Sangam or College, from the eighth or ninth century A. D. to the twelfth or thirteenth century. The important works of this period were Kural, Naladiyar, Chintamani, Divakaram and Nannul.
II. The Tamil Ramayana cycle—the thirteenth century. Kamban, Pugazhendi, Ottaikkuttar and Auvaiyar were the poets of this age.
III. The Saiva Revival cycle—the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Tevaram and the Tiruvachakam were composed during this period.
IV. The Vaishnava cycle-about the same period. To this period he assigns the composition of the Nalayiraprabandam.
V. The cycle of the Literary Revival—the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The works and authors were Vasishtam, the Saiva Siddhantam, AtiviraramaPandyan and Villiputturar.
VI. The anti-Brahmanical cycle in which the compositions of the Siddhar School came into existence—seventeenth century. Agastya, Siva Vakkiyar, Tirumular, Bhadragiriyar, and all the eighteen Siddhas flourished at this period.
VII. The modern school—the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which Pattanattar, Tayumanavar and the authors of Prabhulingahlai and Tembavani lived.
It will be seen from the above classification that there was no literature in Tamil before the eighth century A. D. Elsewhere, the same writer goes on to say that the Tamil literature now extant enables us to
