இப்பக்கம் மெய்ப்பு பார்க்கப்படவில்லை
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11
- மாணிக்கவாசகர் வரலாறும் காலமும் admirable in every way, whereas the historical is grounded mainly on bare suppositions, wild conjectures and on wrong interpretations of verse-quotations. If a student who has familiarised himself with the classical Tamil poems and the old exegetical prose writings, would take the trouble to inquire into the conditions of time that called them into being, he cannot but be struck with the author's fruitless endeavour to reduce the antiquity of the above mentioned calssics to a comparatively later age. The brahmins, as a whole, hold that there cannot exist in any language, except in their own Sanscrit, any valuable intellectual product that can claim high antiquity. Should any irrefutable facts be foruthcoming to prove the contrary, they evince a pronounced tendency to twist their meaning and character so as to render them conformable to their own favourite views and opinions. This tendencey of the brahmins to distort the meanings of the original text that contain matter unpalatable to them may best be seen in the commentaries written skillfully by their forefathers on several old works in antique Sanscrit. In the present instance the same is what we fine to be the case with the autor of the treatise calles ‘Seran Senguttuvan.' In the following work I have reviewed one by one all the facts he brought in proof of his views, and have considered them in the light of the indisputable evidence furnished by Tamil and Sanscrit literatures and by epigraphical records, to see whether they lend any support to his theories. The result is that my conclusions have reached a position diametrically opposed to those he arrived at in his treatis 'Seran Senguttuvan', I have placed before the reader all my evidence drawn from a first - hand knowledge of the original sources, with the help of which he can himself test the points of defference between us and can easily distinguish what is true from what is untrue.
Thus the two treatise and several others that had equally clamied my attention in the matter of correctly fixing the time of St. Manickavachakar, have had to be unavoidably subjected to a searching criticism and analysis, simply for the sake of truth.
