Talikota
City in the Bijapur district of the state of
Karnataka, which in 1565 was the site of
a battle between the Vijayanagar
dynastyking Rama Raja and a coalition
of Muslim sultans from farther north in
the Deccanpeninsula. Rama Raja’s dis-
astrous defeat brought the Vijayanagar
dynasty to an abrupt end. The sultans
sacked the empire’s capital at Hampi,
and it has never been inhabited since
that time.
Tamas
(“darkness”) One of the three funda-
mental qualities (gunas) believed to be
present in all things, the other two being
sattva(“goodness”) and rajas(“pas-
sion”). According to this model, the dif-
fering proportions of these qualities
account for the differences both in the
inherent nature of things and in individ-
ual human capacities and tendencies.
Of the three, tamas is always negative
and is associated with darkness, disease,
ignorance, sloth, spoilage, and death.
The notion of these three gunas origi-
nated in the metaphysics of the
Samkhyaschool, one of the six schools
of traditional Hindu philosophy, and
although much of Samkhya meta-
physics connected with the gunas has
long been discredited, the idea of the
gunas and their qualities has become a
pervasive assumption in Indian culture.
Tamil Epics
Collective name for three early Tamil
epic poems: the Shilappadigaram, the
Manimegalai, and the Shivaga-
Sindamani. These poems were com-
posed in about the sixth and seventh
centuries of the common era, when reli-
gious forms and cultural influence
(among them, the composition of epic
poems) were seeping in from the north
and influencing indigenous forms. Aside
from Sanskrit, Tamil is the only major
ancient literary language. All three of
these poems provide important infor-
mation about life in their contemporary
times, including religious life. In brief,
the Shilappadigaram (“The Jeweled
Anklet”) is a tragedy that highlights sev-
eral important themes that have pervaded
Hindu culture, particularly the need for
a king to rule righteously and the power
gained by a wife through her devotion to
her husband. The Manimegalaifocuses
on a young woman of the same name,
who is wooed by the local prince but
eventually becomes a Buddhist nun.
Although the story clearly has a Buddhist
bias, Manimegalai has numerousdebates
with people from competing religious
traditions. Finally, the Shivaga-
Sindamanidescribes the adventures of
Shivaga, a man who excels at every pos-
sible manly art, who with each new
challenge wins a new wife for his harem
but in the end renounces everything
to become a Jain monk. Although the
later two epics are respectively biased
toward Buddhist and Jain religious
values, they all give valuable informa-
tion about contemporary religious life.
See also Tamil language.Tamil Language
One of the four Dravidianlanguages,
along with Kannada, Telegu, and
Malayalam; all four languages are spo-
ken primarily in southern India. Tamil is
the predominant language in modern
Tamil Nadu, which is one of the “lin-
guistic states” formed after the Indians
gained independence. This state was
formed to unite people with a common
language and culture under one state
government. Although all four lan-
guages have literary and cultural signifi-
cance, Tamil has by far the richest
history as a literary language. Tamil liter-
ature begins in the early centuries of the
common era with the Sangam litera-
ture, eight collections of poetry that
focused equally on the external descrip-
tion of battle or internal descriptions of
love. The Sangam literature was fol-
lowed by the three Tamil epics: the
Shilappadigaram, the Manimegalai,
and the Shivaga-Sindamani. Between
the seventh and tenth centuries cameTalikota