Remembering the Dictionary of Kongu Thamizh
Death was not as kind and gentlemanly as the famed American poetess Emily Dickinson describes ‘him’ in her celebrated poem Because I could not stop for death. When Pulavar Manian, a great Tamil scholar, and lexicographer of Coimbatore passed away at the age of 84 last Monday on June 15, a pall of gloom descended on the world of Tamil intellectuals. Death should have ‘kindly stopped’ for him so that the untiring lexicographer could have further adorned the classical Tamil language with a few more scholarly works on different pieces of literature.
In an age, where even the fabulously-paid college and university Tamil teachers make a fast buck by lending money at high rates of interest, Pulavar Manian, a simple, retired school teacher, penned volumes of lexicons on bhakti literary pieces including Tevaram, Thirumanthiram and Thirvarutpa, all out of his passion for Tamil.
It must have been a Herculean task for this octogenarian atheist and legendary Tamil scholar to research the vast and deep areas of Tamil bhakti literature. Following a strict discipline in the arrangement of thousands of words alphabetically, providing their meanings at necessary points, and citing references to their use in thousands of verses is no easy task even for a team of university scholars. But being an individual, Manian did it and noted philanthropist Pollachi N.Mahalingam supported him.
A pride of Coimbatore, Pulavar Manian was the only lexicographer to compile Kongunattu Thamizh, an exclusive dictionary on the vernacular Kongu Tamil words and phrases with etymological notes.
Born at Seerkazhi of Thanjavur district on April 29, 1936, Manian learned Tamil from eminent Tamil scholar Mahavidhvan S Dhandapani Desikar as a gurukula student for eight years.
Later on, when Manian visited Coimbatore for the first time, he was so much impressed by the people’s hospitable nature and decided to make it his hometown.
“When I joined duty as a Tamil teacher in the Government High School, Vellalore, over five decades ago, I could not rent a house the same day and had to sleep on a thinnai (House pyol) for a night. As there was an empty piece of land near the thinnai, I heard in the night, a group of people chat for hours. I could not follow their Kongu Tamil dialect since it was different from all other dialects of Tamil Nadu.” Pulavar Manian once recalled.
Attracted by the kind of Tamil spoken in Coimbatore, Manian would often say that the words in Kongu Tamil dialect take their roots from the vocabulary in various pieces of classical Tamil literature. He would compare that no other Tamil vernacular has such links with ancient Tamil Literature as the Kongu vernacular has.
“Nevertheless, the Kongu Tamil dialect lost many of its beautiful expressions by the impact of English. Nowadays, even an illiterate building construction worker is used to expressions like Drawing Hall, Loft, and Kitchen, but he would blink at you, when you tell him the same in Kongu Tamil as Aasaaram, Attaali, and Adukaanji respectively” Manian once pointed out in his address at The Vanavarayar Foundation.
An erudite Tamil scholar, who took his Ph.D. at the age of 76 for his dissertation Tevara Sollaaraichi - Agarathiyiyal Nokku ' (Word research in Tevaram- A lexicographic view), Manian once said:
“I went through an article by a Sanskrit scholar, who informed in it that out of the total 2000 verb roots of the vedic language, only 800 are in vogue. After reading this, I took efforts to collect the verb roots of Tamil. But one's lifetime cannot be enough to collect them from the entire Tamil language. Because the verb roots in the two Sangam period works Pathupaattu and Ettuthogai alone are 1047 in number. These two Sangam anthologies are just particles of the entire Tamil Literature”.
Manian's Sanga Ilakkiya Vinai Vadivangal, a lexicon consisting of the entire verb roots available in Sangam classics, is the first of its kind in all Indian languages. Manian also penned the word and subject index of Silapathikaram and Manimekalai – the two great Tamil epics.
His book Kongu Eazhu Sivalayangal traces the history of the seven celebrated shrines of Lord Shiva in the Kongu region and throws light on their links with ancient Tamil classics. Manian’s another book is Kalyana Santhayile, a collection of interesting articles, which he had serialized in the Tamil eveninger Maalai Murasu for over 50 weeks. The book which speaks on wedding customs worldwide is based on Walter Hutchinson’s Customs of the World and Edgar Thurston’s Castes and Tribes of Southern India.
In his tribute to Pulavar Manian, Prof. K. Nachimuthu, former convener, Sahitya Akademi, Tamil Nadu, said:
” Manian’s labour of love for creating reference tools for the study of early and medieval Tamil literature stands unique, as he undertook all these works out of passion and not by any support like government grants. He had received various awards and titles in recognition of his works. At the same time, he was not adequately honoured by the academic bodies commensurate with his deep scholarship and diligent research".