பக்கம்:முத்தொள்ளாயிர விளக்கம்.pdf/27

xiv At present certain clues alone could be provided for further research in regard to the question of authorship. The following basic axioms must be accepted: (i) The Mutiollayiram was not far removed from the third Cañkam period, (ii) It is not improbable that the Muttollayiram was a product of the Cañkam period. (iii) The author had been brought up in the best literary conventions of the Cañkam age. (iv) The literary motifs of the Muttollayiram stand apart from the over-sophisticated complex motifs of the Pallavan and the post-Pallavan epochs, (v) The social and religious ideas and conventions detailed in the work clearly belong to the pre-Pallavan age. The author may be identified from among the well-known luminaries of the period in question. But the temptation to shrewd guessing should be suppressed at all cost. Until more verses are discovered and more direct evidence in regard of authorship available, no surmise must be attempted. The possible lines on which such a surmise can be made are given here. The Puranáttúrit contains more than a dozen verses on Nalafikili by poets like Uraiyur Mutukkannan Căttanār, Kövtir kilär and Ålattir kilar. Strängely enough, the Muttoliayiram mentions only one king by name and that is Nalańkilli. A comparison of the ideas in the verses specially in respect of the military valour of Nalańkilli, his cavalry and his elephantry with the eulogistic verses of the Muttollāyiram would easily lead one to associate Muttollāyiram with one of the authors of the Puranamiizu verses mentioned already. But this superficial identification is bound to lead to an unending controversy. The Muttollayiram is in Venpä metre of four lines for each verse. The Puram verses are all in Åsiriyappa metre with no fixed number of lines. Though the Venpä was also among the four classical