Mel-akkan oral tradition

The oral tradition of Mel-akkam refers to an assortment literary compositions passed down orally over several millennia. The Mel-akkan oral tradition is broadly divided among spiritual revelations, especially those supposedly delivered by the Master of the Animals, a deity later known as Pashupati, as well as secular legends and historical accounts pertaining to the early history of the Mel-akkan Dravidian people. The religious aspects of the Mel-akkan oral tradition were first recorded in writing c. 100 BCE, using the Brahmi script, and became known collectively as the Book of Pashupati (Dravidian: Pustakan na Pasupati). Meanwhile, the secular history of Mel-akkam was first recorded in full by the British civil engineer and Indologist Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1878.