The Wandering Voice - Three Ballads from Palm Leaf Manuscripts (An Old and Rare Book)

About the Book The first ever attempt at bringing out in print the uncollected and unpublished works of folk literature in Tamil with their English translation. The three ballads included in this volume represent a unique cultural component of the Tamils marked as it is by an elemental response of a non-literate people to the demands of social interaction and intercreativity. These 'oral' compositions could provide the researchers in this field a Clue to the meaning and the nature of the interplay between oral and written forms of literary expression.

Introduction The ancient Tamils had been one of the important sea-faring peoples of the world and they had had commercial as well as cultural contacts with the European and the South East Asian countries. After the sixteenth century, these contacts got deepened, resulting ultimately in a wholesome cultural interaction and interfertilization between the Tamils and the other peoples. As a result, a number of Tamil manuscripts are found in the museums, archives and libraries of several countries abroad, which include Britain, France, Finland, Netherlands, U.S.A., U.S.S,R., Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand. Prof. Julian Vinson has mentioned in 1892 that there were 561 palm-leaf manuscripts in the National Library in Paris. In 1956, Dr. Xavier Thaninayagam has written about the rare Tamil manuscripts being preserved in the libraries abroad. Gregory James' article in the Journal of Tamil Studies (No. 18) gives detailed information about these manuscripts. A paper read out by Prof. Ayyadurai Damotharan at the Fifth World Tamil Conference also refers to the availability of Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts in the European countries. The Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts on martial arts found in Japan have been edited by the Institute of Asian Studies and translated into English.

Apart from these, hundreds of palm-leaf manuscripts remain scattered in different parts of Tamilnadu. Dr. U. V. Swaminatha lyer, a great Tamil savant and a pioneering textual critic, collected about 2500 palm-leaf manuscripts and brought out a few of them in print. Owing to his lifelong efforts and those of other scholars, a significant number of Tamil manuscripts have been retrieved from oblivion, and possible decay and death. These manuscripts are now being preserved at Saraswathy Mahal Library Thanjavur, Government Oriental Manuscript Library Madras, Archives of Tamilnadu Government, Institute of Asian Studies Madras, Adyar Theosophical Society, Tamil University, Kerala University Manuscript Library and a few other places in India and abroad.

These manuscripts are on different subjects like grammar, religious hymns, fine arts, medicine, astrology and so on, besides literary texts and folk songs. Only about twenty percent of them have been published so far. And research in Tamil is at present being carried on primarily on the basis of the printed texts. Obviously, any literary history or the history of Tamil culture written on the basis of printed works without reference to these manuscripts will be as much incomplete as it is unauthentic.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages