Tamil is the oldest surviving classical language of India, and Tamil literature goes back to the

early centuries of the Christian era. The old heroic and romantic literature, the devotional hymns
of the Saiva and Vaishnava saints and narrative literature form the glory of Tamil. The Eight
Anthologies (Ettutokai), the Kural, the Silappadikaram, the Iramavataram, the Tiruvasagam and
the Nalayiram are the outstanding productions of the Tamil genius. The Tamils have not, in 2000
years, surpassed this achievement.
The poems from the Eight Anthologies are of such breathtaking sophistication that one would be
hard put to find parallels in contemporary Tamil verse. They remain unsurpassed even to this
day.
The poetry of the Eight Anthologies is little known outside Tamil Nadu. Translations by J. R.
Marr, Kamil V. Zvelebil and A.K. Ramanujan have only exposed the tip of the iceberg. George L.
Hart III is the latest explorer of this interior landscape. The Anthologies together include some
2000 poems by over 200 poets.
Hart’s Poets of the Tamil Anthologies is evidence of the fresh challenge
the Anthologies continue to offer. The 169 (not 300 as the blurb puts it) poems translated by Hart
from five of them so far comprise the largest corpus of poetry accessible in English, thanks to the
Princeton Library of Asian Translations.
Tamil tradition speaks of three literary academies (sangam) which met at Madurai. It was the
poets of the third sangam who composed the Eight Anthologies. They travelled in the Tamil
country enjoying the patronage of kings and chieftains, and meeting at Madurai for festivals of
poetry.
The earliest Tamil grammar, Tolkappiyam, classifies poetry into two groups:
internal (akam), celebrating love as a reality here and now, and external (puram), in praise of
kings. The Tamil country was divided into five regions Uinai), each of which was associated with
some features of love and wal. The hills offered the appropriate setting for lovers’ union and for
raiding cattle; the wasteland, for elopement and separation from the lover and for laying waste
the country; the forests, for patient waiting and for raiding expeditions; the countryside, for lovers’
unfaithfulness and for seige; and the seashore, for anxiety in love and for battle. Every poem was
set in one of the five regions, and had its own exclusive situation (turai) which defined the
circumstances in the erotic and heroic life of the protagonists. Themes (kolu), motifs and
formulae identified the configurations of the situation. The structure is obviously hierarchic, as
exemplified in the following poem by Paranar in the Kuruntokai.
Like the scum on the well
from which the townsfolk drink,
my paleness goes away
whenever my lover touches me.
And whenever he leaves
it spreads over me again.
The poem is set in the environs of a wasteland, the appropriate locale for hardship and
separation from the lover. The formula of the scum-covered water indicates as much. Separated
from her lover, the woman bemoans her situation. This stereotype of conventions, no doubt, re-
stricts the poet. But Paranar, like Kapilar, is able to rise above it. Other aspects of love are
explored in the poems from the Ainkurunuru, the Narrinai and Akananuru. The selections from
the Purananuru are mostly in praise of Chera, Chola and Pandya kings and other chieftains.
There are, besides, a few reflective poems on the impermanance of life and the inevitability of
death.
In spite of the assistance of the poet Hank Heifetz, Hart’s translations remain those of a scholar.
More often than not a translator makes a poem in his own image. But it is his responsibility to
breathe life into the poem, awakening it from its enforced sleep in the language. It· is possible a
poem may be wooed by more than one translator and I’m afraid I can’t resist the temptation.
Here is my rewritings in English of Kuruntokai 130 along with Ramanujan’s and Hart’s.
He just cannot have dug and entered
the earth, nor climbed the skies,
nor waded barefoot through all those
seas he must have met;
If only one looks for him in land after
land, from town to town,
family by family, our lover
cannot slip through the cordon, can he?
(A.K. Ramanujan 1967)
 
He will not dig up the earth and enter it,
he will not climb into the sky,
he will not walk across the dark sea.
If we search every country,
every city,
every village,
can your lover escape us?
(George L. Hart III 1979)
 
Surely, he couldn’t have dug himself in
or, climbed the skies; on foot,
crossed the high seas by the way.
If, in every country, he is searched,
in one city after another, house
by house, your lover can’t give us the
slip.
(R. Parthasarathy 1980)
Notwithstanding these reservations, it is a book to be read for pleasure and instruction.
Parthasarathy is Editor, Oxford University