Tamil Poets and Writers

For the avid readers, when we type a specific word in Google innumerable pages of information related to the word were shown before us. However, when I specifically search for the ancient Tamil laureates and their works, I am unable to  find their works to Tamil Literature in chronological order.  It takes more time to sort out from various websites. Now, I try my best to brief about the Tamil poets and laureates in historical order with their works in PDF or links to the websites. Well, if there are some errors or incorrect information, kindly let me know, will do the changes appropriately. Moreover, if you have more information that are left out about any eminent persons, I am gladly ready to update.

Here, I try to brief about the best available information on Tamil Laureates and their contribution to the Tamil Literature. Let me start from Before Common Era (BCE) to 1000 Common Era (CE)

Tolkappiar One of the Tolkappiyar’s (400 BCE or imprecise) major work is Tolkappiyam. Tolkappiyam is the first descriptive grammar in Tamil language. However, only from the 11th or 12th century CE, several commentaries came to light on Tolkappiyam. Firstly, Ilampuranar commentary on Tolkappiyam was dated 11th or 12th century CE . Naccinarkiniyar’s commentary were dated as 14th , 15th or 16th century . Naccinarkiniyar’s commentaries are considered to be one of the best and most comprehensive commentary.

Naccinarkiniyar’s Text version was published by The South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing Society, Tamil Nadu.

Naccinarkiniyar’s  comprehensive digital version was updated by Project Madurai. You can find the weblink as well as the pdf version.

Web link: https://www.projectmadurai.org/pm_etexts/utf8/pmuni0516_01.html PDF version to download: THOLKAPPIAM – THOLKAPPIAR