namaste.
Surely, Vivek used intemperate language repeatedly in many posts despite warning, but the four points he has summed up (all of which he had been reiterating in his posts) make him stand apart, at such early age, as a man with the right perception. These points deserve their due consideration elsewhere in this Forum for Tamil Brahmins, if not in this thread. I hope that Vivek will mellow and the moderator be lenient eventually and that we will see Vivek back posting, with restrained vigour.
Shri Saidevo,
It is apparent, right now itself, that our points of view on the topic are opposite. Still, since I have found you to rarely go beyond the norms of this forum, I make myself bold to address just one of the four points referred to by you. (Actually, I don't find four separate points, but only one refrain which is that TBs were great, innocent, pure Tamils and deserved to be on the apex of the Tamil society for ever, just because of the above reasons. That this did not happen and anti-Brahmin agitations which pulled the TBs down from their high perch, is as inexcusable a crime as any of the worst in human history, and every morally upright TB has to hold this view; those who do not are all morally bankrupt and deserve the worst condemnation.)
If you differ from the above summarisation, kindly elucidate.
I am trying to deal with just one of the many qualifications attributed to TBs, viz., TBs were pure Tamils. I am not going into the genetic aspects because that science was not in the scene when these developments took place. But otherwise, here is a southern corner of the peninsula which has had a distinct language, which, as spoken by the non-erudite masses, is mostly free from the sanskrit language influence. It also became evident that this Tamizh language had a great literary history and its development was free from the vedic or sanskritic influences and presented a society with a sufficiently developed social structure. Amidst this sea of ordinary masses was a small group, holding allegiance to an entirely different culture, religion, scriptures in an alien language and which, at every other step, would convince an impartial student that this small group was living at best as ambassadors of an entirely different era, people, culture, religion and belief system.
Just take the small and very routine mantra of narmadāyai namaḥ prātaḥ ... ; how is it that the Tamil Brahmans who claim to be one hundred percent Tamil, go all the way north to narmada for protection from poisonous snakes? Is it because none of the rivers in the Dramila region—kaveri, krishna, godavari, tungabhadra—do not have that power?
Again, let us take "imam me gaṃge yamune sarasvati śutudristomagm̐ sacatāparuṣṇiyā |...". Here also not one rivulet south of the Vindhyas gets included!
Many such examples can be provided which clearly shows that as far as the Tamil Brahmins were, and are concerned, their loyalty is not to anything Tamilian but that they take solace from sources outside Tamil Nad. However there is no let up in speaking "vaṭa veṅkaṭam teṉ kumariyāyiṭai tamiḻkūṟum nallulakam" whenever it suits the TBs to do so.
We may also keep in mind the point made by Shri Nara about the advices of the old Vaishnava aazhvaars being effectively overruled by a subsequent sanskrit-oriented orthodoxy which swore by the caste system and the superiority of the Brahmans.
So, the question all of us have to ponder about is "how much Tamil the TBs were/are?".
