podalangai
18th January 2009, 03:47 AM
Professor Kamil Zvelebil, one of the greatest modern Western scholars of Tamil literature, passed away on 17 January 2009.
It is impossible to overstate Professor Zvelebil's contribution to the understanding of Tamil literature, particularly in the west, but also amongst ourselves. It's difficult to describe just how differently Tamil literature was viewed by mainstream academics before Professor Zvelebil began writing on the topic. In 1955, when Nilakantha Sastry, in his History of South India, said that Sanskrit was "the magic wand whose touch alone raised each of the Dravidian languages from the level of a patois to that of a literary idiom", most of his readers agreed with him. Today, almost every serious researcher accepts that Nilakantha Sastry was totally wrong - Tamil was an exception and had its own tradition. And that is very largely thanks to Professor Zvelebil's work.
Professor Zvelebil demonstrated much of what we today take for granted, that Tamil literature was, genuinely, a national literature, in the same way that French or German literature was, with its own special characteristics, forms and approaches. He, too, was responsible for winning mainstream acceptance in the West for the early dating of Sangam literature - which, until then, was most commonly dated to the 8th or 9th centuries AD, following Robert Caldwell and Burnell.
Professor Zvelebil also demonstrated the unity that ran through Tamil literature. Until his time, it was common to divide Tamil literature into discrete periods - the Sangam period, the post-Sangam period, the didactic period, the epic period and so on. Professor Zvelebil showed how, instead, common threads ran through genres of Tamil literature - whether single stanzas, "short poetical works" (ciRRilakkiyam), epics or devotional poetry - across the entire history of Tamil literature.
And, in terms of sheer breadth of scholarship, his Lexicon of Tamil Literature will remain the standard reference work for concepts, work and authors in Tamil literature for the foreseeable future.
An epoch has come to an end with his passing.
It is impossible to overstate Professor Zvelebil's contribution to the understanding of Tamil literature, particularly in the west, but also amongst ourselves. It's difficult to describe just how differently Tamil literature was viewed by mainstream academics before Professor Zvelebil began writing on the topic. In 1955, when Nilakantha Sastry, in his History of South India, said that Sanskrit was "the magic wand whose touch alone raised each of the Dravidian languages from the level of a patois to that of a literary idiom", most of his readers agreed with him. Today, almost every serious researcher accepts that Nilakantha Sastry was totally wrong - Tamil was an exception and had its own tradition. And that is very largely thanks to Professor Zvelebil's work.
Professor Zvelebil demonstrated much of what we today take for granted, that Tamil literature was, genuinely, a national literature, in the same way that French or German literature was, with its own special characteristics, forms and approaches. He, too, was responsible for winning mainstream acceptance in the West for the early dating of Sangam literature - which, until then, was most commonly dated to the 8th or 9th centuries AD, following Robert Caldwell and Burnell.
Professor Zvelebil also demonstrated the unity that ran through Tamil literature. Until his time, it was common to divide Tamil literature into discrete periods - the Sangam period, the post-Sangam period, the didactic period, the epic period and so on. Professor Zvelebil showed how, instead, common threads ran through genres of Tamil literature - whether single stanzas, "short poetical works" (ciRRilakkiyam), epics or devotional poetry - across the entire history of Tamil literature.
And, in terms of sheer breadth of scholarship, his Lexicon of Tamil Literature will remain the standard reference work for concepts, work and authors in Tamil literature for the foreseeable future.
An epoch has come to an end with his passing.