కపిల రాంకుమార్|Sangam Poems in English|| Sangam Poems: These secular poems are uniquely Tamil, although the name is not – the name came later for the set of 18 books when Jain and Buddhist influences were seen in the Tamil country. There is evidence of a Jain sangha in Madurai in the 7th century. It was given to these set of books many centuries later by those who anthologized them. These poems are ancient – 2,000 years old and yet very contemporary since they deal with love for the most part. More than 75% of the literature is love literature – love before marriage, love in marriage, love in infidelity and love in reunion. The rest about war, kings, poets and other subjects. The Tamil scholar Kamil Zvelebil says, “the very beginnings of Tamil literature manifest clear traces of Aryan influence – just as the Indo-Aryan literature, the Rgvedic hyms, show traces of Dravidian influence.” Birds, animals, waterfalls, mountains, rains, streams clouds and the earth itself are described very beautifully in these poems. Kamil Zvelebil, the Czechoslovakian Tamil and Sanskrit scholar’s words about Sangam Tamil, “The early Tamil poetry is unique not only by virture of the fact that some of its features are so unlike anything else in India, but by virture of its literary excellence; those 26,530lines of poetry promote Tamil to the rank of one of the greatest classical languages of the world – though the world at large only just abour realises it”. There are 18 Sangam Tamil books, from 300 B.C. to 300 A.D. (some might have been a little earlier, and some might have been later – most between 100 A.D to 300 A.D), that comprise the Sangam literature. They are the 10 Idylls, and the 8 anthologies. There are 2381 poems in these books – varying from 3 lines to over 800 lines, written by 473 poets, including 102 anonymous poets. There were 32 female poets in total. These palm manuscripts (palmyra palm leaves – about 3 inches by 10 inches, and words were etched with sharp metal, and preserved with neem oil and turmeric) were lost to us for over 1,000 years. There were references to those manuscrips, but they were not to be found. They were recovered only about 90 years ago, after a lot of searching by U.V. Swaminatha Iyer, who we affectionately call our ‘Tamil Grandpa’. The Sangam period was the golden age for Tamil literature. The Chera, Chola and Pandya kings ruled the land, and our language flourished. These set of books are as Tamil as they can be in every way, and the depict the Tamil culture of 2,000 years ago. There is very little northern influence. George Hart says there are more Tamil origin words in the Sanskrit books of those times, than the other way. The poetic traditon of the Tamils is very old. It existed as a oral tradition for very many centuries, before it was written down in the current form. Ancient Tamil Palm Manuscript The ten idylls (long songs) are: Mullaipāttu, Kurinjipāttu, Nedunalvādai, Pattinappalai, Sirupanatrupadai, Perumpānātrupadai, Maduraikanchi, Thirumurukātrupadai, Porunarātrupadai and Malaipadukadām. The eight Anthologies are (each have a few hundred short poems): Kurunthokai, Natrinai, Ainkurunuru, Akanānuru, Kalithokai, Puranānuru, Pathitrupathu, and Paripādal. The eight anthologies consist of poems divided into two broad categories – Akam (interior) and Puram (exterior – king, heroism, battle, ethics and wandering bards and poets ). Five anthologies consist exclusively of Akam poems. These are ‘Ainkurunuru’ – 500 short poems by 5 poets, ‘Kurunthokai’ – 401 poems by 205 poets , ‘Natrinai’ – 400 poems by 192 poets, ‘Ahananuru’ – 400 poems by 142 poets, and ‘Kalithokai’ – 150 poems by 5 poets. Two anthologies consist exclusively of Puram poems. These are ‘Puranānuru’ – 400 poems, and ‘Pathitrupathu’ – 80 poems. The one anthology which consists of both Akam and Puram poems is ‘Paripādal’. The eight Anthologies are: Kurunthokai, Natrinai, Ainkurunuru, Akanānuru, Kalithokai, Purananuru, Pathitrupathu, and Paripādal. The poems are about love, flowers, trees, plants, animals, birds, mountains, ocean, streams, waterfalls, seashores, battles between the different Tamil kingdoms, the kings, valor, battles and much more. They are divided into two great categories: Akam, or interior, poems that view life from inside the family and concern the love between man and woman, and Puram, or exterior, poems that view life from outside the family and concern such topics as kings, heroism in battle, ethics and the life of wandering bards and poets. Akam poems tend to hinge around one or more images, exploiting the complex suggestion of these images to the full. Each akam poem, moreover, is placed in the mouth of one of the lovers or of another character involved in the situation. Puram poems, on the other hand, are more straightforward, making less use of images and of their suggestion, and more use of simple description. Dr. Geoge Hart and many other scholars think that these poems are modeled after oral poems, whose tradition is much older than the written ones. Writing in its present form came to the Tamil Nadu around the 3rd century B.C. The kings and rich men supported the poets and musicians. Some kings became poets, and composed songs. More commonly, poets became the intimate friends of kings and wrote poems describing their friendship, and about giving advice. Both akam and puram categories have been divided into 7 divisions or thinais by commentators. Each of these are named after a flower, which also gave it’s name to the pan, or raga, it which it was sung. For the puram poems, the thinais are Vetchi (cattle raid), Vanchi (preparation for war and invasion), Ulinai (siege), Tumpai (battle), and Paadaan (praise). The akam thinais are encoded with a mood and a situation. Only 5 of the 7 are used in the Sangam books. They are Kurinji, Neytal, Paalai, Mullai and Marutham. In addition to the plant that gives it its name, each of the 5 akam thinais is associated with a tract of land (in which that plant is found), the fauna and flora found in that tract, the people who live there, a season, a time of day, and a situation in the development or fulfillment of love between a man and a woman. Kurinji thinai subject is about the secret meetings of lovers, which may take place during the day or at night, when the heroine must slip out of the house, evading her mother, who has begun to suspect that her daughter is up to mischief. It takes place in the mountains. Neythal thinai is often separation, during which the unmarried woman believes that her lover has abandoned her. Occasionally, neytal poems concern the journey of the hero along the beach in his chariot as he comes to see his beloved. The place is the seashore. Pālai thinai is where the hero sets out across the wilderness to elope with his beloved, or, travels to make enough money to marry her on his return. Occasionally, the hero is married and undertakes a journey for business purposes, or for some god. The land is wilderness that is dry and has a few trees. The season is summer and the time is mid day. Mullai is where the heroine waits for her husband to return from a journey. Some poems describe union. All of them concern the fertility of the rainy season in the forest meadows. The time is evening. Marutham thinai is after marriage, when the couple has a child, and the hero leaves his wife and begins to live with courtesans. The place is paddy fields, and near rivers. The time is day. For those who want to learn the songs in Tamil with English translations, and word by word meanings, I have set up a separate site for that: sangampoemsinenglish.wordpress/
Posted on: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 06:47:47 +0000
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