page_title: Iraiyanar Akapporul
section_title: Content
hierarchical_section_title: Iraiyanar Akapporul / Content
caption_attribution_description: Jasminum multiflorumEnglish: Downy Jasmine
context_page_description: Iraiyaṉār Akapporuḷ, or Kaḷaviyal eṉṟa Iraiyaṉār Akapporuḷ, literally "Iraiyanar's treatise on the love-theme, called 'The study of stolen love'" is an early mediaeval work on Tamil poetics, specifically, on the literary conventions associated with the akam tradition of Tamil love poetry. The date of the work is uncertain, but it is generally taken to have been composed between the fifth and eighth centuries.
  The Akapporul consists of a set of sixty nūṟpās - terse epigrams written in verse which codify rules - attributed to Iraiyanar. The received text of the accompanied by a long prose treatise on akam poetics attributed to Nakkiraṉār, which is structured as a commentary on the nūṟpās, but significantly expands on them and introduces several new ideas. The work as a whole occupies an important place in the history of Tamil literature for several reasons. The poetical argument of the work, and in particular Nakkiranar's treatment of traditional love episodes as successive scenes in an unfolding drama, was extremely influential in the development of Tamil love poetry and poetics in the mediaeval and pre-colonial periods. Secondly.
context_section_description: Iraiyanar Akapporul is concerned with setting out the literary conventions that govern Tamil love poetry of the akam tradition.  The conventions, as such, are taken from the poetics of the Sangam period.  Thus a poem is a poetical snapshot of one instant in a relationship.  This snapshot provides a glimpse into the lives of the couple which is in love.  In addition, each poem must consist of actual words spoken by one of the persons involved in the relationship, without any commentary by an omniscient narrator.  Only certain characters may speak - the hero (talaivaṉ) and heroine (talaivi), a close male friend of the hero (tōḻaṉ) or a close female friend of the heroine (tōḻi), a mother or foster-mother, priests, courtesans, bards who mediate between a wife and husband, and a few other characters.  The words spoken must also be addressed to a listener - the conventions of akam poetry did not permit soliloquies.  However, the listener need not necessarily be the person to whom the words are seemingly addressed.  A common device in akam poetry is to have words seemingly spoken to a friend, but actually intended for the speaker's lover, who the speaker knows is eavesdropping.
  The content of the poems is highly conventionalised.  Each poem must belong to one of five tiṇais, poetical modes or themes.  Each mode consists of a complete poetical landscape - a definite time, place, season in which the poem is set - and background elements characteristic of that landscape - including flora and fauna, inhabitants, deities and social organisation - that provide imagery for poetic metaphors.  The modes are associated with specific aspects of relationships, such as the first meeting, separation, quarrelling, pining and waiting.  Each mode is named for the chief flower in the landscape with which it is associated.  The table to the left gives an example of the various elements which the text associates with the mode marutam.
  In Sangam literature, the composition of such a poem describing an instant in a relationship was an end in itself.  In the Iraiyanar Akapporul, however, its purpose is more complex.  Each poem is an instant in a developing relationship, and is ordinarily preceded and followed by other poems that describe preceding and succeeding instants in the same relationship.  The instants described by each poem must, therefore, also develop the plot, and the character of the persons who are the subject of the work.  Thus the Iraiyanar Akapporul discusses the importance of the essential characteristics of the hero and heroine, and the tension between each of these characteristics and the love and desire of the couple for each other.  Each of the moments described in successive poems, set in an appropriate tiṇai, moves this along, by describing how the couple react to each other in the context of specific situations.
  The text divides the evolution of a relationship into two phases, the phase of kaḷavu or "stolen" love, and the phase of kaṟpu or "chaste" love.  Love is considered to be "stolen" before marriage, and "chaste" after marriage.  A number of situations can occur within each phase.  Within the phase of "stolen" love, for instance, situations that may exist include a nighttime tryst (iravukkuṟi), a daytime tryst (pakaṟkuṟi), the friend urging the hero to marry the heroine (varaivu vēṭkai), the hero temporarily leaving the heroine to avoid gossip (oruvaḻittaṇattal), and so on.  Similarly, within the phase of "chaste" love, situations that may arise include the newly-wed phase (kaṭimaṉai), the necessity to discharge duties (viṉai muṟṟal), separation so that the hero can earn money (poruṭpiṇi pirivu), and so on.  Later texts, such as Akapporul Vilakkam, discuss a third intermediate phase, that of the marriage itself, but Iraiyanar Akapporul does not treat this as being a separate phase, though it does deal with some of the situations that later texts classify under the phase of marriage.  In his commentary on Iraiyanar's penultimate verse, Nakkiranar explains in detail how, by carefully choosing the situations, speakers and t
caption: The mullai theme - named for the jasmine flower - deals with the endurance of a lover waiting for the return of her beloved
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-TZ1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Ver.1.0", "Image DateTime": "2007:07:13 10:08:05", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "418", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7060", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7999", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/800", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:07:13 10:08:05", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:07:13 10:08:05", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "26/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2048", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1536", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "6908", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "35", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}