ther Tolkapyar was ever his disciple. The comment on the prefatory sutra by Sivagnana Swami in confirmation of the facts that Agastya had learnt his Tamil from Siva, that he had been the author of the first grammar of the Tamil language and that it had served, before it was lost, as the model for all the later works on grammar, seems to me very unsatisfactory and even fanciful. No man has ever seen the Agastya's grammar; and the statement of Mr. Damodaram Pillai that it was a jumble of rules relating to the three kinds of Tamil is purely a creation of his powerful imagination. What I am inclined to believe is that every myth and tradition connecting Agastya with the Tamil language should have come into existence subsequent only to the seventh or eighth century A. D.
APPENDIX III
THE AGE OF MANIKKA VACHAKAR
The only Tamil poet whose date has called forth a good deal of controversy from pandits and scholars is Manikka Vachakar. It is, in my humble opinion, mainly due to their sectarian bias, their superstitious belief in the pauranic stories, their want of confidence in epigraphy and their incorrect understanding of the historical trend of the Tamil language, literature and religion. One writer thinks that Manikka Vachakar belonged to a period subsequent to the third academy, another puts his date long anterior to it, while a third brings it down to the thirteenth century. Dr. Pope, the Editor and translator of Manikka Vachakar's works, believes that he lived 'somewhere about the seventh or26
