research must reach society in some form so that society too
becomes creative, and its creativity is seen in its literature, in its arts, and even in its economic
life. Tamil Nadu must protect itself from isolation and open itself to the influences from the rest
of the world while offering its best to the world. For this purpose, the future should develop
comparative studies in other fields as it has already developed in Linguistics. It must train its
own native specialists in various branches. A French sociologist who has done field work in the
Tamil country recently wrote :
"It is a sad fact, but it is a fact, that among Indian States, Madras is lagging far behind in the
matter of anthropological and sociological studies. Not only the main cities and capitals of India,
but a number of less prominent towns have established in their University a Department of
Anthropological and/or Sociological studies. Madras, as a state and as a city, has nothing of the
kind : only a small readership, to my knowledge to which should be added the pioneering work
done on behalf of the ethnography and folklore of the land, since the beginning of this century,
by the Madras Government Museum, including a few valuable publications in social
anthropology.
I earnestly request the Conference to face squarely this situation, which is as incomprehensible
as it is-deplorable. I say that the situation is incomprehensible, for there is no dearth in Tamil
Nad either of work to be clone or of men able to do it, either immediately or after suitable
training. No dearth of work to be done : indeed the living culture of a whole people awaits
recording, analysis, understanding and publication, for whatever efforts a few of us have made,
they are like a few drops of water in an ocean.
There is some degree of urgency, as in some cases the traditional culture is vanishing under the
impact of modern conditions, and as in all other cases it will certainly be seriously altered within
a relatively short time. From techniques and material culture in general to popular religion
through social organization, customary law and folklore, not to speak of music and the arts (but
yet insisting that village music should not be sacrificed to more exalted forms), everything awaits
being recorded, as it has been done, or is being done, in all the countries of the world."
Similar laments and hopes and urgency could be expressed about the Art and Archaeology of the
Tamil country, about the history of the Tamil country, about the study of Tamil culture and
Tamils overseas. Universities committed essentially to teaching may not be able to carry out
large programmes of research development. It will be the role of the new Institute to research
and outline where reform and developments are necessary and to offer the best opportunities to
promising scholars from Tamil areas for training at home and abroad, and for the acquisition of
the highest competence in scholarship and the most desirable Weltanschauung.
This Journal as well as the International Association of Tamil Research operate in the English
medium precisely because English is the medium in which international scholarship may
participate. But the future should pay attention to the Tamil medium so that these fertilising ideas
resulting from international participation may benefit the secluded native scholar and student
without a knowledge. of English, as well as the writers of literature in Tamil. The revival of the
Hebrew language after centuries of neglect concerning which Professor Chaim Rabin of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a very informative study in this first number of the Journal,
should be a lesson and encouragement to all those dedicated to the creative uses of Tamil.
Tamil literature even in this present epoch remains greatly hidebound by the incubus of tradition
and conventionalism. The level of experience of the majority of those who compose it must
considerably vary if it is to make an impact on the outside world. Here too Tamil research and
criticism may indirectly benefit the creative writer and influence his outlook and help him attain
newer levels of experience.
In other pages of the Journal is information concerning the project, which is intended to carry out
a programme which will meet the needs of Tamil scholarship in the next decade. It will be our
duty to co-operate as best as we may in the implementation of the Project for an International
Institute of Tamil Studies.
PROF. XAVIER S. THANI NAYAGAM is an internationally known expert on Tamil Studies. He was the FounderChief Editor of ' Tamil Culture '. the Founder. Secretary General of the International Association of Tamil Research
and the Organizer of the first International Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies held in Kuala Lumpur in 1966. He
has published several books and articles relating to Tamil and related studies and is now the Head of the Department
of Indian Studies at the University of Malaya. He knows several languages and has travelled widely on scholarly
missions.