Cilappatikāram (The Tale of an Anklet)

The Cilappatikāram (“The Tale of an Anklet”) is the earliest and greatest of the Tamil epics, composed probably in the fifth century CE and attributed to Iḷaṅkō Aṭikaḷ, by tradition a prince of the Cēra kingdom who renounced the throne and became a Jain monk. In three books named after the capitals of the three Tamil kingdoms — Pukār (Cōḻa), Madurai (Pāṇḍya) and Vañci (Cēra) — it tells the story of Kaṇṇaki, a merchant’s daughter of Pukār, and her husband Kōvalaṉ.

Kōvalaṉ leaves Kaṇṇaki for the beautiful dancer Mātavi and squanders his fortune on her. Repentant, he returns to his wife, who gives him one of her jewelled anklets to sell so that they can start a new life. They travel to Madurai. There, Kōvalaṉ tries to sell the anklet to the palace goldsmith, who has himself stolen an anklet of the queen; the goldsmith accuses Kōvalaṉ of the theft, and the Pāṇḍya king, without inquiry, orders his execution. Kaṇṇaki, learning of it, goes to the court with her remaining anklet and breaks it open before the king: it contains rubies, while the queen’s contained pearls. The king, realising he has executed an innocent man, dies of shame on his throne, and the queen dies with him. Kaṇṇaki, in her grief and rage, tears off her left breast and hurls it at the city, which bursts into flames, sparing only the good — Brahmins, cows, chaste women, the old and children. She goes to the hills, where, after fourteen days, she is taken up to heaven with Kōvalaṉ. In the third book, the Cēra king Ceṅkuṭṭuvaṉ brings a stone from the Himālaya to make her image, and establishes her worship as the goddess Pattiṉi.

The epic weaves together music, dance, the life of cities, the customs of the three kingdoms, and Jain, Buddhist and Hindu ideas of fate and karma. Kaṇṇaki became a goddess of chastity and justice, worshipped in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Sri Lanka, and a symbol of Tamil identity.