Tolkāppiyam: Text (with non-metrical segmentation), transliteration and translations in English verse and prose

Tolkāppiyam (lit. “ancient poem”) is the most ancient extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. The surviving manuscripts of the Tolkāppiyam consist of three books (atikāram), each with nine chapters (iyal), with a cumulative total of 1,612 sutras in the nūṛpā meter. It is a comprehensive text on grammar and includes sutras on orthography, phonology, etymology, morphology, semantics, prosody, sentence structure, and the significance of context in language.

Tolkāppiyam is a comprehensive text of linguistics and poetics in Tamiḻ belonging to the classical era in the history of Tamiḻ literature, marked as itis by characteristics of literary classicism, viz. prescriptivism, order, regularity, restraint, harmony, idealism, and universality. Accordingly, Tolkāppiyam looks at language and literature by the criteria of structure and organization rather than by time or place, a characteristic by which this text of the pre-Christian epoch transcends its age and stands compellingly relevant to this day. It is preoccupied with form and technique, respect for literary precedent, conformity with tradition, and adherence to conventional modes of diction, syntax, meter, image-making, and style. While the language of Tolkāppiyam, in tune with the metalinguistic character of its content, is highly formal, mature and developed, its content, both linguistic and non-linguistic, is an expression of the collective consciousness of the classical age in Tamiḻ, rather than a product of individual talent, mightily endowed though its author, Tolkāppiyar, had been. 917 pages