Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. Volume 63 (3), 301–317 (2010) DOI: 10.1556/AOrient.63.2010.3.6 0001-6446 / $ 20.00 © 2010 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest “RARE WORDS” IN CLASSICAL TAMIL LITERATURE: FROM THE URIYIYAL TO THE TIVƗKARAM ∗ JEAN-LUC CHEVILLARD CNRS, University Paris-Diderot, UMR7597, France e-mail: jean-luc.chevillard@univ-paris-diderot.fr This article examines the organisation of the Uriyiyal, which is the 8th chapter inside the 2nd book of the TolkƘppiyam, the most ancient Tamil grammatical work preserved. That chapter, because it provides (approximate) synonyms for 120 “unfrequent words”, many of them polysemic, represents the earliest lexicographical attempt in Tamil. Those 120 words all belong to the category of uriccol, a residual lexical category, examined by the TolkƘppiyam once the nouns (peyarccol), the verbs (vi- ṉaiccol) and the particles (iṭaiccol) have been dealt with in earlier chapters. The final section of the article examines the posterity of the Uriyiyal, which becomes a marginal section in grammatical lit- erature, but finds its full development in the different scholarly landscape which is created with the composition of thesauri such as the TivƘkaram and its successors. Key words: Classical Tamil, TolkƘppiyam, Uriyiyal, Uriccol, lexicography, polysemy, thesaurus, TivƘkaram. 0. Introduction One of the challenges faced by Tamil Philology is to give an as precise as possible ac- count of the nature of the language which was used in Classical Tamil literature and ∗ This article presents the current state of my thinking concerning one component in the field of Classical Tamil vocabulary studies, on which I have given a presentation at the conference “Let- ting the Texts Speak” (ELTE, Budapest, 3rd–5th February 2010). I wish to express here my thanks to the organisers, Csaba Dezső and Mária Négyesi, for inviting me to take part in that fruitful and pleasant conference, and to the Indian Embassy (and especially to Mr Mohan) for making my visit possible. Thanks to them it was possible for me to acquire knowledge from a number of learned col- leagues from India and from Europe. I also wish to express my thanks to my colleague and friend Eva Wilden who was not at the conference but who has read the current version and with whom I have been having a long-ongoing discussion on the topics treated here. All errors are of course mine.