Almost all the reference books in English have pages of Index at the last. There will be glossaries which would guide a person to seek out details which have not even been mentioned in the book. There will be indicators about words, sentences, or ideas. We can start an effective search from any angle.
One of my Chinese friends told me that the Chinese have already followed this exhaustive cross-reference methods in their books.
I have often mentioned about a very famous author called Isaac Asimov. Although he is known as a writer of Science Fiction, he is actually a Master of Many Subjects. In fact, he is known as the 'Writing Machine'. He has written more than 600 books and thousands of articles. He has written a few books like 'Annotated Shakespeare', 'Annotated Bible', etc. These are huge volumes. You can search for anything, anyhow within the confines of these books.
But in Tamil, very few books have even index pages.
"Has a particular matter been mentioned in this book?", "What is the last line of the eighth verse of such-and-such ThEvaram hymn?" "What is the first line of a particuar ThEvaram verse?" "Which are the various authors who have emphasised upon such-and-such karuththu - idea?", "What is the crux of the ideology of Appar?"
If you want to know such things, you have to pore over tens of books, thousands of pages, for hours and days on end. Or you must seek out great scholars in that particular field and ask them explanations.
There are many research books which do not possess sufficient coverage. ThiruManthiram is a book which covers vast fields. No other book in Tamil has touched upon the fields of Agama, Tantrik, Mantrik, Yantrik, Vedanta, Siddhanta philosophies, rituals and applications.
But the meanings for many of the verses in that book are totally unknown. You can’t understand them. And there are no scholars who can give any satisfactory or correct commentary to those verses. There are many scholars who like to be wise alecs and downgrade the person who asked the doubts. They will create an image that the questioner is trying to be an 'adhiga pirasangi' - smart alec. Otherwise, they will adopt a hypocritical stance and advise that whatever we learn, is just as much as a palmful of soil. And send the poor querist empty-handed.
What a wonder, this ThiruManthiram is!
It is very doubtful if there is another book like it.
Unless some extraordinary super-human super-genius like the Egyptian Imhoteb could have written such a book in hieroglyphics in sheaves and sheaves of papyrus and left them in some yet-to-be-discovered chamber within some pyramid.
It may be that Imhoteb might be having close connections with Thirumoolar. May be with the Kodi-valzi lineage. After all, the disciple of the disciple of ThiruMoolar was a Chinese, wasn't he?
What I mean to say, is that there are no analytical books with exhaustive index pages and references and glossaries and also books which are known as 'valzi nool', 'thuNai nool', 'urai nuul' as the Tamil grammarians put it.
The greatness of ThiruManthiram is never going to be realised unless the meanings of its verses are going to be understood.
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