Tamilex monthly seminar: Neela Bhaskar

6 May 2025

Did Commentators Use Commentaries?

This presentation examines Aṭiyārkkunallār’s use of quotations in his commentary on the Cilappatikāram. Among the many Caṅkam texts cited by Tamil commentators, Aṭiyārkkunallār shows a marked preference for the Kalittokai, quoting it about 80 times. However, closer analysis suggests that many of these quotations ― often used to justify his gloss or explanation of a difficult word in the root text ― may have been drawn not directly from the Kalittokai itself, but from Nacciṉārkkiṉiyār’s commentary (or a lost precursor). This implies that traditional commentators relied not only on Nikaṇṭus, but also on the interpretations of their predecessors, fostering a more fluid and interconnected style of learning than previously assumed. The potential discovery of such links between commentators hints at the existence of a shared pool of knowledge that blurs the boundaries between different schools of thought, for how else would unrelated commentators provide identical glosses for the same words? Finally, as we work toward building a dictionary of our own, this presentation hopes to offer insight into the background and nature of Aṭiyārkkunallār’s glosses, encouraging all those in the project to apply similar questions to their own objects of research.

The Tamilex monthly seminar will take place on 6 May 2025, at 10:30 CET. This will be hybrid event; for the Zoom link, please contact Charles Li(charles.li"AT"uni-hamburg.de).