Researches of Tamil department at the south eastern university: an overview

Abstract

Since the establishment of the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka in 1996, special degreein Tamil was offered at the faculty of Arts and Culture. Any undergraduate pursuing a special degree in Tamil is required to submit an independent research in the final year. Accordingly, over 2 decades, students submitted many dissertations, yet information about their researches are not known by the public. Hence, the objectives of this study are to compile these researches and bring this knowledge to the society. Generally, language and literature reflect social, political and economic aspects of any society. Moreover, researches depicting literary personalities and other researches within Tamil literature were primarily conducted in Sri Lanka. Thus, this study will be helpful in offering thematic analysis of these researches conducted and compile all such researches. By doing so, it brings out the immense contribution made by SEUSL students specialized in Tamil for the development of Tamil language and literature. It will also be helpful for the Tamil literary enthusiasts to know the scope and gaps in Tamil language and literature for future researches. Dissertations submitted by the students specialized in Tamil were the primary sources for this study. Even though, Tamil unit of SEUSL has done numerous researches to enhance the field of Tamil language and literature, this study is limited to the dissertations of students specialized in Tamil.