Akapporul vilakkam also known as Nambi akapporul ("Nambi's treatise on the love theme"), is a mediaeval treatise on Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 akam poetics

Poetics

Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...

 written by Narkavirasa Nambi (Tamil: நாற்கவிராச நம்பி). The treatise dates to the 13th century. It is closely associated with the Tancaivanankovai of Poyyamolipulavar, a set of connected poems in the form of a kovai on the life of the Pandiyan king Maravarman Kulasekara Pandiyan I, which was written as an ilakkiyam to illustrate the successive rules of Akapporul Vilakkam.

Unlike earlier works on akam poetics, the Akapporul Vilakkam divides the phases of a relationship into three, adding an intermediate phase of varaivu ("marriage

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

") to the two phases of kalavu ("stolen love") and karpu ("chaste love

Chastity

Chastity refers to the sexual behavior of a man or woman acceptable to the moral standards and guidelines of a culture, civilization, or religion....

") discussed in earlier texts. The text's discussion of the topics that are the subject of akam poetry is classified according to a hierarchy of situations and events (kilavi, vakai and viri), unlike earlier grammars which classify topics according to the speaker (kurru).

External links

• Full text of Akapporul vilakkam (in Tamil)