Moreover various papers on different aspects of his life and work have been published in the Christian College Magazine from time to time. Pope’s magnificent edition of the Tiruvasagam, Manikkavasagar has become the best known of the Tamil poets in European circles. As to his date there is much controversy, but the members of the Tamil Antiquarian Society, a body which is doing very useful research work into the past history of Tamil literature, seem to be fairly agreed in fixing him somewhere about the fourth century A.D. We must first refer to Mannikkavasagar, who is almost certainly the most ancient of the great Tamil poets1. The mere learning of them by rote is held to be a virtue, and Tamil parents compel their sons to memorise them in much the same ways as Christian children are made to learn Psalms. It is these songs which are daily sung before the idol in respectable Saivit temples throughout The Tamil districts, and a special class of Vellala priests called othuvar is maintained for their recitation. These eight collections are regarded as matching the Sanksrit Vedas, and are in fact called the Tamild Vedas. The Devaram proper consists of seven collections of songs composed by the three great writers Sambandar, Appar, and Sundarar but very frequently there is bound up with them a copy of the Tiruvasagam of Manikkavasagar. As representing Tamil poetry of modern times, in fact of the last generation, Ramalingaswami. As representing mediaeval Tamil, written probably about the same period as some of the masterpieces of English literature, Pattanattu Pillay and Tayumanavar.ģ. Manikkavasagar and the three great writers of the Devaram Hymns, who represent ancient Tamil literature.Ģ. As specimens of this literature, I propose to deal with -ġ. I shall make no reference to a large body of literature which is chiefly theological or philosophical, though much of that is devotional in character, but shall restrict myself to the literature which is simply devotional and nothing else. I shall aim at selecting typical poets, giving a brief account of them with typical extracts from their works.įollowing this method, it is chiefly the Saivite literature which I attempted to describe, not because there is not an abundance of Vaishanavite literature which thoroughly deserves attention, but bcause it is the Saivite literature, which is most distinctive of the Tamil country, and Saivism is the living system which exerts the greater power today over the great majority of the best Tamil people. Since the extent of Tail literature is so vast, and the greater part of it can included under the heading ‘devotional literature’, it is plain that any paper on the subject can only be kept within reasonable limits by the method of selection. To err is human, and the errors of the author stand rectified by the foot-notes appended to this article. It was later published in the Madras Christian College Magazine, Volume XXVII. The substance of the article printed hereunder was embodied in a paper which he read before the Madras and Bangalore Missionary Conferences in March, 1910. Even here his attention was drawn more towards Saivism than Vaishnavism. He was a Christian missionary who took to the cultivating of devotional literature in Tamil.