குமுதவல்லி நாகநாட்டரசி
5
To the Tamilians of yore and their descendants the art of fiction was not an unknown thing before the introduction of modern novel. How carefully this art was studied by them would become manifest from a glance at the critical commentary of Nakkirar on Iraiyanar Agapporul written about the first century of the Christian era. And another poetic work of considerable literary merit like that of Chaucer, I mean Udayanankadai, was already in existence some six centuries before Christ, in which many a tale of Tamil antiquity appears in a collected form each of which, of course, incorporated into the main story with so profound a sense of unity that every one of them looks like to many inseparable limbs in a whole body. Besides this interweaving of one story into the other, the entire poem drawing faithful portraits from real life and tracing the distinctive features of individual character, combine them all to one complex whole so as to impress the mind of the reader with a sense of the strong unifying power of the poet. But it was a poetic age. Even story-telling went on in verse. From the domain of poetry fiction was slowly emerging to breathe the freer atmosphere of prose, when the pernicious influence of Sanscrit broke in upon the mind of the Tamil scholars and vitiated their taste for simplicity of life. A whole series of Puranic legends and obscene myths found their way into Tamil. And the Tamil people of mediaeval period having come under the influence of priests began to pay unlimited respect to mythical accounts of Gods and lost all their study of real life and with it the art of fiction also. But fortunately for us the study of English has once more opened our eyes to the real grandeur pertaining to the art of fiction; and once again has the unwholesome contact of Sanscrit begun stealthily to sap up the vitality of the Tamil language.I need, therefore, hardly say that it is obligatory on every son of the Tamil country to wake up from his long indifference and do his utmost to render his services in the cause of his own mother tongue Tamil which is, in fact, one of the few highly cultivated ancient languages of the world. I have great pleasure in saying that
