Many questions about Siddha medicine cannot be answered, pending further scholarly investigation. Many of these works have not yet been studied, the jealously guarded property of `medical families' because of their secretive and symbolic language, their deteriorated conditions and their difficult accessibility. Now confined to the states of Tamil Nadu and a few parts of Kerala, there are available a bulk of written works on Siddha medicine exclusively in the Tamil language (and on occasion in Malayalam), but very little in English or other Western languages. Today the traditional medical lineage established by the Siddhars exists almost totally unknown outside of southernmost India, in close proximity to the far more widely known Ayurveda medical system. Patriotic Tamils tend to emphasize the antiquity of such works, pushing their origins back long before the dawn of recorded history (figures of 18 to 50 thousand years are often heard), as are claims that Siddha is the progenitor of all other healing traditions) many academics believe the oldest Tamil works to date between the first century BCE and 250 CE. Some scholars have tended to doubt the genuineness, or at least the claimed antiquity, of these works. Hundreds of their works deal with alchemy, black magic, medicine, yoga and certain tantric rites. Most works by the Tamil Siddhars are not well known outside of scholarly circles, but a few are very popular among the general Tamil public.

They were puritanical and - for the most part - monotheistic. These Siddhars were a class of popular thinkers in Tamilnadu in all realms of scientific, literary and artistic and cultural realms and almost all of them were stridently opposed to formalities of life and religion, the religious practices and beliefs of the ruling class and against generally accepted pan-Indian social and religious doctrines, most particularly those promoting the notion of caste.

Tamil black magic books