of a living tree. 'The bit and bridle of literature' says Max Muller, ‘will arrest a natural flow of language in the countless rivulets of its dialects, and give a permanency to certain formations of speech which, without these external influences, could have enjoyed but an ephemeral existence.' This linguistic principle was clearly understood and fully recognised by the founders of the Tamil academies. To secure, therefore, permanency to the Tamil language the boundaries of the country where it was current were roughly described and the particular locality in which pure Tamil (செந்தமிழ்) was spoken was sharply defined; then the form and pronunciation of letters were settled ; rules were laid down to distinguish pure Tamil words from those of foreign origin, and to determine the structure and combination of words in sentences. These and many other restrictions on the free growth of the language were dealt with in the first Tamil grammar. Treatises were written on prosody, rhetoric and porul (details of conduct in matters of love and warfare). Poetical dictionaries or nikhandus were compiled in order to give fixity to the form and meaning of words in the language, and to check the indiscriminate and unlicensed introduction of alien words in the Tamil vocabulary.
The canons of literary criticism were severe and were applied impartially. In this connection there is a tradition pertaining to Sittalai-Sattanar, a noted member of the so-called third academy and author of the unrivalled epic Manimekalai. When a
