On Monday 24th April Valérie Gillet is speaking on "La période obscure (the Dark Period) du pays tamoul entre les IIe et VIe siècles de note ère : mythe ou réalité ?"

11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (free admission)

Maison de l'Asie, first-floor salon, 22 avenue du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris

This seminar is integrated into the Master seminar "Asies" (EFEO - EHESS - EPHE)

In this seminar we shall be focusing on the concept of the "dark ages" in Tamil Nadu between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE which seems to have been introduced in the writings of the celebrated historian K.A. Nilakantha Shastri in the first quarter of the 20th century and which has been adopted by many of his successors. The conquest of the whole Tamil land by the brutal Kalabhra dynasty in the 3rd century would have been responsible for the descent of a dark age, identified as such on the basis of the relative absence of archaeological and textual documents. We shall initially survey the archaeological and literary material concerning the Tamil land in the 8th century CE in an attempt to understand and contextualise the apparent lack of information about the period we are interested in, and then we shall analyse documents that mention the Kalabhras in order to evaluate the validity of the theory of their three centuries long reign. This approach allows us to consider the processes of historiographic construction of big ideas that sometimes prove to be deeply rooted myths. READ MORE