No apology may be required for bringing out a collection of essays examining ancient Tamil poetry and poetics from diverse contemporary perspectives. Now that Tamil has been declared a classical language by the Government of India, it behoves the native scholars of Tamil to convince the world that Tamil deserves the appellation that has elevated it to the level of Greek and Latin which the West has been unanimously cherishing as classical languages for a long time. By ‘classic’ we mean a literary piece which has achieved a recognized position in literary history for its superior merits. Classical literature may refer to Greek and Roman literature or any literature that exhibits the qualities of classicism. When the word ‘Classical’ is used to describe the characteristic features of a literary work it implies objectivity in the choice and handling of the theme, simplicity of style, clarity, restraint, order and formal structure. Praiseworthy books, according to Milton, “are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them”. Great literature deals not merely with some aspects of the human mind but with the total human psyche. In Coleridge’s view, its great achievement is to bring about a “whole-souled activity in man” by appealing to the senses, the heart, the intellect and the spirit of the reader. Besides possessing these attributes, Caṅkam writings have been exerting their profound impact on several succeeding generations of Tamil poets.
