The Cilappatikaram: The Tale of an Anklet

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One of the world’s masterpieces, the Cilappatikaram (fifth century c.e.) by Ilanko Atikal is India’s finest epic in a language other than Sanskrit. It spells out in unforgettable verse the problems that humanity has been wrestling with for a long time: love, war, evil, fate, and death. The Tale of an Anklet is the love story of Kovalan and Kannaki. Originating in Tamil mythology, the compelling tale of Kannaki-her love, her feats and triumphs and her ultimate transformation to Goddess-follows the conventions of Tamil poetry and is told in three phases: the erotic, the heroic, and the mythic. This epic ranks with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as one of the great classics of Indian literature and is presented for the first time in a landmark English verse translation by the eminent poet R. Parthasarathy, making it accessible to a wider audience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR R. Parthasarathy

R. Parthasarathy was for several years a literary editor with Oxford University Press, Chennai and Delhi. His first book, Rough Passage, was a runner-up for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1977. His second book, A House Divided: Poems of Love and War (forthcoming), is set against the turbulent history of the subcontinent. Parthasarathy has also edited Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets. He is currently working on a verse translation of the Manimekalai (`The Jeweled Belt'), the only surviving Buddhist epic in Tamil.