The River Speaks Read online

  The River Speaks

  The Vaiyai Poems from the Paripāṭal

  Translated by

  V.N. Muthukumar and

  Elizabeth Rani Segran

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  About the Author

  Key to Transliteration

  Introduction

  Paripāṭal VI

  ‘The water fight has begun’

  Paripāṭal VII

  ‘Waters loud as furious thunder’

  Paripāṭal X

  ‘They offer the river liquor’

  Paripāṭal XI

  ‘Check your strength and flow on gently’

  Paripāṭal XII

  ‘More lovely than their words was the river, with its bathers’

  Paripāṭal XVI

  ‘The Vaiyai makes her blush’

  Paripāṭal XX

  ‘You are like the shallow waters, in which anyone can play’

  Paripāṭal XXII

  ‘Thunder resounds like the battle drums’

  Paripāṭal Compilation

  ‘Did the fresh waters know you were here?’

  Notes to the Poems

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  THE RIVER SPEAKS

  V.N. Muthukumar and Elizabeth Rani Segran received their masters and doctorates in South and Southeast Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. They each specialized in classical Tamil literature. This is their first collaboration.

  Muthukumar’s doctoral dissertation, Poetics of Place in Early Tamil Literature, borrows ideas from the disciplines of phenomenology and the anthropology of the senses, and examines the experiential dimensions of place in classical Tamil poetry.

  Elizabeth’s doctoral dissertation, Worlds of Desire: Gender and Sexuality in Classical Tamil Poetry, considers how gender is constructed in classical Tamil poetry. She uses recent frameworks from the field of gender studies as a point of departure for her analysis.

  Key to Transliteration

  The Tamil alphabet has twelve vowels and eighteen consonants. In transliterating these, we follow a scheme which is widely used today. See, for instance, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html.

  Vowels

  The twelve vowels in Tamil are classified as five short (a, i, u, e, o), five long (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō) and two diphthongs (ai, au).

  a

  pronounced like the o in the word other

  ā

  pronounced like a in far

  i

  pronounced like i in it

  ī

  pronounced like ea in eager

  u

  pronounced like oo in book

  ū

  pronounced like oo in brood

  e

  pronounced like e in bell

  ē

  pronounced like ay in pray

  ai

  pronounced like I

  o

  pronounced like o in once

  ō

  pronounced like o in go

  au

  pronounced like ow in fowl

  Consonants

  The eighteen consonants typically occur in combination with any of the twelve vowels.

  k

  pronounced like k in cake

  c

  pronounced like ch in chalk

  ṭ

  pronounced like t in dental

  t

  pronounced like th in there

  p

  pronounced like p in map

  ṅ

  pronounced like ng in strong

  ñ

  has no simple English equivalent; it is a nasal pronounced like jn, with the tongue raised to the palate

  n (dental nasal)

  pronounced like n in need

  ṉ (alveolar nasal)

  pronounced like ‘n’ above, but with the tongue closer to the ridges of the jaw

  ṅ (retroflex nasal)

  pronounced like ‘n’ above but with the tongue positioned at the upper or lower teeth

  m

  pronounced like m in mad

  y

  pronounced like y in yacht

  ṛ

  pronounced like r in rain

  r

  trilled ‘r’ like the r in trill

  l

  pronounced like l in late

  ḷ

  retroflexed ‘l’, somewhat like the l in click

  v

  pronounced like v in van

  ḻ

  has no simple English equivalent. Try saying r while moving the tongue from the middle of the mouth through the upper palate.

  Introduction

  I

  The Vaiyai River begins in the hills of western Tamil Nadu and flows through Maturai, erstwhile capital city of the Pāṇṭiyaṉ kings. Today, the river dwindles to a trickle of water in the Ramanathapuram district, but in poems from the distant past, the Vaiyai is described as a mighty river, rushing towards the sea. The Vaiyai was such a central force in the lives of the citizens of ancient Maturai that they would address the river by name, singing it songs of praise.

  In this volume, we offer translations of songs written to the Vaiyai River. These songs are part of the Paripāṭal anthology, which belongs to the corpus of classical Tamil literature. The corpus is known as caṉkam literature, named for the academies (or caṉkams) of poets believed to have composed these poems. While there is some disagreement about when these poems were written, most scholars believe that the bulk of them were produced between the first and fourth centuries CE with significant outliers on either side of this time frame. Today, approximately 2300 poems survive, constituting a wealth of primary source material on ancient Tamil Nadu.

  The Paripāṭal is one of the eight anthologies of poetry that form the classical Tamil corpus. 1 It was first published in 1918 by the renowned Tamil scholar, U.V. Swaminatha Aiyar. 2 In his research, he discovered that the Paripāṭal had originally been an anthology of seventy songs. 3 However, from the manuscripts he collected, Aiyar could only retrieve twenty-two of these poems. Among them, six are on the god Tirumal, eight on the god Vel (also called Murukan) and eight on the Vaiyai River. In this edition, we have translated all eight Vaiyai poems edited by Aiyar. The eighth is unfortunately incomplete, having survived only in fragments. We have also translated a Vaiyai poem cited as an example in a medieval Tamil commentary; it is very similar to the other eight, and there is a consensus among scholars that this poem belonged to the original Paripāṭal compilation.

  The Paripāṭal poems are unlike most other poems in classical Tamil. For one thing, they are much longer than the poems in the other anthologies. A typical poem in the Paripāṭal comprises about sixty lines and the longest runs to a hundred and forty, while poems belonging to the other anthologies are typically thirty lines long. The Paripāṭal is also one of the two anthologies in the corpus (Kalittokai being the other) that contain dialogue between protagonists. There is good reason to believe that this poetic device was used in the musical performance of the Paripāṭal, for it is the only text in the caṉkam corpus which was organized according to the melodic scale (called pan) to which the poems were sung and performed. Even a cursory reading reveals the performative nature of these poems. The poems themselves contain many references to music. For example, one Vaiyai poem describes the banks of the river in this way (Paripāṭal VII:147–58):

  The yal,

  its strings tuned

  to the seven pālai notes,

  produces sweet music.

  The flute joins in harmony,

  while the mulavu drums

  add their percussion.

  Men and women

  begin
to dance,

  while the cascading waters

  loud as furious thunder

  crash against the banks.

  Unfortunately, it is impossible for us to reconstruct the music of these poems today. However, we urge readers to imagine how these poems would have been received by their earliest audience. The Paripāṭal was presumably such a feat of musical virtuosity that one Vaiyai poem defines and describes it as inniyal man tercci icai Paripāṭal, ‘the song of graceful, sweet music’ (Paripāṭal XI:302–03). 4

  II

  Although they are highly stylized, the Paripāṭal poems display remarkable diversity in scope and expression. Some of the earliest and finest representations of the devotional genre (known as bhakti) are found in the poems on Tirumal, while the Vaiyai poems are an unbridled celebration of sensuality and love.

  The lovers’ quarrel is a theme common to all the Vaiyai poems. This is a well-known motif in caṉkam poetry and the Tamil literary tradition assigns a specific name to it—utal. The quarrel usually occurs between husband and wife and, occasionally, between the husband and his mistress. The reason for the quarrel is always the man’s infidelity. In poems depicting utal, the woman accuses the man of neglecting her and tells him she is aware of his infidelity. Very often, the poems end with the wife indignantly asking her husband to go back to his lover.

  In the poems, one common situation involves a wife accusing her husband of bathing in a river with his mistress. With some minor variations, this theme occurs throughout caṉkam literature, and it is particularly interesting in the context of the Vaiyai poems. As a representative example of such poems, we offer an excerpt from a poem in the Akananuru (an anthology of love poems in the classical Tamil corpus). Here, a woman addresses her erring husband (Akananuru VI:6–22):

  ‘Yesterday, you frolicked

  in the Kaviri’s abundant waters 5

  where even oars cannot stand without bobbing,

  ‘with your beloved

  adorned with glittering earrings and jewels,

  holding the white sugar cane as if it were a raft.

  ‘You were as happy as the elephants

  that seek the lake of the Puliar,

  the flowers on your ravishing chest

  withering.

  ‘Today, you come,

  speaking deceitful lies:

  “You, with yellow specks on your lovely breasts”.

  “You, of unblemished chastity, the mother of our son”.

  It is not becoming to mock my age. …

  ‘our youth too

  is long gone.

  ‘How can your lies

  bring us any happiness?’

  In poems such as this, the reader is forcefully drawn into the betrayed woman’s pain, which in turn reveals her erring husband’s ways. The speaker is almost invariably the heroine (or her female companion) and the invisible hero exists only as the person addressed. Although the poems describe the hero’s behaviour, his impulses and actions are reduced to certain stock phrases such as ‘(you) frolicked in the waters with the woman you desired’. Note that these poems do not bestow any significance to the river, aside from marking it as the site of the husband’s infidelity. In short, the theme of the lovers’ quarrel in these poems centres on the betrayed heroine’s feelings. Everything else in the poem acts only to accentuate her emotions.

  In contrast, the Vaiyai poems are primarily and emphatically about the river. The river is not merely a stage for the husband’s infidelity; it is the setting for a wide range of events, specific sensory experiences and feelings. It is a place which is known in the most immediate manner, through the senses. In turn, such bodily experience brings together memory, imagination and desire, turning the river into a place that possesses inherent emotionality and expressivity. The sensuousness of being in the river is expressed in various ways, imparting a rich and complex texture to the Vaiyai poems. 6 In this poem, for example, the poet describes the colours carried by the river and the sounds that accompany its flow (Paripāṭal X:1–14):

  At night, the rains are abundant in the mountains;

  by morning, they merge with the boundless sea,

  alleviating the earth’s suffering,

  covering the wide, sandy banks

  with intricate blankets of flowers.

  The river mixes banana leaves with the tender shoots

  of the mango tree

  whose branches blossom with buds

  circled by bees humming melodiously

  The river takes in the sounds—

  too many to measure,

  too difficult to discern,

  accompanied by the throbbing of parai drums.

  The Vaiyai comes!

  As the waters spread, there is chaos everywhere, as if in response to the roaring waters of the river. Drums are sounded, presumably to warn people of the flood. The people talk of nothing else (Paripāṭal VII:53–60):

  ‘Lotus flowers in the pond are drenched.’

  ‘Little girls are sobbing, their sand drawings are erased.’ …

  ‘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.’

  But the chaos that the river induces is not confined to the physical sphere. The rushing waters are often used as a metaphor for the swelling desire in people’s hearts. One poem makes it more explicit and declares (Paripāṭal VI:49–53),

  ‘Vaiyai’s banks,

  high like mountains

  strong like prison walls,

  are broken now.

  ‘For those united in their desire, chastity is broken too.’

  This is a recurring theme in the Vaiyai poems. The flow and ebb of the river are akin to the hero’s love for the heroine. The heroine acknowledges that just as the flooding Vaiyai knows no obstacles in its path, so too the hero will forcefully fulfil his desires. Yet, the river is not merely a metaphor in these poems. It is a place that creates and nourishes passion; a place to be perceived and relished by all five senses, as the following lines describe (Paripāṭal XI:126–39):

  women with breasts like mountains

  wear fragrant garlands dripping with honey

  and matching adornments.

  Women wear finely crafted chains

  fastened with clasps;

  sipping fresh, sweet liquor,

  intoxicated, their desire growing,

  they make love like the Naka people

  who perform good deeds

  that yield riches,

  drinking in each other’s beauty

  with their eyes,

  their aroused ears sated

  by sweet music set to meter.

  III

  The Vaiyai poems come alive with descriptions of water sports, which are called atal in Tamil. The revelry takes many forms, such as a mock battle with weapons made of pith or a race to swim upstream using plantain stalks as rafts. Some poems describe the bathers carrying squirts filled with coloured water and perfume. People squirt one another with water and the person who blinks first loses the game (Paripāṭal VII:94–99):

  In this river of the Pāṇṭiyaṉ king,

  girls splash in the water,

  their eyes gleaming like flowers.

  One covers her eyes with her hands:

  she has lost the water game,

  her opponent is delighted.

  The poems frequently compare the river to a battlefield, where young men and women wage war with weapons of their choice (Paripāṭal VI:67–74):

  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.

  Often, the water sports (atal) set the stage for the lovers’ quarrel (utal) (Paripāṭal X:91–105):

  The yal with its long stem,

  accompanying singers and dancers,

  makes music that softens the hearts

  of all who listen.

  Some build fortresses around their hearts,

  but the music breaks their defences,

  though they are loathe to admit it

  fearing other people’s words.

  They are like two armies

  facing each other,

  ready for peace,

  but unwilling to surrender,

  for fear of disgrace.

  Still, their growing desire

  is visible in their intoxicated eyes.

  While atal and utal are important dynamics in the relationship between the Vaiyai and the people of Maturai, the relationship takes on many other forms as well. Acts such as prayers and offerings reveal the deep connection between the Vaiyai and social life in the city of Maturai. For instance, some poems describe women offering the river figurines of fish and crabs in a kind of ritual.

  The river is also a place of community. After all, the characters in these poems sense and experience the river together. This becomes apparent in the following excerpt. In this scene, the heroine and her husband are on the banks of the Vaiyai, accompanied by the heroine’s female companions. They see another woman wearing the heroine’s jewels—jewels given by her father as a bridal gift. The heroine and her companions accost the woman and exchange harsh words. A crowd comprising older women gathers to witness this altercation. At one point, the other woman asks angrily why she is being pursued. The heroine’s companions reply (Paripāṭal XX:124–38),