Kannaki: She is the protagonist of the epic. The title “Cilapattikaram”, i.e.

The Tale of the Anklet is associated with her. Kannaki adds to the uniqueness

of the epic. Firstly, she is a mortal who is immortalised and deified. Secondly,

she is the protagonist of the epic. It is a rarity to find a woman as a protagonist

in an epic. Manimekalai, the sequel to this epic, is the other epic which has

a woman protagonist. Thirdly, she belongs to the merchant class. None of the

Sanskrit epics of India or the Greek epics; depict middle class protagonists.

Kannaki is a human figure in the first two books of the epic. The epic opens

with her bound in the domestic sphere. She is the ideal of conjugal love, loyalty

and chastity. She is wronged by her husband but she takes him back and supports

him by giving up her anklets. B Mangalam notes; “Kannagi is idealized as

the silent, chaste wife in the Book of Pukar.”

It is in Book II that she traverses the private sphere and moves into the public

domain. B Mangalam states that Kannaki “comes alive in the Book of

Maturai as a woman who breaks free of societal barriers”. When Kovalan

is killed, she goes to the court of the Pantiyan king, a public domain, and

challenges him. An angry Kannaki resembles the divine Chandi or Kali. The

image of Chandi or Kali is that of a masculine female, of destructive female

sexual energy. She dwells in the public space, outside the ambit of the domestic.

Kannaki too is defiant. Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan compares her to Antigone from the Greek epic. Sunder
Rajan further assesses her position in the court

as a public figure: “When Kannagi confronts the king, it is as the

representative of a city, a class, and her sex and as a subject.” Her traversing

the public domain from the private associates her “Karpu” as a social order

rather than a personal virtue. Her actions exude the edicts of kingly duties. The

king of Maturai fails to provide justice and thus bring doom to himself and

his kingdom:

By crowned kings the Pantiyan lies condemned.

And before the news reached our ears, it is well

To forswear tyranny and ensure the welfare

Of his subject is the king’s duty. Born

Of a noble line, suffering is his lot. His throne

Is not to be envied.”

(Book III, Canto 25, 97-105)

The Book of Vanci begins with Kannaki’s apotheosis. The Kuravais are a

witness to it.

Praised by the gods, she ascended

To heaven.

(Canto 25, 61-62)

They call her a Pattini. Kannaki’s transformation is unlike that of Kovalan.

While Kovalan is immortalised by the gods and taken to heaven after his death;

Kannaki’s gets immortalised directly from her human form. She is closer to

the goddess Valli, in this regard, thereby, giving her a superior position than

her husband. This, further, helps in the projecting the qualities displayed by

Kannaki as ideal. Therefore, Kannaki, through her apotheosis into a divine

form also manages to subvert patriarchy.

Her apotheosis is, however, completed by King Cenkuttuvan, who in order

to establish himself as the ideal king, establishes Kannaki, who embodies the

virtues of “Karpu (chastity), Vidamayurchi (perseverance) and needhi (justice)”

(The Hindu Magazine: April 6, 2014: 2) as Pattini in his kingdom. After

hearing about Kannaki from the tribesmen and the poet Cattan, King

Cenkuttuvan asks his wife:

One chaste woman

Gave up her life the moment her husband died.

Another in a rage came to our kingdom.

Good woman, tell us who is the better of the two?’

When the king asked her, the great queen replied:

Who gave up her life before she felt the pain

Of surviving her husband. And may the goddess

Of chastity who has come to our good land be honoured.

(Canto 25, 108-116)

She is honoured by having a temple in her name in the Chera kingdom. Kannaki

and Cenkuttuvan collaborate to establish the edicts of kingship and chastity: The king in order to fulfil his
promise of building a temple for Kannaki begins

an expedition to the north to procure the stone for the idol. He wages a gory

battle with the Aryan kings in the north. His expedition institutionalises Kannaki

as a Pattini. It is he who declares;

Worship

The goddess every day with offerings and festivities.

(Canto 28, 238-239)

As has been already stated, the Book of Vanci is more about King Cenkuttuvan

and his expedition to the north. The immortal Kannaki turns into a symbol

and is referred to whenever Cenkuttuvan’s kingship is mentioned. He completes

Kannaki’s apotheosis by building her a temple. Kannaki and Kovalan’s kins,

subjects from various parts of the Chera kingdom and other Tamil kingdoms

collect before the temple of the goddess to pay respect to her. This assembly

is also the show of strength for the Chera king after his triumphant campaign.

He accomplishes his imperial dreams through the apotheosis of Kannaki:

He said, the king offered grants

To the temple of the immortal Pattini who had wrenched off

Her breast and set fire to the noisy city. (Canto 30, 145-147)

Further, it is reported in Canto 30 that;

Then Cenkuttuvan, the other kings and their strong armies

Praised the goddess in impeccable words,

As though they themselves had achieved salvation.

Therefore, it can be said that Kannaki who subverts patriarchy in Maturai

is brought back into its fold through King Cenkuttuvan. Her deification is

at the cost of her human identity. She is no longer referred to by her human

name, ‘Kannaki’; she is now a Pattini – the goddess of chastity. The power

that she had displayed in the court of Maturai is silenced in the Book of Vanci.

She is made the epitome of wifely duties and justice.

Her deification and institutionalisation include the process of myth-making

surrounding her. In Canto 30, Matalan, the Brahmin announces:

The water

Will not lose its power till the sun and moon

Vanish. She legitimises the Chera king as a great king and obviously there are no voices

of dissent.

A voice rose

From the heavens:

‘Your wish is granted.’ (Canto 30, 161-163)

B Mangalam views the apotheosis of Kannaki in terms of her subjugation

into the patriarchal domain which renders her silenced. “Kannaki is deified,

made into a deity at the cost of total erasure of her human identity. She

is no longer referred to by her name. She has become the Pattini goddess.”

The reason for her deification is explained by B Mangalam through a feminist

perspective. She breaks societal norms by entering the public domain in the

Book of Maturai and “Society did not, as it still does not, easily allow

women to transgress. It draws them in, either to domesticate them or to

deify them.”

The deified Kannaki is humanised through the lamentations of her mother as

well as her mother-in-law/Kovalan’s mother who refers to her as daughter and

daughter-in-law. Kannaki’s mother cries:

O my daughter, my partner! When your husband

... My dearest!

Won’t you come back and rid me of my great sorrow?

(Canto 30, 94-98)

Another interpretation of the apotheosis of Kannaki is that the Pattini and

the Chera king collaborate to exude the principles of needhi (justice) and karpu

(chastity). The final cantos of the Book of Vanci display this synthesis. Kannaki’s

benediction to the king shows the confluence of the sacred power and the

imperial power.

The transformation of Kannaki from a human to a divine being is wonderfully

displayed through the use of Akam and Puram poetry. While Book I has mostly

Akam poetry allocated to her, Book II sees the use of Puram for her. This

happens when she enters the Maturai court and challenges the king. Since Book

III is also an attempt to bring her into the purview of patriarchy, most of the

Akam poems are attributed to her and to Valli (only Canto 24). The synthesis

of Kannaki and Cenkuttuvan is completed in the last canto of the Book. It

is here in Canto 30 that Kannaki is described through Puram poetry. The

Book of Vanci therefore, displays the synthesis of the patriarchal and the

feminine, the sacred power and the imperial, the human and the divine and finally,

the Akam and the Puram.

Thus her

life is both a physical and symbolic journey. Through her actions, Kannaki

transgresses those traditional qualities of behavior attributed to women and

transforms into a revengeful female. She is extolled as the epitome of chastity

and is still worshipped as a goddess in different parts of the world. 5

She is

mainly worshipped as the goddess of Pattini

The mortal king is responsible for the deification of the mortal-turned-immortal,

Kannaki. B Mangalam states that;

It is the alliance between the sacred power of Kannaki and the Chera

King Senguttuvan that forms the focus in the third book.

One can also state that the Book of Vanci is more about Cenkuttuvan than

Kannaki.

The Book of Vanci is set in the Chera kingdom. After burning down the city

Of Maturai, Kannaki is asked by Lord Siva to go to the Chera Kingdom

Where she will be able to re-unite with her dead husband. The one-breastedlady is then seen standing
under the Kino tree by the Kuravas, the tribesmen

Of the red mountain. They report her sighting to the Chera king. Cattan, the

Great Tamil poet apprises the king about Kannaki’s past. After hearing about

Her tragic story, King Cenkuttuvan decides to deify Kannaki by establishing

A temple in her honour. He, “recognises Kannaki’s sacred power as a chaste

His kingdom”, as stated by B Mangalam. Cenkuttuvan declares that the

Stone for her idol will be brought from the Himalayas and not the nearby Potiyil

Hills

“The Choice of the Stone” delves into the heroic/ masculine domain

as the narrative shifts from Kannaki and the hill dwellers to King Cenkuttuvan.

The Puram genre is now invoked. The king learns about Kannaki from the

hill dwellers and the poet Cattan. He decides to build a temple for her and

thereby, officially declare her as the Pattini. It is from canto 25 onwards, that

the narrative becomes more about Cenkuttuvan than Kannaki. Kannaki

becomes the silent deity while Cenkuttuvan, the symbol of patriarchal authority,

institutionalises her and also legitimises his authority as a king.

Canto 30 titled “The Granting of a Favor” completes the deification Kanniki.

Cenkuttuvan institutionalises Kannaki as Pattini. The canto describes the value

of renunciation, through the example set by Manimekalai. The Puram thinai

. Bereaved Kannaki comes to a hill in the Chera kingdom after cursing the ancient city of Maturai to be
burnt to ashes and having the left breast plucked out of her body. She sustains here for mere fourteen
days before Indra takes her with him to heaven. In the meantime the girls from hunter community see
her standing under the Kino tree, know her story, empathise her and inform the Chera king Senkuttuvan
everything. Senkuttuvan then declares that she would receive a divine respect from their community;
she would be worshipped as the Goddess Pattini Kadavul (Goddess of chastity). From then onwards
Kannaki is referred to as Pattini. And later Senkuttuvan builds a shrine for her by getting built an idol for
her with the holy stone brought from the Himalayas and washed in the holy waters of Ganga