The present book seeks to show that Tolkāppiyam is a pioneer in the discipline of applied linguistics, going far beyond the applications of theoretical linguistics to other areas of scholarship in which language is a core component. It also attempts to highlight the enormous contribution of Tolkāppiyam to the teaching and learning of languages, both L1 and L2, and to the study of literature. Tolkāppiyar’s conspicuously scientific approach to realities in language and life, his concept of primary and secondary works, his definition of (semantic) translation, his norms on lexicographic definitions, his conception of the classes of elliptical utterances, his classification of fourfold parts of speech, his conception of the suggestive operators called iṟaicci and uḷḷuṟai, his fivefold classification of the latter (closely paralleling what Ezra Pound calls ‘poetry of indirection’), and his ecopoetics, among other things, easily transcend the Tamil milieu and become constituents of universal scholarship, a Tamil exemplification of Wellek and Warren’s vision of ‘general literature’.
