Colonizing the Realm of Words

Sascha Ebeling is Assistant Professor of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

List of Figures and Tables
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Note on Transliteration, Pronunciation, and Translations of Tamil Primary Sources

Chapter 1

Introduction
Colonizing the Realm of Words: Literature and Colonialism
Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India
How to Ignore a Century of Literary Production
A Century of Cultural Change
In Search of a Lost Literature: The Chapters of This Book

Chapter 2

Mapping the Universe of the Pulavar: Ti. Mīnātcicuntaram Pillai (1815–1876) and the Field of Traditional Literary Practices
Pulavar Education and Pre-Modern Tamil Poetics
The Pulavars’ Genres: Pirapantam Works and Temple Myths (talapurānam)
Scholarship in the Name of the Lord: Monasteries as Patrons
When One’s Fame Rises to the Heavens: The Pulavars’ Economy of Praise
“Addressing the Assembly of Poets” (avaiyatakkam)
The Public Premiere (arankērram)
Occasional Poems (tanippātal) and Epistolary Poems (cīttukkavi)
The Spoken and the Written Word: Composition, Performance, and Transmission
Of Gods and Kings: Themes and Contents of Pulavar Literature 
The Uses of Akam Poetics in the Nineteenth Century: The Kulattūrkkōvai (1853)
Makāvittuvān Ti. Mīnātcicuntaram Pillai: A Poets’ Poet

Chapter 3

Pulavars and Potentates: Structures of Literary Patronage at the Zamindars’ Courts and Beyond
Literature and Rituals of Courtly Representation
The System of Literary Patronage at the Zamindars’ Courts
A “Who Is Who” of Nineteenth-Century Royal Patrons and Their Poets
Thanjavur
Pudukkottai
Ramnad and Sivagangai
Smaller Zamindaris
Of Beauty and Benevolence: Themes of Courtly Literature
Kāmas's Arrows Whizzing Past the King: Royal Panegyrics and Eroticism in the Cētupati viralivitutūtu
The Pulavar in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Changes in Patronage

Chapter 4

Toward the Modern Tamil Author: The Colonial Critique of the “Vernacular” and Māyūram Vētanāyakam Pillai (1826–1889) as an Agent of Change
Māyūram Vētanāyakam Pillai: A Biographical Reconstruction
Writing for “the moral improvement of the Natives of India”: The Nītinūl (1859)
Law, Women’s Education and Devotional Poetry: Vētanāyakam Pillai's Other Writings

Chapter 5

The Emergence of the Tamil Novel
The History of Prathapa Mudaliar (1879): An “approximation to a novel”?
The History of Suguna Sundari (1887): A “longwinded moral tale, weary and unprofitable”?
The Fatal Rumor or The History of Kamalambal (1893–1895): “Vedanta through fiction”?
Further Comparisons

Chapter 6

Epilogue

Appendices
The Dating of the Cētupati viralivitutūtu Revisited
Chronological Table of the Earliest Tamil Novels Published Before 1900
Original Tamil Texts Quoted and Annotations

Glossary
References
Index