‘To discipline our unruly ox,
we bring him to the cattle shed,
for the women on the sandbanks to see
and we strike him in anger:
we bring our man
to the Vaiyai
and whip him with our garlands.
‘For
it is not the way of farmers
to let go of the ox
that refuses to do its work:
we bring the ox here
for this gathering
to see
that it belongs to us.
It is this collective encounter with the river that causes the heroine’s friends to refer to the Vaiyai as a ‘gathering’. They believe justice will be served when the community gathers there. When the river is experienced in such a shared setting, the reader is made aware of the ways that the community is bound to a specific place. These poems are about the connections that people have with one another, but ultimately, the relationship that matters most is the relationship between the people and the river. In their portrayal of the significance of place in the life of a community, the Vaiyai poems have a special relevance in the corpus of caṉkam literature.
IV
The issue of assigning a date to the Paripāṭal is plagued with the same difficulties encountered in tracing the history of all classical Tamil literature. We will not attempt to discuss this complex issue in this brief introduction but choose, instead, to make a few remarks that we believe are pertinent to the understanding and appreciation of the Paripāṭal. 7
It is generally believed that the Paripāṭal is a late text in the caṉkam corpus. Some scholars argue that these poems were composed between the sixth and eighth centuries CE, while a few others argue for a date as early as the second century CE. Despite this wide time window, there are two main reasons for assigning a later date to the Paripāṭal: linguistic and thematic.
The linguistic rationale comes from the frequency of Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit and Prakrit) loan words in the text, while the thematic reasoning argues for the foreign cultural origins of the stories found in the text. On the face of it, these criteria appear to be adequate in ascertaining the date of the Paripāṭal. However, both criteria have to be applied with extreme care for the following reasons.
The Paripāṭal belongs to a different genre than the other texts in the eight anthologies. As pointed out earlier, there are strong reasons to believe that the poems in the Paripāṭal were set to music and performed. The text speaks in multiple registers and hence its form and content do not necessarily conform to those of the other texts in the anthologies. Furthermore, as François Gros observes quite correctly, 8 constructing a relative chronology based solely on the progressive ‘Aryanization’ of Tamil is speculative at best. Gros points out that while some caṉkam poems use an Indo-Aryan word, others employ its Tamil equivalent, suggesting the presence of a thesaurus that spanned multiple languages.
As for the themes in the caṉkam poems and their utility in constructing a chronological account, we contend that a strong connection between language and theme is natural in any literary work. Since the Paripāṭal contains many references to religious and puranic themes, the presence of Indo-Aryan loan words may only indicate a difference in theme, rather than a later date; or, to quote François Gros, ‘the presence of puranic themes in the religious portion of these texts does not reveal these texts to be later but only that they are treating puranic subjects’. 9
We noted earlier that the Paripāṭal contains many references to the Pāṇṭiyaṉ kings, making it very likely that the poems were written under the patronage of these kings. Taking that as a working hypothesis, we are left again with two possibilities—either the poems were written prior to the third century CE or after the sixth century CE. Historians agree that Maturai, together with other parts of the Tamil country, came under the rule of the Kalabhras between the third and sixth centuries. It is thus unlikely that the Paripāṭal would have been composed during this interregnum. 10
Finally, we point out that the debate on chronology often tends to overlook the literary aspects of the text. Assigning ‘late’ or ‘early’ status to a text does not necessarily provide meaningful insights on genre, style and the sophistication in poetic content. In the case of texts such as the Paripāṭal, it is our opinion that more comparative research is needed to uncover the different poetic registers available in the entire caṉkam corpus. Such studies will further both our appreciation of the caṉkam aesthetic and a historical perspective of this literature.
V
Our translations of the Vaiyai poems are based on the originals published in Swaminatha Aiyar’s edition of the Paripāṭal. We have also translated excerpts from a commentary written by Parimelalakar, a commentator of great repute who lived in the thirteenth century. 11 These excerpts are in our annotations to the poems. We also benefited from a commentary written by the Tamil scholar Po. Ve. Comacuntaranar. 12 Where appropriate, we have translated excerpts from his commentary and included them in our annotations. For the most part, we have followed the original text in translating the poems; where the text was unclear, we have followed the commentaries and noted it in our annotations.
We have chosen to retain all proper nouns (names of flowers, musical instruments, trees and places) in their Tamil form. In most cases, we felt that an English translation did not preserve the sense of the original; moreover, by retaining the Tamil nomenclature, we wanted to underscore the immense cultural knowledge of the ancient Tamils as well as the poets’ passion for detail. A glossary provided at the end lists all the Tamil words retained in our translation.
To our knowledge, few translations of the Paripāṭal are in circulation. A French translation by the well-known Indologist François Gros was published in 1968. 13 An English translation by Hikosaka and co-authors is also available. 14
Paripāṭal VI
‘The Water Fight Has Begun’
The clouds are heavy—
having drunk their fill
from the ocean.
To empty themselves
of their brimming waters
they pour with rain.
Now water is everywhere;
it is hard to see land.
Mountain animals turn timid,
peacocks shriek.
Tearing away mud
on mountain slopes,
waters rush,
filling foothill paths.
So that the words
of the Tamil poets
may remain true
Lines 1–17
these waters
rush on forever,
causing the work in this land to prosper.
Beautiful, cool waters come bursting forth.
The women carry incense, flowers, oblations and fire,
decked in the garments
befitting this day
when the river arrives.
Their smiling lovers
are spurred to dress in finery.
In this way, the Vaiyai changes people.
Bracelets cling tightly to wrists,
armbands loosen
and drop to wrists.
On bodies, designs
drawn in sandalwood paste
are smudged,
pearls once shiny
are murky in the slush,
revealing the cord
tying them together.
Lines 18–38
Nails and cheekbones
absorb red colouring.
Oils anointed on breasts
flow, like silt.
Garlands of leaves mix with hair,
rubbing paste on bodies,
erasing it away
in the embrace:
jewels on breasts and chests,
tangled, entwined.
Vaiyai’s banks,
high like mountains
strong like prison walls,
are broken now.
For those united in their desire, chasti
ty is broken too.
Vaiyai’s waves
spread out like wings.
Watchmen, alert to the bursting banks
shout and beat parai drums.
The town is now in chaos.
That day,
mighty elephants
Lines 39–60
with speckled faces
were armed for battle.
Today,
female elephants,
in a line,
are armed for water games.
Garbed in splendid regalia
ready for bathing
young men and sweet girls
declare
the water fight has begun!
Their weapons: spurts of perfume and horns containing
perfumed water.
In this charming battlefield,
people frolic in the cool water.
On the front lines, armed foot soldiers
descend into the crashing waters
and casting off their ornaments
search for shallow waters.
Others sit
on napes of elephants’ necks,
Lines 61–80
on proud horses’ backs,
on floats of painted pith.
People wander everywhere.
Relentless crowds block all the paths to the river.
Young ones from town cannot go any further,
weak ones yearn to press forward,
but they stay where they are.
It is the strong who bathe in the new streams of rushing
water.
The river releases the scents
of lotions
pastes
oils
and flowers.
This is the coming of the river.
The Brahmins,
reciters of the Vedas,
are troubled.
They think, ‘The river’s nature
is changed.
Soiled by perfumes,
it is impure.’
Lines 81–101
Others think,
‘Waters flow
carrying lovers’ garlands.
In the swirl, roots, stumps, green fruit and tubers—
the food of simple folk,
and their liquor
made from palm trees.
‘The goodness of the water is ruined.’
This is the coming of the river,
murky and cloudy with mud.
Clean mountain waters babble on.
Formless mountain breeze drifts by
caressing
men who lingered
on the mountain
with their lovers
through the night.
The river arrives in the city,
spreading the word
to those sleeping in the plains
that the mountain of Murukan,
the one with the flower garland,
Lines 102–23
is a fitting place
to lay your head
between your lover’s breasts.
Descending
from the mountain,
flowing through the land
at dawn,
the river speaks
of the night’s happenings,
of the love god who spurred hearts to be fickle.
The Tamil Vaiyai spreads!
She
‘These flowers you give me,
aren’t they really for other women,
the kind always thirsting for someone new?’
He
‘Are they?’
She
‘Although you speak gently
your love for me is broken.
‘Before,
you brought me fresh blooms.
Why are these wilted?
Lines 124–46
‘Did the other woman
reject your gift?
These flowers
you took such pains to gather,
that your own garland
began to fall apart?’
He
‘When I plucked them,
they were fresh.
They withered
on the journey,
as I mounted a boat
to cross the river,
to see you.
‘I swear this by the hill of Murukan, the young god.
‘But look, the Vaiyai is beautiful in its flow!’
She
‘Can
desire that springs from love
forever stay the same?
‘No,
It shrinks as swiftly as it grows—
Like the Vaiyai’s flow.
Lines 147–69
‘Do not swear your love for me:
it would be wrong to do so.
‘When the clouds pour down
the river floods
and even though my town is nearby
you, on your boat, are delayed.
‘But in the pleasant, mild summer
the river is so dry
the birds stand in the trickle
to catch fish.
‘Isn’t this the Vaiyai’s nature?
Your love for me is the same way.
‘Like driftwood
carried by the flow
your chest is a raft
for any woman
with the skill
to cling to it.
‘Do you think she will stop longing for you
after the night you shamelessly spent with her?
Even after you dam a river,
water always seeps through.
Lines 170–91
‘Don’t come here now,
and make the other woman unhappy.
Her heart will smoulder
and her eyes will tear.’
He
‘I was bathing on another bank
when a fair girl fell into the flood.
To help her stand,
I held her in an embrace
and she got up by herself.
‘But who is as close to my heart
as this garland that I wear?
I would never swim in the Vaiyai
with anyone other than you.’
She
‘I know you betrayed me in the Vaiyai.’
He
‘Why are you saying this,
when I tell you it is not true?
I swear this,
with my hand to my head,
on the peak of Mountain Parankunru.’
Old Ladies of the House
‘Let go of your anger.
Lines 192–215
Go back to him,
to bathe,
dance
and frolic
in the water.
‘You will scare him
with the redness of your furious eyes,
laced with black collyrium.
‘Brood no longer, O daughter,
or his love will dry up
and perish.
‘His heart will be locked
and you will have to go after him
in the dark of the night.
‘What a mistake that would be!’
His Beloved
‘And so, this is what happened,
my good woman:
the ladies of the house
pleaded
cajoled
and threatened
until she reconciled with him.
Lines 216–38
‘Once more,
the couple would bathe
in the river
‘And when their desire increased,
they would make love
‘then quarrel again.
‘Vaiyai, you cause desire to swell in the hearts
of those who bathe in you.
May this trait never leave you.’
Lines 239–47
Paripāṭal VII
‘Waters Loud as Furious Thunder’
The clouds
swallowed up
the choppy waters
of the cool, black ocean.
Unable to bear the weight,
their bellies
relinquish water
with the fury of thunder,
like a bursting tank.
No place
beyond the river’s reach,
night and day,
white mountain waters
flow everywhere
like the lines of the Pāṇṭiyaṉ army,
whose drums resound to victory,
conquering land.
Swollen with rains,
many streams converge.
Lines 1–19
The rushing Vaiyai
flows for well-being:
to flourish fields
and foster beauty
in the land.
The Vaiyai comes!
It spreads over thick, dark groves with their fragrant grass,
carrying the venkai flowers fallen from their shiny branches.
Rain ravages
every perilous mountain peak,
uprooting the towering trees,
whose branches are bent by the wind.
Water carries
things from high places
spreading them in the plains.
Farmers sound their mulavu and panai drums in jubilation.
The river resembles
a girl,
oblivious to the steps
of the dance,
Lines 20–39
twirling
prancing
everywhere,
or a lover,
trying not to pout,
battling obstacles
in her path.
The beautiful red water
concocts new scents
by absorbing
all the perfumes
in its course.
People say:
‘Lotus flowers in the pond are drenched.’
‘Little girls are sobbing, their sand drawings are
erased.’
‘Farmers sound the tuti drums because young wheat and
stores of crops are soaked.’
‘The flood has engulfed the town, mounds in the sown fields
are flattened.’
‘In the sky, nothing holds back the rainfall.’
‘It has flooded the singers’ quarters.’
‘And the dancers’ village.’
‘The waters are so high in the fields, the valai fish now nibble
stalks of grain.’
Lines 40–60
People rush to the fields,
as if driven
by a surge of desire
to make love
to their sullen lovers