# Ilango Adigal

Ilango Adigal (a title, literally "prince ascetic", fl. c. 4th-6th century CE) was a Jain monk, belonging to the Chera royal family, from the city of Vanchi. He is traditionally credited as the author of the epic poem Cilappatikaram (the Song of the Anklet), one of the Five Great Epics of Tamil literature.
In the patikam (the prologue) to the poem, Ilango Adigal identifies himself as the brother of the Chera king Cenkuttuvan (c. late 2nd century CE). However, it is generally assumed that the author was a member of Chera royal family during a period much later than Cenkuttuvan (and composed the poem based on a reliable version of the historical tradition regarding Cenkuttuvan and Kannaki).

## Biography

No direct verifiable information, other than from Cilappatikaram ("The Lay of the Anklet") and its prologue, is available about Ilango Adigal.
According to them, Ilango Adigal was a Chera prince ("Kudakko Ceral Ilanko"). He was the younger son of Chera king Imayavarampan Ceralatan and Sonai/Nalconai of the Chola dynasty. His elder brother was Cenkuttuvan, [future] the reputed warrior-king from the Chera family.
The young Ilango chose to forgo the royal life because a soothsayer had told the Chera royal court that the younger prince will succeed his father. And thus the prince became a Jain ascetic in a monastery, called "Kunavayirkottam", outside the Chera capital Vanchi.
It was probably another poet, Chathanar, a friend of Ilango, who discussed the Kannaki legend with Ilango, and inspired him to compose the epic poem. In several parts of the Cilappatikaram, the key characters often meet a Jaina monk [or nun].

### Legacy

The Cilappatikaram epic — credited to Ilango Adigal — inspired another Tamil poetic epic called Manimekalai (which acts as a sequel to the first work). It revolves around the daughter of Kovalan, the protagonist of Cilappatikaram, and Madhavi (the dancing girl who had an affair with Kovalan in Cilappatikaram), named "Manimekalai.

## Historic dating

The dating of Ilango Adigal, the author, to early historic south India, or the Sangam period, is doubtful because the Fifth Ten, Patitruppattu Collection, dated to early historic south India, provides a biography of Cenkuttuvan, his royal family and rule, but never mentions that the king had a brother who became an ascetic or wrote an epic composition. This has led scholars to conclude that the Ilango Adigal biography was likely inserted later into the epic Cilappatikaram.
Scholar Zvelebil suggested that, the Ilango Adigal background and his relationsip with Cenkuttuvan, may be a bit of "poetic fantasy", practiced perhaps by a later member of the Chera Dynasty [5th or 6th century CE] recalling earlier events [2nd or 3rd century CE]". However, Zvelebil explains later:
   "Those who distrust the colophons to Patirrupattu, as well as who tried to prove that the 3rd book of Cilappatikaram was almost a late forgery, have committed one very basic fallacy they thought that late material was necessarily unauthentic, their utterly false contention was that the content of a work could not be older than its form"
The author does appear as a character in the very end of poem (the last canto of the epic, lines 155-178, mentions "I also went in [...]", whose "I" scholars have assumed to be the author Ilango Adigal).
According to Zvelebil, the background must have been added by Ilango Adigal to remain a part of the collective memory in the epic he composed. Adigal was likely a Jain scholar who lived a few centuries later, states Zvelebil, and his epic "cannot have been composed before the 5th- or 6th-century [AD]".
The author was likely not a prince, nor had anything to do with the Chera dynasty, says scholar R. Parthasarathy, and these lines may have been added to the epic to give the text a high pedigree status, gain royal support, and to "institutionalize the worship of goddess Pattini and her temples" in the Tamil regions (modern Kerala and Tamil Nadu) as is described in the poem.

### Gajabahu Synchronism

The epic Cilappatikaram also mentions, among other details, the "Gajabahu Synchronism" (Canto 30, lines 155-164). It was famously used by historians such as K. A. Nilakanta Sastri to date the poem and early Tamil history to 2nd/3rd century CE.
Cilappatikaram (Canto 30, lines 155-164) states that poet Ilango Adigal attended the consecration of the Pattini temple, by Chera king Cenkuttuvan (at the Chera city of Vanchi) in the presence of Gajabahu, the king of Sri Lanka. Gajabahu, thus referred, is identified with the historical ruler of Sri Lanka with the same name (c. 173-95 CE). This has led to the proposals that Ilango Adigal lived in the same period as historical Gajabahu (in early historic south India).
Scholar Obeyesekere considers the epic's claims of Gajabahu, the ruler of Sri Lanka, and the kinship between Ilango Adigal and Senguttuvan to be "ahistorical", and that these portions are likely "a late interpolation" into the poem.
   "There are, however, other pieces of evidence to broadly support this [Gajabahu] chronology"