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''Neṭunalvāṭai'' (, ''lit''. "good long north wind", metonymically "cold season") is an ancient
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
People, culture and language
* Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka
** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...
poem in the
Sangam literature
The Sangam literature (Tamil language, Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam''), historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' (Tamil language, Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cā ...
. Also referred to as ''Nedunalvadai'', it is a blend of a love and war story, highlighting the pains of separation of a queen waiting for her lover to return from the distant war. Authored by
Nakkirar, it is the seventh poem in the ''
Pattuppāṭṭu'' anthology. The poem is generally dated to the late classical period (2nd to 4th century CE).
Nedunalvadai contains 188 lines of poetry in the ''akaval''
metre
The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
. It is a poem of complex and subtle artistic composition, its vividness and language has won it many superlatives, including one by the Tamil literature scholar Kamil Zvelebil, as "the best or one of the best of the lays of the
angambardic corpus". According to G. John Samuel, the "Netunalvatai belongs to the great corpus of ancient classical erotic poems of the world which include the beautiful love poems of the Grecian world, the ''
Song of songs
The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...
'' of the Hebraic world, the ancient
pastoral
The pastoral genre of literature, art, or music depicts an idealised form of the shepherd's lifestyle – herding livestock around open areas of land according to the seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. The target au ...
poems of the
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
literature and the ''Muktaka'' poems of the Sanskrit tradition".
The poem weaves two themes, one of a beautiful palace with a queen inconsolably weeping and missing her husband, another of a chaotic war camp with the
Pandya
The Pandya dynasty (), also referred to as the Pandyas of Madurai, was an ancient Tamil dynasty of South India, and among the four great kingdoms of Tamilakam, the other three being the Pallavas, the Cholas and the Cheras. Existing sinc ...
king Netunceliyan busy and attending his injured soldiers. The former is the ''akam''-genre poetry, the latter the ''puram''-genre. The poem neither names the king nor the queen, but this is alluded to by the metaphors and the words that paint where she lives with her attendants (palace) and by the role and achievements of the man who is at the war front. Similarly, the city itself is not explicitly named, but alluded to by the details included. In the Tamil tradition, as linked in a medieval commentary on this poem, the unnamed king is presumed to be Netunceliyan.
The poem paints the Tamil region in the cold season, with the northerly wind and retreating monsoonal rains. The people are described as huddling around fires, people then putting their warmed hands on their cheeks, how animals and birds shiver. Women wear simple clothes and minimal jewelry (wedding bracelets) inside their homes and mansions, as their husbands are away on war. In contrast, on the war front, men are decked up in their protective gear inside their simple tents.
The ''Netunalvatai'' verses provide social and cultural information. Musical troupes were accompanied by dancing girls in the city. Women prayed to Korravai goddess in temples seeking the safe return of their husbands (lines 48–52, 185–194). They would light lamps, offer flowers and rice with their prayers. Lines 101–102 suggest that Tamil merchants traded with Greek-Romans (''yavanas'') for designer lamps.
See also
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Eighteen Greater Texts
The Eighteen Greater Texts, known as Patiṉeṇmēlkaṇakku () in the literature, is the collection of the oldest surviving Tamil poetry. This collection is considered part of the Sangam Literature and dated approximately between 100 BCE and ...
*
Sangam literature
The Sangam literature (Tamil language, Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam''), historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' (Tamil language, Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cā ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
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* Mudaliyar, Singaravelu A., Apithana Cintamani, An encyclopaedia of Tamil Literature, (1931) - Reprinted by Asian Educational Services, New Delhi (1983)
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* Selby, Martha Ann (2011) Tamil Love Poetry: The Five Hundred Short Poems of the Aiṅkuṟunūṟu, an Early Third-Century Anthology. Columbia University Press,
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{{Tamil language
Sangam literature