Tamil Sangam literature was excluded from the Indian canon for its secularity

Evidence

Tamil literature seems not to have interested this tradition of Orientalist High Textuality, despite its own antiquity, perhaps because of the inherent Northerly/Sanskritic bias of the Indo-Aryan philological construct, perhaps because of late availability of the Sangam anthologies even in printed Tamil, and, conceivably, because the secularity and this-worldliness of Sangam poetic traditions really do not appeal to the kind of mind for which the outstanding attribute of the Indian tradition is its purported spirituality. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1134

Categorization

• XREF: The selection mechanism here — a construct (Sanskritic high textuality) determining which texts are legible — parallels the discourse-determinism Ahmad elsewhere criticizes as obscuring material conditions. — connects to: Canonizing Sanskrit religious classics obscures the social grounds of Indian literature — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1134; Orientalist Sanskrit bias excluded Tamil literature from the Indian canon — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 505; Orientalist scholarship constructed ‘Indian Literature’ as Sanskritic, religious, and North Indian, excluding Tamil. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1134 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Orientalist scholarship constructed ‘Indian Literature’ as Sanskritic, religious, and North Indian, excluding Tamil. #corroborates (0.95) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 1134
• Orientalist Sanskrit bias excluded Tamil literature from the Indian canon #corroborates (0.92) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 505
• The English novel canon excluded religious allegory via Watt’s formal realism test #exemplifies (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 499