Tolkāppiyam

Tolkāppiyam, also romanised as Tholkaappiyam (Tamil: தொல்காப்பியம் listen^ⓘ , lit. "ancient poem"), is the oldest extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. It is the earliest Tamil text mentioning Gods, perhaps linked to Tamil deities.

There is no firm evidence to assign the authorship of this treatise to any one author. There is a tradition of belief that it was written by a single author named Tolkappiyar, a disciple of Tamil sage Agathiyar.

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 (Kanda), 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 Pandiya 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.