Smearing the Drums (contd.)

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

On the other hand, aka.106 clearly says that the bard received the elephants
as gifts in every battle fought by the king. This further confirms the
reading kaLiRu. Moreover, the tradition of giving elephants to bards/poets is
attested numerous times using many synonyms for kaLiRu too. (This is just to
overcome any doubts about the akanAn2URu reading itself.)

Consider the following.

vAl uLai puraviyoTu vaya kaLiRu mukantukoNTu
yAm avaN nin2Ru um varutum nIyir um
(perumpANARRuppaTai 27-28)

kaLiRu mukantu peyarkuvam en2in2 E          (puR. 368.1)

vEza mukavai nalkumati              (puR. 369.27)

iruppu mukam ceRitta Entu maruppin2
varai maruL mukavaikku vantan2en2 peruma    (puR.370.20-21)

matiyattu an2n2a en2 viciyuRu taTAri
akal kaN atira AkuLi toTAlin2
paNai maruL neTu tAL pal piNar taTam kai
pukar mukam mukavaikku vanticin2 peruma     (puR.371.17-20)

viLagku tiNai vEntar kaLam toRum cen2Ru
pukar mukam mukavai polika en2Ru Etti
koNTan2ar en2pa periyOr yAn2 um
am kaN mA kiNai atira oRRa              (puR. 373.28-31)

The tradition of the bards receiving elephants is overwhelming. So the Rajam
edition and Duraisamy Pillai edition are correct. UVS library publication and
whatever else may be the source for tamizar icai are wrong.

Now on to the interpretation of "x" peRu valci. When Venkataraman said in his
patavurai  that the pANan2 skinned the calf and ate it, obviously
Venkataraman was not aware of the fact that valci not only meant food but
also meant livelihood. He also did not check UVS' explanation for the
following line from kuRuntokai.

Or An2 valci cIr il vAzkkai         (kuRu. 295.4)

Here the hero's life before he married the heroine is described as a poor one
with the livelihood he earned from a single cow (oru pacuvin2Al varum
Utiyattaik koNTu uNNum uNavaiyuTaiya celvacciRappillAta vAzkkai). It is
obvious that the hero was not eating the single cow. After all, how long can
a single cow last as food for a person? Not to mention the problem of
preservation!

As for the calf leather being used to make the taNNumai, there is no evidence
for it in CT. If the whole thesis was based on naR.310, it is simply invalid

As for mA- in mAkkaN, it can be shown that LS was right in interpreting it as
black. In the CT, we have evidence for some type of clay, maN, being applied
to the drum, but not flour.

taNNumai was played by land-owning farmers, farm laborers, and warriors also.

Regards
S. Palaniappan