EARLIEST TAMIL POETS. 389
mandments can be translated into classical Tamil with theaddition of a single Sanskrit word. That word is ‘image.’
According to native tradition, Tamil was first cultivated First culti-by the sage Agastya. Many works, besides a grammar and ™amil ° ftreatises on philosophy and science, are ascribed to him.
His name served indeed as a centre around which Tamil compositions of widely separated periods, including some ofrecent date, gather. The oldest Tamil grammar now extant,the Tol-Kappiyam, is assigned to one of his disciples. Butthe rise of a continuous Tamil literature belongs to a laterperiod. The Sivaite and Vishnuite revival of the Brahmanapostles in Southern India, from the 8th century onwards,stirred up a counter movement on the part of the Jains . Jain cycleBefore that period, the Buddhism of the Dravidian kingdoms ijteratu're •had modelled itself on the Jain type. We shall see hereafterthat early Buddhism in Northern India adopted the Prakrit or vernacular speech for its religious treatises. On the sameanalogy, Buddhism in Southern India, as the religion of thepeople, defended itself against the Brahmanical revival of the8th century by works in the popular dialects. The DravidianBuddhists or Jains created a cycle of Tamil literature, anti- 9 th to 13thBrahmanical in tone, stretching from the 9th to the 13thcentury a.d.
Its first great composition, the KuralofTiruvalluvar, not later Its greatthan the 10th century a.d., is said to have been the work of poe^^oQa poet sprung from the Pariah or lowest caste. It enforces the a.d. (?)old Sankya philosophy in 1330 distichs or poetical aphorisms,dealing with the three chief desires of the human heart—wealth, pleasure, and virtue. To the sister of its author, aPariah poetess, are ascribed many compositions of the highestmoral excellence, and of undying popularity in SouthernIndia. The Jain period of Tamil literature includes workson ethics and language; among them the Divakaram, literallythe ‘ Day-making ’ Dictionary. The period culminated in the The JainChintamani, a romantic epic of 15,000 lines by an unknown e P IC -Jain author. Indeed, it is worthy of remark that several of thebest Indian authors, whether Sanskrit or vernacular, have leftno indication of their names. As it was the chief desire ofan Indian sage to merge his individual existence in the Uni-versal Existence; so it appears to have been the wish of manyIndian men of letters of the highest type, to lose their literaryindividuality in the school or cycle of literature to which theybelonged.