Theorising Emotions: An Enquiry into the Emotion Knowledge of Premodern Tamil Treatises

Emotions are an integral part of human history. But what do we know about theoretical knowledge of emotions and what importance do South Indian Tamil-speaking thinkers attach to it? This book systematically and for the first time looks at pre-modern knowledge about emotions in Tamil treatises and commentaries from various theoretical strands and time periods (11th-17th centuries). The results provide information about the questions of the various theorists, their agenda, their definition of emotion, but also about change, linearity, breaks and historical marginal knowledge, and last but not least about the disappearance of emotion words. That Tamil culture did not produce any systematic thinking on emotions, other than emotions in poetics, may be surprising.