Publisher's Synopsis
It was a dream that I was nourishing in my mind for a long period to work on the area of the phonology of Tolkappiyam. I was looking for an opportunity to fulfil this dream. It was finally the Central Institute of Classical Tamil at Chennai that came forward to finance the project. It is unusual for an Institute to give such academic freedom for a researcher to work on his project without any interference from administration. This is the atmosphere that all the researchers like to have, i.e. an ideal atmosphere in which a researcher gets maximum freedom to work on the area(s) he likes. Now, I recall the period I worked on this project with maximum freedom. The freedom given to me forced me to realize my duty and submit the report within a stipulated period of time. One cannot get complete satisfaction from the work one does. It is only a stage which one reaches within a specified period of time. We bring certain generalizations/facts to the awareness of the academic world. These observations or facts may be strengthened or falsified by the available facts in future. Progress in the fields of knowledge depends on a series of research activities even though some of them proved to be false. A research activity may become an input to another study also in some of the areas. It may be compared with the activity of climbing a mountain. There are many stages in climbing a mountain. Each stage allows you to look at the landscape from a different angle and get a particular perspective. It is a continuous journey. I view this work also in a similar perspective. It gave me insights about the nature of Tolkappiyam. There are many unexpressed facts about Tolkappiyam that I need more time to examine. I remember all the scholars who contributed in their own way either from the field of Tamil language or linguistics to enrich the tradition of Tolkappiyam. There is no necessity to evaluate their works and fix them at different points on the scale of scholarship. Everyone contributed to the understanding of this great work in their own ways at different points of time. They used the research tools available in their time. Each generation is lucky to be placed in an advanced stage of development of knowledge. It is provided with rich tools of research to handle and understand and solve the problems of research in its own research areas. That way our generation was introduced to the discipline Linguistics that provided rich conceptual tools to understand the nature of language and the construction of the theories of language and grammar. The theories provided by the discipline Linguistics facilitated me to understand the nature of traditional grammar Tolkappiyam. My seniors have already worked and come up with good results in the area of Tamil traditional grammars. Similarly, this research may help both the language researchers and computer scientists especially programmers to work further and take this work to the next stage. I sincerely express my heartfelt thanks to the authorities of the Central Institute of Classical Tamil, Chennai that sanctioned the project to undertake and Prof. K. Ramasamy, Officer-in-Charge, whose continuous support was a source of inspiration for me to complete this work. He gave me full freedom and I hope the submission of the report and its standard may pay back my academic debt to him. During the period of my work in this area, I disturbed very often my senior friend Prof. K. S. Kamaleswaran in the name of consultation. I had many hours of conversation with him through the phone. The critical questions he raised during our conversation drove me to find answers. I might have incorporated some of his insights also in this report. I like to thank him for his patient hearing and for the insights he offered me. Another source of inspiration came from Prof. P. Kothandaraman with whom I used to discuss some of the problems in Tolkappiyam. K. Rangan
