[INDOLOGY] Request for subscription

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

Classical Tamil poems mention an act of cruelty by Naṉṉaṉ,  a king, whose royal tree was a mango tree. One day a mango from the tree fell into a river and floated down the river. A girl bathing in the river picked it up and ate it. The king had her killed. Thereafter, he attained notoriety as Naṉṉaṉ, who killed a girl. There is a poem in the Kuṟuntokai, which alludes to this event.

Here is the poem in A. K. Ramanujan’s translation.

What Her Girl-Friend Said

When a lovely girl bathing in a river
ate a gree mango from his tree
floated by the water,
for that crime
King Naṉṉaṉ would take nothing,
not even an offer of nine times nine bull elephants
and the girl’s weight in gold
moulded as a doll,

but just killed her.

                                 Like him,
may this mother, too, go to everlasting hell!

For, the other day, when our girl’s lover
    just came in
as a guest with a smiling face,
this woman wouldn’t sleep for days

as if she were a city on an enemy line.


								Panaṇar
								Kuṟ 292

Source: The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, translated by A. K. Ramanujan, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994, p. 87.

Regards,
Palaniappan


> On Oct 9, 2017, at 9:45 PM, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> 
> Ms Kavya Murthy sends the following query.  Please send answers her directly <mailto:%E2%80%8Bmurthy.kavya at gmail.com> (and CC the list if you wish).  Ms Murthy is a professional writer and editor.
> 
> With thanks,
> Dominik
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Kavya Murthy <​​murthy.kavya at gmail.com <mailto:murthy.kavya at gmail.com>>
> Date: 9 October 2017 at 19:41
> 
> ​[...]
> 
> If you would consider a request to members, I wanted to ask the following question. 
> 
> As I mentioned, I am researching mangoes - as a cultural matter of taste. One of the first things I'm setting out to do is learn as much as possible about mangoes in Indian history or philosophy or travelogue,  or any texts. I wished to explore mangoes as metaphor, as ingredient, as mudra or prose. 
> 
> It would be so great to ask this forum about references and reading I can start with! Naresh Keerthi who recommends that I ask the forum has already pointed me towards Pampa mahakavi. 
> 
> Thanks ever so much. ​[...]
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