[Paul Bunyan]

As always, thanks for the info podalangai.

You rocked my chair !

So the absence of contemporaneous epigraphical evidence about Mavalavan or Senguttavan and their exploits isn't necessarily as significant as it may seem.

Yeah. But I has kind of assumed karikAlan was as solid as the kallaNai, which he is credited with. That he was inferred from (no doubt scholastic analysis of) literature is something I find simultaneously thrilling and uneasy

But if it weren't for the Sangam poems, we wouldn't even have had a clue that there was such a strong Tamil identity in the Sangam period.

The history of the texts, how they were preserved, rediscovered would be pretty interesting too. Were they constantly in circulation.

We see AvvaiyAr and NammAzhwAr using lines/expressions found in the ThirukkuraL. An example I hit upon in a discussion with hubber app_engine a few weeks back

உழுதுண்டு வாழ்வாரே வாழ்வார்மற் றெல்லாம்
தொழுதுண்டு பின்செல் பவர்
---
உழுதுண்டு வாழ்வாரே வாழ்வார்
பழுதுண்டு வேறோர் பணிக்கு (Avvai)

AvvaiyAr of course referring to and even prescribing kuRaL (அணுவைத் துளைத்து ஏழ்கடலைப் புகட்டிக்
குறுகத் தரித்த குறள்) Dating avvaiyAr - no pun intended - is itself quite daunting. There are supposedly three of them in history(right ?).

Ok let me quit digressing. What I am trying to ask is, were the Sangam works similarly hailed throughout the time ? Were they digested , if not celebrated, from their creation. Was the historical/literary awareness always there. No major loss-in-transit etc. (would we be able to tell that standing today ? )

I ask because the time distance between, say Rajaraja and Karikalan is so much that the latter could have been raised to a mythological superhuman status. (Only) with literature contemporaneous to Karikalan would they have managed to retain him as human - a great ancenstor nevertheless


For the folks interested, here is a link to text of the Hathigumpha insciption mentioned by podalangai.