1. THE CLASSIFICATION OF SANGAM LITERATURE
PATTU-P-PATTU and ETTU-T-TOKAI
The great literature of Tamilnadu of the early period has been called Sangam Literature. The various poets, poetesses and even the kings of chieftains who have enriched the galleries of Tamil literature of that remote past never thought that they would be called Sangam poets. They were writing prompted by a desire to serve the language and enrich the literature of the land. Incidentally some of them were recipients of land or money grants from kings of chieftains who patronised them. The name "sangam" came to be applied to that literature only during later ages by commentators. There was a great body of literature available which was written in various metres and of varying lengths. The age of the epics was yet to be fixed. By Sangam age, we mean the age before the golden days of the epics. All the available poems of the pre-epic age have been compiled together into anthologies. The shorter verses were grouped together into the "tokai" and the longer verses in that "Pattu". We find that in tokai and Pattu some poets are the same persons. (Kapilar and Nakkirar for example). So, all the poems were written during the centuries preceding the epic age and were later collected into two groups, taking length of the poems as a chief-characteristic. Of course, other aspects of the poems like matter and metre were also taken into consideration in grouping them.
