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THE HISTORICITY OF AGATHIAR

S. J. GUNASEGARAM

There has been a strong and persistent tradition through many centuries that Agathiar, an Aryan Brahmin, was the founder of the Tamil language and the author of its first grammar. This grammar of Agathiar, however, has not come down to posterity, nor has any subsequent grammarian or scholar used it as an authority or given a single quotation from the supposed work of Agathiar.

Tholkappiam, the oldest extant grammar of the Tamil Language, written in or about the fourth century B.C., makes no mention of Agathiar, although the same tradition refers to Tholkappiar, the author of Tholkappiam, as having been Agathiar’s disciple. It is curious that even Panamparanar, who wrote the preface to Tholkappiam has made no reference whatever the Agathiar. If the belief in the authorship of a Tamil grammar written by Agathiar had existed in his time, it is very unlikely that Panamparanar too would have failed to record it.

It is equally striking that the Third Sangam works, the earliest extant literature in Tamil, make no mention of Agathiar. A single reference to the name is found in Irayanar’s Agapporui which gives the story of the Tamil Sangams but the Agathiar in this instance refers to a constellation and not to a person. (Paridapai 11^th poem -).

P. T. S. Iyengar has pointed out in his History of the Tamils, p. 224, that for nearly one thousand years after Christ there is no mention of Agathiar having learnt Tamil from God nor that he was the founder of Tamil. The stories assigning to Siva the origin of Tamil and to Agathiar, the authorship of the first Tamil grammar, appear to have originated nearly a thousand years after Christ.

Dr. L. D. Barnett was of opinion that the myth of an Aryan Muni called Agathiar who lived at Pothia Hills and composed the earliest Tamil grammar, was cultivated after the North Indian Brahmin had planted his influence firmly in the South (“Cambridge History of India”, Vol. I, p. 596).

The story appears to have originated actually in the 8^th or 9^th century A.D. Though in Mainimekalai (2 A.D.) reference is made to an Agathiar, he is not associated either with the Tamil language or its grammar.().

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Srinivasa Iyengar (Tamil Studies, Appendix II) wrote long ago that, Tholkappiar ‘has not said anywhere in his grammar one word about Agastya, his reputed teacher’. “It has been at least the Tamil custom for an author to begin his work with a salutation for his teacher or Acharya. In this case the teacher was a divine Rishi and the suppositious writer of the first Tamil grammar. Both of them flourished at the same period. It is not understood why Tholkappiar should have taken so much trouble to observe the usages, to study the Tamil authors and to deduce from them the grammatical rules, or why he should have recited his work for the approval and edification of the Academy before a fellow student – Athanagottasan, while Asastya was its president… But all these throw serious doubts as to whether Tholkappiar was ever his disciple… No man has ever seen Agastya’s grammar…. What I am inclined to believe is that every myth and tradition connected with Agastya with the Tamil language, should have come into existence subsequent to the seventh or eighth century A.D.”

The same author has pointed out elsewhere in the same treatise that ‘in the early centuries of the Christian era the Tamils seem to have held that Tamil was an independent language’ and that ‘it had nothing to do with Sanskrit’. Tholkappiar himself states in his work that he had consulted earlier grammars and poetical works. Tamil at this period obviously had already a written language and a body of literature. Besides, as Srinivasa Iyengar has shown ‘Sanskrit words in Tamil must have been so few in those days’. Tholkappiar quotes from Tamil works prior to his time and states clearly that special rules were not required to deal with foreign words in Tamil – an indication tht at this period the influence of Sanskrit on Tamil was negligible. Srinivasa Iyengar adds, ‘It was when they (the Tamils) came under Sanskrit culture (that was subsequent to the seventh or eighth century A.D.) the views of Tamil Scholars began to change. Most of them were acquainted with Tamil and Sanskrit. It was because Sanskrit was used as a vehicle of religious thought during this period, a partiality or rather a sentiment connected with religion induced them to trace Tamil from Sanskrit, just as the early European divines tried to trace the Western languages from Hebrew”.

This is no doubt a charitable explanation, but whether or not, it was, at the same time, a planned cultural conspiracy on the part of the Aryanised Brahmins to give priority and supremacy to Sanskrit, the language of the civilising Aryans, and to establish an Aryo-Brahmin dominion over Bharata which they had changed into Aryavarta has to be considered. This interference has not been confined to the domain of religion and to that of

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the courts where Brahmins found places as priests and advisers, but extended even to the Sanskritisation of place names and names of rivers and mountains.

From the early days of the Aryan incursion with India, that there had been a studied attempt on the part of the newcomers to give an Aryan colouring to the indigenous culture, has been noted by many scholars.

“It is an acknowledged fact”, says Hewitt in his Notes on the Early History of Northern India, p. 216, “that at times the Aryans when naming Dravidian tribes distorted original Dravidian names so as to give an Aryan meaning”.

Marshall in his book A Phrenologist among the Todas states, “The low state of culture of the Aryans before their incursion into India, might have contributed a great deal to their final acceptance of an easy amalgamation with the culture of the Dravidians. It has been suggested long ago that prior to their immigration into India, the Aryans of the era were probably of a similar state of culture to the Todas”.

Tamil gods like Muruga, Tirumal (Mal) were given Aryan names like Subramania and Vishnu. Dravidian names of rivers, and places had been Aryanised. Even the word ‘Pandai’ () ‘old’ in Tamil from which the Pandyans derive their name had been changed into Pandavas. (,).

“That the more brawny but thicker witted Aryan could learn the extraordinarily difficult language of the ‘ill spoken man’, as the Vedas term the Dravidian was not to be supposed. The Dravidian instead had to learn Sanskrit.” (Slater, Dravidian Element in Indian Culture, p. 61).

There appears to be some truth in the contention that Dravidian scholars who had gained proficiency in Sanskrit, had translated a large number of Tamil works into Sanskrit which in course of time came to be regarded as Sanskrit originals. In the book referred to above Slater says, “Indian culture, with its special characteristics of systematic and subtle philosophical thought, must have come from people of originality developing it. That capacity would naturally be exhibited also in the evolution of language, and the purest Dravidian language does exhibit it in the highest degree – in a higher degree than any other Indian language”. (ibid. p. 33).

The apostles of this Aryo-Dravidian synthesis were the Brahmins, a priestly caste formed in North India, long after the

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primitive Indo-Aryans occupied it. These priests in all probability, were of Dravidian origin, who by virtue of their superior knowledge and alleged magical powers attributed to them by the Aryans in the Rig-Veda, became personae-gratae among the Aryan ruling classes and, particularly, in the royal households; and at the same time acted as liaison officers between the new comers and the original inhabitants of India. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad itself acknowledges that of the Aryan speakers who were white (sukla), brown or tawny (kapila) and dark or black (syama) and who studied the Vedas, the last was the cleverest of the three, knowing all the three Vedas, while others knew one and two.

The vedic Aryans did not know the art of writing, and the alphabet itself was learnt by them from the Dravidians. The Brahmins of this early age who had gradually acquired an Aryan complex could not have suspected that later generations would laugh at the puerile myth of their making that an Aryan Brahmin had to come down to the highly organised and cultivated countries of the Tamils in the South to teach them their language and to compose the first grammar! The fact would appear to be that it was the Aryan who borrowed, absorbed and gradually transformed the culture of the Dravidians to suit his purpose, and labeled it Indian culture – Aryan.

The widespread Agathiar cult in the countries of South-East Asia is another evidence of this process. These kingdoms were founded, and the countries civilised by immigrants and traders from Southern India. Apart from the prominence given to the Agathiar cult, stories of Brahmins founding dynasties have been created. George A. Walker in his Angkor Empire makes pointed reference to this when he says, “The sphere of Indian cultural influence has been so strongly inbued with the Brahmin complex that it is natural to assume that all those who founded dynasties in the Indian colonies were Brahmins”.

In both Funan and Chenla, now known as Cambodia, the founders of the early Indian Dynasties, according to legend, were Brahmins. Of the art of Funan K. A. Nilakanta Sastri himself admits “The Art of this early Hindu State, judged from the geographical distribution of the monuments and the motifs that satisfy these conditions… are decidedly of South Indian origin”. (pp. 32, 33, South Indian Influences in the Far East). The ‘Aryan’ Brahmin was averse to the crossing of the seas, and it was the Aryanised Brahmin of the South who was responsible for accompanying South Indian colonists to South-East Asian countries, and spreading the Agathiar cult and creating myths calculated to plant the seeds of Brahminic supremacy in these regions.

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K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, the well-known champion of Sanskrit culture has made an attempt, in his History of South India to cast doubts on the antiquity of the Tamil language and literature and to support the theory that the civilisation of the Tamils was largely due to their association with the Northern Brahmin. He holds that the Aryanisation of South India must have commenced as early as 1000 B.C. Taking into consideration the fact that scholars today are in general agreement in placing 1500 B.C. as the lower limit of the Aryan incursion into India, and that the Aryans were a barbarous nomadic people (at the time of their entry into India), without either a knowledge of the art of writing or a developed religion, it requires a good deal of credulity either to approve or to accept that within a period a couple of hundred years they had become so advanced not merely to be able to develop their own language but to study an admittedly more difficult language like Tamil, and to teach the Tamils their own language and to write its grammar!

Sastri himself admits the difficulty of the land-route to the South, at this early period. The Aryans of this period had little or no knowledge of the sea, while the Dravidians – the Kalingas, Andhras and the Tamils were highly advanced sea-faring peoples, and had reached considerable fame as navigators and traders. Recent research and scholarship seem to indicate that it must have taken considerable time for the Aryan speaking people to achieve an appreciable degree of culture and refinement and to develop their language. Their cultural progress was assured and promoted mainly by their contact with the more advanced indigenous peoples of India and as a result of the borrowing and absorption of Dravidian culture and ideas.

There is a tradition (Silappathikaram) that even during the Mahabharatha war the Tamil kingdoms flourished in the South, and that the armies at Kurukshetra were fed by the Chera King. The Mahabharatha itself refers to the Cheras and the Pandyas of the South, and in particular to the wealth and power of the latter kingdom. There is a reference to an Agathiar in the Ramayana as well, and the later story that Tholkappiar was a disciple of Agathiar cannot be reconciled with the Agathiar of either of these epics, as Agathiar of the Ramayana and Tholkappiam belong to two different times.

When and how did this legend take shape? Between the fifth and the seventh centuries of the Christian era, the traditional Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, Cholas and Pandyas came under the sway of the Pallavas, or the Thondayars. The Pallava kings were originally worshippers of Vishnu, and championed Vaishnavaism as the court religion and Sankskrit as their court

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language, though in later years the Pallava kings became converted to Saivaism and began to encourage Tamil. It was probably during the early stages of the Pallava ascendancy, in order to reconcile the Tamils to the Northern language, that the court scholars of the period, most of whom were Brahmins, fabricated the Agathiar myths, and began to associate a venerated name like Agathiar in the South with the origin of Tamil and its grammar. It is significant that it was during this period that the Pallavas extended their influence to the Indian colonies in South-East Asia, as the innumerable Pallava inscriptions and Pallava work of Architecture scattered all over these regions would indicate. The Agathiar cult accordingly was carried across and popularized in South-East Asia by Indian colonists as well as by the court Brahmins of this period.

It is well known that the Tamil poets of the Sangam period were extremely interested in guarding the purity of their language and resisted the incursion of the language of the northerner. Such was their zeal for the preservation of the distinct beauty and composition of their language that the Pallava kings had been more or less ignored by them and very scant reference made to the Pallavas by them in their works. By the time that the Pandyans had regained their power, after the Pallava ascendancy, these stories seem to have taken such a hold that the later Pandyas themselves began to assert that Agathiar was the founder of the Tamil language and the preceptor of the Pandyan kings, the early patrons of the Tamil Sangam.

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