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# Südasien

Anandakichenin, Suganya / D'Avella, Victor B. (Hg.): *The Commentary Idioms of the Tamil Learned Traditions*. Paris/Pondichéry: École française d'Extrême-Orient/Institut français de Pondichéry 2020. IV, 603 S. 8° = Collection Indologie 141; NETamil Series 5. Hardbd. € 43,00. ISBN 978-2-85539-236-3.

Besprochen von Herman Tieken: Den Haag / Niederlande, E-Mail: H.J.H.Tieken@hum.leidenuniv.nl

https://doi.org/10.1515/olzg-2022-0156

Commentaries played, and still play, an important role in the study of premodern Tamil texts. The present volume provides an overview of the diversity of this vast scholarly tradition, with three contributions on commentaries on learned treatises (*Tolkāppiyam*), five on Caṇkam and post-Caṇkam poetry and one on religious Bhakti songs. The commentary on the Bhakti songs is written in so-called Maṇipravāļam, consisting of Sanskrit words with Tamil endings. Another commentary dealt with and written in this variety of Tamil is the one on Amarasiṃha's *Nāmaliṅgānuśāsana*. The book ends with two contributions on Sanskrit commentaries on Sanskrit texts (*Bhāgavatapurāṇa* and Bhāravi's *Kirātārjunīya*).

This volume is the second one entirely dedicated to the Tamil commentary tradition. While in the first one, from 2009 and edited by Eva Wilden,<fnref n="1" /> the focus is to a large extent on the commentary as a phenomenon and on the history of the tradition, here it has shifted to offering examples of the commentaries at work. Together, they place the study of the Tamil commentary tradition on a firm footing; the critical remarks made below mainly concern the individual contributions.

The presumably oldest known commentary is that by Ḫampūraṇar on the *Tolkāppiyam*, which is dated to the eleventh century. Compared to its Sanskrit counterpart, the Tamil commentarial tradition thus started relatively late. However, many of the texts commented on are not much older than that, a point which, if mentioned at all in the book, is apparently too controversial to elaborate on. From the eleventh century onwards commentaries continued to be written well into the twentieth century, with modern editors writing commentaries of their own on the original texts. However, in some cases these modern commentaries have been based on, or are paraphrases of, older ones. In

itself, this is nothing new, for in the course of their transmission the commentaries appear to have been continuously reworked. Jonas Buchholz, in his contribution on the so-called *Kīlkkaṇakku* texts,<fnref n="2" /> which includes a number of collections of poems in the style of Caṇkam poetry, discusses two versions of one and the same commentary on the *Tiṇaimālai Nūrraimpatu*, in one of which the language, both in grammar and in vocabulary, has been modernised. He also notes that those parts of the text for which a commentary is missing show a disturbed transmission, suggesting that in copying the texts the scribes consulted the commentary.

Another effect of this situation is discussed by Jean-Luc Chevillard,<fnref n="3" /> who deals with a set of technical terms from the third book of the *Tolkāppiyam*, which according to him are part of a still-born classification of literary styles. In the various available manuscripts the definitions of the terms differ, depending on the accompanying commentaries. If not due to the commentator on duty, these interventions into the texts are clearly the result of the activity of a commentator. It is interesting to compare this finding with that of Emmanuel Francis in his investigation of ten commentaries of the first six lines of the *Tirumurukārruppaṭai*:<fnref n="4" /> the commentaries comment on largely identical texts. Apparently, literary texts were inviolable to substitutions and insertions, more so than technical treatises like the *Tolkāppiyam*. Incidentally, Francis dates the *Tirumurukārruppaṭai* much too early (p. 251: “perhaps [sic] in the 7th cent. CE”) and describes it as a Caṇkam text, which it is not, that is, not by tradition and not by its format, as it is an example in Tamil of the Sanskrit Mahākāvya genre.

The commentaries on the Caṇkam poems are to a large extent informed by both the grammatical and the poetical details provided in the *Tolkāppiyam*. In his contribution on an anonymous commentary on the *Aiṅkuṇunūru*, Thomas Lehmann duly goes through such details one by one.<fnref n="5" /> He provides, for instance, an example in which the commentator identifies the phrase *menpaṭai*, “soft wings”, in *Aiṅkuṇunūru* 86, as an example of an *ākupeyar*, or metonymy, referring to a flock of young herons. The commentary on the same poem also explains the so-called *ụḷụrai*, or how to read the description of the behaviour of these birds as a

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<footnote n="1">1 Eva Wilden (ed.): *Between Preservation and Recreation: Tamil Traditions of Commentary. Proceedings of a Workshop in Honour of T.V. Gopal Iyer*. (Collection Indologie 109.) Pondichéry: École française d'Extrême-Orient/Institut français de Pondichéry 2009.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2 “Commentaries on the *Kīlkkaṇakku Akam* Works” (pp. 335–383)</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3 “Codifying Beauty: On the Differences of Interpretation between Traditional Commentators Concerning the Last Eight “Limbs of Poetry” (śaṃśyamśaṃśyam) in the *Ceyyuṭiyal* of the *Tolkāppiyam*” (pp. 133–166).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4 “Showing the Way: The Metatextual Field of the *Tirumurukārruppaṭai*” (pp. 251–333).</footnote>

<footnote n="5">5 “The Old, Anonymous Commentary of the *Aiṅkuṇunūru* (*pạalaiyavụrai*)” (pp. 209–249).</footnote>
comment on the love life of the village people portrayed in
the poem (pp. 220–222).

T. Rajeswari presents several examples of the com-
mentaries written by Nacciṅārkkiṇiyar<fnref n="6" /> – the latter wrote
commentaries on altogether four literary texts. Rajeswari’s
main conclusion is that Nacciṅārkkiṇiyar is “an accom-
plished commentator,” who “bases his commentary on
authoritative sources like the *Tolkāppiyam*” (pp. 130 f.). To
put this across, however, more is needed than giving just a
few examples. Eva Wilden’s investigation of a commentary
on the *Akanāṇūru* presents a more systematic approach,
and by adding appendices with glosses, lists of grammatical
and poetical terms, and Sanskrit loanwords her contribu-
tion seems to anticipate an important larger project.<fnref n="7" />

The book contains two contributions of Maṇipravāłam
commentaries, one on the Nālāyira Tivviya Pirapantam
by Suganya Anandakichenin and Erin McCann,<fnref n="8" /> and the
other on Amarasimha's Nāmalingānuśāsana, by Giovanni
Ciotti and R. Sathyanarayanan.<fnref n="9" /> The former looks at the
commentaries as sources of information on the language,
poetic features and religious message of the individual
stanzas. The latter is mainly a study of what a Maṇipravāłam
commentary looks like. This includes discussions of graphic
features (Grantha script) and of the languages used: Sans-
krit words with Tamil endings, Tamil words in their collo-
quial forms and occasional Telugu glosses. On the basis of
the latter glosses the authors suggest that the commentator
himself might have been a Telugu speaker, who, given the
many colloquial features in his written Tamil, it should be
added, lacked practice in writing that language.

The first of the two contributions on Sanskrit commen-
taries, by Suganya Anandakichenin and S. L. P. Anjaneya
Sarma, looks at four commentaries on the Bhāgavata-
purāṇa.<fnref n="10" /> The aim of the study is to show that Pōtana’s
fifteenth-century Telugu translation of the Purāṇa is a
commentary as well, without claiming, however, that it is
or was meant to be such a thing. This seems to me a fore-
gone conclusion in that, like a commentary, the translation
is an interpretation of the text, though without the formulae

characteristic of a commentary. The second contribution,
by Andrey Klebanov, subjects Pitambara's commentary on
Bhāravi's *Kirātārjunīya* to a so-called structure analysis,
that is, a process of dissecting a given text into elements
based on the functions they have in the sentence.<fnref n="11" /> The
result is a concatenation of words or phrases colour coded
between different types of brackets with superscribed tags.
It is a systematic approach which will, among other things,
make possible verifiable comparisons between different
commentators.

Unfortunately, one branch of the Tamil commentary
tradition is more or less silently passed by in this volume,
namely that of commentaries on the grammar part of the
*Tolkāppiyam*, as if with Jean-Luc Chevillard’s two-volume
study of Cēnāvaraiyar’s commentary on the second book
of the *Tolkāppiyam*, the *Collatikāram*, the topic has been
completely exhausted.<fnref n="12" /> Thus, in his contribution on
*Iļampūraṇar’s* commentary on the same *Collatikāram*,
Victor B. D’Avella deals merely with the formulae intro-
ducing new topics, not with the topics proper such as case
endings and tense suffixes.<fnref n="13" /> This is to be regretted all the
more as precisely such grammatical details might have pro-
vided the chance to address the question of the extent of the
indebtedness of the Tamil tradition to the earlier Sanskrit
one.

Moreover, some contributions in the collection might
have profited from collegiate advice. For instance, it
would have helped the reader if Indra Manuel had begun
her contribution of Pērāciriyar’s commentary on the
*meyppāṭu* chapter of the third book of the *Tolkāppiyam*, the
*Poruṭatikāram*,<fnref n="14" /> by informing the reader more extensively
than she has done about what exactly these *meyppāṭus* are
and how the eight *meyppāṭus* are related to the total of
thirty-two. For most readers it would even have sufficed
to mention that the *meyppāṭus* are the *bhāva-s* of the Sans-
krit *rasa*-theory. A similar problem is found in Chevillard’s
contribution (cf. note 3). The passages quoted by him are
difficult to appreciate because readers, and by his own

<footnote n="6">6 “A Note on Nacciṅārkkiṇiyar’s Commentary Techniques” (pp. 119–131).</footnote>

<footnote n="7">7 “Akanāṇūru pañaiyavurai: The Subtle Growth of a Commentary” (pp. 167–208).</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8 “Towards Understanding the Śrīvaiṣṇava Commentary on the Nālāyira Tivviya Pirapantam: The Blending of Two Worlds and Two Languages” (pp. 385–441).</footnote>

<footnote n="9">9 “A Multilingual Commentary on the First Verse of the Nāma-
lingānuśāsana as Found in Ms. IFP RE22704 (Studies in Late Tamil
Manipravalam Literature 1)” (pp. 443–489).</footnote>

<footnote n="10">10 “Reading Pōtana’s *Mahābhāgavatamu* as a Commentary on the Sans-
krit *Bhāgavatapurāṇa*: A Case in Point (pp. 491–522).</footnote>

<footnote n="11">11 “Application of Structure Analysis to the Study of Sanskrit Com-
mentaries on *mahākāvya*” (pp. 523–590).</footnote>

<footnote n="12">12 *Le commentaire de Cēnāvaraiyar sur le Collatikāram du Tolkāppiyam. Sur la métalangue grammatical des maîtres commensateurs tamouls médiévaux. Volume I, and Companion Volume to the Cēnāvaraiyar on Tamil Morphology and Syntax. Le commentaire de Cēnāvaraiyar sur le Collatikāram du Tolkāppiyam Vol. 2: English Introduction, glossaire analytique, appendices.* (Collection Indologie 84.) Pondichéry: École française d’Extrême-Orient/ Institut Français de Pondichéry 1996 and 2008.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13 “The Beginnings of the Tamil Commentarial Idiom” (pp. 27–69).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14 “Salient Features of a Grammatical Commentary in Tamil (With Reference to Pērāciriyar’s Commentary on *Meyppāṭṭiyal of Tolkāppiyam*)” (pp. 71–118).</footnote>
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admission Chevillard himself, do not know what the eight “limbs of poetry” in the present context actually mean or stand for. His discussions of the available commentaries are interesting, but in the end the question remains what it has all been about.

As the contributors to this volume do not do so, I will do it for them, and conclude with a warning never to follow the interpretations offered by the commentators of a Caṅkam poem blindly. When commentators did not know how to interpret a poem – which happened more than once – they tended to produce the most far-fetched solutions, which, to make matters worse, have often found their way into the available translations. A case in point is Lehmann’s interpretation of *Aṅkūrṇūnūr̥* 20 on pp. 242–244, in which, following the commentator, he presents a swaying reed that rubs away the eggs a bee had laid in a lotus flower. However, as everybody knows, bees don’t lay eggs in lotus flowers, or for that matter in any other flower. Furthermore, in Caṅkam poetry the bee, which hops from one flower to the other, always stands for the unfaithful lover, and male bees, or drones, do not lay eggs at all. Instead, their genitals explode immediately after having impregnated the queen bee, and they die. As I have argued elsewhere, the poem describes a lover who is reluctant to leave his pregnant wife (the bee rubs against the swollen pistil – not the egg – of the lotus flower) and join his mistress.<fnref n="15" /> As can be seen, if need be, the commentators created a natural world of their own that is far removed from what the world is really like.

Another telling instance is found in *Akanāṇūr̥* 101. This poem describes a jungle in which two groups of cowherds are involved in a boundary conflict, which ends with the one making away with part of the herd of the other. In this description the following phrase is found: *vāyppakai kaṭiyum maṇṇoṭu*, which according to the commentator would refer to cough syrup: earth (*maṇ*) that chases away (*kaṭiyum*) the enemy (*pakai*) from the mouth (*vāy*). And this is how the passage has been translated by George L. Hart III: “[young men] stuff their mouths with clay to keep from coughing”.<fnref n="16" /> In her translation of the text published a few years ago, Eva Wilden ignored the gloss and translated the text as follows: “[warriors made fierce] with earth that chases the enemy from (their) mouths”.<fnref n="17" /> But in her con-

tribution in the volume reviewed here (see note 7) she returns to the gloss, noting that it would be interesting to look for parallels (pp. 177 f.). In fact, there is a parallel, not for the use of earth as cough syrup but for *vāyppakai*: this term is also found in stanza 17 of the *Tirikaṭukam*, one of the above-mentioned *Kīlkaṇakku* texts. There, *vāyppakai* clearly means “dispute” or “fighting with words or the mouth”. The conflict between the cowherds thus starts with shouting abuse at each other (*vāyppakai*) and (the case ending -oṭu) chasing the others away by throwing clods of mud (*maṇ*). From there, it goes to throwing burning embers and shooting arrows, and finally, to clubbing one another with churning sticks.

These examples show that the commentators were far removed from the milieu of the Caṅkam poets, if not in time then in focus. They looked at the poems mainly through the lense of the *Tolkāppiyam*, a treatise dealing with the grammar as well as the poetics of the poems. In other words, they were scholars whose main ambition it was to identify the rules of the learned tradition. Beyond that, they had little to add that would enhance interpretation, leading, in some instances, to awkward results.

The volume contains a preface and an introduction before, and an index after the contributions.

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<footnote n="15">15 Herman Tieken: “On a Recent Translation of Classical Tamil Love Poetry”, *Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques* 66 (2012): 811–832 (see pp. 812 f.), and, “Translating Tamil Caṇkam Poetry: Taking Stock”, *Orientalistische Literaturzeitung* 115 (2020): 287–303 (see pp. 289 f.).</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16 *The Four Hundred Songs of Love. An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil. The Akanāṇūr*. (Regards sur l’Asie du Sud 7.) Pondichéry: Institut Français de Pondichéry 2015, pp. 112 f.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17 *A Critical Edition and an Annotated Translation of the Akanāṇūr*. (Part I – *Kaṭiyyānainirai*). *Volume II: 51–120*. (Collection Indologie</footnote>

<footnote n="134">134.2; NETamil Series 1.2; Critical Texts of Caṇkam Literature 4.2.). Pondichéry: École française d’Extrême-Orient/Institut Français de Pondichéry 2018, pp. 628–633.</footnote>