* மாணிக்கவாசகர் வரலாறும் காலமும்
―
܀1
5
In addition to being the author and publisher, I have to be the printer of my own writings. This causes me no little trouble and allows me not even sufficient time for taking necessary rest.
With all these troubles, difficulties and frequent interruptions, it gives me no samll pleasure to think that was enable by the grace of Lord Siva to complete this most important work of mine ofter so long a time.
This work comprises two parts. The first part treats of the life of St. Manickavachakar and the second of the times in which he lived. The method pursued in dealing with the two subjects would seem to be quite novel to the present day Tamilians who, having, for the last four or five centuries, come under the influence of the Aryan priesthoond, have lost their independent and rational way of thinking and have become slaves to the Aryan laws, customs and manners. They now remain hopelessly unprogressive and inimical to all kinds of salutary reforms. Their observances of rites, of reliigious practices and social customs are formal and inflesible, for they care little to understand the significance of what they so strictly but unwittingly obseve. This slavishness, this petrified concervatism has so thickened the gloom of their ignorance as to render them throughly impervious to the ray of light coming from the critical and historcal spirit of the modern culture. Even the few who have acquired and extensive knowledge of Tamil grammar and modern Tamil literature, are unable to recongnize the great value and importance of the critical and historical methods of inquiry, for a clear comprehension of the subject they have taken to study. This is due partly ot their want of acquaintance with the pure subject matter of the ancient Tamil classics which depict nature and human nature as they truly appear, and partly also to their indiscriminate understanding of the later Puranic literature which contains nothing but exaggrated and distorted accounts of nations conflicts as well as the mythical and legendary histories of gods and goddesses. These Puranic stories being quite foreign to the Tamil
