The Cilappatikaram of Ilanko Atikal, An Epic of South India.

• Author: Heifetz, Hank
• Position: Review

Translated, with an introduction and postscript, by R. PARTHASARATHY. New York: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1993. Pp. xix + 426. $17.50 (paper).

The Cilappatikaram of Ilanko Atikal ("the Young Prince") is the earliest, major Tamil example of a kind of literature that is, or has become, pan-Indian. based on Tamil folk poetry and differing greatly from Sanskrit kavya ("ornate epic"), the work nevertheless shares a certain stylistic connection with the Sanskrit form in that the flow of "small lyrics" - the ongoing ornamental texture of the poem - is at least as important as the narrative spine. But like most of the methods and details of its style, the theme and psychological reverberations of the "Story of the Anklet" are thoroughly Tamil: the tale of an ideal marriage within a merchant caste (more or less ordinary people rather than the gods and emperors of Sanskrit kavya); the husband Kovalao's period of infidelity with the beautiful courtesan Matavi and his return to his patient and loving wife Kannaki, followed by his undeserved death at the order of the king of Madurai; and the dramatic climax (though the poem goes on for one more book) of Kannaki's revenge. Her action - she tears off a breast and hurls it at the city of Madurai, which is then destroyed by divine flames - synthesizes a key symbolic emphasis and psychological obsession of classical (and modern) Tamil culture: the dangerous power of a woman's sexuality resident especially in her breasts and the "passive aggressive" notion of the power to harm others present in an act of self-mutilation. Kannaki's direct descendant is the village woman who leaps to her death down a well, in part to shame and thereby punish oppression by relatives or an uncaring community.

This verse translation by R. Parthasarathy includes a brief introduction, a useful glossary and bibliography and a long postscript, which contains considerable information on Tamil poetics, but could have been better organized. The translation...