பதினெண் கீழ்க்கணக்கு நூல்களின் முதல் பதிப்புகள் / The First Editions of the Pathinen Keezhkannakku Noolgal (The Eighteen Books)

Abstract

The songs sung by the poets who excelled in the Tamil language in ancient times are included in the collections of ‘Ettuthogai’ (Eight Volumes), “Patthupattu” (Ten Volumes), and ‘Pathinen Keezh Kanakku Noolgal’ (Eighteen Books). It includes ‘Naaladiyaar’ and so on. The fact that our ancestors wrote and preserved these descriptions in palm leaves, called ‘Olaichuvadi’ (Palmleaf manuscript). The ones written in olaichuvadi formerly were now on replacement of paper. The texts written on the Olaichuvadi was written by the authors at a time was not clear today because of decay and archaic nature of the text. These were called "Uraipadi" (textual explanation). It has been the Guru's tradition for the teacher to teach the students a lesson and to write down what the students have asked the teacher to do. After the discovery of the paper, they wrote texts similar to the ones written on palm leaves. They called it the paper chuvadi. Thus writing on paper and it continued till the nineteenth century. With the invention of the printer at the turn of the century, the grammar and literature on the olaichuvadi began to rise one by one for print. In that sense, ‘Thiruvalluvamalai’ was first published in Tamil Literature in 1812 along with ‘Pathinen Keezhkanakku’, ‘Thirukkural’ and ‘Naladiyar’. Thereafter, each of the ‘Pathinen Keezhkanakku”, such as ‘Asarakovai’, ‘Eladi’, was published by the editors until 1931. Early publishers who published the book from the Olaichuvadi performed various tasks such as searching for Olaichuvadi, copying, reading, approving, and researching. Arumugam Naavalar and more was the first to do so with excellence. That is why we call them “Pathippu Munnodigal” (Pioneers of Tamil publishing). The paper tries to trace the roots of the early period editions of Pathinen Keezhkanakku books.

Keywords

• pathinen keezhkanakku
• first edition
• editor
• publishing