The Colas c34.20

c34.20

Pugalēndi is held by a persistent tradition to have been a contemporary of Oṭṭakkūttan; a native of Kaḷandai in the Toṇḍaināḍ, he sought a career in the Pāṇḍyan court; later, he went over to the Cōḷa court when the Cōḷa ruler espoused a Pāṇḍyan princess. There he roused the jealousy of Kūttan, and their intrigues against each other brought discord into the royal household. Finally, the differences between the poets were made up by the king's intercession and they began to live in peace and friendship. This pretty story has no apparent claim to our credence. Again the *Toṇḍaimaṇḍala-śatakam* states that Pugalēndi composed a *Kalambakam*, a eulogium in various metres, on Kōrrandai, the chief of Jiñji (*Śeñjiyar kōn*); if we accept the tradition that Oṭṭakūttan and Pugalēndi were contemporaries, this chief of Jiñji may have been no other than the one mentioned in the *Vikramaśōḻanulā*,²⁸ but this is doubtful, and modern critics place him a century later than Kūttan. Pugalēndi is, however, best known by his *Naḷaveṇbā*, a poem narrating the story of Naḷa in about four hundred stanzas in the *veṇbā* metre. The *veṇbā* is to Tamil what the *anuṣṭhup* is to the Sanskrit language, a simple and flexible medium capable of producing great results in the hands of a great poet. And Pugalēndi's *veṇbās* are indeed of high quality; and the popularity of the theme he handled gained great currency for them. Other works with little or no claim to literary merit have often been fathered on Pugalēndi; the tendency is partly explained by the easy style of the *Naḷaveṇbā* which made Pugalēndi popular; but there is nothing in common between the fine poetry of the *Naḷaveṇbā* and the miserable doggerels attributed to him by an ignorant popular tradition. The age of Pugalēndi cannot be established by any tangible evidence, as his references to Candiran Suvarkki of Muraṇai-nagar in Maḷḷuvanāḍu cannot yet be related to the inscriptions; the echoes of the ideas and even phrases of Kamban in his poem are sufficiently striking to give plausibility to the view that Pugalēndi could not have preceded that great poet.