![]() Those limbs are subdivided into several groups, which are examined in this article, particularly with a view to matching them with phenomena attested in the existing poetical corpus and to assessing how naturally they fit the Tamil language. ![]() The oldest treatise available is the Tolkāppiyam, which gives in its penultimate chapter, the Ceyyuḷiyal, a characterization of the thirty-four “limbs” (uṟuppu) of poetical compositions. As a consequence, we observe the simultaneous transmission of a poetical corpus, progressively enriched, and of a series of grammatical treatises. That refined language would be used for the metrical composition (yāppu) by poets of a variety of poetical texts (ceyyuḷ) falling under different genres, the dominant one being pāṭṭu “song/verse”. The main purpose of that collective endeavour seems to have been the detailed characterization of a refined language, which was possibly one of the components in a diglossic situation (analogous to that of Tamil today). ABSTRACT: In writing a history of the Tamil Grammatical Tradition, one must try to make explicit the genesis, the constituent elements and the purpose of an ensemble that was gradually put together during the First Millenium of the Common Era.
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