Nature in Ancient Tamil Poetry – research methodologies and researchers (original) (raw)

The Deviant Loves of Classical Tamil Love Poetry

The Tamil concept of love is broadly divided into three categories: kaikkilai, aintinai and peruntinai. This division has been done by Tolkappiar, author of Tolkappiam, considered to be the founding text for the whole of classical Tamil literature, popularly known as Sangam Literature. This article focuses on kaikkilai, the one-sided love and peruntinai, the mismatched love. It ponders over the marginality of these two aspects of love and explores whether any ulterior motive lurks behind the marginalisation of these akam aspects and the canonisation of the aintinai aspects and reaches the conclusion that there is a measure of politics at play in this hierarchisation. It supports this conclusion not only from evidence borrowed from studies carried out in the past but also the findings from contemporary research. It tries to envision the kind of Tamil literature which would have evolved had these impulses been allowed to take their natural course. INTRODUCTION There are five aspects of love in Classical Tamil Love Poetry, which, for the sake of brevity, we shall call " akam " poetry. They are Union (Punartal), Separation (Pirital), Awaiting (Iruttal), Wailing (Irankal) and Quarrel (Utal). The akam conventions tied these aspects of love to a particular tinai or physiographical region. The mountains (Kurinji) claimed Union, the desert (Palai) had Separation, the forest (Mullai) is fit for Awaiting, the seashore (Neidal) is apt for Wailing and the riverside (Marutam) became a vehicle for Quarrel. (Marr.19) There must be some sort of logic to the way these aspects were assigned which is very clearly evident in making the desert the right location for feelings of sorrow induced by separation of husband from wife for reasons of making wealth or war. Traditional scholarship has categorized every akam (love) poem as belonging to one of these five major tinais, known as Aintinai. As if acting on afterthought that these five tinais do not cover all aspects of love, later commentators, particularly Nacchinarkiniar, have condescendingly assigned four poems to Kaikkilai (one-sided love) and ten poems to Peruntinai (mismatched love), (Mariaselvam.110). A single anthology Kalittokai, the latest among the eight anthologies of Ettutokai, contains all these deviant love

The Roles Animals Play in Classical Tamil Love Poetry

Dr M Nazir Ali has authored two books of translation from classical Tamil to English besides publishing a volume of his own poems. His areas of interest are translation studies, comparative literature and critical theory. He has done his doctoral work on postmodern fiction. He is currently engaged in translating the love couplets from Tirukkural, the Tamil classic. The Roles Animals Play in Classical Tamil Love Poetry Abstract Classical Tamil Love Poetry is also known as akam poetry. Though akam means interior or subjective, in classical Tamil it explores love between a man and a woman in all its dimensions like jealous quarrels, secret trysts, parting, patient waiting and reunion. For the evocation of these feelings, the akam poets have extensively made use of animals, birds and plants and flowers of the vegetable kingdom and these poems embody these very acute and pertinent observations of the poets who related them to the human world in a seamless fashion. This paper proposes to discuss the relationship between the human and the animal world in Classical Tamil Love Poetry and what it means to the contemporary situation.

The Logic of Tinai in Akam Poetry

The Aintinai (five tinais) of Classical Tamil Love Poetry has always been a curious matter. And in it, the concept of tinai appeared to be a masterful idea containing within itself the landscape, season and time, flora and fauna and the erotic behaviour of the humans. The allocation of specific romantic attributes to areas of similar geographical features was intriguing in the extreme and at one time appeared to be quite irrational and capricious and theoretically obfuscatory. Clarity came only when theory was read in conjunction with practice. The Ainkurunuru, its five hundred poems neatly divided into five exalted tinais, and each century of poems further subdivided into ten decads, seemed to be the best anthology among the Ettutokai capable of providing answers to questions like 1) What exactly is a tinai? 2) How are its constituent elements deployed in poetic practice? and most importantly, 3) How is the human element integrated with the non-human? “The Logic of Tinai in Akam Poetry” can be construed as answer to these provocative questions. Key word: Tinai, mutal, karu, uri, non-human, Ainkurunuru, Tolkappiam, kurinchi, mullai, marutam, neidal, palai

Land, Town, Temple: the Aesthetics of the "Lyrical Preludes" in Tamil Talapurāṇams

2024

Talapurāṇam is one of the most prolific genres of early modern Tamil literature. Unlike its Sanskrit counterpart (sthala\kṣetra-māhātmya) the works of this genre are composed in the form and style of high poetry. One distinctive feature of the genre is the inclusion of descriptive chapters that focus on the land and town eulogized in the texts. These chapters, which I term "lyrical preludes," were never formalized by traditional poeticians. In this article, I present a preliminary analysis of Tamil talapurāṇams' lyrical preludes: their sources of inspiration, structural patterns, recurrent themes, and aesthetic principles.

Exploring New Aesthetics of Tribal Poetry with Reference to Korku, Pawari and Banjara Dialects

Creative Saplings, 2022

are some tribal communities settled in the hills and forest of India. Many of them are found spread in Maharshtra. The area called Gondwan has the largest number of Gond and Pardhan communities, and once they had their territory there. Similarly, the Korku tribe is settled in the Melghat area of Vidarbha and Pawari in the western region of the Sahyadri. During the course of time, they lost their script, but they were able to preserve their dialects and culture, which is rich and erotic. They sing several folk songs at the festivities and cultural gatherings. Now, due to the spread of education and facilities, many talented poets and writers from the communities have come forward and produced a lot of literature, particularly poetry. They used Marathi script for their poetic expressions. The poets like Ramgopal Bhilavekar in Korku dialect, Santosh Pawara in Pawari dialect and Dr. Veera Rathod in Banjara dialect are some of the important names whose poems in their respective dialects have been taken for the study. This research article is an attempt to bring fore the tribal consciousness expressed by them and a serious and novel attempt to explore their aesthetics with some examples by translating them into English. Hopefully, it will provide an international platform for these tribal senses and sensibilities and bring before the developed world community the richness of rebellious thoughts and a beautiful cadence of content essential in their short but simple compositions.

The Paradoxical Representation of North-East India in the Village Morning Poems of

Pacific Books International, 2022

Nature plays a vital role in the literature of Northeast India. Writers like A. C. Agarwala, B. K. Bhattacharya, Dimbeswar Neog, Hemchandra Barua, Hemchandra Goswami, Hem Barua, Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, Kamalakanta Bhattacharya, Lakshminath Bezbaroa, Mamang Dai, Nalini Bala Devi wrote extensively enumerating the detailing picture of their region. They have echoed the long prevailed and isolated self of their own with the incorporation of sociocultural and environmental issues. They have shown how the states have been torn apart and neglected by mainland of India. They eulogize nature as the lap of their mother and how tenderly they have been raised by this mother. They nostalgically relate their lineage to mountains, forests, streams, trees, stones, their traditional gods etc. In a similar way, Temsula Ao does not forget her own true self. She has a stout bond with this nature too and has proved this throughout his writings whether in her poetry or in her short stories. But what makes her different from other writers is her delineating nature in touch with the human psyche and heart. She incorporates the spirit and human in the same line and goes on her experimentation of human nature relationship.