Cultural Factors for the Decline in the Number of Women Poets in Tamil Literary History

தமிழ் இலக்கிய வரலாற்றில் பெண் புலவர் எண்ணிக்கை அருகியமைக்கான பண்பாட்டுக் காரணிகள்

Abstract

This paper presents the cultural and socio-political reasons behind the depreciation of women poets in the history of the Tamil literature. Although there were women poets who composed about a tenth part of the Sangam literature, only two major women writers in literature can be recognized in the next millennium, namely, Karaikkal Ammaiyar in Shaiva and Andal in Vaishnava. According to the article, this drastic fall cannot be easily attributed to numerical considerations where very bright women poets like Avvaiyar were in key posts even in the royal courts during the Sangam era. The article discusses the ways in which the Tolkappiyam period and the Sangam literary period itself represented a period of transition between the matriarchal and patriarchal forms of social organization in which the codification of grammar itself served to linguistically enforce patriarchal ideological formations. It also analyzes how the idea of Kalavu, the monogamous marriage system, property rights, and hierarchies of classes led to the gradual subjugation of women autonomy and intellectualism. The article presents evidence based on Kurunthokai, Thirukkural or Manimekalai to trace the manner in which women became subordinated however, ideologically first by religious and caste structures, and then by marriage rules. The role played by Jainism, Buddhism, and Brahminical Vedic religion in changing the Tamil social structures is also examined. The article concludes that it was not natural that women literature talent was oppressed during history, but as later literary histories reveal that it is a systematic and intentional erasure of culture by the influence of patriarchal ideology, caste, and religion.