Karnamoksam: A Play by Pukalentippulavar.

• Author: Cutler, Norman
• Position: Review

Karnamoksam: A Play by Pukalentippulavar. Translated by HANNE M. DE BRUIN. Publications du Department d'indologie, vol. 87. Pondichery: L'INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY and L'ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT. 1988. Pp. xxxvii + 260 (paper).

Recent studies by Alf Hiltebeitel and Richard Frasca have focused attention on a religionally based folk tradition of performing and interpreting the Mahabharata which flourishes in the northern districts of Tamilnadu, and, as their work demonstrates, dramatic performance of episodes from the Mahabharata is a central element of this tradition. [1] The actors who perform these episodes from the epic--often in the context of an annual festival in honor of Draupadi, who is worshipped in this region as a goddess--participate in a theatrical tradition known as terukkuttu ("street theater") or alternatively as kattaikkuttu (named for heavy wooden ornaments [kattai] worn by some of the characters in these plays). The monograph under review is devoted to a transcription of the Tamil text and English translation of a very popular kattaikkuttu play titled Karnamoksam ["Karna's Death"]. Like numerous other folk dramas and ballads this play is traditionally attributed to a poet named Pukalentipulavar. While a poet of th is name probably lived during the twelfth century and was patronized by the imperial Colas, it is unclear how and why his name came to be connected with "Karna's Death" and other folk texts. Hanne M. de Bruin's transcription and translation, the first full transcription and translation of a kattaikkuttu play, is based on recordings of two performances of "Karna's Death" by a professional kattaikkuttu company in February and March 1987.

The bilingual format of the monograph is very well conceived and executed, with the original Tamil text and corresponding English translation printed on facing pages. In her introduction, de Bruin explains the choices she was faced with when she took on the challenge of transcribing and translating this text. In addition to the fairly self-evident discontinuities between Tamil and English syntactic and semantic structures, de Burin had to confront the task of transposing an essentially oral "text" into a written medium. Faced with these challenges she was forced to reflect upon the nature of the kattaikkuttu play as a text, and its differences from notions of "text" that prevail in Western scholarly tradition. As a matter of practical necessity, de Bruin's project...