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மறைமலையம் -29
Puranic literature came to be written first in Sanscrit and then trans- lated into Tamil and other living languages in India. Sanscrit being the dead and not the spoken language understood by people, the authors of the Puranas adopted it is the means best suited to their purpose and said in them all that was to be said in their own inter- est and to the great disadvantage of the people. And as if to give a finishing and successful stroke to their artifices, not only did they uniformly conceal their human authorship of the Puranas, but they also attributed the composition of which invariably to Divine Be- ings such as Siva and Narayana. Being Divine utterances their contents were taught to be unquestionable under penalty of hell- fire to unbelievers. Having thus established the unquestionable au- thority of the Puranas, their authors, selecting for the basis a few cardinal facts, did their work excellently by exaggerating them so much out of all proportion, twisting them so much out of their shape, and combining them so much out of all hormony, that, to the degree they succeeded in the abnormal treatment of the subject, the leg- ends appealed the more strongly to the minds of the credulous and led their belief to take deep root in them. As a consequence of this artifice people have become slaves to blind faith and ineradicable supersitition and they completely distrust that there can be any- thing as reason to question about their truth or untruth. Nay the very attitude of a person who dares to doubt the legend is repug- nant to the people and they are sure to look upon him as their bitterest enemy and heretic. The hold which the Puranas thus have on the mind of the people and the intensity of the prejudice which they foster in their mind against a man who doubts them, one may best learn by nothing the strength of the Puranic belief even in those who have imbibed western education.
Under this deplorable condition it is no wonder that Tamil books written on modern critical and historical lines should seem strange and revolutionary to men of such mental calibre. Still the sale of 500 copies within four years betokens a brightening pros- pect and authors of my type need not despair of a better condition in future. For man cannot always rest in ignorance. He is ever
