The late Professor V I Subramoniam was very keen to have English translations of the Tamil Sangam classics to be prepared, for the use of students and scholars at post-graduate levels. He himself had done much pioneering work in this regard. His Index of Purananuru, published by the Kerala University (1962) remains a standard reference authority even now.
It was by probably a sudden whim that he called upon T. Madhava Menon, Senior Fellow, ISDL, to translate the Purananuru. It took Menon completely by surprise because he is not a scholar in Tamil. Though he protested that he did not know enough Tamil to attempt such a difficult task, the Professor's reply was typical "You know English; we shall tell you all the Tamil you need to know"!
From such an imperative, Menon had no escape. He proceeded as best as he could. He would submit his translation to the Professsor, who would return them with corrections or comments. The Professor's health, meanwhile, deteriorated rapidly, and he could not devote much attention to Menon's work. His demise in June 2009 was an irreparable loss.
Menon felt that his translation tended to follow closely on the Malayalam translation of the work by the late V.R. Parameswaran Pillai. He suggested that it could be checked by a Tamil scholar, to ensure fidelity to the original. Fortunately, Prof. Ms Gloria Sundaramathy had retired from the University of Kerala, and kindly agreed to undertake the work. She had several discussions with Menon, and much of the work was corrected to accord more faithfully to the original, and the famous commentaries on it by savants like Caminatha Iyer and Ovvai Duraiswamy Pillai. However, Menon acknowledges that the responsibility for mistakes that may still remain is solely his own.
The Purananuru is a very difficult text. Even scholars who have devoted a lifetime to its study find it hard to explain it fully to their satisfaction. It has peculiarities of diction and vocabulary that set it apart even from other Sangam works. Its scope is vast - indeed, everything under the sun, and even beyond it!
I would also like to mention with gratitude that Prof. Pandurangan, erstwhile of the Pondicherry University, kindly favoured Menon with detailed comments in a correspondence, part of which has been published in DLA News (August 2010). He was kind enough to compliment Menon as being a path-breaker in his comments on some of the Purams, especially on the (alleged) caste structure of the times. I have therefore great pleasure in placing this publication before the scholars, and especially students.
As Professor Subramoniam remarked, "The Purananuru is a classic; every time you read it, something new strikes you."
The Purananuru (literally meaning the "four hundred of the butside") traditionally comprised of 400 compositions of various bards and poets attributed to the "Sang(h)am Age". As now available, the first itern is an invocation to God Siva by a later poet, and two are missing. According to the Tamil classic tradition, akam refers to the inner feelings, especially love in all its forms, and puram (outside) refers to topics that occur in the 'external world', viz., beyond the emotional "inner" (akam) consisting of emotions, feelings and purely mental transactions going on in an individual's mind. After discussing the ramifications of the various classifications, Kailasapathy K (Reprint 2002:5) concludes that "those treating wars, exploits of kings and chieftains, the splendour of courts, and the liberality and munificence of heroes may be called heroic poems; those in which the love theme is predominant may be called love songs. And it is in this general sense that one can accept the categorization of poetry into Akam and Puram. The point is that they were not mutually exclusive." The Purananuru accordingly deals with descriptions of fighting, cattle raids, despoliation and looting of enemy territory, politics and the principles of governance, and the largesse demanded as a matter of right from kings and ruling chieftains by the bards who sang their praises. The compositions were not necessarily contemporaneous with the happenings described in them, and contain references to precedents, myths, and legends, or evidences of the bard's erudition. Most of them praise the king or chieftain concerned (referred to as "Hero" in this translation); but there are a few which are advices, sermons, and philosophical statements. (Prof. Indra Manuel, who had kindly gone through section 7 of this Introduction, suggested that the term "Hero" may be reconsidered, because the term had normally been used in Akarn literature only. She suggested the word "Warrior" instead). The social strata detailed in the Purananuru are dominated by the ruling class and their bands of soldiers and fighters, generally termed as "Marava". References to other communities do not furnish details of the life styles of the poorer people, though mention is made in general terms of their modes of living. The bards sing of landscape, wild life, and life as lived of the people; their belief systems, and material culture. Some of the descriptions, as of the metaphor of a battlefield being like a field being harvested of its crops, of elephants with "mottled foreheads", of drums with "one eye" big like an elephant's foot or the full moon, of Virali-s (female bards) with prominent mons veneris, etc., are formulaic, and repeated in several Puram-s. But, despite this pretence of being "external", many of them touch intense levels 310, attributed to of emotion, for example, the following (Puram Ponmutiyar), where a mother bewails her teen age son, dying in battle;
"palkontu matuppavumunnanakalir cera atocciya cirukolanciyo-tuyavotu varuntumananoyiniye pukarnirankonta kalirattanan munnal vizhntavuravor makane unnivenennum punnontrampu manulaiyannakutumit-tonmicaikkitanta pullanalone"
[My son with whiskers like wisps of a horse's mane, lying on your shield, your chest pierced through by this arrow! When you were very young, you had refused to drink the milk I poured into your mouth through a spouted vessel; and, when I had threatened to beat you with a small stick, afraid of the pain it would cause you, you had gulped it down. I was anguished because I had thought you would be a coward. And now, as, after you had killed the attacking elephant, the arrow of the enemy pierced your chest, you say you do not even feel the pain! You truly are the son of your father!
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