பக்கம்:ஆய்வுக் கோவை.pdf/180

A Plea for Fixing the Age of Kampan Dr. T. P. MEENAKSHISUNDARAN Kampan is our national poet for whom we can claim international stature. As T. S. Eliot has pointed out the study of any literary classic becomes significant only when viewed from its importance in the historic flow of the national and international literature. Chronology thus becomes, atleast to a limited extent a tool of literary criticism. What is the place of Kampan's epic amongst the epics of the East and the West? What is his place among Tamil epics? Is he anterior or posterior to other epic writers like Sekkilar or Tiruttakka Tevar? These, it will be granted, are crucial problems of literary experience as for instance raised by identification of the original: Kampan’s Kukan, the veda of the Ganges or the Sekkilar’s Kannappa, the veda of Kalahasti. Are the traditional anecdotes reliable, which make Kampan, Ottakuttar, Avvaiyar, Pukalenti and a host of others contemporaries. We have, well established political and dynastic histories along with dated inscriptions of patrons of poets and dated colophans of texts etc. One such colophan to Kamparamayanam is the verse “ EN NIYA CA KAPTAM INN ( | R R I I IN MEL * which gives the year 885-886 A. D., as the year of its production. This is attempted to be rejected as a later interpolation. Another colophan “ã vin kotai-c-cakarar” variousły but unnaturally interpreted will give a date in the X century or one in the XII century. There is mention of the name 17.2