Tamil: A Biography
No Customer Reviews
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil--language, literature, and civilization--emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography.
Two stories animate Shulman's narrative. The first concerns the evolution of Tamil's distinctive modes of speaking, thinking, and singing. The second describes Tamil's major expressive themes, the stunning poems of love and war known as Sangam poetry, and Tamil's influence as a shaping force within Hinduism. Shulman tracks Tamil from its earliest traces at the end of the first millennium BCE through the classical period, 850 to 1200 CE, when Tamil-speaking rulers held sway over southern India, and into late-medieval and modern times, including the deeply contentious politics that overshadow Tamil today. Tamil is more than a language, Shulman says. It is a body of knowledge, much of it intrinsic to an ancient culture and sensibility. "Tamil" can mean both "knowing how to love"--in the manner of classical love poetry--and "being a civilized person." It is thus a kind of grammar, not merely of the language in its spoken and written forms but of the creative potential of its speakers.Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0674059921
ISBN13:9780674059924
Release Date:September 2016
Publisher:Belknap Press
Length:416 Pages
Weight:1.65 lbs.
Dimensions:1.2" x 6.4" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
0 rating
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
