Photo: Courtesy Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology
The broken pot from Andipatti, stored in a museum.
Today I am a broken pot stored away in a museum. But, about eighteen hundred years ago, I was a shining new kalayam. My proud owner was a toddy-tapper named Naakan. He lived in a small hamlet at the edge of the forest (near present-day Andipatti in Theni district of Tamil Nadu).
Naakan was too poor to own land; but he earned his living by taking on lease some coconut and palmyra trees, tapping and selling the toddy.
There were several toddy-tappers in the hamlet. They would climb the trees early in the morning, make deep cuts on the crown of the trees with their sharp bill-hooks, and tie their pots beneath to collect the sap (juice) that oozed from the cuttings.
The pots, when full, would be taken down and stored for a few days to allow fermenting of the sap into toddy, for which there was a good market.
Etched belongings
Poor he might have been, but Naakan was literate. In order to identify his kalayam and its contents, he scratched this message on it with his sharp iron tool:
naakan uRal `Naakan's (pot with) toddy-sap'
The Tamil word ooRal (from ooRu `to ooze') meaning `freshly tapped toddy' is spelt here with the short vowel u probably due to oversight or reflecting the colloquial usage.
Determining age
Archaeologists who dug me out of the earth near Andipatti a couple of years ago, have determined from examining the fabric of my body, that I was made in about the third century A.D. Epigraphists (who study old inscriptions) have identified the writing on my shoulder as in Old Tamil written in the Tamil-Brahmi script of the same period.
And that is not all. The two-word inscription carries an important message, namely, how widespread literacy must have been in the ancient Tamil country, if a poor toddy-tapper, living in a remote hamlet far away from urban and commercial centres, could write down his name and what he was doing with the pottery he owned.
That is the reason why I am preserved in the museum and not discarded like other broken pottery!
Iravatham Mahadevan is a well-known researcher of the Indus and Brahmi scripts. Dr. S. Rajagopal is a senior archaeologist specialising in Old Tamil inscriptions, who retired from the Tamil Nadu State Department of Archaeology.
Going by Madan's thought, which seems a bit logical.....
1000 years later, all our records will be found in English....includin the PS mails...and karpooram ethi sathiyam pannalum, PS tamil literary forumnu namba matanga.... Interpretation can be like this - People of this area used English as their primary language, but were knowledgeable in another language, ie. tamil too and discussed extensively on PS.
If this pot from 3rd century AD, then what was the tamil script used for epics likesilapadikaram, which are believed to be of the same age? Is it tamil-brahmi or vatezhettu script?
Unfortunately we cant determine that...all the eedu shelf life is 200 yrs max...so every script we have present day was copy of the old palm script by some person ...except for few palm leaves stored in Tibet while bhuddist from Tn went to Tibet. Palm leaves get destroyed due to our climate...and majorly due to white ants or termites.... other things are flood....and ppl also had practice of putting old edu in river as part of festival or ritual.... so we have lost so many palm leaves for so many diff reasons.... so what ever palm leaves we have was probably written in 17 or 18th century by some scholar who copied it from a older script.... so here comes the problem wether a work is of a single person.... there have been proofs where the person who copies writes his own stuff and deletes the orginal stuff.... A French translator of Thirukural in 18th century had more than 1330 Thirukurals in Palm leaves.. There has also been an instant where editor mahabaratha was shivate and hence removed orignal passage and inserted passages to praise shiva when he copied the orginal text.... The problem of Dating with Tolkapiyam is that it has hands of many people.... So in Tamil Nadu no plam leave is original...every thing is a copied version... If at all anything survived ...then it is in some European library
U.Ve.Sa in his autobiography would have expressed his pain when he narrates how he searched for the palm leaves.
The tradition is to copy the text in new palm leaves and then throw the damaged/old things in river or fire. But people due to misinterpretation started doing only the second part and never copied the original text. we lost a lot of, not just copies but the original text itself. If properly preserved we would have had more sangam literature in the list then the few we have now (intha 'few've ivvalavu content-na, full evvalavu irunthirukkum).
I agree that toddy gatherers among themselves should be able to read, which the reason it was scribed...
I would really be proud if education was very prevalent in ancient times in tamilnadu.
Having said those, I still feel that this cannot substansiate the fact that literacy rate was high in those times.
For example, consider this: In current times, with so many boards and hoardings (that display alphabets basically), with a widespread and highly available education system, we still come across people who cannot even string letters together. Even with the absence of a formal education, the huge need to constantly decipher words can still make illiterate people a little more language oriented nowadays.
Things must have been very different in the 3rd century AD. Education was limited to certain classes, with gurukula being the primary form of formal education (am assuming this, please correct me if I am wrong), and very little artificial signboards, the necessity to decipher letters of any form would have been very minimal. So, with no formal education, most of such people would have no need at all to encounter any form of literature. Which is probably why education is given so much importance in our culture (naalu ezhuthhu padichavan). These people would probably not even feel the pinch of not knowing the alphabets, because the lifestyle would not have required them to - This is my humble opinion.
These are the reasons am skeptical about concluding that toddy-gatherers would be educated - or that the society in general would be highly literate based on just this artifact. Probably Iravatham sir might have seen more that might have led him to conclude so. This is not mentioned in the article.
Another possibility could be that there were two forms of writing - one commonly and colloquially used among the masses, and another elite language.
We constantly see such occurings even today - tamil is the common language while english is (kinda) the elitist language in our society today. I hear latin education was considered elitist and a compulsory subject (even though it did not have any practical usage) till sometime last century in many universities - english then being the common language in UK/US.
Could it be that tamilbramhi was the commoners language which was widely prevalent - which required little or no formal education, while there was another form of elitist tamil/other languages/script?
*" Remember that the story is deciphered only based on Two Words, just Two Words that is "naakan URal". Irukkara kOttula nAma rOdu pOtturukkOm.... avvaLavudhAn." * True. Maybe Mr.Naakan was a big toddy barron (Just for illustration sake... someone like vjay Mallaya ;) ).
and ** he had lots of plantations to extract toddy where he employed other people to gather toddy for him. We can never conclude that naakan was "the" toddy collector. He could have emplyed lot of people do that for him, and these people employed by him *need not be literate.* My point is education might still have been available to only a few and we can never be sure that Naakan was a toddy collector and he was literate.
That is a good and possible perspective. Now I am really curious as to how Iravatham,deciphered the story on the basis of these two words. What were the other pointers that made him conclude so.
Sorry, I missed this. Regarding the literacy prevalent then, I would still like to stick my point that basic education was available for a larger section, while certain eductation were restricted for certain classes, as there are no accounts (unless I am corrected) indicating that the kings did not allow basic education to the people in the lower rungs of the society. Also on a logical reasoning, a country can be prosperous only if the literacy is high. Looking a the glory of India in older days, which invited all the foreigners to invade us, I have to conclude that the literacy was, if not so great, definitely better than what we see today.
Are people aware ofany literature works that survived the transition and be available in original form? or at least stone inscriptions with gradual transitions from tamil-brahmi to vatezhettu?
> -Hi > thats a good point > > like hotels in early 1900's used to inscribe " ithu aanandavilaasil > thirudappattathu" > > > or could be the man who leased it > > venketesh > Leasing of an earthern pot - wow, we often read of how rich tamil kings n merchants were ( the famous roman coffers being drained story) but this is really heights on the other side - how meagre would be the mortal possessions of a toddy gatherer that he had to safe guard an earthern pot with his etched name!!! or how valuable was a earthern pot that he feared it would get stolen ! or mistaken for somebody elses...or maybe it was just his favorite pot ( ala mohinder's red hankerchief)
Hi, This is my perspective of the event, toddy pots are usually tied to coconut or palm trees and are removed when it needs to drunk. I have seen this in lot of movies!.... So basically pot which is tied over the tree has these inscriptions. We usually know that coconut fields are very big and coconut trees close to each other. There might be many toddy collectors using the same farm. SO there might be a need to identify whose pot was up in the tree since some times it might be confusing to identify the right tree. So the identity can be in any form...may be a paint or some mark or coloured cloth around it etc. and every body who were using the farm should be aware of that sign and recognize whose pot it is. Here instead of any obscure symbol they have used the alphabets itself, it means every body using the farm should have been able to identify what was inscribed in it. This is an indicator that people working in the farm were literate enough to understand what was written on the pot.
I think its not literally leasing of an earthen pot. Lets say there where 4-5 toddy makers in the village.. The pot might be just a identification of a particular cultivator.. say he had 100 palm trees, May be there where a hundred earthen pots with the inscription "naakan URal" to mark his trees and pots and differentiate them from the rest.
on a lighter note: For all we know it might even be the earliest form of branding of products.. May be Naakan's Toddy was a big brand.. Just like we have pepsi trucks and containers.. naakan might have had his own branding to stand out of the rest.. Its amazing how a two liner can be interpreted into n different meaning..
> on a lighter note: > For all we know it might even be the earliest form of branding of products.. > May be Naakan's Toddy was a big brand.. Just like we have pepsi trucks and > containers.. naakan might have had his own branding to stand out of the > rest.. Its amazing how a two liner can be interpreted into n different > meaning.. > > Regards,
Superb....Naakan's Toddy - has a ring to it as well. Sps sir, like you say PSVP has truly become a Kallu Kadai now
- how meagre would be the > mortal possessions of a toddy gatherer that he had to safe guard an > earthern pot with his etched name!!! or how valuable was a earthern > pot that he feared it would get stolen ! or mistaken for somebody > elses...or maybe it was just his favorite pot ( ala mohinder's red > hankerchief) >
vijaykumar marathula kaLLu irakki parthirukiyaa? its not a instantaneous process. you have to cut the peduncle of the bunch of flowers and let it drain drop by drop over days so the writing is not only for the pot also for its contents.
so the wordings actually meant, en kaLLai thottaal uthaippEn
> > vijaykumar > marathula kaLLu irakki parthirukiyaa? > its not a instantaneous process. > you have to cut the peduncle of the bunch of flowers and let it drain > drop by drop over days > so the writing is not only for the pot also for its contents. > > > so the wordings actually meant, en kaLLai thottaal uthaippEn > > venketesh > Now i know how much research you did for nandan and his oru marathu kallu ( sorry rest of the gang - you need to read thillaiyil oru kollaikaran to understand this...