With the publication of The
Heroic Age by H. M. Chadwick in 1912, the comparative
study of heroic poetry may be said to have begun.
Beginning his studies on the early narrative poetry of
the Anglo-Saxons, he extended his inquiry to the epics
of different peoples - particularly the ancient Greeks-
and by a comparative study established a number of
correlations which make it possible to refer to a body
of works showing many of the same characteristics, that
they may be regarded as arising out of a specific set
of social and historical conditions.
Following Chadwick's work, the
epic narrative poetry of the Indo-European nations was
studied, by many who have produced a considerable
number of works on the Homeric epics, the old French
epic, the Teutonic heroic songs, the epics of Indians,
the Irish and Icelandic prose sagas and Slavonic
popular literature.
Chadwick himself along with his
wife followed up his studies with the monumental
three-volume work The Growth of Literature (Cambridge
1932-40), which drew on several studies in various
languages. They rightly emphasized the potential value
in the study of the heroic poetry of non-Indo-European
peoples, particularly the African and Polynesian
communities. In recent years archaeological studies of
the Near East have led to the 'discovery' of a New
Heroic Age of the Ancient Sumerians. This has been
largely due to the work of S. N. Kramer, who has
applied the comparative method of Chadwick very
successfully. Referring to the pioneering works of the
Chadwicks, Kramer says, "it is no insignificant index
of the value and reliability of these works to note
their effective utilization to give meaning and form to
an hitherto practically unknown cultural stage in the
history of ancient Mesopotamia." (1)
Since heroic poetry may be
related to a specific socio-historical condition and
literary milieu it can arise at different times among
different peoples. So far as is known, the Sumerian
Heroic Age is the oldest, preceding the oldest of the
Indo-European Heroic Ages, that of the Greeks, by more
than a millenium and a half. The Indo-Aryan or (North)
Indian Heroic Age probably dates only a century or so
later than that of Greece.
One could venture to say that the
Tamil Heroic Age comes next in time, preceding the
Teutonic Heroic Age of about the fourth century A.D.
The Tamil Heroic Age should be placed somewhere
in the fourth or fifth century B.C.. Before we go on to
it, it would be relevant to point out here that in
almost all the cases of these ancient Heroic Ages, the
written literary pieces relating to them date from much
later days; in Sumer it is said that some at least of
the heroic lays were first inscribed on clay some five
to six hundred years following the close of the Heroic
Age; (2) a span of
about four hundred years may be ascribed for the Greek
and a little more may be the case with that of the
Tamils. In any case the Tamil heroic poetry had most
probably been committed to writing by the beginning of
the Christian era.
Now, what is of interest to us
here is that the bulk of the heroic poetry which has
come down to us, portrays the emergence of the three
principal kingdoms from among innumerable tribal
organisations and village communities. This epoch in a
nation's history is violent but brilliant, short-lived
but glorious, convulsive but opulent. As elsewhere, the
politics of the Tamil Heroic Age were marked by the
ascendancy of an "energetic military caste, which torn
by internecine conflicts of succession and inheritance
breaks loose from its tribal bonds into a career of
violent, self-assertive individualism." (3)
It has been pointed out that most
heroic poetry evolves round a few select personalities,
giving rise to a cycle of poems and lays. For example,
in the Slavonic Kiev cycle of heroic poems, Vladimir I
dominates the subject matter, (4) as Charlemagne does in the French
Chanson de Roland. Similarly, Sumerian heroic poetry
centres round, among others, Gilgamish. Among the
Kirghiz, the greatest hero is Manas with his retinue of
forty friends. The heroic songs of Manas form a cycle
and, with that, the starting point for a real epic is
provided. The ease of Achilles, Odysseus and Hector is
only too familiar in the Greek epics.
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In common with this
general characteristic, most of the
Ten Songs have their heroes, two princes,
NheTunjcezhiyan of the PaaNTiya dynasty and
Karikaalan of the Coozha dynasty. Cengkuttuvan
of the Ceeral line represents the third family.
We have mentioned that Emperor Asoka referred
in his rock edicts to these three kingdoms. In
the course of the development of Tamil heroic
poetry, one from each of these three dynasties
seem to have emerged and remained heroes par
excellence.
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Students of heroic poetry have
often formulated the following general characteristics
for comparative purposes:
(1) narratives told for their
own sake;
(2) connected with the Heroic Age of past;
(3) they contain factual m detailed descriptions;
(4) told in the third person with abundant speeches;
(5) full of formula, i.e., noun-adjective
combination, repeated lines, and themes used often
though not always in precisely the same form;
(6) composed in a metre where the line is the unit
and not the stanza;
(7) centred on a few heroes;
(8) accepted by later generations as records of
historical past. The idea that the bards who sang
these were divinely inspired gave it absolute
authenticity.(5)
Now, if we turn to the Tamil
heroic poems, we find these characteristics more or
less valid. The Ten Songs at least are narratives,
developed by generations of bards whose special
vocation was the declamation of heroic poetry; they are
certainly connected with a Heroic Age, which saw the
establishment or the laying of foundations for the
establishment of the three kingdoms which survived well
into the medieval period.
In them we have abundant factual
and detailed descriptions of unimportant actions,
needed by the narratives, such as banquets, dress,
travel, ornaments, instruments, etc. They are narrated
in the third person, but with plenty of speeches, such
as oaths, challenges, reports and the like. The words
kilhavi and kuuttu may be noted. The very basis of this
poetry is the traditional language of the epics, full
of all formulae, which had led some modern critics to
see painful repetitions in them. The metre of these
poems is akaval, the oldest known metre in Tamil,
ideally suited for oral narration, and comparable - and
in fact compared by some - to the Greek hexametre. They
are centered around a few super heroes. They were
traditionally accepted by Tamil scholarship as of
authentic historical past, and like the Homeric poems
we know that they formed the staple of Tamil education
in post heroic period until our times.
For Homer," wrote Parry "as for
all minstrels, to versify was to remember - to remember
words, expressions, phrases from the recitals of
minstrels who had bequeathed to him the traditional
style of heroic verse." By studying the recent
compositions of Jugoslav minstrels, he demonstrated
that such poems depend upon a gradually evolved
traditional style of stock epithets, fixed expressions,
which the bards fit into their mould of verse after a
fixed pattern, according to their needs.
Now a study of the early Tamil
poems show this to be very true. For example fixed
formulaic phrases like "chieftain of swift steeds ", "
warrior of victorious lance", "possessor of lofty
chariots," "chieftain of eye-filling garlands ",
"Ceeran of war-drum beating army", "wide-spaced world
", "beautiful broad breast ", "Mathurai rich in gold",
are repeated wherever occasion demands them, and they
are not always the characteristic style of a single
poet. The question of imitation does not arise at all,
as there is "no question of plagiarism or copyright
".(6)
Readers of Homeric epic are
familiar with formulaic phrases such as chronos thronos
Here - 'golden-throned Hera', polytlas dios Odysseus -
'long-suffering god-like Odysseus', Gerenios hippota
nestor - 'the Gerenion charioteer Nestor', Glaukos
Athene - ' grey-eyed Athene' or 'Mycenae or Troy rich
in gold', etc. Such stock epithets and many others like
them evolved by a long process were the stock in trade
of all the minstrels and in due course came to form a
literary dialect or what has been called the epic
dialect. Similar to these noun-adjective combinations
are the stock of repeated lines and
passages.
This composite nature of the
Tamil heroic poems, and their cherished recital by
schools of bards - of which we have some evidence -
in due course lead to what we may call a "national
consciousness ", an idea of pan-Tamilian culture,
which in fact became a political concept in
historical times. In this sense, one is naturally
reminded of the gradual evolution of a Greek national
consciousness arising out of the recitation of the
Iliad and the Odyssey at the Panathenaea.
In an epic style like that of
early Tamil heroic poetry, reaching back through a
tradition, we would naturally find not only ancient
words and usage but also archaic customs and manners.
There are survivals in the poems, faithfully carried on
by the bards as part of their stylistic heritage. The
Tamil heroic poetry perhaps, took its final form, when
trade between South India and the western world
flourished.
The writings of the Graeco-Roman
geographers corroborate some of the evidence in these
poems. As such they are datable. And descriptions of
material objects are identical. Yet the bulk of the
poetry contains older memories with their terminology
unchanged.
We may cite an example. There are
repeated references to 'raincloud-like black hides'-
the heroes' shield. The word used for hide is tool,
'skin' or 'hide', has survived to this day. This
expression was probably an echo of a time when hide was
in fact used as a shield. But we also find in the poem
new words - meaning shields of other materials - wood
and metal. These were presumably added by later bards,
when such was the practice.
A striking parallel is seen in
the Iliad. In the 6th Book, when Hector withdraws from
battle, it is said, 'the black hide beat upon his neck
ankles', referring in all probability to a Nycenean
body shield. But it has been pointed out that at a
later date it was not visualized as such, and a further
description, "the rim which ran round the outside of
the bossed shield", was added. The latter description
does not fit with the earlier one.
Finally I shall just mention one
more aspect of heroic poetry that promises scope for
comparative study: the simile. It has been pointed out
by students of Homeric epics that there are three types
of simile:-
(1) The elementary one. The
identification of one object with another.
(2) Where comparisons in two objects are developed on
both sides.
(3) The typical Homeric, or epic simile in which the
image used as illustration is developed at length for
its own sake, where some of the details no longer
apply in the comparison.(7)
With the reservation that Tamil
Heroic poetry did not develop into the epic but
remained in the form of lays - the longest being about
700 lines - which to some degree curbs the effective
use of similes - it may be said that all three types
are found in it.(8)
By way of conclusion, let me draw
your attention to the immense potentialities of the
comparative method. In a penetrating essay on The
Comparative Study of Homer, (9) Sir Maurice Bowra has shown how
comparative studies or rather studies in other
literatures have had their impact on Homeric
scholarship.
For example, Lachmann's theory of
independent lays that constitute the Iliad is said to
be traceable to the creation of the Kalevala by the
poet-scholar-folklorist Lönnrot. This was a
Finnish epic made, out of a number of epic poems
collected by the scholar.
Likewise, the postulation of
three strata for the Iliad by Leaf, the famous editor,
commentator and analyst, owes something to the
systematic analysis and edition of the
Mahdbhãrata, with its obvious interpolations. The
idea held by the influential Greek scholar and
translator, Gilbert Murray, that the Homeric epics are
traditional books, subject to continuous change, i.e.
accretion and expurgation, appears to have been derived
from the Higher Criticism of the Old
Testament.(10)
These were some of the influences
that emanated from works of the last century and
before. In the present century the collection and
analysis of living oral poetry of several peoples have
gradually helped evolve a new -awareness of oral
poetics which alone seems to hold the key to the true
understanding and appreciation of heroic poets like
Homer.
Says Professor Emeneau, "For many
scholars over many centuries the implications of oral
composition for the understanding of Homer were
forgotten. There was a need for some new impulse to
make the matter vivid enough to be vital in Homeric
Studies."(11)
The reference is of course to
Milman Parry and his associates who broke new ground by
applying boldly and profitably to Homeric study the
details of the technique of oral verse-making found
among the South Slav epic singers.
While studies on Tamil heroic
poetry can benefit immensely from such works as that of
Radlov, the Chadwicks, Parry, Thomson, Lord and others,
(12) I would hazard
the suggestion that a proper study of Tamil heroic
poetry itself will in turn throw some light at least on
some problems that beset the students of Homeric and
other heroic poetry in general.
Notes
1.S. N. KRAMER, "Heroes of Sumer - A New
Heroic Age in World History and Literature ", PAPS 90
(1946), p. 120.
2. Ibid., p. 121.
3. G. THOMSON,
Studies in Ancient Greek Society, I: The Prehistoric
Aegean, 2nd ed., London, 1954, pp. 413 f.
4. H. M. and N. K.
CHADWICK, The Growth of Literature, Cambridge, 1932-40,
2, p. 99; 3, p. 37; etc.
5. For a detailed
enumeration of these categories, see C. M. BOWRA, "The
Comparative Study of Homer", AJA LIV (1950), p.
185.
6. Cf. C. M. B0WRA,
in Companion to Homer, p. 34.
7. R. W. WILLETTS,
"The World of Homer", Our History Series 32 (1963-64),
pp. 8-11
8.REV. X. S.
THANINAYAGAM has briefly referred to the striking
similarity between the Homeric and Tamil simile. Cf.
Nature Ancient Tamil Poetry, Tuticorin, 1953, pp.
48f
9. AJA LIV (1950),
pp. 184-92.
10.Cf. G. MURRAY,
The Rise of the Greek Epic, Oxford, 1934, pp.
93-145.
11."M. B. EMENEAU,
"Oral Poets of South India-The Todas ", JAF 71 (1958),
p. 312. As an attempt at applying theories of oral
poetics to a living Dravidian literature, the
importance of this essay cannot be over-rated. See also
"The Songs of the Todas ", PAPS 77 (1937), pp.
543-59.
12. For a detailed
comparison of such features, see K. KAILASAPATHY, A
Study of Tamil Heroic Poetry with Some Reference to
Ancient Greek Epics (Thesis approved for the degree of
Ph.D., in the University of Birmingham). Material
contained in this thesis was later published in
*Tamil Heroic Poetry, Clarendon
Press, Oxford, 1968
