WRITTEN BY LONDON SWAMINATHAN
Post No. 9370
Date uploaded in London – –11 MARCH 2021
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Panini lived 2700 years before Tamil literature came into existence. Oldest Tamil book Tolkappiam written by Tolkappiar, is dated first century CE because he talks about dotted letters.
Other scholars like M. Varadarajan, former Vice Chancellor, placed him in second century BCE. Panini lived in seventh or eighth century BCE. But the amazing thing about his grammar book Ashtadhyayi is , Tamils followed it in several rules.
All Tamil scholars agree that Agastya was the first one who gave a grammar to Tamil language. His disciple was Tolkappiar. His name was Trunadumagni , a seer, according to the most famous Tamil commentator Nachchinrkiniyar. No wonder he followed Panini.
Previously it was pointed out that he followed Panini in describing the origin of sound, case suffixes and he followed Manu in describing the eight types of marriages and Arthasastra of Kautilya in certain things. Tolkappiar himself admitted that he repeated what his predecessors said. He used the journalistic cliche, ‘they say’, ‘it is said that’ etc in 305 places.
Now I have found more examples to show that he followed Panini in other areas as well.
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1).A- kaara and A- kara
The first sutra of Tolkappiam and the first couplet of Tirukkural has ‘A- Kara’ . It means letter A. Panini used this in his sutras. In Sanskrit it is long sound A- kaara. In Tamil it’s short sound A -Kara . No other language has this kara or kaara suffix to a letter.
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2).PaniniYAM and Tolkappi YAM
When you want to name a book after its author or on the subject matter you add ‘IYAM’
PaniniYAM- book written by Panini
Sisukand’iya’,
Indra janan’iya’
Yamasabh’iya’
are some of the books mentioned by Panini (4-3-88)
Tamils also named books in the same way
Agasthi’YAM’
Kakkai paatini’YAM’
Tolkapp’iYAM’
English is also part of Indo European Languages. So, we find
ShakespereAN
MiltoniAN scholar etc.
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3).Another area where similarity is naming a book after the number of verses it has
Tamils were obsessed with numbers 4,40, 400 and 4000. They named a lot of the 36 books of Sangam and Post Sangam works wih these numbers.
Let us take 400 for example
We have Pura 400/nanuru, Aka 400, Narrinai 400 etc.
Naming a book with numbers is very common in Sanskrit:-
Panchakam, Satakam , astakam, pathikam, Sahasranamam are a few examples
But 2700 years ago, Sanskrit scholars used this.
Satapata Brahmana – book with 100/ sata chapters.
Kaushitaki Brahmana was called 30 chapter book
Aitareya Brahma was called 40 chapter book
So naming a book with number also came from a common source from Vedic days.
50 SANSKRIT WORDS AND 25 PRAKRIT WORDS IN …
tamilandvedas.com › 2021/02/27 › 5…
27 Feb 2021 — Agreement between Tolkappiam and Sanskrit works on Grammar. BY S N Sri Rama Desikan. (FOLLOWING MATTER IS FROM AN OLD …
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tags- Tamils, Panini, naming book,
Tamil and Vedas 