Silappatikaram

01The prince who became a monk

The poem tells, in its preface and its last canto, how it came to be. Ilango Adigal was the younger brother of the Chera king Senguttuvan. A soothsayer at court said the younger prince bore the marks of a king, so to leave no doubt about his brother’s throne he renounced the world and lived as an ascetic at Kunavayil Kottam near Vanji. Hill people came to the Chera king with news of a woman who had stood under a vengai tree with one breast torn away and had been carried up to heaven. The poet Sathanar, who had been in Madurai, told the rest. Ilango resolved to set it down as a song with three lessons.

02Three truths

The poet names his three lessons in the patikam, and every Tamil schoolchild learns them. Dharma itself becomes Yama to a king who fails in his rule. The great ones of the world praise a chaste and faithful wife. Karma of a past life comes back and makes one eat its fruit. The anklet, silambu, is the cause that binds all three, and so the poem is called Silappatikaram, the Tale of the Anklet. Ilango is careful to belong to no camp: the poem honours Shiva and Vishnu, Murugan and Korravai, Indra and the Jain monks, and the Buddhist teaching is close by, for its twin epic Manimekalai follows Madhavi’s daughter into the Buddhist sangha.

03Puhar: the dancer and the shore

In Puhar, the Chola port, the merchant’s son Kovalan marries Kannagi, and for a while they keep house. Then Madhavi, a dancer of the courtesans’ line, makes her debut before the Chola king; the poem describes her stage, her musicians and her dance step by step, and she is given a garland worth a thousand and eight kalanju of gold. Kovalan buys the garland and goes to live with her. At the Indra festival and the sea-bathing festival that follows, they sing to each other on the shore, the kanal vari songs. A line in her song sounds to him like a hint of another love, and he walks away from her with nothing left.

04The road to Madurai

Kovalan comes home to Kannagi with nothing, and she gives him her anklets to start again. They leave Puhar before dawn and walk west along the Kaveri, with the Jain nun Kavunti Adigal as their guide and protector. They cross the forest, where hunters worship Korravai and, seeing Kannagi, hail her as the goddess herself. At the edge of Madurai Kavunti leaves Kannagi in the care of Madari, a cowherd woman, while Kovalan goes into the city to sell one anklet. Kannagi cooks him a last meal in Madari’s house, and the poet lingers over it.

05One anklet, two anklets

A royal goldsmith who has stolen the queen’s anklet sees Kovalan’s and tells the Pandya king Nedunjeliyan that he has caught the thief. The king, without inquiry, orders the stranger’s death, and Kovalan is cut down. In the cowherds’ quarter bad omens appear, and the women dance the kuravai of Krishna and Nappinnai to ward them off. Then the news comes. Kannagi walks the streets of Madurai holding up her one anklet, finds her husband’s body, and goes to the palace gate. Before the king she breaks it open. Hers are filled with rubies. The queen’s held pearls.

06The court and the burning city

Kannagi’s speech in the Vazhakkurai Kathai begins, “Unthinking king, I have something to say,” and reminds him of the Chola kings who gave their own flesh for a dove and crushed their own son under a chariot wheel for a cow’s calf. When the rubies scatter, the king cries, “Am I a king? I am the thief,” and falls dead on his throne; the queen dies after him. Kannagi swears her oath before the city, twists off her breast and flings it down, and Agni appears. At her word the fire spares Brahmins, cows, chaste women, the old and children, and burns the rest. Madurapati, the city’s goddess, comes to her and tells the karma of a former birth that brought this about.

07Vanji: stone from the Himalaya

Kannagi walks west into the Chera hills, and after fourteen days, under a vengai tree, a chariot of the devas comes down with Kovalan in it and carries her up. The hill people, the kuravar, sing and dance their kuravai in her honour and bring the news to King Senguttuvan. He resolves to raise a temple to her and to carve her image from Himalayan stone. He marches north, defeats the kings Kanaka and Vijaya, makes them carry the stone on their heads, bathes it in the Ganga and brings it home. At the consecration in Vanji she appears in the sky and grants boons, and kings from Lanka and beyond stand in the hall.

08Iyal, isai, natakam

Tamil calls learning muttamizh, the three Tamils: iyal, poetry; isai, music; natakam, drama. Silappatikaram holds all three, which is why it is called the first Tamil kappiyam. Its thirty cantos mix the akaval metre with songs called vari, round dances called kuravai, and passages of prose, and they carry names of ragas, drums, dance poses and stage measurements that are found nowhere else. Adiyarkunallar’s commentary of the twelfth or thirteenth century, with an older anonymous Arumpadavurai, explains this music and dance in detail; much of what is known of early Tamil pann and Bharatanatyam’s ancestry comes from them.

09Kannagi worshipped today

The epic records that Gajabahu, king of Lanka, came to the consecration of Kannagi’s temple; historians use this ‘Gajabahu synchronism’ to date the poem. In Sri Lanka she is still worshipped as Pattini Devi by Sinhala Buddhists and as Kannaki Amman by Tamil Hindus, and in Kerala the Kodungallur Bhagavathy and the Attukal Pongala, where lakhs of women cook pongal in the streets of Thiruvananthapuram, keep her memory. U. V. Swaminatha Iyer published the text with Adiyarkunallar’s commentary in 1892. A statue of Kannagi holding up her anklet has stood on the Marina in Chennai since 1968.

What it contains

1. 1
   Patikam and Mangala Vazhthu பதிகம், மங்கல வாழ்த்துப் பாடல்

   The preface tells how Ilango heard the story and names the three truths the poem will teach, then lists all thirty cantos. The first canto opens with blessings on the moon, the sun and the rain, each likened to the Chola king.

2. 2
   Puhar Kandam புகார்க் காண்டம்

   Cantos 1–10 in the Chola port: the marriage of Kannagi and Kovalan, Madhavi’s debut, evening in the city, the Indra festival, the sea-bathing festival, the shore songs (Kanal Vari), spring and Madhavi’s grief, Kannagi’s dream, and the departure. The last canto, Nadukan Kathai, follows the couple across the Chola country.

3. 3
   Madurai Kandam மதுரைக் காண்டம்

   Cantos 11–23: the forest, the hunters’ song to Korravai (Vettuva Vari), the city outskirts, Madurai seen, Madari’s shelter, the execution, the cowherd women’s kuravai, the songs of grief, the walk through the city, the case at court, the oath, the burning and the goddess Madurapati’s explanation. It is the heart of the epic.

4. 4
   Vanci Kandam வஞ்சிக் காண்டம்

   Cantos 24–30 in the Chera country: the hill people’s kuravai, Senguttuvan hearing the news, the northern march, the stone bathed in the Ganga, the hero-stone of Kannagi raised, the blessing, and Kannagi granting boons at the consecration.

Famous verses

அரைசியல் பிழைத்தோர்க்கு அறம்கூற்று ஆவதூஉம் உரைசால் பத்தினிக்கு உயர்ந்தோர் ஏத்தலும் ஊழ்வினை உருத்துவந்து ஊட்டும் என்பதூஉம்

That dharma becomes Death to those who err in ruling; that the great praise a renowned and faithful wife; and that karma of the past comes back in wrath and makes one taste its fruit.Silappatikaram, Patikam, lines 55–57

திங்களைப் போற்றுதும் திங்களைப் போற்றுதும் கொங்கலர்த்தார்ச் சென்னி குளிர்வெண் குடைபோன்றிவ் வங்கண் உலகுஅளித்த லான்

We praise the moon, we praise the moon, for like the cool white parasol of the Chola who wears the honey-laden garland, it shelters this wide and lovely world.Silappatikaram, Puhar Kandam, canto 1 (Mangala Vazhthu), lines 1–3

தேரா மன்னா செப்புவ துடையேன்

Unthinking king, I have something to say.Silappatikaram, Madurai Kandam, canto 20 (Vazhakkurai Kathai), line 50

பொன்செய் கொல்லன் தன்சொற் கேட்ட யானோ அரசன் யானே கள்வன்

I, who listened to the word of a goldsmith: am I a king? I am the thief.Silappatikaram, Madurai Kandam, canto 20 (Vazhakkurai Kathai), lines 74–75