A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s2.20

c19.s2.20

A greater poet than Kūttan was Kamban, the celebrated author of the Tamil *Rāmāyaṇam* or *Rāmāvatāram*, who flourished in the reign of Kulottunga III. This poem is the greatest epic in Tamil literature, and though the author states that he follows in the wake of Vālmīki, still his work is no translation or even adaptation of the Sanskrit original. Like the other great poets who have enriched the literatures of the different languages of India by their works on the Rāma saga, Kamban imports into his narration the colour of his own time and place. Thus his description of Kosala is an idealized account of the features of the Chola country, and he compares the brightness of moonlight to the fame of his patron, Śaḍaiyan of Veṇṇai-nallūr. Rāma himself was as much master of the Tamil idiom as of Sanskrit. Sometimes Kamban yields to the somewhat rigid canons of Tamil poetics as when he enters on an elaborate analysis of the emotions of Rāma and Sītā after a chance meeting which takes place immediately after Rāma's entry into Mithilā. Elsewhere, as in the description of Sītā's behaviour on receiving Rāma's ring from Hanumān, Kamban elaborates a brief hint thrown out by Vālmīki who says that she rejoiced as if she had rejoined her husband. He compresses Vālmīki's account at other points, as in Daśaratha's *aśvamedha*. Few authentic details of the poet's life are forthcoming. He is believed to have belonged to the *Uvaccar* caste, priests in the temples of Kālī and similar deities, and stray verses attributed to him seek to bring him into some relation with all the great monarchs of South India including the Pāndya and Kākatīya rulers. Kamban's poem carried the story of Rāma up to his return to Ayodhyā and his coronation as king; the *Uttarakāṇḍam* being the work of another hand. The Rāmāvatāram attained great popularity, and there was a family of hereditary expounders of the Kambarāmāyaņa in Hassan in Mysore State at the end of the fourteenth century. Two mediocre poems Ereḷupadu and Śaṭakōparandādi are attributed to Kamban; the former is in praise of agriculture, and the praise of Śaṭakōpa (Nammāḷvār) is said to have been composed to please the god of Śrīrangam whose approval was sought by the poet for the Rāmāyaņa and who ordered him to praise his beloved devotee in a centum of verses. One of the best known works of secular literature belonging to the late Chola period is the Kulōttungankōvai, on Kumāra Kulottunga, afterwards Kulottunga III. Little is known of the author, and the poem has no conspicuous merit except that it has a great Chola monarch for its hero and contains passing allusions to some of his achievements in war.