Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Literature in History
- 2 Interrogating ‘Rediscovery’ and an Enquiry into the Transmission of Sangam Literature during the Pre-modern Period
- 3 Patrons and Networks of Patronage in the Publication of Tamil Classics
- 4 From Reproduction to Reception: The Writing of Literary Histories
- 5 Orientalism, Tamil Classics and the Organisational Politics
- 6 Conclusion
- Appendix I
- Appendix II
- Select Bibliography
- Index
5 - Orientalism, Tamil Classics and the Organisational Politics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Literature in History
- 2 Interrogating ‘Rediscovery’ and an Enquiry into the Transmission of Sangam Literature during the Pre-modern Period
- 3 Patrons and Networks of Patronage in the Publication of Tamil Classics
- 4 From Reproduction to Reception: The Writing of Literary Histories
- 5 Orientalism, Tamil Classics and the Organisational Politics
- 6 Conclusion
- Appendix I
- Appendix II
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The period from 1856 to 1916 is considered a period of incubation for the emergence and consolidation of the Dravidian consciousness in the Tamil-speaking region of the colonial Madras Presidency. It corresponded with the spread of English education, the emergence of the new middle class trained in English education and the evolution of political organisations that began to play an active role in the presidency. The social formation engendered by colonialism took a consolidated form by the end of the nineteenth century in Madras Presidency. The story of Tamil Brahmin preponderance in the field of literacy, administration and the politics of the colonial Madras at the turn of the twentieth century is too well known and articulated to be repeated here. As we have detailed in the previous chapters, the persona of the Tamil Brahmin was not totally absent in the processes leading to the reproduction of classical Tamil literature from manuscript tradition to the print medium. It has to be studied how the ‘Tamil Brahmin’ was soon displaced as the ‘other’ in the regional politics of colonial Madras at the turn of the twentieth century. The classical Tamil ‘Sangam’ literature, beginning with the printing of the Kalithogai in 1887, was published before 1920. Confined earlier to the tiny circle of scholars, the Sangam literature was thrown open to the ‘wider public’ once they were printed.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Manuscripts, Memory and HistoryClassical Tamil Literature in Colonial India, pp. 203 - 241Publisher: Foundation BooksPrint publication year: 2014