How the Lotus Became a Tiger and the Tiger Became a Lion – Sanskrit Poetic Vocabulary in the Tamil Nikaṇṭu-s

When reading the Tamil thesauri of the first millennium – the first systematic and versified collections of words for Tamil poets, the Tivākaram and the Piṅkalam – what is noticable at first sight is the very uneven distribution of Tamil and Sanskrit vocabulary in various sutras. Some parts are almost exclusively in Tamil (older parts?), often the distribution is about fifty-fifty percent, in some parts the Sanskrit share is overwhelming. An example of that type is Tiv. 4.198 which enumerates 21 words that may mean lotus, of which 18 are either Sanskrit or Sanskrit calques. An example of a slightly different kind is sutra 3.1 with the words for lion. The lion is not a Tamil animal but gradually intrudes to fight the elephant instead of the traditional Tamil tiger, and of course it is a royal animal. This talk will follow up the actual use of the variuous words in the poetry of the period (and beyond), trying to find answers to question like how, why, by whom and for whom were those nikaṇṭu-s composed.

Prof. Dr. Eva Wilden is a scholar of classical Tamil literature at the University of Hamburg, holding Europe's only professorship in classical Tamil studies. Her groundbreaking work includes critical editions and annotated translations of major Caṅkam texts like Kuṟuntokai, Naṟṟiṇai, and Akanāṉūṟu s well as pioneering translations of early Tamil Bhakti poetry. With extensive fieldwork experience in South India as a member of the École Française d'Extrême-Orient, Wilden’s  research encompasses the full spectrum of Tamil literary traditions, bridging classical philology with contemporary manuscript culture studies.