The cilappatikaram of ilanko atikal: an epic of south India

"Literary scholarship on India’s epic traditions has long focused on the Sanskrit classics – the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyana – thereby excluding works in Tamil. Now, the esteemed poet R. Parthasarathy offers a memorable new translation of the renowned Tamil poem, the Cilappatikāram, one of the world’s literary masterpieces and India’s finest epic in a language other than Sanskrit.

Traditionally believed to have been composed in the 5th century C. E. by Iḷaṅkō Aṭikaḷ, a Tamil prince, the Cilappatikāram – which means “the epic of an anket” – is the compelling love story of Kannaki and Kovalan. The anklet is the emblem of the goddess Pattini, and the poem depicts the transformation of Kannaki into the goddess. Parthasarathy’s introduction examines the poem in a comparative perspective with reference to the Sanskrit and Greek epics, and proposes that Iḷaṅkō rewrites the epic tradition by subverting its essentially androcentric bias. The post-script discusses the poetics of the Tamil discourse: akam, “inside”, and puram, “outside”, which represent two of the three distinct phases through which the narrative moves – the erotic and the heroic. To these, Iḷaṅkō adds a third phase, the mythic (puranam)."