121-538: Maṇimēkalai ( Tamil : மணிமேகலை , lit. ' jewelled belt, girdle of gems ' ), also spelled Manimekhalai or Manimekalai , is a Tamil Buddhist epic composed by Kulavāṇikaṉ Seethalai Sataṉar probably somewhere between the 2nd century to the 6th century. It is an "anti-love story", a sequel to the "love story" in the earliest Tamil epic Cilappatikaram , with some characters from it and their next generation. The epic consists of 4,861 lines in akaval meter, arranged in 30 cantos. The title Manimekalai
242-455: A Tamira Samghatta ( Tamil confederacy ) The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BCE contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Southworth suggests that the name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "our own speech". Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ , with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and " -iḻ " having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests
363-468: A lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes . Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person , number , mood , tense , etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination , which can lead to long words with many suffixes, which would require several words or
484-480: A , as with other Indic scripts . This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi , to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a ) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama , but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without
605-740: A 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in Tamil Nadu , Puducherry , (in India) and in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Maharashtra , Gujarat , Delhi , Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and
726-506: A Buddhist monastery, and that is where she met nun Manimekalai. The prince left unconvinced, resolving to meet Manimekalai's family to put pressure on her. Manimekalai then confesses she is confused because she wants to be a nun, yet she feels attracted to the prince. The goddess of the seas, Manimekhala, appears. She praises the Buddha, his wheel of dharma, meets the two Buddhist nuns. A description of Goddess Manimekhala and her powers; she advises
847-819: A Buddhist nun. She informs her that Madhavi and Sudhamati were her sisters in previous lives, and are now her mother and friend in this life. She then guides her on how to be free of suffering and fears. The goddess asks Manimekalai to study the "deceitful theories of various religions", and teaches her magical mantras ( Dharani ) to overcome sufferings of ascetic life and hunger. One of the mantras, says goddess, will let her change her appearance into another person and instantaneously travel through air. A Buddhist protectress goddess Tiva-tilakai (Skt: Dvipa-tilaka) meets Manimekalai. The goddess says, only those who have amassed great merit in past lives and remained Buddhist over their many births are able to see and worship Buddha's footprints in their present life. Tivatilakai mentions that Buddha
968-570: A classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Singapore. The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate the Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamil Sangams , which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these Tamil Sangams
1089-409: A derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < * tav-iḻ < * tak-iḻ , meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature. The Tamil Lexicon of University of Madras defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests
1210-592: A few before it, are the epic's statement on the karma theory of Buddhism, as understood by its author, and how rebirths and future sufferings have links to past causes and present events in various realms of existence ( samsara ). The Manimekhalai palm-leaf manuscripts were preserved and found in Hindu temples and monasteries along with those of Silappadikaram . It is the only surviving Tamil Buddhist literary work, though commentary and secondary Tamil literature evidence suggests that there were other Buddhist epics and texts in
1331-497: A hospice. The epic mentions Rama and Vishnu story from the Ramayana , states that they built a link to Sri Lanka, but a curse of an ascetic dissolved the bridge link. It also mentions stories of people fed from the magic bowl suddenly realizing their past lives. The hospice of Manimekalai is near a Temple of Heaven (Buddhist mounds, gathering place for monks). Prince Udayakumara visits the hospice of Manimekalai after her grandmother tells
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#17330862412871452-418: A married woman in the neighborhood, as the prince pursues her. The husband sees the prince teasing her, and protects "his wife" – Manimekalai-in-hiding – by killing the prince. The king and queen learn of their son's death, order the arrest of Manimekalai, arrange a guard to kill her. Angels intervene and Manimekalai miraculously disappears as others approach her, again. The queen understands, repents. Manimekalai
1573-606: A member of French Institute of Pondicherry , which works in the field of Indology . Upon his return to Europe in 1960, he was appointed an advisor to the UNESCO 's International Music Council , which led to a number of recordings of traditional music such as Unesco Collection: A Musical Anthology of the Orient , Musical Atlas , Musical Sources , and Anthology of Indian Classical Music - A Tribute to Alain Daniélou . In 1963, he became
1694-591: A number of apparent Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew dating to before 500 BCE, the oldest attestation of the language. Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BCE to 700 CE. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil-Brahmi . The earliest long text in Old Tamil
1815-512: A number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic. Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with
1936-637: A nun, lead a religious life and that she will not dance or otherwise attend the festival; more description of the Chola city, people and the festival. Manimekalai goes to a city garden, away from the festival center, with her friend Sutamati; continued description of the Chola city, people and the festival, mentions a "Jain monk, naked and waving a fly-whisk to avoid hurting unseen fragile insect" as well as "Kalamukhas [a subtradition of Shaivism] wearing oleander flower garlands and rudraksha mala, body smeared with ashes, acting madly". Manimekalai enters crystal pavilion of
2057-409: A propaganda pamphlet of Buddhism. In Silappadikaram , the epic's storyline is served by ethics and religious doctrines. In Manimekalai , states Zvelebil, the ethics, and religious doctrines are served by the epic's storyline. Kannaki is a strong, inspiring tragic character that grabs the audience's interest. In contrast, Manimekalai is a rather feeble character, says Zvelebil. According to a review by
2178-523: A relative parallel to Tamil, even as Tamil has undergone some changes in modern ways of speaking. According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil) was created by Lord Shiva . Murugan , revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya , brought it to the people. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the Proto-Dravidian language , which
2299-578: A sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following morphemes : போக pōka go முடி muṭi accomplish Alain Dani%C3%A9lou Alain Daniélou (4 October 1907 – 27 January 1994) was a French historian , Indologist , intellectual , musicologist , translator , writer and Western convert to and expert on
2420-620: A small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults. Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada , the United States , the United Arab Emirates , the United Kingdom , South Africa , and Australia . Tamil is the official language of
2541-595: A subject of study in schools in the French overseas department of Réunion . In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the Government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations, Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India , Abdul Kalam , who
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#17330862412872662-458: A variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil . These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese , Dutch , and English. In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on
2783-438: A vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives . Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology . In addition to
2904-414: A window into then extant ideas of Mahayana Buddhism, Jainism , Ajivika , and Hinduism , as well as the history of interreligious rivalries and cooperation as practiced and understood by the Tamil population in a period of Dravidian–Aryan synthesis and as the Indian religions were evolving. There is no credible information available about the author or the date of its composition. Late sources suggest that
3025-412: Is Malayalam ; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect, the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally Kannada is also relatively close to the Tamil language and shares the format of
3146-486: Is "Buddhist propaganda" that ridicules the other. The epic mentions Vedic religion and their various epistemological theories ( pramana ). The Hindu sub-schools mentioned include Vedanta, Mimamsa, Nyaya, Samkhya, Vaisheshika, Shaivism [Shive], Vaishnavism [Vishnu], Brahmavada [Brahma] and Vedavadi [no deity, the Vedas are supreme]. Manimekalai visits Kanci, meets her mother and Aravana Adigal. Aravana Adigal teaches Manimekalai
3267-526: Is "attacked and ridiculed", according to Zvelebil. According to Richman, the Manimekalai is a significant Buddhist epic, given its unique status. The summary of Buddhist doctrine in it, particularly in Cantos 27, 29 and 30, present a Tamil literary writer's perspective of Buddhism before it likely died out in Tamil Nadu, in or about the 11th century. According to a 1927 thesis of Rao Bahadur Krishnaswāmi Aiyangar,
3388-486: Is also the name of the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi, who follows in her mother's footsteps as a dancer and a Buddhist nun. The epic tells her story. Her physical beauty and artistic achievements seduces the Chola prince Udayakumara. He pursues her. She, a nun of Mahayana Buddhism persuasion, feels a commitment to free herself from human ties. She rejects his advances, yet finds herself drawn to him. She hides, prays and seeks
3509-457: Is based on the dialect of Jaffna . After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava . The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels , 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam . The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel
3630-563: Is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam . Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam , with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu , col , poruḷ , yāppu , aṇi . Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry. Tamil words consist of
3751-451: Is from Bengal, her father a Brahmin who tended fire [Vedic], and they came to the south on a [Hindu] pilgrimage towards Kanyakumari, related to the journey of Rama in the Ramayana . There she joined a Jain monastery. Her father joined her, but one day after an accident her father was bleeding badly. The Jains kicked them both out, afraid that the blood will pollute them. She then became a nun at
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3872-405: Is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic . In grammar, the most important change
3993-409: Is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example,
4114-410: Is in koṭuntamiḻ , and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' koṭuntamiḻ , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai . In Sri Lanka, the standard
4235-501: Is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name is found in Tholkappiyam , which is dated as early as late 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription , inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by Kharavela , the Jain king of Kalinga , also refers to
4356-771: Is not always consistently applied. ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to Latin script , and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English. Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs. /f/ , /z/ , /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. Tamil has two diphthongs : /aɪ̯/ ஐ and /aʊ̯/ ஔ ,
4477-478: Is one of the Five Great Epics of Tamil Literature , and one of three that have survived into the modern age. Along with its twin-epic Cilappatikaram , the Manimekalai is widely considered as an important text that provides insights into the life, culture and society of the Tamil regions (India and Sri Lanka) in the early centuries of the common era. The last cantos of the epic – particularly Canto 27 – are also
4598-425: Is right. The goddess then casts magic, plunges the two nuns into sleep, thereafter instantly transports Manimekalai alone through air to the island of Manipallavam where her oaths of being a nun would not be threatened by the prince's charms. The goddess meets the prince and tells him to forget about Manimekalai because she is destined to live a monastic life; She then awakens and meets Sudhamati, tells her Manimekalai
4719-436: Is safe on a distant island and to remind her mother Madhavi not to search and worry about her daughter; the goddess then disappeared into the sky; a description of the ongoing festival continues, along with a mention of upset women, infidelities of their husbands, the tired and sleeping young boys and girls who earlier in the day had run around in their costumes of Hindu gods (Vishnu) and goddesses (Durga); Sudhamati walked through
4840-606: Is set free. Manimekalai converts the prison into a hospice to help the needy, teaches the king the dharma of the Buddha . In the final five cantos of the epic, Buddhist teachers recite Four Noble Truths , Twelve Nidanas and other ideas to her. She then goes to goddess Kannaki temple in Vanci (Chera kingdom), prays, listens to different religious scholars, and practices severe self-denial to attain Nirvana (release from rebirths). The Manimekalai
4961-409: Is the Tolkāppiyam , an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BCE. Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature . These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE. The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil , which
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5082-822: Is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia , along with English, Malay and Mandarin. A large community of Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka. There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in Réunion , Guyana , Fiji , Suriname , and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only
5203-615: The samnyasin by whom he was initiated into Shaivism under the Hindu name Shiva Sharan ("Protected by Shiva"). In 1942, he published his translation of the Tirukkural , a Tamil moral literature. In 1953, he joined the Adyar Library and Research Centre at the Theosophical Society Adyar near Madras (now Chennai ), where he was the director of a centre of research into Sanskrit literature until 1956. In 1959, he became
5324-576: The Banaras Hindu University , where he studied Hindustani music , Sanskrit language and literature , Hindu philosophy , and Hindu religion for the next 15 years of his life. In 1949, he was appointed as a research professor at the University, a post he held until 1953; he also remained the director of the College of Indian Music. In Bénarès (now Varanasi ), he lived in a mansion on the banks of
5445-654: The Ganges , named Rewa Kothi . During these years, he studied Indian classical music in Bénarès with Shivendranath Basu and played the veena , a classical Indian instrument which he started playing professionally. He also studied Hindi and Sanskrit languages, as well as Indian philosophy . His interest in the symbolism of Hindu architecture and sculpture lead him to long trips with Burnier to Khajuraho , Bhubaneswar , and Konarak , sites located in central India and Rajasthan . He also translated some works of Swami Karpatri ,
5566-431: The Manimekalai is Buddhist propaganda that "attacks and ridicules Jainism", according to Kamil Zvelebil. The annual festival in the honor of Indra begins; a description of the Chola city, people and the festival. Manimekalai, her delicate beauty and extraordinary talents introduced in the epic; Kovalan and Kannaki remembered; Manimekalai's mother Madhavi and grandmother Chitrapati learn that Manimekali insists on being
5687-667: The Shaivite branch of Hinduism . In 1991, he was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship , the highest honour conferred by Sangeet Natak Akademi , India's National Academy for Music, Dance and Drama. His mother, Madeleine Clamorgan, was from an old family of the Norman nobility ; a fervent Roman Catholic , she founded schools and a religious order, the Order of Sainte-Marie, for women teachers in civilian costume under
5808-584: The University of Madras , was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. A strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamil Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil. It received some support from Dravidian parties . This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain. According to
5929-609: The Vedas , Hindu philosophy , and Shaivism . He is the author of over thirty books on Indian music and culture. He received several awards for his work on music. He was also a photographer and artist. Daniélou was an Officer of the Légion d'Honneur , an Officer of the Ordre National du Mérite , and Commander of Arts and Letters . He was the director of the UNESCO Collection series,
6050-486: The 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai , a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak
6171-633: The Brahmin flees in terror, then dies in shock in front of his mother Gotami. The mother goes to the Champapati temple and prays, "take my life, let my son live". Champapati appears and says this was fate, his karma and he will be reborn. The mother questions the four Vedas, the goddess explains the Buddhist theory of samsaras , mount Meru, and realms of rebirth. According to the epic, the feeble mind of Sudhamati barely understands but she feels that Goddess Manimekhala
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#17330862412876292-479: The Brahmin scholar Subrahmanya Aiyar in 1906, Manimekalai in puritan terms is not an epic poem, but a grave disquisition on philosophy. He states that the three surviving Tamil epics including Manimekalai , on the whole, have no plot and are not epic-genre texts. The Manimekalai is a Buddhistic work of an "infant society sensitive to higher influences of life", and inferior to the Silappadikaram that he calls as
6413-523: The Indian state of Haryana , purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab , though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi , in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamil as the medium of instruction . The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamil language by
6534-469: The Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India . It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore . Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala . It was once given nominal official status in
6655-520: The Manimekalai contains "nothing that may be regarded as referring to any form of Mahayana Buddhism, particularly the Sunyavada as formulated by Nagarjuna ". In contrast, in 1978, C.N. Kandaswami stated there is a lot of internal evidence that "Manimekalai explains Mahayana Buddhism, and champions its cause". According to G John Samuel and others, based in part on the antiquity of the text and theories, it
6776-411: The Manimekalai should be dated after 890 CE. According to Paula Richman, the 6th-century dating by Kandaswami and Zvelebil are the most persuasive scholarly analysis of the evidence within the epic as well as the evidence in other Tamil and Sanskrit texts. The Manimekalai builds on the characters of the oldest Tamil epic Silappatikaram ( Tamil : சிலப்பதிகாரம் ). It describes the story of Manimekalai,
6897-502: The Tamil language at least till the 14th century. The reason for its survival, states Richman, is probably its status as the sequel to the Silapathikaram or Sīlappadhikāram . UV Swaminatha Aiyar published a critical edition of the text in 1921. The first abridged English translation and historical analysis of Manimekalai by R. B. K. Aiyangar in 1928, as Maṇimekhalai in its Historical Setting . Extracts of this, particularly Canto 30,
7018-673: The Tamils who settled there 200 years ago. Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in Canada and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the Parliament of Canada . Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as
7139-442: The ancient language ( sankattamiḻ ), a modern literary and formal style ( centamiḻ ), and a modern colloquial form ( koṭuntamiḻ ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ . In modern times, centamiḻ
7260-912: The approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages. In 2004, a number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware urns dating from at least 696 BCE in Adichanallur . Some of these urns contained writing in Tamil Brahmi script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin. Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in Keezhadi . These were sent to Beta Analytic in Miami , Florida , for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating. One sample containing Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions
7381-462: The author Seethalai may have been a Buddhist grain merchant and Tamil writer. The Manimekalai has been variously dated between the 2nd-century and early 9th century by Indian and non-Indian scholars, with early dates favored by Tamil scholars generally allied to the Tamil tradition. A part of the complication is that the Manimekalai contains numerous Hindu Puranic legends, references to gods and goddesses in Hindu and Buddhist traditions, as well as
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#17330862412877502-443: The beautiful daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi, in 30 cantos. The Manimekalai is the anti-thesis of the Silappadikaram in focus, style and the propaganda in the two epics. The Silappadikaram is a tragic love story that ultimately becomes supernatural. The Manimekalai is an anti-love story that starts off with supernatural elements. The Silappadikaram builds on human emotional themes and includes some sections praising Jains, while
7623-649: The bowl of Aputra, which Aputra shares with the poor, the blind, the deaf and other needy people. The epic mentions the name Kanyakumari and it being a Hindu bathing pilgrimage site. Manimekalai learns more about the Aputra story from ascetic Aravana Adigal. Aputra lives in Madurai for many years, begging in the Lakshmi temple. In a particular year, there was famine in the Tamil region when god Indra became angry. During this period of suffering, one day goddess Sarasvati appears and gave him
7744-466: The circumstances, and saddened by her numerous rebirths, her fathers and husbands. The epic mentions she meeting a sage named Brahma Dharma, being a Buddhist in the last birth, of Gandhara, Naganadu, the north city of Avanti, and other locations significant to Indian Buddhism. A goddess appears and says that Buddha appeared when "goodness was no longer found among living beings, people have become deaf to wisdom and true knowledge". She circumambulates around
7865-466: The crystal pavilion. According to the epic, Manimekalai's beauty rivaled that of the goddess of fortune, Lakshmi as she hid in the crystal pavilion full of statues. Udayakumara sees her, falls for her instantly, wonders if she is real or a perfectly crafted statue. The more she avoids him, the more he wants her. Sudhamati reminds him that Manimekalai is not interested in handsome men like him, because both Manimekalai and she are nuns. Sudhamati describes she
7986-430: The customs of the times. It presents the author's view of the Buddhist doctrine of Four Noble Truths ( ārya-satyāni ), Dependent Origination ( pratītyasamutpāda ), mind (citra), goddesses, miracles, mantras, rebirth, merit-making, begging by monks and nuns, helping the poor and needy. The epic provides a view of religious rivalry between Buddhism and Jainism, where Buddhist ideas and propaganda are presented while Jainism
8107-481: The death of Udayakumara. She cries. She laments that her husband of "innumerable" previous births is dead because of her decisions, adding that the endless cycles of suffering would continue without her monastic ways. She hopes that Udayakumara will learn from all this in his next birth. A Buddhist genie appears, talks and comforts her. Others recommend that she go to Vanci (Chera kingdom) to learn more about religious traditions and Buddhism. The Buddhist monks learn about
8228-983: The dialect of Madurai , and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear " akkaṭṭa " meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect , Kongu Tamil , Madras Bashai , Madurai Tamil , Nellai Tamil , Kumari Tamil in India ; Batticaloa Tamil dialect , Jaffna Tamil dialect , Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada . The dialect of
8349-634: The district of Palakkad in Kerala has many Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in
8470-464: The doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism but also those of Hinayana Buddhism", in an era when monks of these traditions were staying together, sharing ideas and their ideologies had not hardened. To some critics, Manimekalai is more interesting than Silappadikaram , states Zvelebil, but in his view the literary quality of Manimekalai is significantly inferior. The story of Manimekalai is overloaded with supernatural events, miraculous goddesses and reads like
8591-503: The doctrines of the Buddha dharma. Manimekalai learns more Buddhist doctrines. She then puts the theory to practice, performs severe ascetic practices to end her cycles of rebirth and attain Nirvana. According to Anne Monius, this canto is best seen as one dedicated to the "coming of the future Buddha", not in the prophetic sense, rather as nun Manimekalai joining the movement of the future Buddha as his chief disciple. The last canto, along with
8712-453: The epic's author's summary sections on various schools of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain philosophies some of whose authors are generally dated to later centuries. The colonial era Tamil scholar S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar proposed in 1927 that it was either composed "much earlier than AD 400" or "decisively to be a work of the fifth century at the earliest". In 1974, Kamil Zvelebil – a Tamil literature and history scholar, proposed mid 6th-century as
8833-506: The famous Charles Panzéra , as well as classical dancing with Nicholas Legat (teacher of Vaslav Nijinsky ), and composition with Max d'Ollone . Subsequently, he performed professionally on stage with dancers such as Floria Capsali and Marjorie Daw. Growing up, he rebelled against his mother's deep devotion to her faith, but his father remained a positive influence, which helped in developing his musical talent and in coping with his homosexuality . He studied piano and singing, learning
8954-459: The feet of the Buddhist ascetic to honor him. The ascetic explains the Twelve Nidanas (causation links) doctrine of Buddhism, uses it to explain the loss of her son. He says past lives of her son made him behave inappropriately and led to his death. The ascetic cautions everyone to follow dharma, behave according to it. Manimekalai prostrated before the ascetic and asked everyone gathered including
9075-466: The formal ancient Tamil language. While there are some variations from the Tamil language, Kannada still preserves a lot from its roots. As part of the southern family of Indian languages and situated relatively close to the northern parts of India, Kannada also shares some Sanskrit words, similar to Malayalam. Many of the formerly used words in Tamil have been preserved with little change in Kannada. This shows
9196-640: The founder and director of the International Institute for Comparative Music Studies and Documentation (IICMSD) in West Berlin , where he remained till 1977; he was also the director of the Istituto Internazionale di Musica Comparata (IISMC) in Venice from 1969 to 1979. He worked on Indian classical music . But his more important contribution to Indology is his writings on the ancient wisdom of
9317-433: The garden; Prince Udayakumara introduced, brave and beautiful; he is told about Manimekalai the dancer and her beauty; the prince heads to find her in the garden; he finds her, pursues her, her friend Sudhamati tries to block him, and he then asks why is she not in a monastery, why in the garden; Sudhamati says, body is simply a vessel of vices, born due to karma of past births; the prince tries to meet Manimekalai, she hides in
9438-466: The girl, and teaches them the Buddha dharma about rebirths and merits. They prostrate before him and invite to take all the gold, diamonds and rubies in shipwrecks near their islands. Shaduvan collects a massive fortune from the wrecks and brings it back to Atirai. The monk teacher explains to Manimekalai that this was all because of merits earned and virtue in the past lives. Manimekhalai, with monk Adikal's wisdom, uses magic bowl to help people. She starts
9559-418: The help of her mother, her Buddhist teacher Aravana Adikal and angels. They teach her Buddhist mantras to free herself from fears. One angel helps her magically disappear to an island while the prince tries to chase her, grants her powers to change forms and appear as someone else. On the island, she receives a magic begging bowl, which always gets filled, from Manimekhala . Later, she takes the form and dress of
9680-699: The hill country . Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century CE. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century CE. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar , Mysore , Mandya and Bengaluru . There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , Mauritius , South Africa , Indonesia, Thailand, Burma , and Vietnam . Tamil
9801-406: The honor of women. He ordered the cremation of his dead son and the arrest of Manimekalai for the deception that caused the misunderstandings. The queen learns of her son's death. She sends an assassin to kill Manimekalai. Buddhist goddesses perform miracles that scares the queen. She asks the king to free the prisoner. Manimekalai comes out of the prison. Aravana Adigal meets the queen. She washes
9922-432: The introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the syntactic argument structure of English. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiran Vanakkam , thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The Tamil Lexicon , published by
10043-446: The jeweled Buddha's pedestal clockwise three times. The goddess then meets Manimekalai and gives her more information about her cycles of previous rebirths, including that prince Udayakumar in this life was the king and her husband in the last birth who was rude to a Buddhist monk, but you begged his forgiveness, donated food and obeyed the monk's orders. In this life, therefore, he is a frustrated prince while your merits have made you into
10164-441: The killing of the prince. They ask Manimekalai what happened. She tells them everything. They hide the dead body of the prince, confine Manimekalai to her quarters. A monks delegation goes and meets the king. The Buddhist monks tell the king legends of Vishnu , Parashurama and Durga , then the errors of the prince and finally his death. The king thanks them, said he would have executed his son according to his dharma duty to protect
10285-399: The kingdom and world without him. His dharmic duty is to continue. Manimekalai meets him and tells the king that his kingdom suffers without him. He should be in his throne, while she will now spend her time in Vanci. Manimekalai flies through air and arrives in the mountainous kingdom's capital Vanci. She first visits the temple of Kannaki and pays her homage to the goddess. The epic mentions
10406-456: The latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items. Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class , number , and case , verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Indo-Aryan languages . Much of Tamil grammar
10527-433: The legend of Kalinga kingdom ( Odisha ). Manimekalai learns about the different schools of Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Ajivika and Carvaka philosophies. This section and the rest of the epic are "not a philosophical" discussion per se , states Paula Richman, rather it is a literary work. The Buddhist author presents non-Buddhist schools in a form that shows them inconsistent or inferior to Buddhism. According to Zvelebil, this
10648-480: The magic bowl in their possession to help the hungry and needy, just like the gods tried to help the cause of good with the amrita they obtained by churning the cosmic ocean [samudra manthan]. The nuns, so convinced, began roaming the streets of Puhar to beg. They then shared the food they collected in the magic bowl with the needy. The epic mentions kingdoms in the Himalayas, Kausambi and Ujjain. Ascetic Adikal teaches
10769-450: The magic bowl. The epic refers to Sarasvati as the goddess of all things related to mind, and goddess of language, knowledge and arts. The magic begging bowl always fills up every day with mountains of food, which Aputra shares with the needy. The famine continues for 12 years in the Pandya kingdom, yet the bowl always fills up. Aputra, like a boy, mocks Indra because he has the magic bowl to help
10890-403: The magic mantra she had learned to convert herself into a look-alike of Kayashandikai – the wife of Vidyadhara. She escapes the prince's pursuit. Manimekalai in her new appearance continues to beg with her bowl and help others. She reaches the prison and meets the guards and then king, persuading him to convert the prison into a Buddhist monastery. The king releases all the prisoners, and converts
11011-458: The magical lake and gets the magic bowl. She chants the glory of the Buddha, prostrates before goddess Tivatilakai and the Buddha's footprints. The goddess tells her to meet Aravana Adigal to learn more about the magic bowl and the Buddha dharma. Manimekalai returns from the island. Back with her mother and friend Sudhamati in the Chola kingdom, she finds the old Buddhist ascetic Aravana Adigal after several efforts to locate him. Manimekalai learns
11132-619: The meaning "sweet sound", from tam – "sweet" and il – "sound". Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages , a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent . It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue ). The closest major relative of Tamil
11253-465: The most informed dating, based on the linguistics, internal evidence, the dating of its twin-epic Silappadikaram , and a comparison to other Tamil literature. In his 1989 translation, Alain Daniélou suggests that the text was composed after the first Tamil epic Silappadikaram , but likely in the 2nd- or 3rd century. According to Hikosaka, if some of the events mentioned in the epic partially related to actual historic Chola dynasty events, some portions of
11374-522: The navel of Vishnu who holds a golden disc as his weapon. Aputra reminds the Brahmins that the greatest Vedic teachers such as Vasishtha and Agastya were born of low birth. Aputra is labeled as a cow-thief, and his begging bowl is filled with stones when he does his rounds. Aputra leaves the city and reaches Madurai. He sits with his begging bowl inside Madurai's Temple of Lakshmi , the goddess of fortune. The worshippers of Lakshmi are kind and donate much food to
11495-453: The needy. Indra takes revenge by making rains plentiful and showering everyone with so much prosperity that no needy were left. No one was poor, and Aputra felt frustrated that he had no one to donate food from his abundant magic bowl to. Then, one day, people of Java (Indonesia) met him. Indra was not generous to them, and many were dying of hunger in Java. Aputra left for Java in a ship. A storm hits
11616-474: The nuns about supernatural genies and the tale of trader Shaduvan and his wife Atirai. Shaduvan is reported dead in a sea storm. Atirai tries to kill herself by jumping into a pit with burning wood, but the fire did not harm her. She sees a goddess who tells her that she is unharmed by her fire because her husband is alive on the island of the Naga kingdom. The Nagas welcome him and give him a girl for pleasure. He refuses
11737-554: The nuns to go to the Chakravala-kottam , that is "Temple of Heaven" – monk gathering spaces with Buddhist mounds – to avoid being chased by the prince. A history of the "Temple of Heaven" follows along with their then-popular name "City of the Dead"; the epic recites the story of a Brahmin named Shankalan enters the mound by mistake at night and is confronted by a sorceress with a skull in her hand accompanied by screaming jackal-like noises,
11858-531: The old aspect and time markers. The Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows
11979-650: The patronage of St. François-Xavier . His father, Charles Daniélou , was an anti-clerical Breton politician who held numerous national ministerial posts in the Third Republic . One of his brothers was the Roman Catholic prelate and Académie Française member, Jean Daniélou . He received his education at the Institution Notre-Dame de Sainte-Croix , Neuilly-sur-Seine , and at St. John's College, Annapolis . The young Daniélou studied singing under
12100-401: The prince arrives and tries his lines on her. She recognizes him, smiles but refuses him too. The "husband" overhears the prince, sees his frowning "wife" smiling at another man, assumes the worst, pulls out his sword and cuts the prince's body into two. The prince dies instantly. The "husband" learns who his wife really is, he is in sorrow. A Buddhist goddess comforts him. Manimekalai learns of
12221-401: The prince where she is. He tells the grandmother how much he adores her, wants her. She says that it is his duty to return her to dance, music and householder role. The prince, driven by his desires and said duty promises her that he will. He confronts Manimekalai. She insists she is and wants to be a nun because the body and human desires are the source of all suffering. After her reply, she used
12342-402: The prison into a monastery. The prison-turned-monastery adds a temple for the worship of Buddha. Udayakumara learns about it and that Manimekalai was behind the conversion. He goes to see her. While he was on his way, the husband of Kayashandikai-but-in-reality-Manimekalai goes to meet his wife. The husband reaches first. Manimekalai does not recognize him, frowns and refuses his affections. Then
12463-515: The queen to follow the dharma. She resolves to go to the city of Vanci, after one visit to Manipallavam island. Manimekalai disappears, travels through air to reach the island of Manipallavam. Aputra miraculously joins her on the island. They circumambulate the jeweled footprints of the Buddha on the island, then pay homage to it. The king meets his teacher and tells him he wants to renounce, spend his time worshipping Buddha's footprint. The teacher says that would be selfish and wrong, as who will protect
12584-451: The ship, and Aputra lands on Manipallavam island. Aputra died on that island. That is how the magic bowl came to be on that island, and why Manimekalai found the same bowl there. The Buddhist ascetic tells the nun the story of a generous cow who helped the people of Java in the memory of Aputra. He presents the Buddhist theory of rebirth dependent on the merits earned in previous lives (karma). He recommends that Manimekalai and Sudhamati use
12705-507: The sleeping city, when a stone statue spoke to her and told her that Manimekalai will return to the city in a week with a complete knowledge, like Buddha, of all her past births as well as yours. Sudhamati froze in fear seeing the stone statue talk and what it told her. Manimekalai wakes up on the Manipallavam island. She finds herself alone, is confused and afraid. She weeps while walking on the beach, recalls her friend, her father Kovalan who
12826-510: The songs of Duparc and Chausson and the liederkreis of Schumann and Schubert. He started writing poems, as acquired proficiency in English and other European languages . He and his partner, the Swiss photographer Raymond Burnier , first went to India as part of an adventure trip, and they were fascinated with the art and culture of the nation. Daniélou and Burnier were among the first Westerners to visit India's famed erotic Hindu temples in
12947-539: The southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada . Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka , Thailand , and Egypt . The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature , consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later,
13068-465: The standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script , which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit, Prakrit , and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology, remains, but
13189-522: The story of Aputra – the first possessor of the magic bowl, and the Brahmin Abhanjika of Benares (Hindu holy city) where Abhanjika taught the Vedas . A boy named Aputra is accused of stealing a cow, and the cows protect the boy by fighting Abhanjika and other Brahmins, killing one of the Brahmins. Aputra then meets and accuses the Brahmins of twisting the meaning of the Veda verses taught by Brahma born from
13310-437: The vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu , India, and the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia , Singapore , and among diaspora communities . Tamil has been recognized as
13431-549: The village of Khajuraho and Burnier's stunning photographs of the ancient temple complex launched the site internationally. The photographs were featured in an exhibition at the New York's Metropolitan Museum . In 1932, during his first trip to India, he met one of the great influences poet Rabindranath Tagore . His close association with Tagore lead him to become the director of Tagore's school of music at Shantiniketan ( Visva-Bharati University ). Subsequently, in 1935, he joined
13552-517: The word for "here"— iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore , inga in the dialects of Thanjavur and Palakkad , and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka . Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli , Old Tamil iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in
13673-442: The work of a "Hindu poet". Tamil language Sri Lanka Singapore Malaysia Canada and United States Tamil ( தமிழ் , Tamiḻ , pronounced [t̪amiɻ] ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia . It is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India , along with Sanskrit , attested since c. 300 BCE. The language belongs to
13794-526: Was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004. The socio-linguistic situation of Tamil is characterised by diglossia : there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status , a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example,
13915-422: Was believed that the epic was from an early Hinayana (Theravada) Buddhist school, but more recent studies suggest that the Buddhist epic Manimekalai belonged to an early form of Mahayana Buddhism influenced by ideas now attributed to scholars such as Vasubandhu, Dignaga, Buddhagosha, Buddhadatta and Dharmapala. According to Shu Hikosaka – a scholar of Buddhism and Tamil literature, in Manimekalai "there are not only
14036-407: Was born in the month of Vaishaka on the longest day, and every year on Buddha's birthday near a lake a magic bowl appears, called Amrita Surabhi ( lit "cow of abundance"). It just happens that Manimekalai is near the lake on that very day, so she can go and get the magic bowl she is destined to receive. With that bowl, she will never run out of food to eat everyday, says Tivatilakai. Manimekalai visits
14157-586: Was claimed to be dated to around 580 BCE. John Guy states that Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt. In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BCE with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. There are
14278-604: Was most likely spoken around the third millennium BCE, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India, but it has also been related to the Harappan civilization . Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BCE–700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). About of
14399-584: Was republished in Hisselle Dhammaratana's Buddhism in South India but with altered terminology. In 1989, Alain Daniélou with the collaboration of T.V. Gopala Iyer published a complete French translation, then an English translation. There is also a Japanese translation by Shuzo Matsunaga , published in 1991. The epic gives much information on the history of Tamil Nadu , Buddhism and its place during that period, contemporary arts and culture, and
14520-451: Was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil ( கில் ), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ṉ ( ன் ). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa ( கின்ற ) – which combined
14641-500: Was unjustly executed in Madurai, her mother and all loved ones. Then Manimekalai sees Buddha's footprint pedestal, shining with jewels. She sees some people fighting near it. Buddha appears, orders them to cease fighting, to remember that the pedestal is for him alone and should be worshipped by sages and the powerful. Manimekalai's fear and worries vanished near the Buddha's footprints. Tears of joy rolled down her cheeks. She suddenly and miraculously remembers all her past lives along with
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