THE LAY OF THE ANKLET
Author(s): KAMIL ZVELEBIL
Source: Mahfil, Vol. 4, No. 3/4, TAMIL ISSUE (Spring and Summer, 1968), pp. 5-12
Published by: Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40874188
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THE LAY OF THE ANKLET
by
KAMIL ZVELEBIL
First of all, What is Silappadigaram? According to Adiyarkunnallar,
the medieval commentator on the work, it is an iyalicainãtakapporultotarni-
laicceyyul, which means !la poetical work dealing with a story with elements
of song and dance or music and drama.11 This is not a bad definition of the
main properties of the work, but it is hardly a satisfactory answer to the
question: What is Silappadigaram?
My answer is:
1. It is a saga of the cult of Goddess Pattini.
2. It is the first literary expression and the first ripe cultural
fruit of the Dravidian-Aryan synthesis.
3. It is the first consciously national work of Tamil literature,
a literary expression of the fact that the Tamils had by that time attained
nationhood.
4. It is, of course, a supreme work of art.
If I maintain that this magnificent epic poem is the saga of Pattini1 s
cult, I do not mean that it is primarily a religious work. The original
epical poem is primarily and totally a kãppiyam, a work of art. Its author
obviously did not intend to produce a sacred, ritualistic text of the cult.
The legend, of course, was there long before the great poem was born,
and independently of it-as it is there today, and again independent of it.
An old poem, Na^rinai 216, and an even older poem, Puram 278, mention the
story, just as it occurs much later in Vaishyapuranam; and in the commentary
to Yapparungalavirutti, we find a line which is part of the heroine's lament,
but which is not found in our version of the epic. Today the story is known
in ballad, Puranic, and dramatic forms, e.g., the Kõvalan katai, or the
Kannaki purãnam. The characters are much transformed: the hero, Kovalan, is
a licensed profligate; Madavi an avaricious prostitute; and Kannagi a terrible
shrew. I heard illiterate workers in the textile mills of Madurai speak of
Kovalan and Kami; in their version, for example, the classical Madavi was
transformed into Magadi, the corrupt daughter of a devadasi by the name of
Vasantamala. The cult is also alive in a few places in Kerala and in Ceylon;
the deity is connected with fertility rites, marriages, etc. In Tamilnad,
Negapatam was, and probably still is, the place where Kannagi was (is) wor-
shipped as Goddess Pattini. Thus we have, e.g., several works edited at the
beginning of our century containing legends, kummi s , and hymns to Pattiniyam-
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man of Nãkappattanam (cf., Sri pattiniyammanperil nalunku, 1915, or Pattini-
yamman varalãru carittiram, 2nd edition, 1915) .
But Ilangovadigal1 s great poem, although a version of the widely-spread
and obviously very old legend, is primarily a story of human proportions, of
human love and passions, infidelity, jealousies and chastity, so human, in
fact, that the deus ex machina appears more or less casually and as a non-
essential factor, or rather is forced to appear by the logic of human passions
and actions. It is Kannagi,the woman, who alone matters to the poet ;Kannagi,
the human being, who, backed by the sympathies of the entire people of Madurai,
performs her duty and avenges the death of her husband; it is she who for one
moment doubts the very existence of God, and who finally conquers and over-
throws the law of karma and forces gods and karma to capitulate.
And the fact that in the 3rd book of the poem, this extremely human and
humane heroine, this woman who is transformed before our eyes from a simple,
quiet, patient maid into a passionate, admirable woman of the magnitude of a
Greek heroine, the fact that she herself becomes a goddess, is the logical--
in India's way of thinking, at least-outcome and result of her inner growth
and development.
Let me first deal with the date of the poem and with its integrity.
In canto 30, lines 155-164, we may read: "The monarch of the world
circumambulated the shrine thrice and stood proffering his respects. In front
of him the Arya kings released from prison, the Kongu ruler of the Kudagu, the
king of Malva, and Kayavãgu, the king of sea-girt Lanka, prayed reverentially
to the deity . . . ": Kayavãgu, alias Gajabâhu, the king of sea-girt Lanka,
that is, of Ceylon.
Years and years were spent in discussions of this verse since it was
first made a matter of attention and importance by V. Kanakasabhai Pillai
in his trail-blazing book, The Tamils 1800 Years Ago (1904).
In the history of Ceylon, there is only one Gajabãhu who might be iden-
tified with the ruler of sea-girt Lanka. He is Gajabãhu I, who, according to
Wilhelm Geiger, ruled between 171-193 A.D.--(K. N. Sastri says 173-195)--any-
how, a ruler of the later second century. According to this line in the 3rd
book of the epic, Gajabãhu I and Chera Senguttuvan were contemporaries.
This statement, known as the "Gajabãhu synchronism," became at once an
object of sharp criticism. One must admit that the objections were well-
founded: first, if Senguttuvan the Chera and Gajabãhu I of Ceylon actually
met at the end of the second century A.D., and if-as the text and tradition
maintain- -Senguttuvan1 s younger brother, Prince Ilango, was the author of the
work, how are we to explain the striking differences between the language of
this epic poem and that of the classical Tamil lyrical poetry which should
be contemporaneous with Silappadigaram? In the epic we have the first oc-
currences of such items and forms as inta,"this"; untel, a conditional forma-
tion; the pronouns nãn, tãm, tãn; of the present tense suffix -kki£r-/-k
there are also clear lexical innovations like tampi, katai, etc.
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How is it possible that the ideology, the rites and cults, customs and
manners, the political situation, and the religious and philosophical back-
ground of the poem is in striking contrast to the whole cultural, social, and
political world of the so-called Sangam poetry? There is, e.g., a thorough
knowledge of Bharatanãtyashãstra revealed in the 3rd canto of the 1st book;
in 11.54-74 of the 15th canto, we have a clear reminiscence of the Pancha-
tant ra : the author speaks about Bengal, about many places in North India, etc.
Beyond doubt, the civilization of Silappadigaram is based upon a well-
progressed synthesis of pre-Aryan as well as Aryan elements in the South,
in all spheres of life and culture, in thoughts and habits of the people.
How is it possible that the epic quotes faithfully a couplet of the
famous early post-Sangam didactic work Tirukkural (No. 55) which is supposed
to have been composed only in the fourth- fifth century A.D.? But it also
quotes other later works of Tamil literature, such as Palamolinänüru 46, and
many earlier works such as Patirruppattu, Tolkâppiyam, etc. By no stretch of
imagination is it possible to consider the bulk of classical Tamil lyrical
poetry and this epic, as we have it today, as contemporaneous works.
But the defenders of the faith in the "Gajabãhu synchronism11 supported
their hypothesis by no less valid arguments: by archeological finds and by
quotations from Greek and Roman authors, like Pliny, Strabo, Ptolemy. Their
arguments more or less proved that Senguttuvan1 s age must be assigned roughly
to 100-250 A.D., and not later; that, in other words, Senguttuvan and Gajabähu
were contemporaries. It is interesting that when the medieval commentary of
Adiyarkunallar was studied carefully once again, it was found that this great
commentator had calculated the date of the departure of Kovalan and Kannagi
from Kaviripattinam, computing on the basis of astronomical data; his date for
the story is 174 A.D.
The "Gajabãhu synchronism," as such, was accepted by most of the serious
scholars, since, to quote K. A. Nilakantha Sastri, "it fits very well with all
other lines of evidence derived from the general probabilities of history in
North and South India . . .from archeology, from Greek and Roman authors, and
from early Tamil literary sources." (A Comprehensive History of India, Vol. %
1957.)
On the çther hand, Silappadigaram as we have it today, in that literary
form which is accessible to us, could not have been composed before the
fifth- sixth century A.D.
Somehow or other the most simple solution did not occur to scholars.
And so the antagonists of the "Gajabähu synchronism," and those who rightly
maintained that the work must be of later origin, joined hands and proclaimed
that the 3rd book of Si lappadi garam which contains the synchronism and the
tradition of Ilango1 s authorship, and which is thus the real trouble-maker,
is not an integral part of the work; it is, in their opinion, entirely a later
appendix.
This was, of course, a very serious statement-a sort of declaration of
war. But the antagonists of the poem's integrity had some powerful arguments.
First of all, the structural argument: the first two books are self-
sufficient; they form a closed structure, a single complete unit; the story
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of the two lovers is perfectly finished and needs no continuation whatsoever,
while the 3rd book is a non- functional appendix, an independent and somewhat
boring panegyric which has nothing to do with the story of Kovalan and
Kannagi.
This reasoning, which is so very non- Indian, and based to a great extent
upon Western, Aristotelian concepts, originated interestingly enough with a
Tamil scholar, P.T.S. Iyengar,and was quite ably elaborated by another Tamil,
Sami Sidambaranar .
It is true that, structurally, and from the point of view of the story
itself, the first two books form a perfectly closed unit-by application of
Western aesthetic criteria, though! But, ideologically, from the point of
thought-content and subject-matter of the poem, it is entirely in agreement
with the Indian tradition and with Indian aesthetic conceptions that the
heroine of the book becomes ultimately the object of apotheosis, and that the
3rd book is, at the same time, a panegyric on the ruling dynasty whose member
had very probably been the poet himself.
I shall go even further. I maintain that even from the point of view
of form, of structure, we cannot escape the conclusion that the third part ijs
an integral portion of the poem. First of all, in terms of traditional Tamil
views, Silappadigaram celebrates both love and war, it deals both with akam
and pu£am; without the 3rd book (the puram portion) it would be incomplete,
and the balance and symmetry would be destroyed. The 1st book, describing
the country of the Cholas,is the stage set for the opening and development of
that tragic story of human passions; the 2nd book-- the action of which
takes place in the Pandya country- -contains the climax of the human story, t
culmination of the tragedy; and the 3rd book, describing the country of the
Cheras-- since times immemorial an integral part of the Tamil land-con tains
the typically Indian conclusion of the story: the deification of Kannagi-
Pattini. Thus, the poem has three dominant phases; it is like a threefold
classical musical composition, each of the movements set in one of the three
capitals of the three Tamil kingdoms. The Lay of the Anklet is the first
consciously national work of Tamil literature. It transcends the borders and
barriers of different landscapes (the tinais of classical lyrics) and of dif-
ferent tribal loyalties. Ilangovadigal has on purpose set the stage for the
tale in all three Tamil kingdoms; he enshrines in his poem the whole of Tamil
India. The 3rd book, dedicated to the Cheras, is therefore an organic and in-
dispensable part of the poem.
Further objections-- such as the fact that the 3rd book is not quite as
full of dramatic and swift-moving action as the first two- are too weak to
withstand the other two facts which support the integrity of the work: unani-
mous consensus of indigenous tradition, and, more important, the doubtless
fact that the language of the whole work, its style and diction, are perfectly
homogeneous.
It is interesting that the most simple and obvious solution of the whole
problem occurred to scholars only as the last possibility: namely, that the
synchronism of Senguttuval and Gajabãhu- a reliable historical fact in it-
self-is not valid only for the time of the origin of the poem; in other
words, it does not coincide with the date of the literary work, while it is
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valid for the time when historical Gajabãhu met with historical Senguttuvan;
in yet other words, it is valid for the story which formed the basis of the
3rd book of the poem, but invalid for the date of the origin of that poem
itself.
Silappadigaram is primarily the story of a woman. Except for Kannagi,
there is, so to say, no hero in the poem. She alone matters to the poet.
Wedded when she was twelve, beautiful, shy, a sheltered and beloved maiden,
she shows at first extreme reticence- a "gracious silence.11
The young couple, Kovalan and Kannagi, keep a quiet and happy home for
some time, until Kovalan abandons Kannagi for Madavi, the dancing girl, who
lives in grand style, lures her lover to the fashionable resorts of the time,
and is set into marvelous contrast with the patient, chaste wife. Th
account of a silly quarrel, Kovalan and Madavi fall out, or so it seems, for
the fact is that Kovalan has lost faith in Madavi and also is probably over-
spent and exhausted by the kind of life he has been leading as her lover.
Kovalan is back at home with his wife, who is prepared to follow him wherever
he will go. Madavi1 s plea for reconciliation is rejected. Ruined in his
career, Kovalan accepts his wife's anklet, cilambu, to raise the money on
which he wants to build a new life. For this purpose they travel to Madurai,
the Pandya capital. On their long and strenuous journey, Kavundi Adigal, a
Jain nun, gives them much friendship and comfort. In Madurai, Kovalan en-
trusts his beloved to the care of poor and honest folk of a shepherd com-
munity and walks forth alone to seek out a jeweller who would help him sell
Kannagi1 s anklet. Thus he meets his fate: a goldsmith, who has misappro-
priated the queen's anklet, sees a golden opportunity in Kovalan's coming.
Kovalan is brought before the king as the culprit. Since Kannagi1 s anklet
resembles the jewel of the queen^ Kovalan1 s doom is sealed. He is executed.
When Kannagi arrives on the scene-an entirely different being now, not
the meek and reticent girl we know from the 1st book-- she proves her hus-
band's innocence by bursting open her anklet- incidentally, a deeply symbolic
act- revealing to the king the diamond inside instead of the pearls wftich
were contained in the queen's jewel. The shocked king is killed by remorse,
and his queen becomes a true satee. Kannagi' s wrath then turns on the
capital city, the seat of crime and profligacy; tearing off her brea
hurling it onto the city, she sets fire to Madurai and the whole city goes
up in flames. She then turns west to Cheranad where Kovalan, in a divine
chariot, meets her on a mountain, and both are then received into heaven.
A temple to Kannagi is built in Vanji, the Chera capital. Senguttuvan,
the powerful king of the Cheras, has the stone for carving her image brought
down all the way from the Himalayas on the shoulders and heads of conquered
Arya kings. Kannagi comes back to grace the temple with her presence, now a
full-blown deity.
It is not ruled out that the popular legend is an echo of a tragedy
which actually happened in Madurai sometime in the first century A.D. during
the reign of the Pandya king Nedunjelian. Anyhow, when the throne of the
Cheras was occupied by Senguttuvan (about 180 A.D.), the cult of the "grand
chaste lady" seems to have been firmly established there. Later, sometime in
the fifth- sixth centuries (this is how a historical linguist would date the
poem), the popular legend, which has become the saga of the cult, became a
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source of inspiration of the prince-poet, Ilangovadigal. According to tra-
dition, he was the younger brother of Senguttuvan, the son of King Cheraladan
Imayavaramban . He renounced the throne which, according to a prophecy, he
should have occupied. The vow of asceticism kept faithfully all his life
earned for Ilango (which simply means "prince, " or f 'younger brother of the
king11) the title Adigal or n saint. f!
It seems quite probable that the poet actually belonged to the Chera
royal family-- though of course to a much later time than his famous forebear
Senguttuvan- -and it is not ruled out that--as maintained in the introduction
to the poem-- it was another poet , Sattanar (the author of the well-known twin-
epic Manimegalai) , a friend of Ilango, who discussed one version of the Kan-
nagi-Pattini legend with Ilango, and this discussion inspired Ilango to com-
pose his poem. Or the poem--the entire poem as we have it now--was composed
by some unknown poet and ascribed to an Ilango, a prince of the Chera family.
Though an argument ex silentio,we should not forget that ancient Tamil poetry
which knows well King Senguttuvan, does not at all, not even once, mention
any brother of his, a prince by name of Ilango.
Anyhow, the cult of Kannagi- Pat tini must have been well established in
Cheranad; but, at the same time, Jainism and Buddhism were still flourishing
in the South, which shows also that Ilango composed his poem sometime between
the end of the fifth and the beginning of the seventh century. He embodied a
reliable historical tradition in his poem: his royal ancestor Senguttuvan,
victorious in battle with the Aryas, is conceived as a national Tamil hero,
and Ilango describes his march to the north and finally the erection of a
shrine to Pattini, which was witnessed by a number of contemporary rulers,
among them Gajabãhu I of Ceylon.
The only false statement Ilango has made--we may easily forgive him--is
that, at the very end of the poem, he brings himself into the story, as if he
had personally witnessed the meeting of the kings in honor of Pattini. This
kind of fraud is well known from other literature, too.
The story of Silappadigaram, as already said, is a thoroughly human
story, in spite of the divine chariot which goes up to heaven with Kannagi
and Kovalan on board. The driving forces of the story spring out of the
hearts of the human beings, motivated by human thoughts and passions. One of
the greatest merits of the work is the treatment of the problem of wrong:
the poet's conception of guilt. Who is to be blamed for the tragedy? The
hot-headed king? The weak Kovalan? Or the attractive Madavi?
Silappadigaram is not a story of schematic shadowy figures, of crystal-
clear and faultless heroes and raven black demoniac villains. If we seriously
ask who is the villain in the piece, we are actually unable to answer. No-
body is entirely to be blamed--and all of them are guilty. Not a single
character in the epic is thoroughly bad or thoroughly good-not even the
pious Jain woman-ascetic, and probably not even Kannagi.
Certainly not the king, who is not intrinsically unjust-he is only
hot-tempered and excitable and somewhat unbalanced. Not even the goldsmi
who is not evil to the core, but merely a greedy coward. And Madavi? Is she
perhaps an immoral and vicious harlot--as she appears in some folk versions
of the tale? Not at all. She is a charming character: sweet, clever, loving,
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passionate, trained to attract. Was it her fault that she was born in her
caste and trained to become a courtesan?
What about Kovalan? He is of that tribe of Indian literary heroes who
are affectionate, brave, handsome, very accomplished- but not very faithful,
not very gallant, not very chivalrous, not very strong; who are no proof
against the vices of society and the charms of an attractive woman. In
short, he is very human.
The only figure which is clearly good from the beginning to the end,
and is painted in one bright basic color, is Kannagi. But she, too, is human;
she, too, is not fully perfect. In perfection there is, metaphysically so to
say, no change; once perfect, always perfect, always the same, pure perfect
ens. But there is tremendous change in Kannagi. At the beginning of the
story, she is an innocent, sheltered girl, obedient and silent-she just does
not speak at first at all- an excellent wife; perhaps a mere child. When
Kovalan returns to her, we might expect a passionate scene of reconciliation.
There is no such thing. There are no recriminations, no explanations. She
simply offers her anklet when Kovalan confesses poverty. And Kovalan is
deeply moved by her silent acceptance of him back into the shelter of her
love*/ But all this quiet beauty and silence, this extreme patience merely
shows the depth of emotion dedicated entirely to the husband. And with his
undeserved death, that deep emotion is unleashed and turned into a storm of
pathos and passion (C. and H. Jesudasan) .
And yet all these people who are actually not guilty, confess their
guilt; they plead guilty, Madavi, Kovalan, the king, and even Kannagi. And
this is what makes Silappadigaram a supreme masterpiece of Tamil poetry,
tan titu ilal
Kovalan when he reads a letter from Madavi (13th canto in the 2nd book). But
Madavi confesses her guilt by the act of renunciation; she, who was so fond
°f the e*dat of the king and court, who loved gold and jewels and extravagant
life above all-- she atones for her guilt by becoming a nun and persuading the
daughter she bore Kovalan to become a nun as well.
The king is shocked by his own deed and exclaims: yanê kalvan
en ãyul
by remorse.
Kannagi herself says (29th canto): tennavan tïtilan
South has not committed crime. " And she blames her past for what has hap-
pened. Out of the shock and pain which she has experienced when told of
Kovalan1 s death, an unforeseen, painful skepsis is born in her mind (cf.,
canto 19); but, almost at once, there is a tremendous resolution: first, to
know the truth; then, to perform the act of justice. And when this is accom-
plished (canto 21), she goes on to fight the very fate, to combat the very
basis of the philosophical and religious ideology which lies at the bottom
of the work; out of a tremendous inner and hidden tension between the karmic
and dharmic interpretation of the world, and human hearts, this tremendous
resolution of Kannagi is born- not to rest, not to eat, not to sleep, only to
go and search for Kovalan, until she finally succeeds; she compels the forces
of karma to give up- and so Kovalan and Kannagi are reunited. It is no wonder
that a woman of such calibre should be deified.
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The blend of epic narration and lyrical stanzas (plus a little genuine
prose) is unique in this great poem. The narrative portions proper are, of
course, not in prose-and hence each prosaic translation, Danielou's and
Glazov's included, is rather inadequate; these portions are in the ãciriyappã
(akaval) meter of ancient classical poetry; they have a dignified grandeur
and a definite prosodie pattern. The narration is interrupted by whole gar-
lands of lyrics, exquisite jets of pure song which interrupt the "baroque
splendor11 (Basham) of the main narration. These lyrical songs are still full
of flavor of the past classical age, but, at the same time, fully functional
to the action-not merely descriptive embellishments.
The one fault found by some critics in the poem-- the over-emphasis on
Fate- is conditioned by the ideology of karma prevalent at the time when the
great epic was born. Saivism, Vaishnavism, and, above all Jainism and Bud-
dhism are shown by Ilango to coexist without friction and disharmony. The
poet's own strong inclination towards Jainism is seen in many features of the
poem. On the other hand, the story was so powerful and the characters- -mainly,
of course, the central figure of Kannagi- -which the poet created, so strong
and so full of life, that the ultimate actions of Kannagi-- setting fire to
Madurai and her struggle with Fate to win Kovalan back- -mean a rebellion
against that Fate, and perhaps even a denial, a negation of the whole basic
karmic-dharmic philosophy. This, of course, may be highly controversial, but
it is quite tempting (even though it may seem somewhat far-fetched) to see in
the ultimate actions of Kannagi a denial of karmic philosophy within the
poet's mind itself.
References
C. and H. Jesudasan. A History of Tamil Literature. 1961.
P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar. Pre-Aryan Tamil Culture. 1930.
A. L. Basham. The Wonder That Was India. 1954.
K. A. Nilakantha Sastri. A History of South India. 1955.
Sami Sidambranar. Manimeekalai Kaattum Manita Vaalvu. 1960.
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