Iraiyanar Akapporul
Encyclopedia
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
, specifically, on the literary conventions associated with the akam tradition of Tamil love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
poetry. The date of the work is uncertain, but it is generally taken to have been composed between the fifth and eighth centuries.
The Akapporul consists of a set of sixty nūṟpās - terse epigram
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, usually memorable and sometimes surprising statement. Derived from the epigramma "inscription" from ἐπιγράφειν epigraphein "to write on inscribe", this literary device has been employed for over two millennia....
s written in verse
Verse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
which codify rules - attributed to Iraiyanar. The received text of the accompanied by a long prose treatise
Treatise
A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject.-Noteworthy treatises:...
on akam poetics attributed to Nakkiraṉār, which is structured as a commentary on the nūṟpās, but significantly expands on them and introduces several new ideas. The work as a whole occupies an important place in the history of Tamil literature for several reasons. The poetical argument of the work, and in particular Nakkiranar's treatment of traditional love episodes as successives scenes in an unfolding drama, was extremely influential in the development of Tamil love poetry and poetics in the mediaeval and pre-colonial periods. Secondly. Nakkiranar's treatise is both the first major Tamil work to be written entirely in prose, and the first erudite textual commentary in Tamil, and as such stylistically shaped the development of the Tamil prose and commentarial traditions. Finally, the work also contains the oldest account of the Sangam legend, which has played a significant role in modern Tamil consciousness.
Layers, authorship and dating
The Iraiyanar Akapporul in its present form is a composite work, containing three distinct texts with different authors. These are sixty nūṟpās which constitute the core of the original Iraiyanar Akapporul, a long prose commentary on the nūṟpās, and a set of poems called the Pāṇṭikkōvai which are embedded within the commentary.The nūṟpās
The original Iraiyanar Akapporul consisted of sixty brief verses - called nūṟpās - that, in total, contain 149 lines. The verses show a number of similarities with the poruḷatikāram section of the TolkappiyamTolkappiyam
The Tolkāppiyam is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram. Each of these books is...
- an old manual on Tamil grammar, poetics and prosody - both in its vocabulary and the core concepts it discusses. Takahashi suggests that this work was originally composed as a practical handbook for writing love poetry in accordance with the conventions of the akam tradition. The intent behind its composition, according to him, was to produce something that was more accessible and useful to poets than existing theoretical works on poetics, such as the poruḷatikāram.
The author of the sixty verses is unknown. Nakkiranar's commentary states that the verses were found inscribed on three copper plates under the altar to Shiva in Madurai
Madurai
Madurai is the third largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It served as the capital city of the Pandyan Kingdom. It is the administrative headquarters of Madurai District and is famous for its temples built by Pandyan and...
, in the time of the Pandiyan king Ukkiraperuvaluti, who is also mentioned in the Akananuru
Akananuru
Akananuru , a classical Tamil poetic work, is the seventh book in the Sangam literature anthology Ettuthokai. It contains 400 Akam poems dealing with matters of love and separation...
as being the king who ordered its compilation. Nakkiranar says their author was Shiva
Shiva
Shiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
himself, "the flame-hued lord of Alavayil in Madurai". Later sources, such as Ilampuranar's commentary on the Tolkappiyam, name the author of the sixty nūṟpās as "Iraiyanar", which literally means "lord", but is also a common name of Shiva. Apart from this legend, there is no tradition or concrete evidence as to who their human author was. Zvelebil and Marr suggest that the author was a poet or grammarian, possibly called Iraiyanar, and that the text itself had probably been stored in the temple at Madurai under Shiva's altar, where it was rediscovered in the time of Ukkiraperuvaluti. A poem in the Sangam anthology Kuruntokai
Kuruntokai
Kuruntokai ,a classical Tamil poetic work, is the second book of Ettuthokai, a Sangam literature anthology. Kuruntokai contains poems dealing with matters of love and separation content matter and were written by numerous authors. Nachinarkiniyar, a Tamil scholar living during the sixth or the ...
is also attributed to Iraiyanar, and Marr goes on to suggest that the author of the nūṟpās may have been the same person as the author of that poem.
The verses are also difficult to date. The commentary says that they were composed in the Sangam period, but the scholarly consensus is that they are from a later date. Takahashi and Zvelebil assign them to a period between the fifth and sixth centuries, on the basis that their relationship to the poruḷatikāram suggests that they were composed a few generations after the final redaction of the poruḷatikāram, which they date to the 4th - 5th centuries. Marr takes the view that the similarities between the nūṟpās and the poruḷatikāram indicate that the two were broadly contemporaneous, and drew upon common poetic ideas and definitions.
Nakkiranar's commentary
The second component of the work is Nakkiranar's treatise on love poetics which, although structured as a commentary, is treated by modern scholars as an erudite work in its own right. It is several times the length of the verses themselves, running to over two hundred pages in Tamil. The treatise is written in the tone and style of a discourse of the type that might be heard at a literary academy. The commentary uses a number of rhetorical devices. Nakkiranar repeatedly poses hypothetical questions and objections, to which he presents answers and rebuttals which are directly addressed to the reader, as if the reader himself was the questioner. He also uses stories, anecdotes and legends to illustrate specific points, and draws extensively on the then-existing corpus of Tamil akam poetry to provide examples of the poetical techniques he discusses.The commentary says that it was written by Nakkiranar, son of Kanakkayanar. A number of traditions connect Nakkiranar with the Sangam age. The commentary itself claims to have been written in the Sangam age, and names Nakkiranar as one of the poets of the Third Sangam. Later legends recorded in the Tiruvilayadarpuranam say he was the president of the Third Sangam, and there are extant Sangam poems attributed to a poet by that name. The scholarly consensus, however, is that the commentary was written some centuries after the end of the Sangam period, on the basis that its language differs significantly in structure and vocabulary from that of Sangam literature, and that it cites verses which use a metre
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...
- kattalaikkalitturai - not found in Sangam literature. Zvelebil suggests that the Nakkiranar who wrote this commentary may be the same as the composer of the Tirumurukarruppatai.
The commentary records that it was transmitted orally for eight generations, until it was finally committed to writing by Nilakantanar of Musiri
Musiri
Musiri is a panchayat town in Tiruchirappalli district in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Musiri is located at . It has an average elevation of 82 metres . It is the site of an ancient inland port on the Kaveri River also called Pseudostomus or 'one with false mouths'.-Demographics: India...
, a tradition which Zvelebil and Marr find credible. Early scholars, such as S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, dated the commentary to a period as late as the 10th - 12th century, on the basis that the author appeared to be familiar with the 10th century Civakacintamani. Modern scholars, however, tend to view these as later interpolations into the text, and date the commentary itself to a period closer to the 8th century on the basis of its relationship with the Pāṇṭikkōvai. Zvelebil suggests that many of these may have been inserted by Nilakantanar of Musiri, who he suggests added an introduction and more modern quotations into the text when he wrote it down.
The Pāṇṭikkōvai
The third component of the text is the Pāṇṭikkōvai, a work containing a series of related akam poems about the seventh century Pandiyan king, Nedumaran. Nakkiranar's commentary uses a number of verses from this poem to illustrate points he makes concerning the poetics of Tamil akam poetry - of the 379 quotations in the commentary, all but 50 are from the Pāṇṭikkōvai. The Pāṇṭikkōvai is believed to have had 400 quatrainQuatrain
A quatrain is a stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. Existing in various forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and China; and, continues into the 21st century, where it is...
s in its original form, 329 of which are preserved in Nakkiranar's commentary. The author of the Pāṇṭikkōvai is unknown; however, the poem is interesting in itself as one of the earliest literary works written in the form of a kōvai - a series of interlinked poems which became one of the mainstays of akam poetry in mediaeval Tamil literature.
Modern editions and translations
The text of the Akapporul is almost always printed together with the commentary of Nakkiranar, and the two are usually treated as a unity. T.G. Aravamuthan suggests that Ilampuranar, the author of a celebrated 11th-12th century commentary on the TolkappiyamTolkappiyam
The Tolkāppiyam is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram. Each of these books is...
, also wrote a second commentary on the work, but this is no longer extant.
The Akapporul was transmitted for several centuries in the form palm-leaf manuscripts. The first printed edition was prepared by Damodaram Pillai
C. W. Thamotharampillai
C.W. Thamotharampillai also sometimes the initials are used as S.V , devoted his energies to the work of editing and publishing some of the oldest works of classical Tamil poetry and grammar.Pillai along with his contemporaries such as U. V...
in 1883. The first critical edition, based on a comparison of all manuscript copies that were then available, was prepared in 1939 by K.V. Govindaraja Mudaliyar and M.V. Venugopala Pillai. A second critical edition, which took into account a few additional manuscripts that came to light subsequently, was published by the Saiva Siddhantha Works Publishing Society in 1969.
An English translation of the nūṟpās and commentary was published by Buck and Paramasivan in 1997. A new translation, with annotations, is currently under preparation by a team of scholars including Jean-Luc Chevillard, Thomas Lehmann and Takanobu Takahashi, and is scheduled to be published in 2008.
Content
| Place | Agricultural tract, riverside town |
| Phase | Lovers' quarrels |
| Time | Hour before daybreak |
| Season | All six seasons |
| Flower | Marutam Lagerstroemia speciosa thumb|left|Bark in [[Kolkata]], [[West Bengal]], [[India]].Lagerstroemia speciosa thumb|left|Bark in [[Kolkata]], [[West Bengal]], [[India]].Lagerstroemia speciosa thumb|left|Bark in [[Kolkata]], [[West Bengal]], [[India]].Lagerstroemia speciosa (Giant Crape-myrtle, Queen's Crape-myrtle, Banabá... (Queen's flower), lotus, red waterlily |
| God | Ventan Indra ' or is the King of the demi-gods or Devas and Lord of Heaven or Svargaloka in Hindu mythology. He is also the God of War, Storms, and Rainfall.Indra is one of the chief deities in the Rigveda... |
| Food | red rice Rice Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies... , white rice |
| Animals | Water buffalo Water buffalo The water buffalo is a domesticated bovid widely kept in Asia, Europe and South America.Water buffalo can also refer to:*Wild water buffalo , the wild ancestor of the domestic water buffalo... , otter Otter The Otters are twelve species of semi-aquatic mammals which feed on fish and shellfish, and also other invertebrates, amphibians, birds and small mammals.... |
| Trees | willow Willow Willows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere... , queen's flower |
| Birds | waterfowl Waterfowl Waterfowl are certain wildfowl of the order Anseriformes, especially members of the family Anatidae, which includes ducks, geese, and swans.... , heron Heron The herons are long-legged freshwater and coastal birds in the family Ardeidae. There are 64 recognised species in this family. Some are called "egrets" or "bitterns" instead of "heron".... |
| Drums | wedding-drum, harvest-drum |
| Activities | harvesting, threshing and wedding rice |
| Music | Marutam pann Pann Pann is the melolic mode used by the Tamil people in their music since the ancient times. The ancient panns over centuries evolved first into a pentatonic scale and later into the seven note Carnatic Solfege... |
| Water | Household wells Water well A water well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, boring or drilling to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn by an electric submersible pump, a trash pump, a vertical turbine pump, a handpump or a mechanical pump... , reservoir Reservoir A reservoir , artificial lake or dam is used to store water.Reservoirs may be created in river valleys by the construction of a dam or may be built by excavation in the ground or by conventional construction techniques such as brickwork or cast concrete.The term reservoir may also be used to... s |
Poetics
Aristotle's Poetics is the earliest-surviving work of dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical treatise to focus on literary theory...
of the Sangam period. Thus a poem is a poetical snapshot of one instant in a relationship. This snapshot provides a glimpse into the lives of the couple which is in love. In addition, each poem must consist of actual words spoken by one of the persons involved in the relationship, without any commentary by an omniscient narrator. Only certain characters may speak - the hero (talaivaṉ) and heroine (talaivi), a close male friend of the hero (tōḻaṉ) or a close female friend of the heroine (tōḻi), a mother or foster-mother, priests, courtesans, bards who mediate between a wife and husband, and a few other characters. The words spoken must also be addressed to a listener - the conventions of akam poetry did not permit soliloquies
Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a device often used in drama whereby a character relates his or her thoughts and feelings to him/herself and to the audience without addressing any of the other characters, and is delivered often when they are alone or think they are alone. Soliloquy is distinct from monologue and...
. However, the listener need not necessarily be the person to whom the words are seemingly addressed. A common device in akam poetry is to have words seemingly spoken to a friend, but actually intended for the speaker's lover, who the speaker knows is eavesdropping.
The content of the poems is highly conventionalised. Each poem must belong to one of five tiṇais, poetical modes or themes. Each mode consists of a complete poetical landscape
Sangam landscape
The Sangam landscape is the name given to a poetic device that was characteristic of love poetry in classical Tamil Sangam literature. The core of the device was the categorisation of poems into different tiṇais or modes, depending on the nature, location, mood and type of relationship...
- a definite time, place, season in which the poem is set - and background elements characteristic of that landscape - including flora and fauna, inhabitants, deities and social organisation - that provide imagery for poetic metaphors. The modes are associated with specific aspects of relationships, such as the first meeting, separation, quarrelling, pining and waiting. Each mode is named for the chief flower in the landscape with which it is associated. The table to the left gives an example of the various elements which the text associates with the mode marutam.
In Sangam literature
Sangam literature
Sangam literature refers to a body of classical Tamil literature created between the years c. 600 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous The period during which these poems were composed is commonly referred to as the Sangam...
, the composition of such a poem describing an instant in a relationship was an end in itself. In the Iraiyanar Akapporul, however, its purpose is more complex. Each poem is an instant in a developing relationship, and is ordinarily preceded and followed by other poems that describe preceding and succeeding instants in the same relationship. The instants described by each poem must, therefore, also develop the plot, and the character of the persons who are the subject of the work. Thus the Iraiyanar Akapporul discusses the importance of the essential characteristics of the hero and heroine, and the tension between each of these characteristics and the love and desire of the couple for each other. Each of the moments described in successive poems, set in an appropriate tiṇai, moves this along, by describing how the couple react to each other in the context of specific situations.
The text divides the evolution of a relationship into two phases, the phase of kaḷavu or "stolen" love, and the phase of kaṟpu or "chaste" love. Love is considered to be "stolen" before marriage, and "chaste" after marriage. A number of situations can occur within each phase. Within the phase of "stolen" love, for instance, situations that may exist include a nighttime tryst (iravukkuṟi), a daytime tryst (pakaṟkuṟi), the friend urging the hero to marry the heroine (varaivu vēṭkai), the hero temporarily leaving the heroine to avoid gossip (oruvaḻittaṇattal), and so on. Similarly, within the phase of "chaste" love, situations that may arise include the newly-wed phase (kaṭimaṉai), the necessity to discharge duties (viṉai muṟṟal), separation so that the hero can earn money (poruṭpiṇi pirivu), and so on. Later texts, such as Akapporul Vilakkam
Akapporul Vilakkam
Akapporul vilakkam , also known as Nambi akapporul , is a mediaeval treatise on Tamil akam poetics written by Narkavirasa Nambi . The treatise dates to the 13th century...
, discuss a third intermediate phase, that of the marriage itself, but Iraiyanar Akapporul does not treat this as being a separate phase, though it does deal with some of the situations that later texts classify under the phase of marriage. In his commentary on Iraiyanar's penultimate verse, Nakkiranar explains in detail how, by carefully choosing the situations, speakers and tiṇais, a series of episodes can be woven into a seamless narrative detailing the history of a relationship.
Poetical context
The treatise contains the oldest full-length exposition of poetical devices central to akam poetry, including the five tiṇais or landscapes into which all love poems were classified, and the various kuṟṟus or speakers whose emotions and expression the poems sought to articulate. However, its principal purpose was not to clarify or explain the ancient akam tradition.At the time the work was written, a new class of work - called ciṟṟilakkiyam, or "short literature" - was emerging in Tamil literature. Unlike the old akam tradition, which mainly focused on short poems dealing with a single, detached scene in the life of a pair of lovers, these works sought to depict a complete story. This was not in itself alien to Tamil literature, in that epics - peruṅkāppiyam in Tamil - such as the Cilappatikaram
Cilappatikaram
Silappatikaram Silappatikaram has been dated to likely belong to the beginning of Christian era, although the author might have built upon a pre-existing folklore to spin this tale. The story involves the three Tamil kingdoms of the ancient era, the Chola, the Pandya and the Chera...
dealt with whole stories. Works of the ciṟṟilakkiyam tradition, however, sought to do so on a less grand scale, through longer series of related poems which described successive episodes that cumulatively chart the entire course of a relationship.
It is in relation to these that the text had its longest-lasting impact. By chronologically ordering the isolated moments which Tamil akam poetry, and describing how they fit into a serialised plot, the text - and in particular, Nakkiranar's commentary - related the emergent ciṟṟilakkiyam tradition to the ancient akam tradition, and thereby helped create a new approach to literature, on the basis on which a plethora of new literary forms developed in succeeding centuries. The kovai, in particular, came to dominate secular and religious akam poetry in the mediaeval period. The very last example of akam poetry, written before the tradition was suppressed by seventeenth century religious revivalism, is a 600-verse kōvai, composed by Kachchaiyappar Sivachariyar and embedded into his Tanikaippuranam.
Stylistic influences
Nakkiranar's commentary also created a basic template which all subsequent commentaries on Tamil texts followed. Each verse of the original text is followed by a commentary on that verse, which explains its content, and presents examples chosen from extant literature and where necessary quotes previous authors in support of the commentator's claims. Nakkiranar, for example, frequently quotes rules from the TolkappiyamTolkappiyam
The Tolkāppiyam is a work on the grammar of the Tamil language and the earliest extant work of Tamil literature. It is written in the form of noorpaa or short formulaic compositions and comprises three books - the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the Poruladikaram. Each of these books is...
, Akattiyam and other works on grammar and poetics to support his literary theories, and illustrates these theories by quoting from the Pāṇṭikkōvai, Cilappatikaram
Cilappatikaram
Silappatikaram Silappatikaram has been dated to likely belong to the beginning of Christian era, although the author might have built upon a pre-existing folklore to spin this tale. The story involves the three Tamil kingdoms of the ancient era, the Chola, the Pandya and the Chera...
and poetry of the Sangam age
Sangam literature
Sangam literature refers to a body of classical Tamil literature created between the years c. 600 BCE to 300 CE. This collection contains 2381 poems composed by 473 poets, some 102 of whom remain anonymous The period during which these poems were composed is commonly referred to as the Sangam...
, weaving all these into his prose commentary in a manner that highlights his points. In addition, the comments on the initial verses, and on the final one, present additional material dealing with general themes, which goes beyond a simple elucidation of the verses on which they comment. Thus Nakkiranar, in addition to simply commenting on Iraiyanar's verses, here outlines rules for the structure and content of a commentary, discusses the manner in which conventions regarding love-poetry should be presented, and sets out general observations on history.
Historical and social context
The work, and in particular the commentary of Nakkiranar, reinterprets the Tamil akam tradition in the light of the Shaivite bhaktiBhakti
In Hinduism Bhakti is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine.Within monotheistic Hinduism, it is the love felt by the worshipper towards the personal God, a concept expressed in Hindu theology as Svayam Bhagavan.Bhakti can be used of either...
tradition, which was then sweeping through Tamil Nadu in a wave of Hindu revivalism. A commentary, in the Indian tradition, plays an important role in reinterpreting and reworking the applicability of a text or tradition in the context of changing historical or social circumstances. Nakkiranar's commentary thus plays the role of reclaiming the Tamil akam tradition - secular in appearance, and associated with Jainism - for the Tamil Shaivite tradition. This reappropriation had a significant effect on the Tamil bhakti tradition, whose poems, from the ninth century onwards, make extensive use of the conventions of the akam tradition, but in the context of describing the love of a devotee for God.
External links
- Full text of the nūṟpās, together with an extract of the commentary on the first verse (in Tamil)