Ponniyin Selvan Tamil Historic novel in English
Book 1
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5
Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10
Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15
Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20
Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25
Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30
Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35
Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40
Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45
Characters to follow the story easily
Emperor Kandaradithar : the late monarch of the Chozha empire.
Sembianmadevi : dowager queen, widow of Emperor Kandaradithar.
Maduranthaka Thevar : their son, a prince raised as a renunciate.
Emperor Paranthaka Sundara Chozhar : reigning monarch.
Empress Vanamadevi : Sundara Chozhar’s queen, daughter of Thirukkoilur Malayaman.
Aditha Karikalar (Crown Prince), Arulmozhivarmar (Ponniyin Selvan) : Sundara Chozhar’s sons.
Kundavai Devi (Ilaya Piratti) : Sundara Chozhar’s daughter.
Aniruddha Brahmayar : Sundara Chozhar’s Prime Minister.
*****
Periya Pazhuvettarayar : Lord of Pazhuvoor, Keeper of the Treasury, Chancellor of Sundara Chozhar’s Court.
Nandini Devi : his queen, the Pazhuvoor Rani.
Chinna Pazhuvettarayar : his brother, Kalanthaka Kandar, the Commandant of the Thanjavur fort.
*****
Ravidasan (a magician), Soman Sambhavan, Idumbankari, Devaralan : Pandya conspirators.
*****
Sengannan Sambuvaraiyar : Lord of Kadambur.
Kandan Maran : his son.
Manimekhalai : his daughter.
*****
Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan : a warrior of the royal but impoverished Vana clan, friend and emissary of the Crown Prince.
Thirukkoilur Malayaman : a princely chieftain and grandfather of Aditha Karikalan also known as Miladudaiyar.
Parthibendran : a Pallava prince, confidant of Aditha Karikalan.
Eesana Bhattar : a Saivite priest.
Azhwarkadiyan Nambi, also known as Thirumalai : a
Vaishnavite, Aniruddha Brahmayar's spy.
Kudandhai josier : an astrologer.
Sendhan Amudhan : a young man in charge of the temple garden.
his mother : a mute, skilled in traditional medicine.
Kinship terms/forms of address
anna : elder brother.
appane : an affectionate way of addressing an equal.
akka : elder sister.
thambi : younger brother.
thaaye : mother/a senior or important lady.
swami/sami : respectful term of address.
chittappa : father's younger brother
Ponniyin Selvan story part 1 ponniyin selvan latest updates
Introduction
Ponniyin Selvan was first
published in serial form in the Tamil weekly magazine Kalki ; it was begun in the issue
dated 29 October 1950 and
concluded in the issue for 16 May 1954. During the period of the novel's serial
publication, Kalki’s weekly
circulation was 71,366 copies, a staggering
figure in the nineteen fifties. Writing in 1993 about the novel, a Tamil
literary historian recalls “how eagerly tens of thousands of readers looked
forward to the next instalment of this novel... and [how] when the periodical
was received, there used to be fights over who in the family should have the
privilege of reading the instalment first. The serial went on for over five
years [sic] and we were witness over this long period to the unique phenomenon,
never seen before, of all normal work being suspended in thousands of Tamil
homes till the weekly instalment had been read.” (Subramanian: 356-57)
When the novel was first
published in book form in 1955, C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) wrote in a brief
preface that the novel did not need a preface, “Even as the sun needs no lamp
for people to see it by.” The novel has since been published by four different
houses and the last of these houses has itself brought out seven editions.
The continuing popularity of Ponniyin Selvan among Tamil readers is
attested by the fact that the work is now being re-serialized for the fourth
time in Kalki and is being read by
thousands of readers, new and
old; many of the latter will proudly tell you that they are reading the novel,
in book or serial form, for the fourth or fifth time. We also read every week
in the Kalki magazine about Kalki’s
birth centenary celebrations being held in the district capitals of Tamil Nadu
and in other State capitals in India and even in cities abroad; at all these
gatherings there are invariably nostalgic recollections of the five decade
spell that the novel has cast since its first appearance. There have even been
fancy-dress shows with children donning the costumes of characters from the
novel.
There are a variety of
reasons for the outstanding success of Ponniyin
Selvan at the stands, at bookshops, in homes and even, by and large, in academia. If the celebration of a heroic
past age in a refreshingly new and lucid style was particularly appealing to
the immediate Tamil audience at a time of national renaissance, newer and newer
readers have, through the decades, been drawn to the novel by its elements of
romance and mystery, by the author’s delightful powers as a story-teller, by
his unfailing humour and above all by the warm and friendly authorial voice and
tone. However, unlike the present day reader who may know Kalki mainly as an
historical novelist, Kalki's contemporaries found in Ponniyin Selvan even richer fare than they had received from his
pen for nearly three decades as
journalist, essayist, translator, short-story writer, social and historical
novelist. He had also earned respect and reputation as a freedom fighter, a
Gandhian and a champion of the Tamil language and Tamil music.
*****
R. Krishnamurthy — that was
the real name of the author of Ponniyin
Selvan — had written under several other
pseudonyms — such as Agastyar, Tamiltheni (Tamil honeybee), Karnatakam and
Guhan — before finally adopting
the name “Kalki.” It was also
the name he chose for the periodical magazine he started when he left Ananda Vikatan . The choice of the
pen-name was itself a matter for speculation among the readers for a long time
till the author set it at rest saying he had deliberately chosen the legendary
name of the tenth avatar (yet to take place) of Lord [77] Vishnu. Why did he choose it? Kalki had first used it in an essay
entitled “Ettikkupooti” (“Vying with one another”) (1927), in which he had launched
a devastatingly ironic attack on popular superstitions. Many years later (in
1950), he said in an interview, in the mock-serious tone which he invariably
employed when talking about himself: “People who have read the first essay I
wrote under this pen-name will know its signification. In that essay I
expressed the view that we need to discard hidebound traditions and meaningless
conventions and usher in a new era. It is quite natural for every writer to
hope that he will destroy worn-out traditions and create a new epoch.
Similarly, I too fancied myself as an epoch-creating warrior hero, and chose
the name which signifies both the tenth avatar of God and the new epoch.”
(Quoted in Tamil by Sunda, tr. by the present writer)
R. Krishnamurthy (1899-1954)
was born in Puthamangalam village in Thanjavur (Tanjore) district in the state
of Tamil Nadu (Madras Presidency at that time) in South India. Thanjavur
district, often called the granary of South India, lies at the heart of what
was Once the Chozha country; it contains half of all the temples in South
India; it is also the land of the river Ponni (another name in Tamil Nadu for
Kaveri), the river which was to witness so many memorable. experiences,
incidents and deeds in Ponniyin Selvan
. Sunda entitles his monumental biography (1976) of Kalki Ponniyin Pudalvar (“The Son of Ponni”). (The present writer would
like to acknowledge his debt to this book for most of the biographical
information contained in the following account.)
Kalki's father, Ramaswami
Iyer (also called Ponnu), was a village officer (karnam); he also gave discourses
on religious and mythological topics. He passed away when Krishnamurthy was
nine, but the love for that unique cultural resource of India, the
Kathakalakshepam (the narration of puranic tales interspersed with songs),
planted in the child Krishnamurthy and his elder brother Venkataraman by their
father, grew with the years. The brothers not only walked to villages nearby to
listen to these discourses but very soon they also started giving such
discourses to audiences small and large. Thus arose in the young Kaiki a
passion for story-telling. Each village in India, said Raja Rao in his preface
to Kanthapura , has its own
sthalapurana (local legend), inevitably
linked not only to the presiding deity in the village temple but also to a
saint-visitor (some Azhwar or Nayanmar) who had worshipped at the temple and
sung a pasuram or padigam in praise of the Lord. Ponniyin Selvan , as we will see later, is rich with recountings of
such legends and songs.
Kathakalakshepam thus entails
acquiring religious lore and the child Krishnamurthy's reading included Azhwars
(in fact, his first introduction to poetry), Bhagavatam, Valmiki Ramayanam and a history of Krishna Chaitanya, a
Bengali Vaishnavite savant. Besides,
the upanayanam (sacred thread) ceremony for him had been performed when he was
eight and he had learned all the ritualistic mantras very quickly. (Most of
these rituals he was to give up later, under the influence of reformist thought,
which also led him to fight for the cause of untouchables). The passion for
reading stories soon led him, beyond the early novels in Tamil such as
Vedanayagam Pillai's Pratapa Mudaliar
Charitram , Rajam Iyer's Kamalambal
Charitram and Madhavaiah's Padmavati
Charitram , to the contemporary Tamil novelists; he procured, often with great difficulty, and gobbled
up, the novels of Arani Kuppuswami Mudaliar, Vaduvur Duraiswami Iyengar and
Rangaraju. Kalki had been introduced by Ayyaswami Iyer (a kind neighbour who
became the brothers’ godfather and
guardian after their father’s
death), to books in English: some non-fiction (Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia , the writings of
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Swami Vivekananda) and a tremendous amount of
fiction, both the classics of those times (Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Walter
Scott, Lord Lytton, Charles Dickens, W.M. Thackeray, Thomas Hardy) and more
recent popular writers (Edgar Wallace and William Reynolds). P.G. Wodehouse,
Jerome K. Jerome, Mark Twain and Stephen Leacock were to become later additions
to this list.
By all accounts, the child
Krishnamurthy was a bookworm, little given to play or any other physical
activity. It was this frail and weak boy who was to create, by an interesting
psychological impulsion, fictional men and women of extraordinary physique and
energy. (The saintly Vaishnavite in Ponniyin
Selvan, Azhwarkadiyan , proves to be physically as strong as and mentally even tougher than the hero Vandiyathevan!)
But there was a particular incident in childhood which was to have a lasting
impact on Kalki’s creative imagination. The boy Krishnamurthy was very nearly
drowned when he slipped and fell into the tank near his school. He and his
elder brother, who had jumped into the water to save him, were rescued by the
village folk. But that early experience of near-drowning was to work constantly
in the writer’s mind and generate several similar situations in his fictional
work. The title of the novel Alai Osai
(“The Sound of Waves”) is very significant because the sound is a recurrent
image in the novel, all the vital experiences of the heroine Sita registering
in her consciousness in terms of wave-movements. And there are at least four
such important incidents in Ponniyin
Selvan : the child Arulmozhivarman is rescued from the Ponni river by a
mysterious female figure (whom the people then identify with the river-goddess
herself, hence the name Ponniyin Selvan, the darling of Ponni; part II: chapter
17); Vandiyathevan, who impulsively jumps into the sea after suspecting
Poonkuzhali's motives, is saved by the girl herself (part II: chapter 7); both
Vandiyathevan and
Arulmozhivarman clutch a raft
after a shipwreck and are found and rescued by Poonkuzhali (part II: chapter
3); Vanathi and Poonkuzhali are both saved from the Ponni in spate by
Arulmozhivarman (part V: chapter 21). Besides these references to drowning, we
notice a constant preoccupation with waterfronts; except for the ending of Part
I, all the five parts of Ponniyin Selvan
begin and end on or near the sea or river front.
After his early education at
Puthamangalam village, Krishnamurthy was sent, at the age of sixteen, to
Tiruchirapalli, the nearest city, where he first joined E.R. High School and a
year later was admitted to National High School with a full-fee concession and
free accommodation in the hostel. The nationalistic impulses which had been
roused much earlier by an introduction to Subrahmanya Bharati’s songs now grew
stronger in a city which held and received ardent nationalist leaders. So, in
January 1921, barely three months before the school-final examination,
Krishnamurthy left school, literally throwing his books into the river Kaveri,
and joined Mahatma Gandhi's Non-cooperation Movement. After defying prohibitory
orders in January 1922 he was arrested and sentenced to a year’s rigorous
imprisonment. (At the trial, when the young British magistrate had asked
whether the accused knew what “sedition” meant, Kalki replied, “Yes, of course,
that is precisely what I have been engaged in for the last one year.”)
By this time he had come
under the influence of both Gandhiji and Rajaji (the latter in a more direct
and intimate manner) and when he was released from prison, he plunged into the
Freedom Struggle, propagating not only nationalistic ideals but also reformist
views like anti-untouchability and Prohibition. He translated many of
Gandhiji's writings and read them out to villagers. He addressed meetings,
authored and published pamphlets rousing people to non-violent revolt, often
went underground, and was imprisoned twice more, for
six months in 1930 and for
three months in 1941. Even after he had entered on a full-time writing career,
he continued propagating and campaigning for nationalistic ideals. This early
participation in the Freedom Struggle had at least one adverse effect on his
personal life: quite apart from disapproval from his relatives (except his
elder brother who always understood and supported him) it also delayed his
marriage, in fact breaking up one engagement. He eventually married at the age
of twenty-five, a rather late age in those times. Some of his writing was also
avowedly polemical, Kalki having thrown in his lot with Rajaji whom he forever
regarded as his political and cultural mentor. He had rendered service in
Rajaji's Tiruchengode Gandhi Ashram in 1928 and edited a journal called Vimochanam , devoted almost entirely to
the advocacy of Prohibition. In 1942, when Rajaji's acceptance of Jinnah's
two-nation theory came under severe criticism as a betrayal of Gandiji's
one-nation ideal, Kalki wrote indefatigably supporting Rajaji's views, in the
process entering into an editorial war with Ananda
Vikatan , the magazine which he had edited for several years before
starting his own magazine Kalki .
Krishnamurthy started his
journalistic career in 1923 with the Tamil daily Navasakti , which was being edited by Thiru Vi. Kalyanasundara
Mudaliar, an ardent Tamil scholar and Gandhian. He filled the paper with
reports of meetings, interviews, essays, skits and jokes. However, he could not
see eye to eye with Thiru Vi. Ka, who had rather rigid and purist notions about
what “proper” Tamil style was. He left Navasakti
in 1928 to join Rajaji's ashram in Tiruchengode but at the same time he also started writing for Ananda Vikatan , a weekly magazine that had been recently bought by
S.S. Vasan, who was later to become the owner of Gemini Studios and to produce
and direct path-breaking films as well as commercial hits such as Chandralekha . Vasan had planned to make
Ananda Vikatan a humour
and-entertainment magazine and, shrewd judge of popular taste that he was, he
spotted
the prodigious talent for
witty and humorous writing that lay in Krishnamurthy and not only accepted the
latter’s contributions gratefully — the first article by Krishnamurthy writing
under the name “Kalki” was published in Ananda
Vikatan in 1928 – but also pressed him to join the magazine as a working editor. Kalki did so
eventually in 1931 and the association with Ananda
Vikatan continued for ten highly productive years during which he wrote
editorials, articles (on an amazing variety of topics) literary, art and music
reviews, short stories and social novels that were serialised. There however
arose difference between the two men, especially over the contests which Vasan
had insisted on including in the magazine in order to boost its circulation and
which Kalki did not approve of. The parting came in 1941 when Vasan refused to
permit Kalki to take part in Gandhiji’s satyagraha
because he believed that Kalki’s participation in the campaign would affect the
magazine. Kalki resigned, courted arrest and imprisonment and in a few months
started his own magazine.
Kalki had met T. Sadasivam
during his first prison term as a comrade in the Freedom Struggle. The two men
were to become lifelong friends and mutual supporters in various projects. With
the active participation of Sadasivam’s wife, M.S. Subbalakshmi, they engaged
in fund-raising projects for several public causes. Now, when Kalki left Ananda Vikatan , Sadasivam rallied to
his friend’s side and together they started the new magazine Kalki in August 1941. The first, second
and third objectives of the new magazine, said the editor in an imaginary
interview with Lord Vinayaka in the first issue, were “the good of the nation,
the good of the nation, the good of the nation.” The magazine appeared as a
fortnightly for the first twelve months, three times a month from the
thirteenth to the thirty second month and as a weekly thereafter (from April
1944). Priced at two annas (twelve and a half paise now), the first two issues
sold 12,000 copies, the third 20,000 and the fifth 35,000. The circulation
exceeded 70,000 when Ponniyin Selvan was being serialized, as
we noted earlier.
We shall say something
presently about the novels of Kalki most of which were written after he started
the new magazine. We should here mention the variety of writing he did through Kalki : he continued the light-hearted
stuff which he used to contribute to Ananda
Vikatan but he was now free to express himself much more forthrightly on
matters of grave political, social and cultural importance. We have already
mentioned the vigorous, sometimes even undiscriminating, support he provided
through his columns for all the views of Rajaji. Another cause he espoused
passionately was Tamil music (Tamil Isai). Concerts in Carnatic music till then
had consisted almost entirely of compositions in Telugu by composers like
Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Deekshitar and Syama Sastri and when a group of Tamil enthusiasts
met in successive conferences in 1941 and passed a resolution calling upon
singers, music sabhas and their patrons to ensure that “compositions in Tamil
are given importance and sung in concerts held in Tamil Nadu for the benefit of
Tamils,” there was vehement opposition to the idea from several men of
importance in the music world. Kalki wrote untiringly in support of Tamil music
and it was a triumphant occasion for him — and he celebrated it exultingly in a
review — when, later in 1941, M.S. Subbalakshmi gave a three-and-a-half hour
vocal recital entirely of Tamil songs of excellent musical quality. Kalki
actively supported the establishment of the Tamil Isai Sangam (Tamil Music
Association) in 1943. (The Sangam continues to organize classical music
concerts in which only compositions in Tamil are sung.)
Kalki wrote a large number of
short stories, collected later into nine volumes, many of them with social
reformist intent, though invariably with a touch of humour and unexpected
twists and turns. The short stories are not free from technical
flaws: they tend to be a
piling up of incidents, they are often too numerously peopled and the authorial
voice (which, as we shall see, was to be a positive strength in the novels) is
at times intrusive.
It is however as a novelist
that Kalki attained greater fame than as a short-story writer.
All the novels of Kalki were
serialized (in Ananda Vikatan or Kalki ) before being published as books;
and the serial origin generally
determined their structure, especially the manipulation of episodes. He wrote
seven social novels (including Amara Tara
which was completed by Kalki’s daughter Anandi after his death), and three
historical novels. The more important of the social novels are Kalvanin Kathali (“The Brigand’s Love”)
(published serially in 1937 and as a book in 1938), Tyaga Bhoomi (“The Land of Sacrifice” 1939) and Alai Osai (“The Sound of Waves” serial
form 1948, book 1953). Kalvanin Kathali
and Tyaga Bhoomi were originally
written for the talkie and later serialized with some changes to suit the
periodical print mode. The first of these, based on a real-life model,
presenting an unconventional hero, a thief, with sympathy and humour, was
acclaimed for its realistic portrayal of characters, its tight plot structure
and its lucid style. (The novel, though originally written for the talkie, was
made into a film only after Kalki’s death). Tyaga
Bhoomi , as the title suggests, was about sacrifice. The character of
Sambhu Sastri, who became a model for all social reformers by actually mingling
with Harijans and treating them as equals, became quite famous among readers. Tyaga Bhoomi was the first Tamil novel
to be accompanied by movie stills in print.
Alai Osai , Kalki's longest social
novel (running to 868 pages and now in its eighth edition), which Kalki himself
regarded as his best work, was published first serially in Kalki . It won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1950. The background to
this novel
is provided by the national
and international events between 1930 and 1948: the Salt Satyagraha, the Quit
India Movement, World War II, the August Movement, the history of the Indian
National Army, India’s independence, the birth of Pakistan, the disturbances in
Hyderabad and Telengana, the integration of Indian states and the assassination
of Mahatma Gandhi. “It is undoubtedly one of the great novels of Tamil
literature, portraying how individuals, families and human relationships are
affected by the struggle for Independence....
all the major cities of India
figure prominently in the novel, and the picture of violence during the
Partition is also included. The reader witnesses Gandhiji's assassination and
its impact. The style is absorbing, language rich, narrative well controlled.”
(Zvelebil: 365)
Kalki was also a translator.
The most important of his translations is that of Gandhiji's The Story of My Experiments with Truth entitled Satyasodanai (1927). Kalki also
attempted a biography of Gandhiji in
Tamil. This serial biography, with the title Mandarukkul Oru Deyvam (“A God among Men”) was begun in the Kalki issue for 8 February 1948,
continued for 106 weeks, was “suspended” but never resumed. Other translations
include the works of Swami Vivekananda and Yuvabharat
or the History of the Indian National Movement by Lala Lajpet Rai. Many of Kalki's own works have been translated
into other languages: Parthiban Kanavu,
Kalvanin Kathali, Solaimalai Ilavarasi, Mohini Theevu, Veenai Bhavani,
Tukkudandanai (all into Hindi), Alai
Osai (into Hindi, Gujarati and
Russian), and Puli Raja a collection
of short stories (Hindi and German). There have been dramatizations of some of
the novels. The most famous of these was the stage-play of Sivakamiyin Sabadam enacted by the T.K. Shanmugam Brothers. As this introduction is being
written, there are reports of the staging of Ponniyin Selvan by a troupe in Chennai called the Magic Lantern.
We shall presently proceed to
a discussion of Kalki’s historical novels but the above account will give
readers a fair idea of the nature, range and depth of Kalki’s achievements as a
man of letters. There are undoubtedly limitations in his art and these have
been pointed out by various critics, but there is universal agreement that
Kalki was the first distinguished prose (more particularly prose fiction)
writer in modern Tamil. The versatility of his art has also been acknowledged
as unmatched. He was also the first popular writer in Tamil who attained an
eminent public status. We have already mentioned his association with a number
of public figures. Besides the political and social associations, it was a
matter of satisfaction to Tamil readers that he was in the company of, and held
in high regard by, eminent Tamil scholars of the time such as U.Ve. Sawaminatha
Iyer (the Grand Old Man of Tamil letters, whom Kalki himself called “Tamil
Thatha”), K.V Jagannathan (editor of the magazine Kalaimagal ), Thiru Vi. KalyanaSundara Mudaliar and T.K.
Chidambaranatha Mudaliar.
As editor of Ananda Vikatan and Kalki , he discovered, introduced and shaped innumerable young
writers and helped rehabilitate many an indigent Tamil scholar. We have already
referred to his services towards the establishment of Tamil music. He was
associated with a number of other public projects for the development of Tamil.
As Honorary Secretary of the Tamil Development Council, he launched the
multi-volume project Kalaikkalanjiyam
(literally “Art Granary”), perhaps the first encyclopaedia in an Indian
language — twelve volumes of the encyclopaedia have since appeared — and organized
the First International Tamil Conference in Jaffna. But in all his concern with
and for Tamil, Tamil Nadu, and the growth of both, Kalki never lost sight of
larger nationalistic causes. He worked successfully for the creation of a
memorial for the nationalist Tamil poet Subrahmanya Bharati in Bharati's own
native town, Ettayapuram. He also worked tirelessly as the Secretary of the
Gandhi Memorial
Committee though he did not
live to see the completion of the memorial at Madras.
*****
Kalki is the first
significant historical novelist in Tamil. There were a few others before him
(such as Saravanamuthu Pillai and Koodalingam Pillai) who had attempted writing
in the genre but none of them is read now or even remembered in literary
histories. Kalki himself had used recent history as a background in the social
novels, for example in Alai Osai in a
big way, as we have seen above. A recent researcher has drawn attention to the
historical backdrop of some of Kalki’s short stories which could well have
served as a preparation for the great historical novels (Parvathi: 25). But the
first historical novel — or rather historical romance — that Kalki wrote, Parthiban Kanavu , appeared as a serial
in Kalki from 16 October 1941. The
second, Sivagamiyin Sabadam , was begun
in January 1944 and the third, Ponniyin
Selvan in October 1950.
It is important to note the
long interval between the birth of the novel as a genre in Tamil and the
creation of the sub-genre of historical fiction. Vedanayagam Pillai's Pratapa Mudaliar Charitram , generally
regarded as the first Tamil novel,
had been published in 1879 and it took another sixty years for the first
historical novel to appear. One explanation for this long interval could be
that Tamil writers had first to master this new form, the novel, in its
familiar Western manifestation, social fiction, before they could gain the
confidence for attempting the extremely challenging task of writing historical
novels. (It has been pointed out that there was a similar transition in English
literature itself: “With Scott, the historical novel, branching from the
realist mainstream, moved such representation into the past, where it could
more easily incorporate the historical determinants of social being” (Shaw:
532).) But there was a stronger reason as well.
Meenakshi Mukherjee, quoting
Mircea Eliade, has spoken of the necessary “correlation in all traditional
Societies between the secularization of culture and the emergence of historical
consciousness” and gone on to say that “certainly English education in India,
at least in the urban centres, was creating an awareness of history and
stressing the importance of temporal events as well as human bonds irrespective
of faith” (Mukherjee: 39). Put rather crudely, India had to wait for a break in
its history before it could record its earlier history. South India has suffered
from a further disadvantage. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri — incidentally a major
source for Kalki's knowledge of history – said in A History of South India , quoting Vincent Smith, “Hitherto most
historians of ancient India have written as if the South did not exist.” But
this neglect of the South was also because of an extreme deficiency of ancient
records concerning the peninsula (Sastri:2). Even the Anbil copperplates, which
were an important source for Kalki, were discovered only in 1905, as Kalki
himself points out in an authorial note in the course of Ponniyin Selvan (II:12). Sunda sums up very well the situation at the time Kalki wrote: “It took
centuries for historical information about ancient Tamil Nadu, culled through
the labours of researchers from copper-plates, inscriptions and verses, to be
suitably incorporated into books of history; it took a long time too for Tamil
prose style to evolve from the poetic. It was only after both these processes
were completed that there arose possibilities for the creation of historical
novels. As soon as they did, Kalki exploited them and created three sterling
works as models of historical fiction.” (Sunda: 575)
But why did Kalki have to
write historical novels? As we have seen, he took an active, fairly prominent,
part in the Independence Movement, fighting shoulder to shoulder with greater
and smaller men and women, and, even if he was not always creating history, he
was, always a close witness to it. If at a certain stage he decided that he
should narrate the
earlier history of his
people, the impulsions behind that decision could not have been very different
from those that guided him in shaping contemporary history.
One way of interpreting
Kalki's, or indeed any colonized writer intellectual's attempt to re-create
past history is to view it as a psychological, but politically safe, release
for his and his race's wounded pride as colonized subjects. As Meenakshi
Mukherjee puts it: “The framework of history afforded the novelist a way to
glorify the past, and the past, however nebulous, meant the pre-British past:
any tale of past bravery or heroism vindicated present servitude. This was the
safest form a newly awakened nationalism could take.” (Mukherjee: 46.)
Mukherjee goes on to explore
this point by analysing Bankimchandra Chatterji's Anandamath (1882). Mukherjee's perspective is of course quite valid
in relations to Indian historical novels of the nineteenth century (in Bengali
or in other languages), a time when the seeds of the Freedom Struggle had
hardly begun to sprout. In fact, there is a sense in which the despondent,
defeated, state which Mukherjee sees in the nineteenth century seems to prevail
in the mind of Parthiba Chozhan in Parthiban
Kanavu (“Parthiban's Dream”). Reduced to the servile status of a minor king
paying tribute to the ruling Pallava Empire, Parthiban paints out in a picture
gallery his dream of a regained Chozha Empire, now extending to the Himalayas.
But this picture gallery he keeps secret in a locked chamber. However, before
setting out to wage war against the Pallavas, he opens the gallery to the view
of his son Vikraman and also reveals his dream. The amazed Vikraman asks his
father why he had kept these excellently drawn pictures a secret so far.
Parthiban replies: -
Listen, Vikrama! This world acclaims only the art of one who wields
authority and power. Don’t you remember Emperor Mahendra at Kanchi? Once a
learned gathering conferred on
him the title of “A Tiger among Artists.” Mahendra’s drawings were quite
ordinary; but there was none who didn’t praise them. And now, the present
Emperor, Narasimha, boasts of ever so many titles; a lion in the art of
painting; a Narada in the art of music; a Viswakarma in sculpture. The world
sings his praises in all these ways. Why? Only because he possesses a huge
army; only because his empire is so vast.
Is the colonized subject here
laying bare his inevitable helplessness that his art and his skills will never
be accepted or acknowledged so long as he remains a colonized subject?
But then Parthiban himself,
as well as Kalki, refuses to rest in such a negative, despondent state.
Parthiban has to reveal his art, his past glory, and the glory of his race, to
his son so that he might be roused to heroic action. Parthiban himself plunges
into a heroic, though eventually futile, war against his colonizers. Later his
son is driven to heroic resistance fired by the memory of his father’s dream.
As for Kalki, the situation had changed vastly from the time Bankinchandra’s Anandamath was written: though Parthiban Kanavu was written when India was still under foreign yoke, the freedom
movement was in full cry and the impulsions behind the re-creation of history
were now far more positive.
Kalki was a Gandhian and
sworn to the principle of nonviolence, but he set great store by both physical
and mental toughness as being essential to a liberated consciousness. He firmly
believed that centuries of political slavery had clearly resulted in a
debilitation of body and mind. This is seen in a very interesting article he
wrote in the Kalki issue for 30 November 1952. The magazine had, in an earlier
issue, published a commentary on an international wrestling match held in Madras
in which the Indian wrestler Dara Singh had vanquished his overseas opponent
King Kong. A woman reader had written to the editor expressing her revulsion at
the spectacle and registering her anger that Kalki
should have stooped so low as
to feature and even celebrate such a barbarous activity acclaiming it as sport.
Kalki was unapologetic in his reply to the reader through the article. He said
wrestling was a time- and legend-honoured sport and that the gods themselves
(Lord Siva against Arjuna for instance) as well as earlier historical heroes
(Narasimha Varman who became known as Mamallan, the Great Wrestler) had engaged
in it. He then added, significantly for us: “Owing to centuries-long
subjugation under foreign rule, the mental firmness and the physical strength
of the people of this country have declined. There cannot be two opinions about
the need for the men of this country to regain them....We
believe that watching these
wrestling games will help to some extent in this respect.” (Kalki , 30 Nov 1952, reprinted in Kalki , 8 Aug 1999, tr. by the present
writer)
Ashis Nandy in The Intimate Enemy speaks of the
klibatva (“femininity in man”) to which the colonized subject had degenerated
(in the opinion of both the colonizer and the colonized) and from which he had
to be restored to purushatva (“manliness”) (Nandy:52). We referred early in the
introduction to the frail physique of Kalki himself in his childhood and even
later: in some ways he must have associated that with the nation's own psyche and
thought that one way of raising both the individual and the national psyche to
heroic heights was through the presentation and recreation of past heroism. We
immediately recall that delightful yet intense wrestling bout in Ponniyin Selvan (II:30) between
Arulmozhivarman and Vandiyathevan, which comes as a complete surprise to the
latter. Arulmozhivarman springs a similar surprise again later in the novel
(II:39). Vandiyathevan wrestles with Pinakapani in earnest (III:25). Even among
the women, Poonguzhali and Mandakini match heroic men in courage and bravery.
This is perhaps also the best
place to examine the reasons for the overwhelming reception that Kalki's
writings in general
and the historical novels in
particular found among Tamil readers of the nineteen thirties, forties and
fifties. We have already mentioned his skills as a story-teller and his
glorification of the past history of the Tamils. (Meenakshi Mukherjee observes
that “in many languages the most popular themes of historical novels centred
around Shivaji and the Rajput kings who successfully resisted Mughal power”
(Mukherjee: 44). But Kalki found no need to look outside Tamil Nadu for true
tales of heroism.) We have also noticed how hard Kalki worked as a public
figure and a citizen for the development of Tamil. But a very important aspect
of the national awakening, the sense of national pride he brought about related
to Kalki’s own use of Tamil. Kalki’s acknowledged achievement as a writer
consists in a transformation of Tamil prose style into a medium eminently
suited for discourse — literary, political, even historical — in the modern
world. (This transformation is similar to the revolution that Subrahmanya
Bharati brought about in poetry.) In fact, Kalki had to rescue the Tamil of his
day from its votaries as well as its detractors. Chief among the latter were
those sahibs, Rao Sahibs, Dewan Bahadurs and the like, holders of titles
conferred by the British Raj, as well as many English-educated intellectuals,
who firmly believed that Tamil could never be a vehicle for any communication
except the most casual; at any rate no literature could be written in modern
Tamil. Among the writers of Tamil there were two kinds: those engaged in
religious writing who wrote a highly Sanskritized, and therefore
incomprehensible, variety — this variety survives even now in the “house
journals” of some of the mutts — and secondly those fanatical purists who
assiduously avoided any trace of Sanskrit but who in the process inflicted the
most stilted kind of style on their readers and listeners. (These people called
their Tamil “Sentamizh” – High Tamil — but Kalki described it as “Koduntamizh” –
Cruel Tamil!) Kalki steered clear of these extremes. S.S. Vasan described Kalki’s
achievement well in an obituary notice:
“Kalki’s prose style filled
both kinds of people — those who, put off by the learned style of the pundits,
were afraid to read Tamil or speak in Tamil and those who, because of the
prestige of English, were asking, “Is anything expressible in Tamil?” – with
ardour for Tamil. (Quoted in Sunda:886, tr. by the present writer)
A more specific tribute had
been paid to Kalki at the time of the publication of Parthiban Kanavu as a book (1943). S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, professor
of Tamil in the University of Madras, wrote in a preface to the book: “It will
be very clear to the readers of this novel that a writer of multifarious
abilities has emerged. Particularly remarkable is this author's Tamil style; he
deploys only those words which are in living use; he doesn’t burrow into the
language for pure Tamil words; he doesn’t fight shy of using certain words
because they are Sanskrit; it is a clear style; an animated style; a style that
takes the readers with it; a style appropriate to situations and characters; this
author indeed stands in the forefront of contemporary prose-writers.” (Preface
to Parthiban Kanavu : viii)
There were two other features
which made Kalki’s Tamil nationalism more acceptable to the great middle-class
Tamil reading public and even to the educated among the less affluent than the
Tamil nationalism which was being propagated in those days by the leaders and
followers of the Dravidian Rationalist Movement. The first, as we have already
briefly noticed, was that Kalki’s Tamil nationalism was firmly in place as a
part of a larger Indian nationalism, Indian reawakening. In Ponniyin Selvan , Aniruddha Brahmarayar,
Sundara Chozha's sagacious Prime Minister, speaks of the sacred land of India
stretching from Trincomalee in the South (in present-day Sri Lanka) to the
Himalayas in the North, warns of the marauding tribes invading the North and
the need for the Chozhas to repulse them (III:26). Secondly, Kalki’s Tamil
nationalism, again unlike that of the Dravidian
Rationalist Movement, in no
way repudiated the religious aspirations of a people who by and large remained,
and remain even now, believers. It is very significant that the periods Kalki
chose for his historical romances — 7th century A. D. for both Sivakamiyin Sabadam and Parthiban Kanavu and 10th century A.D.
for Ponniyin Selvan — were ages of
Hindu religious revival after a period of strong Buddhist and Jain influences.
In fact, many of the Tamil Kings had earlier become Jains and a process of
reconversion to Hinduism had just begun in the 7th century with Emperor
Mahendra himself leading it (Nachiyappan; 31-35). One consequence of this
choice of historical periods is that the novels reverberate with quotations and
citations from religious texts of earlier and current periods. More, religious
personages, of historical and legendary fame, slide in and out of the novels as
easily, if not as frequently, as kings and courtiers. Saint Tirunavukkarasar is
introduced at the beginning of Sivakamiyin
Sabadam . In Ponniyin Selvan ,
Sundramurti Nayanar's visits to Nagaipattinam
and Vriddhachalam — Kalki takes care to mention its ancient Tamil name
Tirumudukunram — along with the legends connected with them are recounted
(II.10 and IV.2). Balancing the scales Kalki creates a staunch Vaishnavite in
the character of Azhwarkadiyan and makes him not only walk alongside Saivite
Kings and princes but also quote Azhwar
Pasurams (the Songs of the Azhwars) in the midst of his less religious, and
more political, sometimes even martial, occupations as a superspy of Prime
Minister Aniruddha Brahmarayar (who incidentally is also depicted as a
Vaishnavite). Even the hilarious Vaishnavite-Saivite disputes, altercations and
fist-fights in Ponniyin Selvan are
part of the atmosphere of the religious fervour that permeates the novel. These
disputes continued well into the 20th century, at least till Kalki's times:
there were legal cases for example over the rights of the deities of Lord
Vishnu and Lord Siva in the same temple precincts to be taken out in
procession!
It is now time to turn to Ponniyin Selvan and examine it as an
historical novel. In what sense can it be said to be an historical novel at
all? When Kalki started attempting the genre he had hardly any model to go by.
There is no reference in Sunda’s biography to show that Kalki had read
historical novels in other Indian languages though we dare say he might have.
The only models therefore must have been the novels in English, especially
those of Walter Scott. But, as Meenakshi Mukherjee has observed, though “the
influence of Sir Walter Scott is often cited as important in shaping the
historical novel in India... on a closer examination Scott's influence turns
Out to be much less than is rumoured” (Mukherjee;43). A recent researcher, S.
Thothadri, has attempted a rigorous comparison between Kalki and Scott. He
observes that while there are a few superficial similarities — such as the fact
that both novelists were prolific writers or that neither cared much for
plot-structure or for historical accuracy — there are also vital differences:
(a) Scott had fairly clear-cut views about what constitutes a historical novel
– for example that it should
be numerously and variously peopled. Kalki disavowed any such formulated
framework (see the Epilogue to Ponniyin
Selvan ). Kalki’s conception of historical fiction is in fact visionary and
Romanticist. (Read the genesis he gives of Sivakamiyin
Sabadam in his preface to that novel). (b) Scott's historical novels are
shaped in the realist tradition and built on the assumption that class
differences constitute the basis of history. Kalki ignores class differences
altogether. (c) Scott does not subscribe to the belief, while Kalki obviously
does, that individual men and women create history. (d) Scott was led to the
past by the impulsions of the Romantic Movement though he came to achieve a
blend of romanticism and realism in his historical novels. Kalki on the other
hand turned to the past impelled by nationalism and so tends to idealize that
past (Thothadri:1-14).
These observations are made
from a Marxist-Lucacsian critical point of view and are none the less valid for
that. The world of Kalki's historical novels is indeed numerously peopled but
not variously. We See kings and queens, princes and princesses, courtiers and
court-poets, generals and soldiers, spies and conspirators, saints and godmen,
but very few common people. When we do — Boatman Ponnan in Parthiban Kanavu or Rakkammal in Ponniyin Selvan — it is always in relation to the role they play in
the destinies of the rulers. In other words, what interested Kalki was
political, religious and literary history (or the history of art) but not
social and economic history, even when they had a bearing on those other
histories. We mentioned earlier the introduction of the saint Tirunavukkarasar
in Sivakamiyin Sabadam . It has been
pointed out that Kalki had quite ignored the socio-economic origins of
Tirunavukkarasar’s rise from the peasant class as well as the enormous social
service he had rendered (Nachiyappan; 34-35). And the Marxist critic must
surely smile a wry smile, if not laugh, at the amazing naivete of Kalki’s
reflections as he sat at Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram) watching those immortal
classics of sculpture:
I had heard some people say, “These temples and towers, these structures
over the shrines, these rock-sculptures were all created by the tyranny of the
kings of those days.” I now came to the conclusion that such a view was absurd
and nonsensical. It might be possible, through tyranny and coercion, to get
other tasks done; but these miracles of art could never have arisen because of
cruelty; you can force a man to till the field, weave cloth or pay taxes. But
art will never grow through such means.
(Preface to Sivakamiyin
Sabadam )
The deluding romanticism here
— or the romantic delusion — is obvious. But we must say this in defence of
Kalki. The
charge of irrealism, of a
tendency to romanticize, can be made with regard only to the historical novels
of Kalki and not to the social novels or the short stories. We have already
mentioned Sambu Sastri in Tyaga Bhoomi
and there are many other characters and situations in the works — not to speak
of Kalki’s own direct participation in programmes of action for the people,
including the anti-untouchability campaigns — to show his acute awareness of
contemporary social history, its basis in class differences and so on. One has
only to read the story “Pahal Thookkam” (“Siesta”) reprinted in the collection Ettikkuppotti (1947), to see the
ruthless and ironic social realism
that Kaiki is capable of achieving, directed at all social classes including
his own. If then, such realism is not to be found in the historical novels,
perhaps the explanation is that it was never attempted. In other words, though
Kalki never formulated his conception of historical novels, it is clear, from
the design of the novels themselves, that he meant them to be, on the whole,
romantic reconstructions rather than accurate records of day-to-day phenomena.
Kalki would have quite agreed with Rabindranath Tagore who said, speaking about
the historical novel: “Once in a while a few individuals appear whose joys and
sorrows are linked with the greater rhythm of world events and the rise and
fall of kingdoms. Their private loves and feuds merge with the great orchestra
that like the roaring of the Oceans swells and subsides according to the large
and remote workings of time... This distancing from our ordinary lives is
important. While we are whiling away our time in our fixed jobs, in laughter
and tears, eating and sleeping, in the broad thoroughfares of the world the
chariot of time is being driven by men larger than us. This realization gives
us a momentary release from our circumscribed existence. This is the true
aesthetic experience of history.” (quoted in Mukherjee:58)
In other words, the works in
question are, and were meant to be, historical romances rather than historical
novels. This was recognized early by S. Vaiyapuri Pillai in the preface to
Parthiban Kanavu (1943) which we have already quoted from. (Pillai used the Tamil term “Arpuda
Charitra Naveenagam” as a translation of “historical romance.”) And it is as an
historical romance that we should now examine Ponniyin Selvan .
We therefore return to the
question: how historical, how true to history, is Ponniyin Selvan ? The broad outlines of the novel
— the very broad outlines —
do certainly accord with the historical facts. Let us look first at the
genealogical tree of the kings belonging to this period of Chozha history.
Parantaka (I) Chozha was
succeeded by his second son Kandaraditha as the first son Rajaditha had died in
war earlier. On the death of Kandaraditha, as his son Maduranthaka was still a
child, Kandaraditha's brother Arinjaya ascended the throne. When Arinjaya died
within a year of his ascension, Parantaka II (Sundara Chozha) was coronated.
Early in Sundara Chozha's reign, his first son Aditha II (Karikala) was
declared crown-prince. But a few
years before Sundara Chozha's
death Aditha Karikala was killed and Maduranthaka Uttama Chozha was declared
heir-apparent (in preference to Sundara Chozha's second son Arulmozhivarman)
and he eventually became king in 973 on the death of Sundara Chozha. Uttama
Chozha was succeeded by Arulmozhivarman who came to be known as Rajaraja I.
These are the very broad
historical facts and these Kalki scrupulously adopts. But there are two
intriguing questions in the historical account which must surely have caused
problems for Kalki in his Overall project (agenda, as some of us might choose
to call it) of the glorification of the Chozha age. The first is the obvious
issue of claim: if Parantaka II (Sundara Chozha) was right to ascend the throne
after the death of his father (since Maduranthaka was still a child), was he
justified in declaring his own son Aditya II (Karikala) heir-apparent, thus
effectively, and well in advance, blocking Maduranthaka's path to the throne?
The argument given in the novel on behalf of Sundara Chozha and in support of
Karikala’s claim is that Kandaraditha had clearly been against his son becoming
king, that Maduranthaka's mother too, following her husband’s wish, was also
against Maduranthaka's ascension, and that Maduranthaka himself had, as his
parents wished, no interest in royal concerns, giving himself up entirely to
other-worldly pursuits. But even when the novel begins we are told that
Maduranthaka had changed in disposition and pursuits and now yearned to be
king. He was therefore a strong claimant.
The second question concerns
the mystery behind the killing of Aditha Karikala. Kalki’s biographer Sunda
cities two books as possible sources for Kalki: K.A. Nilakanta Sastri’s The Cholas , in two volumes (1935, 37)
in English and T.V. Sadasiva
Pandarathar’s Pirkala Chozhar Charittiram
(“History of the Later Chozhas” 1949) in Tamil. There is however disagreement
between the two historians on who murdered Aditha Karikala, the former
maintaining that it was
Maduranthaka and the latter
disputing this view. A recent writer of Chozha history cites an inscription
naming five commoners (including two called Ravidasan and Soman) as the
murderers of Karikala; this writer also, after recording the above two and
other theories about the murder (including one about the possible involvement
of Arulmozhivarman himself or his sister Kundavai), points out the difficulties
in accepting any of these views (Mangalamurgesan: 45-48)
What does Kalki make of this
uncertainty about historical facts? The fact of the assassination (which was
not in dispute) was of course grist to the mill of his action-loving novelistic
imagination and he makes the most of it, letting drop darker and darker hints
and forewarnings through the first four parts and through a considerable part
of the fifth. (In fact he also adds one other murder and three other attempted
murders, for good measure.) And even after the murder does take place, the
uncertainty continues, for another four hundred and fifty pages till the end of
the novel, with character after character claiming (for various reasons) to
have committed it. Even after the last “confession” there is still some doubt
about who exactly delivered the blow though we are certain who plotted the
assassination.
Similarly with the claim to
the throne, Kalki states the issue several times, through several versions,
from several points of view. We have the claim first stated by Periya
Pazhuvettarayar in Part I, Chapter 7, when the conspiracy (to instal
Maduranthakan in the throne) starts. A few chapters later, in I. 19, the other
conspiracy — to kill Aditha Karikala – is also introduced. Then we have Sundara
Chozha's story (II. 16-17), Mandakini's pictorial narrative (II.38),
Maduranthaka’s version (III.41), Aniruddha Brahmarayar’s version (IV.25),
Nandini’s secret (V.39), Chembiyanmadevi’s confession (V.48), Arulmozhivarman’s
inference (V.52) and Karuthiruman’s story (V.58-59). The result of these
carefully-placed hints, confessions and revelations is that the mystery
seems to be unravelled only
to be entangled again. Added to these verbal statements there is the spectacle
of the movements of men and women, spies and counterspies, sorcerers and
soothsayers, along roads and riverbanks, through groves and dense woods, secret
passages in and out of castles, the march of troops, a few popular uprisings,
fights and ambushes, captures and rescues, floods and storms. The height of
romance is reached when the charming prince, riding an elephant, rescues both
the women who love him, from floods as well as a crocodile! (V.21) And, to lend
the human mystery a supernatural aura, a comet appears early in the novel, its
sinister import is discussed every now and then while it stays in the sky and
it crashes out of view only in the final part.
A major objective of the
novel, as we have observed before, is the glorification of the Chozhas. A
serious problem therefore arose for Kalki in dealing with the culpability of
Maduranthaka and possibly other members of the royal family in the murder of
his own nephew Aditha Karikala. Kalki effectively, though eventually in the
novel, obliterates any suggestion of a stain on the Chozha escutcheon by
building on a suggestion, made by Sadasiva Pandarathar, of Pandiya
intervention: the result is that Uttama Chozhan remains an uttama! Besides, and
more importantly, everywhere in the novel there are paeans of praise, in prose
and verse, for the Chozha Empire (which in fact had not expanded to its full
extent at the time presented in the novel): the noble lineage and traditions of
its kings (V87), which is acknowledged even by the Buddhist monks of Sri Lanka
who offer Arulmozhivarman the Lankan throne (II.35); their innumerable acts of
valour and heroism (I.30; IV.2); the services they rendered to God and religion
by building countless temples: Sundara Chozha recalls the golden roof that his
grandfather Parantaka I had raised over the shrine of Lord Nataraja at Thillai
Ambalam (Chidambaram) and expresses his stern disapproval of his son Aditha
Karikala building a Golden Palace for his father, instead of for God
(I.26); the respect they
showed nevertheless for other religions; Arulmozhivarman is praised for
rebuilding the Buddhist viharas in Sri Lanka (II.35); their strict
sexual-ethical code; a Chozha prince could marry any number of maidens but not
covet another man’s wife (IV.31); their stately palaces which were centres not
only of power but of literature and the arts: Vandiyathevan is awe-struck, on
entering the Thanjavur fort, at the contrast it offers to the now-decaying
erstwhile Pallava capital, Kanchi (I.25); the excellence of their craftsmen, as
seen in the chariotcum-boat that Kundavai and Vanathi use just before the
floods (V12); the rich fertility of their land: the novel begins in a
carnivalesque setting and atmosphere with Vandiyathevan riding on the banks of the
huge Veeranam lake during the sowing season taking in the sights and sounds of
joy and well-being all around him.
In all fairness it must be
said that Ponniyin Selvan is not all
romance and fantasy and that there are quite a few historical details of the
age that Kalki faithfully records. For instance, not withstanding the dominance
of a few queens and princesses (like Nandini or Kundavai) the position of most
women even in the royal and noble families remained weak and subordinate:
Nandini points out to Manimekalai (V31) how girls are given away in marriages
of political expediency, almost always against their will. Aniruddha
Brahmarayar resents women, even Princess Kundavai, interfering in politics
(III.27). Elsewhere Kalki reports the power dynamics of the age, the feuds of
minor kings and chieftains (IV40) and intermarriages among the clans, often
arranged in order to end the feuds and secure power. The chief Buddhist monk in
Sri Lanka refers to the atrocities committed by the invading Tamil kings in
that country (II.35). When Vandiyathevan, travelling to Sri Lanka in
Poonguzhali’s boat, wakes up in the morning to find the island in all its
resplendent glory, he asks Poonguzhali if it is heaven or earth. Poonguzhali
replies, in words that could well describe the island-nation even now, that it
is a heavenly land but that war-mongers like him had
been trying to turn this
heaven into hell (II.9). There are references to the rise of Islam:
Parthibendran sees the new religion as offering a possibility for Nandini
getting a divorce from Periya Pazhuvettarayar so that he, Parthibendra, can
marry her (III.3). There are descriptions of periodic visits to an astrologer
by royal personages; however, Kalki’s treatment of these visits and the
conversations that ensue are never free from irony (e.g. I.10).
Dealing with a period marked
by regular wars for regional supremacy and battles for local power, Ponniyin
Selvan is also replete with references to wars and war ethics. There is for
instance the question of the invader’s relation to the invaded country.
Arulmozhivarman, true to his noble image, departs from the existing convention
and insists that supplies to his army now in Sri Lanka should come from the
home country rather than be forcibly taken from the conquered country
(I.7). There are also
occasional discussions on the futility of war and on the fascination of a
quiet, contemplative life, but these are always rounded off with exhortations,
to oneself or others, on kshatriya dharma and the obligation to fight: Queen
Sembiyanmadevi cites the Durga Mahishasura myth to establish the need for war
to fight both kinds of demonic forces, the brainless as well as the cunning
(V.85). (Did the novelist have in mind World War II?) Kalki's characters,
living in a war-loving milieu, also adopt the practice of celebrating a hero by
the number of battles he has fought — Periya Pazhuvettarayar is honoured as one
who has proved his valour in twenty-four battles (I: 1) – or by the number of
scars he has sustained. Vandiyathevan, at the beginning of the novel, listens
to the song of young women on the banks of Veeranam lake in praise of
Vijayalaya Chozha who bore ninety-six battle scars like ornaments (I.1)! In
general, the Tamil society of those days seems to have been a title-loving
society. Parantaka I, we are told, was the holder of several titles such as
Veeranarayanan (in whose honour the Veeranarayanan Lake — now called Veeranam
Lake — was
built by his son), Pandita
Vatsalan (the lover of scholars), Kunjara Mallan (one who was elephant-like in
strength), Soorasikhamani (Champion Warrior), conqueror of Madurai and Eezham
(I.30). The longest of these title-series (thirty words in Tamil, many more
when translated into English!) occurs in IV. 1 when Aditha Karikala is welcomed
into the Kadambur castle. In comparison with such long, picturesque, sonorous
strings, the names of Western kings and conquerors e.g. (Alexander the Great,
William the Conqueror, Etheldred the Unready) must indeed sound dull, montonous
and colourless!
That must take us to the
other elements of romance that characterize Ponniyin
Selvan . The novel begins, as we said earlier, in a carnivalesque
atmosphere, on the banks of a lake and we listen, with Vandiyathevan, to the
vellappattu (“flood song”) and other forms of folk-music sung by young girls
(I.1). Later in the book there is a personified description, by means of an
extended metaphor in the high lyrical mode, of the river Ponni as a bride
(I.10). The lyrical strain is heard again whenever the key female figures of
the novel are introduced: the most famous of these is the comparison between
Kundavai and Nandini, paragons of female beauty of two different kinds.
The
enthusiasm of the people knew no bounds when they saw the two most beautiful
women of Chozha Nadu. Nandini was golden-hued in complexion; Kundavai had the
colour of the red-lotus. Nandini’s face was round like the full moon; Kundavai’s
was somewhat long, like a figure carved by a skilled sculptor. Nandini’s large,
dark eyes were like the outspread wings of a golden bee; Kundapai's long,
blue-black ones almost touched her ears and glistened like petals of a blue
lotus. Nandini’s nose was slightly flat and as smooth as ivory; Kundavai’s was
long, like the bud of a panneer flower. Nandini’s full lips seemed like a coral
cup overflowing with honey; Kundavai’s thinner ones were like a pomegranate
dipping with honey. Nandini wore her hair in a kondai decorated with an
elaborate floral arrangement; Kundavai’s hair, piled up like a crown,
proclaimed her a queen of beauty.
(II.Ch.14)
Shortly after this, however,
Kalki pits the two women against each other in a battle of wits and describes
it in martial terms:
There was constant war between the Pazhuvoor Ilaya Rani and Pazhayarai
Kundavai Piratti. They fought using verbal arrows and sharp, spear-like looks.
Sparks flew in that struggle as swords clashed and sharpened lances attacked
each other with flames. Tipo bolts of lightning trembled as they collided in a
darkened sky. Tivo beautiful, cruel tigresses grappled, scratching each other
until their talons drew blood. Two cobras danced, their hoods swaying,
thrusting out their thin, pointed red tongues, each threatening to swallow the
other.
(II.Ch.14)
There is also a less famous
comparison, that between Kundavai and Vanathi (I.10). Before we pass on to the
other romantic elements in Ponniyin
Selvan , we must say two things about Kalki's descriptions of women. First,
they are cast in highly imaginative terms, deploying simile and metaphor, but
are not really particularized or concretized. This is in a way a limitation
but, and this is our second point, the mode enables him to stop well short of
eroticism. There are a number of situations in the novel (I.2.1; II.45; V20)
which would well have been exploited by a later Tamil historical novelist like
Chandilyan to set the young reader's nerves tingling. Kalki had repeatedly
written against vulgarity and obscenity; he had attacked the later novels of
Vaduvur K. Duraiswami Iyengar on this score. When his attention was drawn to
the explicitness found in many novels of Western
countries, he snapped: “Let
such things appear in a mlecha bhasha and be damned, not in our precious Tamil
language!”
Needless to say, this was
another aspect of Kalki’s writing which must have ensured their reception as “safe”
and healthy reading in innumerable middle-class homes.
To return to Ponniyin Selvan , the lyrical mode
sustains reader interest in the meetings of lovers. At his meeting with
Kundavai on returning from Sri Lanka, Vandiyathevan launches into a two-page
long “recollection” of all the times he had “met” her before, forty thousand
years earlier, a hundred thousand times in hundreds of earlier lives, as
hunter, fisherman, gardener, warrior among men and gods! (III.22) Parthibendran,
generally given to martial bluster, finds himself moved to a poetic flight of
fancy at the sight of Nandini and states his love for her in the most
hyperbolic terms (III.3).
The elements of romance in Ponniyin Selvan are not confined to such
highly poetized descriptions, addresses and expostulations. The novelist also
provides witty delight whenever he describes the meetings of lovers. These
lively, witty, high spirited dialogues must have been as a whiff of fresh air to
the majority of Tamil readers who had only heard about the wit and humour of
Sangam poetry which was not really accessible to them. On the other hand, to
those who had read English literature, here was witty, animated, delightfully
romantic conversation in their own language reminiscent of those scintillating
repartees in Shakespearean Comedy or the Comedy of Manners, but without the
licentious overtones of the latter (V.84; V.90).
It has been the opinion of
many readers and critics of Kalki that Ponniyin
Selvan is not the most powerful of his historical romances; that that
credit must go to Sivagamiyin Sabadam
which certainly is far more tightly-knit and shows a far greater economy of
effort. However, the very vastness of Ponniyin
Selvan
(2448 pages as against the 105+ of Sivagamiyin
Sabadam ) also provides a larger canvas, a greater scope for peopling it
with characters great and small. As we said earlier Ponniyin Selvan brims over with people. The Marxist critic might
grumble that they are of the same social class or that they promote the
interests of the same class but surely there is sufficient variety among them and
it is a veritable character gallery that the novel presents. There was indeed
literally a “picture” gallery when the novel was being serialized and the illustrations
of Maniyam which accompanied each instalment contributed in no small measure to
the novel's popularity.
If the Chozha age is
conceived and presented by Kalki as a golden age, Arulmozhivarman must surely
have been the golden lad of that age. Though he was to become monarch (Rajaraja
Chozha I) . only later and achieve so much including the creation of the famous
Big Temple for Brahadeeswara (Siva) at Thanjavur, he is already presented in
the novel in idealized terms. He is the divinely protected child, born with the
marks in his palms of sanku (conch) and chakra (wheel), the objects which Lord
Vishnu holds in his hands. He is the darling of Goddess Ponni: “selvan” in
Tamil means “darling” but the word has suggestions of prosperity and
auspiciousness. In him are present “Arjuna's handsome grace and majesty and
Bhimasena's physical strength,” as Vandiyathevan muses to himself after being
worsted by the prince in a hurricane wrestling bout (II.30). He is the master
of all arts and can communicate with elephants as effectively as with kings and
saints (V.18). In his ability to seize opportunity he is likened by Kalki in an
authorial comment to heroes of history like Chandragupta, Julius Caesar, Joseph
Stalin and the like (V18). He is thirsty for martial action: he likens himself
to an unstoppable dense dark monsoon cloud that must break out into thunder,
lightning, storm and shower (V.86). He is a shrewd administrator; before the
coronation he disperses all possible trouble-makers in different directions (V.78).
He is the monarch who must save the empire from its friends as
well as its enemies, keep his
own counsel, take his own decision and carry it out at the end (V.73; V.88). He
is the sensitive intellectual who is caught between conflicting longings and urges
and must choose between a life of action and a life of contemplation (V1), and
who can raise philosophical questions about reconciling the notion of a
benevolent God with that of an omnipotent God (V1). He is soft and selfless and
is drawn to a life of sacrifice as many others before him in history and legend
had been: Emperor Sibi, Lord Ram, Harichandra, Buddha, Jesus Christ (V16). In
short he is the ideal man and the ideal monarch, beloved of his people, and at
his coronation celebrations, myth and history mingle in festive spirit. The
novelist likens the gaiety of the Chozha people on this occasion to the joy of
the people of Ayodhya at the time of Sri Rama’s coronation. Kalki quotes the
relevant verse from Kamba Ramayanam
and renders it into modern Tamil:
All the aged women (of Ayodhya) became like Kosalai: they rejoiced,
thinking their own sons were to be crowned; all the young women attained the
bliss that Sita attained and decorated themselves with ornaments, imagining
that their husbands were to be crowned; all the old men became as Dasaratha.
(VCh. 87)
However, it is not
Arulmozhivarman but Vandiyathevan whom the novelist refers to, every now and
then, as “our hero.” If Arulmozhi is conceived and presented as
larger-than-life, Vandiyathevan is depicted as a more real, more life-like
human being than Arulmozhi and we and the author emotionally warm to him.
(Incidentally, in Sadasiva Pandarathar’s Pirkala
Chozhar Charittiram , one of the sources for Kalki, there is just a
five-line reference to Vandiyathevan, that he belonged to the Eastern Chalukya
dynasty, that he married Kundavai and stayed on in the Chozha country.)
Kundavai suggests, not quite
fancifully or mischievously, that Vandiyathevan was the only person for whom
even Nandini had softer feelings (V90).
He is the picaresque hero who
literally and metaphorically rides through the novel, seeking his fortune,
courting adventure, often acting on impulse, walking, running, riding or
swimming into trouble and talking and fighting (sometimes both simultaneously)
his way out of it, breaking resolutions as fast as he makes them, blushing at
his own folly (III.12), admonishing himself (I.34), laughing at himself
(III.1.2). Vandiyathevan is the one character who really changes and grows through
the novel and as the novel ends with his tears falling On Manimekalai's face,
the author salutes and blesses him and bids him farewell saying, “May your
auspicious name ever live in the valorous tradition of Tamils!”
It has been said about the
power of Kalki’s imaginative creations that often the non-historical personages
are far more memorable than the historical figures. It is as though, after
creating the fictional ghoullike figure of Naganandi in Sivagamiyin Sabadam , Kalki decided to present the brighter exterior of evil and fashioned Nandini
as “the cunningest pattern of excelling Nature” as Shakespeare might say, using
“cunning” in all its ambiguity. Kalki knew his Shakespeare and Thackeray and
his readers would have surely recognized in Nandini – named, ironically, after
the sacred cow Kamadhenu, and pictured, in all the illustrations, in the
likeness of Goddess Andal – a combination of Cleopatra and Rebecca Sharp in her
amazing ability to ensnare all around her, certainly all the men. We have already
mentioned the novelist’s comparisons of her beauty with Kundavai’s but we must
observe here the nature of the similes and metaphors that she evokes:
Could the softness of Kasi silk, the intoxication of liquor; the
sweetness of wild honey and the blinding brilliance of
monsoon lightning mingle in a girl’s voice? They had, just now!
(I.Ch. 22)
These are the musings of
Vandiyathevan as he hears Nandini's voice for the first time. But, as her
figure visits him in his half sleep later the same night, it slides into
another image from childhood; a cobra which had once mesmerised and terrorised
him as he walked through a jungle (I.23).
There is a melancholy strain
in Kalki’s presentations of Vanathi and Poonguzhali. Poonguzhali's pensive song
as she rows through the midnight ocean (“Alaikadalum oyndirukka”: “When the
wave-filled ocean is at rest...”), which became so famous among the readers,
was Kalki's own poetic composition. Vanathi is the soft and helpless orphan
always in need of protection till a transformation takes place in her. But the
most unconvincing aspect of the novel — there are other wild improbabilities
and amazing coincidences which however we can accept as inevitable in a romance
— is the change in Poonguzhali: from a fearless, solitary spirit, in love with
the sea and marshes and jack-o' lanterns, loathing and abominating everyone
except her aunt and Arulmozhivarman, to a quiet and self-satisfied royal wife
exchanging pleasantries with all around at the end of the novel.
There are a host of other
characters including the old warhorse Periya Pazhuvettarayar in near dotage,
but displaying courage and devotion at the very end, the sagacious Prime
Minister Anirudha Brahmaraya who has his eyes and ears everywhere in the empire
and outside, the impetuous Aditha Karikala, suffering eternally from a sense of
guilt and rushing to his destruction at Nandini's call as surely as a moth is
drawn to the flame, the mysterious Mandakini playing the guardian angel to the
royal family at every moment of danger and so on. But surely the most
delightful creation in Ponniyin Selvan
, the most delightful in all Kalki we
might say, is Azhwarkadiyan (“the
servant of Azhwars”), by no means phoney in his devotion to those saints and to
Lord Vishnu, but equally — even more — committed to the service of the state
and its Prime Minister. Short and stout, he is the perfect foil in stature to
Vandiyathevan in whose company — sometimes without his knowledge — he roams the
Chozha country and Sri Lanka. But he is more than a match to Vandiyathevan in
bravery, resourcefulness, wit and humour. He rescues Vandiyathevan from many a
disaster by his timely intervention. The most hilarious scenes in the novel are
however those in which Azhwarkadiyan pits his wits or wields his stick against
the detractors of Vishnu – and it is in that role that we and the hero
Vandiyathevan are introduced to him in the very second chapter of the novel.
When the Advaitic vedantin tries to wriggle out of an embarrassing situation by
cleverly saying that he doesn’t mind being hit by Azhwarkadiyan – the vedantin
says, “The one who strikes is Brahmam; the one who is struck is also brahmam;
in striking me you will be striking yourself” – Azhwarkadiyan is ready with his
retort and his stick: “Watch me, all of you. Brahman is going to be hit by Para
Brahman, the Greatest Brahman. I am going to hit myself with this staff,” he
says and advances towards the swami rolling his stick. The swami vanishes into
the crowd! (I.2). There is a trace of Falstaff in Azhawarkadiyan in wit and
size, and like Falstaff he in no small degree contributes to the education of
the young prince in his company, but unlike Falstaff he is truly courageous and
heroic. It is a measure of Kalki's success that in presenting this character
with comic and satirical intent he did not hurt the sentiments of his
Vaishnavite readers. He was, and is, loved by every reader of Ponniyin Selvan .
Kalki's great asset as a
narrator is his ability to relate to the reader in the warmest manner. He is
constantly aware of the reader, sometimes looking over his shoulder, sometimes
walking with him, sometimes trying to overtake him. He therefore is ever ready
with his authorial comments, chatting
with the readers, preparing
them for what follows (“Let us return to ...”), warning them against
misunderstanding and so on. He provides psychologically convincing insights
through his authorical comments, e.g. the one about Periya Pazhuvettarayar's
satisfaction, in the midst of a great betrayal, that Nandini had not been
guilty of infidelity (V11). He is aware of his narrative obligations. Sometimes
he feels the need to justify to the readers the shifts in his characters’
stances, explaining how he himself may have misled his readers (V.76).
Sometimes he apologizes to the readers, in a quaint and humorous manner, for
having neglected a character for a while.
For quite some time now, we have neglected Azhwarkadiyan, with whom we
had moved very closely at the very beginning of this story. For this, we beg
the forgiveness of our readers and, more importantly, of Nambi, since he is now
in a rage. His tuft flies in the wind that blows on the Rameswaram seashore; he
whirls his stick over his head. He is surrounded by Adi Saivas and Veera
Saivas. They are clamouring noisily, so we are slightly worried about the fate
of Azhwarkadiyan. However, Nambi’s look of a Narasimha avatar, and the speed at
which his stick whirls dispel our anxiety.
(II.Ch.10)
Kalki is without doubt one of
the most reader-friendly authors that ever wrote. We can be sure that Mr.
Karthik Narayanan's translation of Ponniyin
Selvan , being launched in Kalki's centenary year, will win this great
Tamil novelist hundreds, if not thousands, of friends in the English-reading
world.
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