11 The Lay Of The Anklet

According to Jules Bloch, Cilappatikāram or the “Lay of the Anklet” is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult of all Tamil ancient poetical works.¹ In spite of this, the poem was translated into English,² French,³ Russian⁴ and Czech.⁵ It is only the Czech version which renders prose by prose and verse by verse in exact agreement with the original text. All the other translations are more or less exact⁶ prosaic renderings of the poem and, though this is very sad, they lack almost totally the great poetic splendour and grace of the original.

¹ In his Foreword to V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar’s translation (Madras, 1939).

² Cf. V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, The Silappadikaram or the Lay of the Anklet, Oxford Univ. Press, Madras, 1939.

³ Alain Daniélou-R. N. Desikan, Prince Ilangô Adigal, Le roman de l’anneau, Gallimard, Paris, 1961; A. Daniélou, Shilappadikaram (The Ankle Bracelet), New Directions, New York, 1965.

⁴ by J. J. Glazov, Povest’ o braslete, Moskva, 1966.

⁵ Píseň o klenotu-Silappadigáram, transl. by Kamil Zvelebil, Praha, SNKL, 1965. It took me ten years to translate the text and reshape it in Czech verse.

⁶ The most precise of them being probably the Russian version.

⁷ Cf. ivviyalicaināṭakap poruṭṭotarnilaic ceyyulai atikal ceykinra kālattu. . . (p. 6 of the 1950 U. V. Swaminatha Aiyar’s ed.).

What is the Cilappatikāram? According to Aṭiyārkkunallār, the medieval commentator on the work, it is an iyalicaināṭakapporuļ- toṭarnilaicceyyul⁷; this somewhat lengthy compound means a poetic work dealing with a story which has the elements of songs and dance (or, music and drama)“. This is not a bad definition of the main formal properties of the work, but it is hardly a satisfactory answer to the question about the essential character of the epos. According to my opinion, Cilappatikāram is

1) a saga of the cult of Goddess Pattiṉi, 2) the first literary expression and the first ripe fruit of the Aryan-Dravidian synthesis in Tamilnad, 3) the first consciously national work of Tamil literature, the literary evidence of the fact that the Tamils had by that time attained nationhood.

The legend obviously existed in the indigenous tradition long before the great poem was born, and independent of it. An old poem, Naṟṟiṇai 216, and a probably even older poem, Puṟam 278,⁸ mention the motive; it occurs later in the Vaiṣyapuraṇa, in the commentary to Yapparuňkalavirutti we find a line which is part of the heroine’s lament, but is not found in our versions of the great epic. According to Amitacākarar’s Yapparunkalam I.351, there is a poem referred to as having been composed by Pattiṉi or Kaņṇaki.⁹ The story of the “great chaste lady” is known even today in balladform as Kōvalankatai, in “puraṇic” form as Kaṇṇaki Purāṇam. The heroes, however, became duly transformed: Kōvalaṉ is a licensed profligate, Mātavi an avaricious prostitute, and Kaṇṇaki a terrible shrew. I heard myself illiterate workers in the textile mills of Maturai speak of “Kōvalom” and “Karņi”; in their version, too, the classical Mātavi was transformed into Mākati, the corrupt daughter of a devadāsi by name of Vasantamālā.¹⁰

⁸ Navy. 216: ēti lalan kavalai kavarra | orumulai arutta tirumāvunni. Puṟam 278: en / mulaiyaru ttiṭuven yān (v.1. mulaiyaruttiṭukuvan).

⁹ T. P. Meenakshisundaran, HTL, p. 43.

¹⁰ In the original poem, Vacantāmalai is a servant-girl and companion of Mātavi.

¹¹ In Cranganore on the West Coast, Durgā-Bhagavati is still worshipped as Orraimulaicci “The woman with one breast”. Cf. also N. Vanamamalai, “The Folk motif in Silappadikaram”, Proc. I International Tamil Conference Seminar II (1966) 138-63.

¹² There exists a number of beautiful bronzes of Pattiṉi of Ceylonese provenience (probably the best known among them being the great statue of the standing goddess in the British Museum, 10th Cent., and a small but charming sitting Pattiṉi from Trincomalee, 10th Cent.). Cf. also H. Neville (1887) (transl.) “The Story of Kovalan. Ceylon Tamil Version”, Tamil Culture X2 (1963) 72-84.

The cult of Pattiṉi is alive in a few places in Kerala¹¹ and Ceylon, as a minor cult connected with fertility rites and marriages. However, twelve or fifteen hundred years ago, the cult of Pattiṉi, the goddess of chastity, must have been rather important and widely-spread throughout today’s Tamilnad, Kerala and Ceylon.¹²

The story must have been well and widely known, and this is the reason why the poet of Cilappatikāram “could afford to be irritatingly allusive and terse in important narrative passages and lingers lovingly over interesting descriptions” (Basham).

But Iḷaṅkōvaṭikaḷ’s great poem, although a version of the widelyspread and obviously very old legend, is primarily a story of human proportions, of human love and passion, jealousies, infidelity, charity and forgiveness, so human in fact, that the deus ex machina appears more or less casually and as a non-essential factor, or is rather forced to appear by the logic of human passions and actions. It is Kaṇṇaki, the woman, the human heroine, who alone matters to the poet; it is Kaṇṇaki, who-backed by the sympathy of the entire people of Maturai-performs her duty and avenges the death of her husband, it is she who at one moment doubts the very existence of God, and who finally conquers and overthrows the law of karma, she who enforces gods and fate to capitulate. And the fact that, in the third book of the poem, this extremely human and humane heroine, this woman who is transformed before our eyes from simple, quiet, patient maid into a passionate, admirable woman of the magnitude of a Greek heroine, becomes a goddess, is the logical and very Indian outcome of her inner growth and development.

Canto 30, lines 155-164, contain the “Gajabāhu synchronism”, discussed above.¹³ We came to the conclusion that the hero of the 3rd book, Cēral king Cenkuṭṭuvan, was a contemporary of Gajabāhu I (171-193 A.D.), king of Ceylon.

¹³ Cf. Chapter 3, pp. 37-8.

¹⁴ The epical poem contains such pronominal forms as nāṇ and tām; it contains twice the present-tense suffix; a later conditional form unṭēl; forms like inta, and a number of lexical innovations, e.g. tampi, kaṭai etc.

The Gajabāhu Synchronism became at once an object of sharp criticism. The objections were well-founded: first, if Cenkuṭṭuvan the Cēral and Gajabāhu of Ceylon indeed met at the end of the 2nd Cent. A.D., and if, as the text and a persistent tradition maintain, Cenkuṭṭuvan’s younger brother, prince Iḷaṅkō, was the author of the poem, how to explain the striking differences between the language of the epic poem and that of the classical Tamil lyrics, which should be contemporaneous with the Cilappatikāram?¹⁴

How to account for the fact that the ideologies, beliefs, customs, manners, rites and cults, the entire social, religious and philosophical background of Cilappatikāram is strikingly different from the social, political and cultural world of the so-called Caṅkam poetry? The civilization portrayed in the epos reflects beyond any doubt a well-progressed synthesis of the pre-Aryan and the Aryan elements in all spheres of life and culture, thinking and social habits. Cilappatikāram quotes some didactic poems (e.g. Tirukkuṟaḷ 55 or Palamolināṇūru 46). By no stretch of imagination is it possible to consider the bulk of the classical Tamil bardic poetry and the epos ―as we have it today—as contemporary literature.

But the defenders of the faith in the Gajabāhu Synchronism supported their hypothesis by no less valid arguments; and they proved that Cenkuṭṭuvan’s age must be assigned roughly to 100-250 A.D., not later. In other words Cenkuṭṭuvan and Gajabāhu were contemporaries. Aṭiyārkkunallār, the medieval commentator on Cilappatikāram, calculated the date of the departure of Kōvalaṉ and Kaṇṇaki from Kāvirippaṭṭinam (computing on the basis of astronommical data) as 174 A.D.

The Gajabāhu Synchronism was accepted by most of the serious scholars, since, to quote K. A. Nilakanta 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”.¹⁵ On the other hand, Cilappatikāram, as we have it today, cannot have been composed before the 5th-6th Cent. A.D.

¹⁵ A Comprehensive History of India Vol. 2 (1957).

¹⁶ This argument, which sounds so strikingly non-Indian, originated interestingly enough with a Tamil scholar, P. T. Srinivasa Iyengar (1929), and was later elaborated by another-Marxist-oriented-Tamil scholar, Cami Citamparaṉār, in books written in Tamil.

Somehow or other, the most simple solution, as it frequently happens, did not occur to scholars for a long time. And so the antagonists of the Gajabāhu Synchronism, and those who rightly maintained that the work must be of later date, joined forces and proclaimed that the 3rd book of Cilappatikāram, which contains the Gajabāhu Synchronism and the tradition of Iḷaṅkō’s authorship, is not an integral part of the work; that it is, in toto, a later appendix. This was naturally a very serious statement to make. But the antagonists of the poem’s integrity had some very impressive arguments. First of all, the structural argument: the first two books, they maintained, were self-sufficient, they formed a semantically and functionally closed structure, a single complete story. The story of the two lovers is finished and needs no continuation whatsoever. The third book is a non-functional appendix, an independent panegyric in the old bardic tradition, which has nothing to do with the story of Kōvalaṉ and Kanṇaki.¹⁶

It is true that, from the point of the story itself, the first two books form a perfectly closed cycle (at least if we apply the Western aestetic criteria); but, from the point of the subject-matter and thought-content of the poem, and in full agreement with the Indian tradition and the Indian aestetic theories, it is only just that the heroine should ultimately become an object of deification, and that the epos should contain a panegyric on the ruling dynasty whose member very probably the poet had himself been.

But, even from the point of its form, of its structure, the epos must be viewed as patterned into its three books. First of all, in the traditions of classical Tamil poetry, Cilappatikāram celebrates both love and war, dealing with both akam and puṟam, and without the third book it would be incomplete. The first book, dedicated to the land of the Cholas, is like a stage set for the opening and development of the tragical story of human passions. The second book, describing the Pandya country, contains the climax of the human story, the culmination of the tragedy. And the third book, portraying the land of the Cheras-since times immemorial an integral part of the Tamil land-contains the typically Indian conclusion of the story: the deification of Kaņṇaki-Pattini. Thus, the poem has three dominant phases, it is like a three-fold classical music composition, each of the phases set in one of the capitals of the three Tamil kingdoms. The “Lay of the Anklet” is the first consciously national work of Tamil literature. It transcends the barriers of different “landscapes” since it deals with all of them; it ignores tribal and clannish divisions and loyalties; Iḷaṅkōvaṭikaḷ has purposely set the stage for the tale in all three Tamil kingdoms, enshrining in his poem the whole of Tamil India.

There are two other valid reasons why the third book has to be regarded as an organic, indispensable and integral part of the poem: the unanimous consensus of the indigenous tradition, and the fact that the language of the entire work, its diction and style, are perfectly homogeneous.

Those who distrust the colophons to Patiṟṟuppattu, as well as those who tried to prove that the 3rd book of Cilappatikāram was almost a late forgery, have committed one very basic fallacy: they thought that late material was necessarily unauthentic; their utterly false contention was that the content of a work could not be older than its form. But, as K. A. Nilakanta Sastri says, the colophons to Patiṟṟuppattu as well as the Cilappatikāram “embody genuine history” and are exceptionally accurate and trustworthy, as is usually the case with traditional oral material. The synchronism of Cenkuṭṭuvan and Gajabāhu-a reliable date in itself—is not valid for the time of the origin of the poem as we have it today; it is not valid as the date of the literary work; but it is valid for the time when the historical Gajabāhu met with the historical Cenkuṭṭuvan, that is, it is valid for the story which forms the content of the 3rd book of the poem.

Cilappatikāram is primarily the story of Kaṇṇaki. Wedded when she was “not yet twelve”, beautiful “as the goddess of Fortune” but “more shy than Arundhati”, a sheltered and beloved maid, tender and silent.

The young couple, Kōvalaṉ and Kaṇṇaki, keep, for some time, a quiet and happy home, spending “sweet, pleasure-filled days in close embrace”. Kōvalaṉ loves Kaṇṇaki tenderly and passionately.

      “Flawless gold,
      translucent pearl,
      unblemished seed,
      sweet sugar cane,
      honey,
      rare maid!” ¹⁷

¹⁷ Transl. S. Kokilam.

That is how he calls her. But the fore-taste of the tragedy is there, at the very beginning of the poem.

      “Kovalan and Kaṇṇaki lay entwined
      like two black serpents on their couch,
      drank to its depth their cup of love,
      already having felt, perhaps,
      how transient is human joy.” ¹⁸

¹⁸ Transl. A. Daniélou (1965).

Then Kōvalaṉ abandons Kaṇṇaki for Mātavi, the dancing girl, who lives in grand style, lures her lover to the fashionable resorts of the time, and who is set marvellously into contrast with the patient, chaste wife. On account of a silly quarrel, Kōvalaṉ and Mātavi part. So it seems at least-but the fact is that Kövalan has lost faith in Mätavi, and he was probably overspent and exhausted by the kind of life he was leading as her lover. “Long-eyed Madhavi had patiently listened to all these sailor songs. But she felt they showed a change in Kovalan’s feelings. Angry but pretending to be pleased, she took the harp…” ¹⁹

¹⁹ Transl. A. Daniélou (1965).

Kōvalaṉ is back at home, which is sad and quiet, with Kaṇṇaki, chaste and faithful, waiting. She is prepared to follow him wherever he will go. Mātavi’s plea for reconciliation is rejected. Ruined in his career, Kōvalaṉ accepts his wife’s anklets-cilampu-to raise the money on which to build a new life. For this purpose they travel to Maturai, the Pandya’s capital. On their long and strenuous journey, Kavunti Aṭikaḷ, a Jaina nun, gives them much comfort and friendship. In Maturai, Kōvalaṉ entrusts first his beloved to the care of poor and honest folk of the shepherd community, and then walks forth alone to seek out a jeweller who would help him sell Kannaki’s anklet.

Thus he meets his fate: a goldsmith, who “had the face of Death’s dread messenger”, who has stolen the queen’s anklet, sees a golden opportunity in Kōvalaṉ’s coming. He accuses Kōvalaṉ before the king, and the king says: “Put the man to death and bring me the bracelet!” Since Kaṇṇaki’s anklet resembles the jewel of the queen, Kōvalaṉ’s doom is sealed. He is murdered by a drunken soldier of the king. “Blood gushing from the wound felt upon the Earth, mother of men, and she shuddered with grief”.

When Kaṇṇaki arrives on the scene-now an entirely different being, no more the meek and silent girl we met in the first book ―she proves her husband’s innocence by bursting open the other anklet—incidentally, a deeply symbolic act—revealing to the king the ruby inside instead of the pearls which were contained in the queen’s jewel. The shocked king is killed by remorse, and his queen dies a true sati. Kaṇṇaki’s wrath turns now on the capital city of Maturai, the seat of crime and profligacy; twisting off “her lovely breast” and hurling it on to the city, she sets fire to Maturai and the whole town goes up in flames. Only “Brahmins, good men, cows, truthful women, cripples, old men and children” are spared. Kaṇṇaki then turns west to the land of the Cheras where Kōvalaṉ, in a divine chariot, meets her on a mountain and they are received into heaven.

A temple to Kaṇṇaki is built in Vaňci, the Chera capital. Cenkuṭṭuvan, the powerful Cēral king, has the stone for carving her image brought down all the way from the Himalayas on the shoulders and heads of conquered arya kings. Kaṇṇaki comes back to grace the temple with her presence, now a full-blown deity.

The poet, Iḷaṅkōvaṭikaḷ, who composed his masterpiece sometime between the 4th-6th Cent. A.D. (this is how a historical linguist would date the text) was, according to tradition, the younger brother of Cenkuṭṭuvan, and the son of King Cēralātaṉ Imaiyavarampan. He renounced the throne which, according to the prophecy of a soothsayer, he should have had occupied. The vow of asceticism kept faithfully all his life earned for Iḷaṅkō which means simply “prince” or “younger brother of the king” the title Aṭikaḷ or “saint”.

It is not improbable that the author of the epos actually belonged to the Cēral royal family-though of course to a period much later than his famous forebear Cenkuṭṭuvan. And it is not ruled out-as maintained in the introduction to the poem-that it was another poet, Cattaṇār (the author of the “twin-epic” Maṇimēkalai), a friend of Iļaṁkō, who discussed one version of the Kaņṇaki-Pattiņi legend with Iḷaṅkō; and this discussion inspired Iḷaṅkō to compose the poem. Or the poem, as we have it now, was composed by some unknown poet and ascribed to an Iḷaṅkō, a prince of the Cēral clan. Though an argument ex silentio, we should not forget the fact that ancient Tamil poetry which knows well king Cenkuṭṭuvan (witness the panegyric bardic collection Patiṟṟuppattu) does not at all, not once, mention any brother of his, a prince by name of Iḷaṅkō. Anyhow, the cult of Kanṇaki-Pattini must have been wide-spread and well-established in Cheranad; but, at the same time, Jainism and Buddhism were still flourishing in the South, which also shows that Iḷaṅkō composed his poem sometime between the end of the 4th and the end of the 6th Cent. A.D. He embodied a reliable historical tradition in his poem: his royal ancestor Cenkuṭṭuvan, victorious in battles with the aryas, is conceived as a national Tamil hero, and Iḷaṅkō describes his march to the North and finally the erection of a shrine to Pattiṉi, which was witnessed by a number of contemporary rulers, among them Gajabāhu I of Ceylon.

The only false statement Iḷaṅkō has made is that, at the very end of the poem, he brought himself into the story, as if he had personally witnessed the meeting of the kings in honour of Pattiṉi. This kind of fraud is well-known from other literatures, and not only from India, and may be easily forgiven.

The driving forces of the story spring out of the hearts of the heroes, mainly of course of Kaṇṇaki, Kōvalaṉ and Mātavi. One of the greatest merits of the work is the treatment of the problem of evil; the poet’s conception of guilt.²⁰ Who is to be blamed for the tragedy? The hot-headed king? The week Köōvalan? The attractive Mātavi? Or Fate itself?

²⁰ I remember having read years ago (1958) a discussion of this problem in a Tamil journal the name of which I unfortunately forgot. Its author was T. A. Chokkalingam.

Cilappatikāram is not a story of schematic shadowy figures, of faultless heroes and demoniac villains. If we ask who actually is the villain of the piece, we are unable to answer. Nobody is entirely to be blamed and all of them are guilty. Not a single character in Cilappatikāram is thoroughly bad or thoroughly good—not even the pious Jaina woman-ascetic, and probably not even Kaṇṇaki.

Certainly not the king, “the virtuous Pandya monarch, the noble Nedunjeliyan”, who is not intrinsically unjust or evil-he is only hot-tempered and unbalanced. Wherein lies his guilt? Instead of calling for an inquiry, instead of saying “Bring him along with the anklet for being executed if found guilty”, the king says: “Put the man to death and bring me the bracelet!”

Is Mātavi the immoral and vicious harlot as she appears in some folk versions of the same matter? Not at all. She is a charming character: sweet, clever, cultured, loving, passionate, trained to attract. Was it her fault that she was born in her caste and trained to become a courtezan?

Is Kōvalaṉ a bad character? He certainly is not. He is of that tribe of Indian literary heroes who are “courteous, kindly, generous, competent, gentle-spoken, popular, pure, eloquent, well-descended, stable, young, intelligent, energetic, with a fine memory, insightful, artistic, self-respecting, courageous, consistent, vigorous, learned in the sciences, and observant of the Dharma” (Dhanamjaya’s Daśarupa, quoted by J. A. B. van Buitenen, 1968). However, this hero “is more often than not involved in amorous intrigue” (van Buitenen), and he is no proof against the vices of society and the charms of an attractive courtezan.

The only figure that is clearly good from the beginning to the end, painted with one bright colour, is Kaṇṇaki. But she, too, is very human; she, too, is not fully perfect. In perfection there is, metaphysically, so to say, no change; once perfect, always perfect. Many of the heroines of classical Sanskrit erotic poetry and drama are predictable; they are stereotypes; they are of importance only in relation to the hero. Kaṇṇaki is very different. There is tremendous change in her. At the beginning of the story, she is an innocent, obedient and silent girl, almost a mere child. When Kōvalaṉ returns to her, we would expect a passionate scene of reconciliation. There is no such thing. There are no recriminations, no explanations. “I feel great shame”, says Kōvalaṉ, “at the dire poverty that I bring into this house today”. Kaṇṇaki welcomes him “with a clear smile” and answers: “Do not be anxious: you still possess the gold circlets that weigh on my ankles”.

But all this quiet beauty, this extreme patience merely shows the depth of emotion dedicated entirely to her husband. With his unjust death, “that depth is lashed to a storm”²¹ of pathos and passion.

²¹ C. and H. Jesudasan, op. cit., 55.

And yet all these people who are in fact not guilty, confess their guilt: Mātavi, Kōvalaṉ, the king, and even Kaṇṇaki. And this is what makes Cilappati kāram the supreme masterpiece of Tamil poetry. tan tītu ila!… en tītu enre… “She did no wrong. I alone am to blame”, says Kōvalaṉ when he reads a letter from Mātavi (Canto 13). But Mātavi confesses her guilt by the act of renunciation; she, who was so fond of the éclat of the king’s 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 Kōvalaṉ (Maṇimēkalai) to be a nun as well.

The king is shocked by his own deed and exclaims: yāṇē kaļvan….. ketuka en ayu! “I am the robber… Let me die!” And he is killed by remorse (Canto 20).

But Kaṇṇaki says in Canto 20: “I too am guilty of great sins”, and, again (Canto 29): tennavan tītilan “The king of the South has not committed crime”. And in Canto 23: “Alas, I am guilty of a great crime”.

Fate is of course everywhere in the poem. It occurs in all crucial moments; in Canto 7, when Kōvalaṉ and Mātavi part: “Inspired by fate, for whom the harp appeared a suitable pretext, he gradually withdrew his hand from her body”.

Before departure for Maturai, Kōvalaṉ is “inspired by fate” to start at once; and again: “they left, / impelled by fate that had devised for ages past their final destiny.”

But there seems to be an inner tension between the conception of Fate, of the karmic and dharmic interpretation of events, and between Kaṇṇaki’s actions. Out of the shock and pain which she has experienced when told about Kōvalaṉ’s murder, an unforeseen, painful skepsis is born in her mind (“Is there no god? Is there no god in this country? Is there no god, no god?” in Canto 19). But, almost at once, there is a tremendous resolution: first, to know the truth; then, to perform an act of justice. And when this is accomplished, Kaṇṇaki goes on to fight that very Fate, to fight against the very basis of the philosophical and religious ideology which lies at the bottom of the work: “I wish neither to sit nor sleep nor stop, until I see the husband dear to my heart.” And she finally succeeds: she compells the forces of karma to give up, and so Kōvalaṉ and Kaṇṇaki are reunited.

“Then heaven’s king, with all his angels, thought the time had come to proclaim the saintliness of this woman, whose name men shall ever recall. He showered down a rain of never-fading flowers, then appeared and bowed at her feet.”²²

²² Transl. A. Daniélou (1965).

²³ T. P. Meenakshisundaran, HTL, p. 40.

Let us once more return to the tragedy itself, to its roots and causes: is it true that Cilappatikāram is a social tragedy rather than a personal one? The fall of a society which cut in twain art and chastity, and family women, made custodians of charity and love, were set into contrast to public women–the custodians of art, leaving thereby no room for such men as Kōvalaṉ, aspiring for both art and love? It is one possible explanation, suggested by T. P. Meenakshisundaran in his lectures on Tamil literature.²³ It finds support in the fact that Kaṇṇaki and Mātavi are set into a significant contrast by the poet: Kaṇṇaki is unripe, naive, unsophisticated, reticent; whenever she speaks, she is an illustration of maṭamai, simplicity and naiveté; she is lovely, but not charming; after her unfolding and transformation, she becomes the illustration of marakkarpu, “stern, heroic chastity”. In contrast, Mätavi speaks a lot, knows how to read and write, is literate and cultured, she sings, dances, plays on musical instruments; she is charming, sophisticated, witty, gay, even brilliant.

The burning of Maturai is, according to this view of the epic, the symbol of the downfall of the society which splits womanhood.

Another important matter to discuss is the anklet, the cilampu, which is so very important, so pivotal in the story and its symbolism that it gave the epic its name: cilampu + atikāram >Cilappatikāram “The Lay about the Anklet”.

In the beginning, when she was happy after her marriage, Kaṇṇaki was wearing her anklets, a pair of them. But once her husband deserted her and went to live with Mātavi, she no longer adorned herself: “No anklets adorned her shapely feet” (Canto 4).

It is the anklets which are offered by Kaṇṇaki to Kōvalaṉ and he accepts them (Canto 9) to sell them in Maturai and start a new life there. Thus it is the anklets that “drive” them, so to say, to Maturai.

It is one of the two anklets which, in Canto 16, becomes the instrumental cause of Kövalan’s death. It is the anklet which is broken open and thus proves Kōvalaṉ’s innocence (Canto 20).

However, there seems to be still deeper meaning in the symbol of the anklets.

First of all, the breaking of the anklet in Canto 20 (“The ankle bracelet was brought and placed before the king. Kaṇṇaki seized it and broke it open. A ruby sprang up into the king’s face. When he saw the stone, he faltered. He felt his parasol fallen, his sceptre bent”) is symbolic of the specific truth and of truth in general, truth which breaks through, which is, ultimately, always revealed. Does not, however, the round anklet and the breaking of it symbolize more than that? The circle of the story, of the plot, and of Fate, must be, and is completed; the cilampu, the anklet, comes to the Pāṇḍya’s court, the circle is completed (Kōvalan murdered, the king and queen die, the Pāṇḍya capital burnt) and the round anklet is broken: the human story tragically ends here. What follows is another story a divine tale, the story of Kaṇṇaki’s apotheosis.

And there is yet another symbolism connected with the anklets: in a way, the pair of them is symbolic of the married couple’s happiness. While she was happy with Kōvalaṉ, Kaṇṇaki wore her bracelets; when he left her, she wore none; when he returned, she wore only one, because the marriage was no longer a perfectly happy and “whole” marriage. And it is very significant for this symbolism of the cilampu that, at the beginning of Canto 19, the remaining anklet which Kaṇṇaki holds in hand, is called “mate to the one she had given to Kövalan.” At the very end of the poem, in Canto 29, Kaṇṇaki, united with Kōvalaṉ in heaven, again wears both anklets. King Cenkuṭṭuvan says: “In the sky, a marvellous vision..! A woman, slender as a lightning-flash..! Gold circlets gleam at her ankles!”²⁴

²⁴ For anklets in contemporary ritual, cf. T. P. Meenakshisundaran, HTL 42 “In the Tamil temples big anklets made of bronze are held in the hand and moved so that the sound of the rolling stones inside may keep time to the songs sung in praise of the deity. It is thus clear that there is an intimate connection between the symbol of the anklet and the story of Kaṇṇaki, the chaste woman”.

Apart from the fact that Cilappatikāram is a great masterpiece of narrative and lyrical poetry, it contains the essence of old Tamil culture, and, like other epics, it portrays whole civilization. It stands at the very end of its first bloom, gilded by the rays of the setting sun of that early era which was doomed to end soon after the poem was composed, with the tremendous changes that occurred in the Tamil land under the Pallavas.