A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s2.16

c19.s2.16

Finally, mention must be made of two works of the time of Pallava Nandivarman III. The anonymous *Nandikkalambakam*, that has come down with many interpolations, is a quasi-historical poem of about eighty stanzas dealing, in various metres, with events of the reign of the last great Pallava monarch. The *Bhāratam* of Perundēvanār of which only a small part has survived raises questions which cannot now be satisfactorily answered. The extant portions include the whole of the Udyoga and Bhishma *parvas*, and part of the Droṇa *parva*,—to the battle on the thirteenth day. The work consists of *veṇbās* interspersed with connecting prose passages, and thus attains the form of a *Campū*. But it has been doubted if the poetry and prose are from the same pen, and the problem is complicated by the fact that the *Bhāratam* was rendered into Tamil by a Perundēvanār in the Śangam Age. The present work, poetry and prose taken together, is a straightforward and simple narrative of the main story not devoid of eloquence and charm. It may well be that the entire work was written by a single author in the ninth century, his poetry conforming to a long-established tradition regarding its diction, while his prose was modelled on the style of the learned commentaries, the only prose then known.