Between Preservation and Recreation: Tamil Traditions of Commentary. Proceedings of a Workshop in Honour of T.V. Gopal Iyer.

Edited by Eva Wilden, Collection Indologie n°109, IFP / EFEO, 2009, xiv, 319 p.
Language: English (except 2 articles in Tamil). 600 Rs (26 €)
ISBN (IFP): 978-81-8470-173-9. ISBN (EFEO): 978-2-85539-674-3

The seed from which this book germinated was a workshop entitled “Between Preservation and Recreation: Tamil Traditions of Commentary in Pursuit of the Caṅkam Era”, held in the Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO in July 2006 in honour of the late and much lamented Pandit T.V. Gopal Iyer. A presentation of the life and work of T.V. Gopal Iyer, along with his bibliography, is followed by essays.

After a general introduction by Eva Wilden, Thomas Lehmann gives a survey of the types of commentary found in Tamil. Jean-Luc Chevillard addresses the interaction between scholastic Sanskrit and Tamil. G. Vijayavenugopal, Eva Wilden and A. Dhamodharan deal with the genre of grammatical and poetological commentaries. Martine Gestin explores the possibilities of retrieving social and anthropological information from a poetological commentary. T.V. Gopal Iyer (†2007), T.S. Gangadharan and T. Rajeswari write about literary commentaries. R. Varadadesikan introduces the genre of Vaishnava theological exegesis and, finally, Sascha Ebeling characterises the “neo-commentaries” of the 19th century.

Keywords: Tamil literature, exegesis, philology