KT: Introduction

1. Aim

"In translating (or reading) an ancient Tamil poem, one is translating a poem, a tradition of commentary, and one's current sense of both." This remark of Ramanujan (Ramanujan 1985: 231) is quite illustrative of the attitude even philologists have adopted when dealing with Caṅkam poetry. This attitude is problematic in two respects. Firstly, wherever the text is difficult (and it is difficult nearly everywhere we turn) the commentary is adopted instead, and the commentary has the clear tendency to gloss over problems and smooth the text. Secondly, the commentary is heavily dependant on a poetological tradition with concerns in part quite different from those of the poetry itself. This results in a biased reading.

There may be signs of some change in this situation. There has recently been some methodological discussion[FNote_1], and there are already a few translations with at least basic annotation[FNote_2]. This is, however, not the case with the Kuṟuntokai. The probably most translated text of the whole Caṅkam literature has so far not been translated in any philological sense of the word. We can therefore observe here a familiar phenomenon - the operative laws of which would be an interesting object of study in themselves -, well-known, for example, also from the Ṛg-Veda: half a dozen translations of one and the same poem by different scholars/authors, and the reader is left wondering whether this could possibly be the same poem.

So, what I propose to do in the present volume is not to add just another more or less "beautiful" translation[FNote_3], but to give a rendering as literal as possible - which means rough reading, sometimes very rough, and quite often several alternative renderings - endowed with notes (metrical, morphological, semantic, syntactical) and a host of question marks (a punctuation mark that has, in my opinion, been used all too sparingly in Caṅkam philology as a whole). As for the content of the poems, it is, of course, impossible to avoid discussing at least what might have been their literal meaning when considering the various semantic and syntactic possibilities, but what has been avoided more often than not is a discussion along the lines of poetics. In other words, I have tried to explore the wording of the poems and not their possible implications. (That will be done quite systematically and extensively in chapter IV of the investigation volume.) The result has been, quite often, sadly unsatisfactory, but, I think, it is a point of honesty (that old-fashioned quality) to say: thus far we can come, at the moment, no further, before these questions have been answered.

In consequence, to readers unfamiliar with the poetological background the poems quite often will be puzzling, sometimes even bordering on the unintelligible. But this might turn out to be an exercise of at least heuristic value, for it might teach the limits both of a mere philological approach and of the traditional approach guided by poetics. It might also help to elucidate the strategies of traditional interpretation, for in very many cases the traditional opinion, as regards tiṇai, for example, is far from unanimous. So the reader familiar with the theory of the interior landscapes will often be impatient with a given translation and feel that it is perfectly clear what meaning has been intended in a given passage. It might be useful, in such cases, to ask oneself why it seems so clear, what the reasons are for preferring one interpretation over the other and how far such a decision can be justified on the basis of the text (more often than not, I'm afraid, it has unconsciously been justified on the basis of the kiḷavi).[FNote_4]

The benefits to be derived from such a procedure are manifold. For one thing, it opens up the field for the investigation of poetic techniques beyond a mere transmission of Akam messages. One such technique, for example, might be the encapsulation of two contrary messages in one poem[FNote_5], unless this type of ambiguity in many cases has to be attributed to insufficient understanding - so far one of the silent presuppositions of interpretation has been that there is only one "solution". Moreover, the philological approach may be of help when trying to establish not a synchronic perspective, as is that of poetics, but a diachronic one, in which the development of, say, poetic themes is envisaged. The burden of proof, however, for such extended usefulness has to be laid on the investigation volume, while the translation can only document as far as possible a state of knowledge that must be called no more than preliminary as long as, to repeat this yet once more, at least the other two or three old Akam anthologies, the Akanāṉūṟu, the Naṟṟiṇai and also the Aiṅkuṟunūṟu have not been treated in a similar way.

As desirable as an adequately explicit grammatical analysis is full access to (and use of) parallel materials. To make this possible the entire range of formulaic elements has been marked and referenced (for want of space complemented by tables of the more frequent systems in volume III), while parallels of topoi and motifs are indicated by cross-references.[FNote_6]

2. Sources of text and commentary

The edition used is that of Caminataiyar 1955, sometimes corrected on the basis of the 1937 edition that contains considerably fewer printing errors, and occasionally supplemented by additional variant readings given in Shanmugan Pillai 1994. The variants have been taken into consideration and, if of interest, been discussed in the footnotes. Although fairly often the reading adopted by Caminataiyar's text seems to be (or arguably could be) a lectio facilior, the text as it stands has not been tampered with, except for the use of typographical devices to draw attention to the metrical irregularities (which are also discussed in the notes) and two additional lines to the poems KT 266 and KT 394 as to be found in Pillai 1994.

Besides Caminataiyar's (Cam.) commentary I have taken into account the oral commentary given by the pandit T.V. Gopal Iyer (T.V.G.) whose erudite explanations I had the honour and the immense pleasure of listening to in Pondicherry 2001, 2002. Especially interesting to me have been the cases where these two traditional commentaries deviate from one another.[FNote_7] Also the cases where the interpretation of my teacher S.A. Srinivasan (Srin.) considerably differs from my own have been reported. Other people who had a considerable hand in the final version are Alexander Dubianski from Moscow (Dub.) and Dominic Goodall from Pondicherry (D.G.).

3. Arrangement

Each page of translation contains the following:

• 1. number of the poem plus name of the author plus speaker (the latter being traditionally inferred by the kiḷavi, while in cases where the kiḷavi didn't convince me I have added an alternative in square brackets).
• 2. text and translation of the kiḷavi (regrettably without considering the variants).
• 3. the transliterated text of Caminataiyar's edition, with the variants enumerated there given in the right margin, completed by the more interesting additional variants from Pillai's edition in square brackets.
• 4. an interlinear version in English containing morphological analysis (making compromises, however, for the sake of readability for the orientation of a reader not acquainted with the language). Here the particles that are arguably functional but not semantically valid have been raised, as are those suffixes serving different purposes like -um and -iṉ. Cases of circular syntax[FNote_8] have been marked by {INF}. Ambiguities resulting from morphology or semantics have been reported by representing the same word or element twice, separated by a slash /. The formulae have been underlined (rather here than in the original text, once again for the sake of the ordinary reader) in the usual way, that is, a full line means a literal repetition, while a broken line indicates systemic value (a line of strokes meaning a synonym, a pointed line meaning an equivalent). On the right margin the parallels, so far very regrettably only in the Kuṟuntokai itself, have been reported in a hierarchic way: first the longest formula as indicated by the line (references divided by a comma), then in descending order the shorter formula (references divided by a semicolon). Overlapping formulas in one line have also been separated by a semicolon, different formulas in one line have been separated by a slash /. Minor morphological deviations have been noted in brackets behind the number, revised word order is indicated by {Word-Order-Change}, in the case of repetitions that deviate metrically the whole number has been put in brackets.
• 5. cross-references to topoi and motifs (as well as a few cases of peculiar word usage however not formulaic).
• 6. translation into more or less heavy English prose (depending on the complexity of the poem's structure).
• 7. alternative translations of certain lines giving the line number of the original (which is quite often different from the line number of the translation).
• 8. notes.

4. Notes

Notes appear basically on four levels, that is,

• on level 3 (the transliteration) in so far as they concern the edited text, metrical considerations and the variants. The discussion of the latter is far from exhaustive. I have, as a rule, refrained from commenting upon morphological and sandhi variants (which might make up approximately one third to one half of all variants), unless some conclusion can be drawn from them. The same holds good for what I should like to call the mere semantic variants, that is, variants which give a word closely related in sense or an equally conceivable attribute. Of the remaining third of interesting variants I have rather made some case studies, unless they are relevant for further semantic or syntactic problems in the actual text in which case the variants have also been referred to in the corresponding notes on the translation.
• on level 4 (the interlinear version) when dealing with morphological problems and basic semantics, including etymological considerations. Quite a few words of the, however, many more that are in need of special investigation have been investigated to some extent, in which case on their first occurrence the reader is referred to the word index contained volume III for fuller information.
• on level 6 (the translation) when concerning context and syntax. These problems take up, for obvious reasons, the bulk of the notes.
• on level 7 (alternative translations) for reasons of justification including poetological considerations (quite often the traditional interpretation), unless the alternatives obviously result from morphological and semantic ambiguities.

5. Question Marks

Question marks in brackets are distributed rather freely (though perhaps still not freely enough)

• in the variants when I couldn't make sense of them.
• in the morphological analysis in cases of doubt, explained by notes.
• in the translation for the remaining semantic and syntactic unclarities, as well as behind phrases or sentences of doubtful meaning (sometimes even behind poems with doubtful sense).{(|_)} {(_|)}
• In very few especially hard cases, that is, cases where also Caminataiyar's commentary with all the goodwill in the world could only be taken as a makeshift solution, instead of a translation ... are to be found.