In the ancient port of Manthai, on the northwestern coast of what is now Sri Lanka, a poet named Eelattu Poothanthevanar composed verses that would echo through the centuries. His words, praising the valor of King Pasum Poon Pandyan who reigned from 275 to 240 BCE, found their way into the great anthologies of Tamil Sangam literature. Seven of his poems survive today in the Akananuru, Natrinai, and Kurunthokai—treasured collections compiled before 250 CE in the city of Madurai. Poothanthevanar was not merely a poet; he was a bridge between two lands, his identity encoded in his very name: “Poothan-thevan from Eelam.”
The Sangam Age Connection
The earliest extant Sri Lankan Tamil literature survives from the academies of the Sangam age, dated from 200 BCE. During this golden era of Tamil poetry and learning, the island known as Eelam (the native Tamil name for Sri Lanka) maintained vibrant literary and cultural exchanges with the Tamil kingdoms of southern India. The Jaffna Peninsula, referred to in Tamil literature as Naka Nadu, in Pali as Nagadeepa, and in Greek gazetteers as Nagadiba, was home to a flourishing community of poets and scholars.
Poothanthevanar was not alone in his literary achievements. Other ancient native Sri Lankan Tamil poets whose work features in the Sangam anthologies include Mudingarayar, Musiri Asiriyar, Neelakandanar, Nannaganar, Putan Ila Naganar, and Marudan Ila Naganar. Most of these poets belonged to the Naga tribe of Manthai and Jaffna, a testament to the literary culture that thrived in these ancient coastal communities.
The physical evidence of this ancient Tamil presence remains etched in the very earth of Jaffna. Potsherds bearing Tamil Brahmi inscriptions from the 2nd century BCE have been discovered in Poonagari, carrying fragments of text including the clan name “velir”—chieftains and minor kings who also resided in the ancient Tamil country. At Kandarodai, excavations revealed black and red ware pottery dating to 300 BCE, inscribed with Tamil Brahmi script. These artifacts were found alongside Roman coins, early Pandyan and Chera dynasty coins, and copper kohl sticks similar to those used by the Egyptians—tangible proof of the active transoceanic maritime trade that connected ancient Jaffna Tamils with continental kingdoms across the prehistoric world.
The Buddhist Literary Tradition
The Tamil Buddhist tradition also left an indelible mark on Jaffna’s literary heritage. The Manimekalai, a Tamil Buddhist epic composed by Kulavanikan Seethalai Satanar sometime between the 2nd and 6th centuries, weaves Jaffna into its narrative fabric. This supreme work of Buddhist literature from the 3rd Sangam period is set partly in the harbor town of Kaveripattinam in Tamil Nadu and partly in Nainatheevu of Naga Nadu—a small sandy island of the Jaffna Peninsula in modern Sri Lanka.
In this epic, the heroine Manimekalai is miraculously transported to a small island called Manipallavam, where a sacred seat or footstool associated with the Buddha enabled devotees to remember their past lives. According to the poem, this seat had been used by the Buddha himself when he preached to and reconciled two kings of the Naga world. Ancient history according to the Mahavamsa chronicles and the Tamil Buddhist epic mentions a gem-studded throne and a stone with the Buddha’s footprint at Nainativu (also known as Nagadeepa), which pilgrims from India visited. The similarity between these legends has led scholars to identify Manipallavam with Nagadeepa, cementing the Jaffna Peninsula’s place in Tamil Buddhist literary geography.
Medieval Flowering: The Jaffna Kingdom’s Literary Patronage
The medieval period witnessed another renaissance of Tamil literature under the patronage of the Jaffna kingdom’s Arya Chakravarti rulers. These kings maintained a Tamil Sangam and rewarded poets and writers, consciously continuing the ancient tradition of royal literary patronage. The court became a magnet for learning, attracting scholars and poets not only from the local community but also from South India.
During this fertile period, Jaffna produced a remarkable series of literary works. Three medical treatises on Siddha Ayurveda—the Jega-raja sekeram, the Para-raja sekeram, and the Vaidya cintamani—codified traditional healing knowledge. The Jega-raja sekera maalai explored astronomy, while historical poems such as the Dakshina Kailasa Puranam chronicled the history of the Siva temple in Trincomalee. The Kailaya Malai by Muttu Raja, the Vaiya Paadal, the Para-raja Sekaram Ula, and the Koneswar Kalvattu by Kavi Raja Varotayan enriched the kingdom’s literary treasury.
Even Sanskrit classics found new life in Tamil. Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa was translated from Sanskrit into Tamil by Arasa Kesari, making this great epic accessible to Tamil readers. During the reign of Jeyaveera Cinkaiariyan, a scholar named Karivaiya authored works on medical sciences (Segarajasekaram), astrology (Segarajasekaramalai), and mathematics (Kanakathikaram). A Tamil academy was established in Jaffna in 1478, and literary manuscripts were preserved in the Royal Library—the Saraswati Maha Alayam in Nallur.
The Chroniclers and Historians
In 1736, under the patronage of Jan Maccara, the Dutch Governor of Jaffna, the poet Mayil Vaakanaar (Mayilvagana Pulavar of Mathakal) composed the Yalpana Vaipava Malai—a comprehensive historical and mythical account of early and medieval Jaffna and Ceylon. This work, written in Tamil, documented for the first time the history of the Jaffna Peninsula and the Vanni region during the Dutch period. The author drew upon earlier sources including the Kailaya Malai, Vaiyai Padal, and Pararajasekaran Ula. Translated into English by C. Brito and first published in 1879, the Yalpana Vaipava Malai was regarded between the 18th and 19th centuries as a work of great authority among the Tamils of Jaffna, and it remains an essential source on Sri Lankan history, particularly esteemed among Jaffnese and Sri Lankan Tamil historians.
The Modern Revival: Print, Preservation, and Renaissance
The 19th century brought a transformative revival of Tamil classical literature, and Jaffna stood at its epicenter. Arumuga Navalar (1822-1879), a Shaivite Tamil scholar and religious reformer born into a Tamil literary family in Jaffna, became the architect of this renaissance. His mission was dual: to restore the Tamil language to its pristine purity and to reassert Saiva Siddhanta as one of the world’s ancient religions.
In 1850, Navalar established a printing press in Sri Lanka, purchasing a printing machine and naming his publishing house Saiva Vidyanubalana Yantra Salai. This was no mere commercial venture—it was a cultural revolution. Navalar brought the first Sangam text into print in 1851, and by 1860 had published a fine critical edition of the Tirukkural, one of Tamil literature’s most revered works. He could now compare various manuscripts and publish critical editions of literary classics meant for the cultural and spiritual education of his students.
The printing press also became a weapon in the information war of the colonial era. Just as Christian missionaries had used mass-produced literature to attack Hinduism, Navalar mass-produced religious literature to counter missionary propaganda, defending Hindu traditions with scholarly rigor and literary excellence. In 1848, nine years before India’s First War of Independence, he established the Saiva-Prakasa Vidyasala, creating an institutional foundation for Tamil and Hindu learning.
Following Navalar’s pioneering work, C.W. Damodaram Pillai (1832-1901), also from Jaffna, became the earliest scholar to systematically hunt for long-lost manuscripts and publish them using modern tools of textual criticism. These two Jaffna scholars rescued countless works from oblivion, employing the revolutionary technology of the printing press to preserve and disseminate Tamil classical literature for future generations.
The Library and Its Loss
The culmination of Jaffna’s literary heritage found physical form in the Jaffna Public Library, which once functioned as one of South Asia’s most famous libraries. Its collection represented centuries of Tamil intellectual heritage, containing ancient palm leaf manuscripts that preserved classical Tamil poetry, religious texts, and philosophical treatises dating back to the medieval period. Among its treasures were over 97,000 volumes, including priceless Tamil manuscripts like the sole surviving copy of the Yalpana Vaipava Malai—a comprehensive chronicle of Jaffna’s history.
On June 1, 1981, tragedy struck. The library was burned to ashes, consuming globally acclaimed collections that could never be replaced. The loss extended beyond books and manuscripts; it was an erasure of memory, a severing of the thread that connected modern Jaffna to its ancient literary roots.
Digital Preservation: A New Beginning
Yet from this tragedy emerged new forms of preservation. The Noolaham Foundation initiated the Noolaham Digital Library in 2005 as a virtual library—an online open-access database of Tamil language documents, books, manuscripts, videos, and photos. This digital archive now includes photographs of 5,000 timeworn pages that make up 24 palm-leaf manuscripts and books such as Yalpana Samaya Nilai (Religion in Jaffna) dating to 1893.
The British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme has also undertaken crucial work, surveying and digitizing endangered Tamil and Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscript collections in the Jaffna, Vanni, and Mannar districts of Northern Sri Lanka. Through more than 150 field visits, researchers identified 49 different collections and digitized 135 manuscripts from 21 collections. These manuscripts cover traditional Siddha and Ayurvedic medicine, Hindu religious and temple ritual texts, astrology and astronomy works, local histories, literature, mathematics, and folklore. They bear testimony to the historical, social, and cultural history of the people of Jaffna—knowledge that grows more vulnerable with each passing year.
Legacy and Continuity
From the Sangam age poet Eelattu Poothanthevanar composing verses in ancient Manthai to the medieval scholars in the royal courts of Nallur, from Arumuga Navalar’s printing revolution to today’s digital preservation efforts, the Tamil literary heritage of Jaffna represents an unbroken chain of cultural transmission spanning more than two millennia. The Tamil Brahmi inscriptions on pottery shards, the Buddhist epics locating sacred geography in Jaffna’s islands, the medical and astronomical treatises of the medieval kingdom, the historical chronicles, and the modern critical editions—all testify to a community’s unwavering commitment to learning, literature, and the preservation of knowledge.
This literary tradition did not exist in isolation. It emerged from a cosmopolitan maritime culture that connected Jaffna to trade networks spanning from the Red Sea to the Far East, from Egypt to Southeast Asia. The same ports that welcomed merchants from distant lands also welcomed ideas, stories, and literary forms. The poets who emerged from this milieu wrote with an awareness of both their local landscape—the seas, the islands, the palmyra groves—and the wider Tamil cultural world of which they were an integral part.
Today, though the Jaffna Public Library’s irreplaceable manuscripts are lost, the spirit of that literary tradition endures. In digital archives, in scholarly editions, in the ongoing work of preservation and translation, the voices of Jaffna’s poets and scholars continue to speak. They remind us that literature is not merely entertainment or decoration—it is memory made tangible, identity preserved across time, and a bridge connecting past, present, and future. The literary heritage of Jaffna stands as testament to the enduring human need to create, to record, and to remember.