Sangam Literature Corpus

The complete extant corpus of Sangam literature (சங்க இலக்கியம், Old Tamil, c. 300 BCE – 300 CE) with modern English translations, scholarly notes, word-by-word glossaries, and rich per-poem metadata. One row per poem, 2,377 rows.

All text was scraped from Sangam Translations by Vaidehi, the site of translator Vaidehi Herbert, who translated all 18 classics of the Sangam corpus.

Contents

work	rows	notes
Natrinai (நற்றிணை)	399	poem 234 lost
Kurunthokai (குறுந்தொகை)	401
Ainkurunuru (ஐங்குறுநூறு)	498	poems 129–130 lost
Akananuru (அகநானூறு)	400
Purananuru (புறநானூறு)	398	poems 267–268 lost
Kalithokai (கலித்தொகை)	150	incl. invocation
Pathitruppathu (பதிற்றுப்பத்து)	80 + 8	first & last decades lost; 8 pathikam (epilog) rows
Paripadal (பரிபாடல்)	22	extant poems
Paripadal Thirattu (பரிபாடல் திரட்டு)	11	fragments preserved in commentaries (4–5 are a few lines)
Pathuppattu (பத்துப்பாட்டு) — the ten idylls	10	one row per long poem, section titles inline

Schema

field	type	description
id	string	e.g. natrinai_0001, nedunalvadai, pathitruppathu_pathikam_2
category	string	Ettuthokai (eight anthologies) or Pathuppattu (ten idylls)
work / work_tamil	string	work name in English / Tamil
poem_number	int64?	null for the ten idylls and pathikams
title_tamil / title_english	string?	raw poem headers from the source (lossless)
poet	string?	poet name (romanized where the source gives it)
thinai	string?	landscape/theme classification (e.g. Kurinji, Pālai, Pādān)
thurai	string?	sub-theme (mainly Purananuru)
situation	string?	dramatic context, e.g. "What the heroine said to her friend"
sung_to	string?	king/patron/deity the poem addresses (Puram works, Paripadal)
group	string?	decade/section name, e.g. Ainkurunuru "வேட்கைப் பத்து – Ten on Wishing"
composer / melody	string?	Paripadal only: musical composer and pann (melody)
tamil_text	string	the Old Tamil verse (line breaks preserved)
english_translation	string	Vaidehi Herbert's English translation
notes	string?	scholarly notes (mostly Tamil, citing classical commentators)
meanings	string?	word-by-word Tamil→English glossary
tamil_urai	string?	modern Tamil prose explanation (பொருளுரை) — see coverage below
source_url	string	page the row was scraped from

tamil_urai coverage is partial because the translator adds urai progressively: complete for Natrinai, Kurunthokai, Ainkurunuru, Akananuru, and the ten idylls; partial for Purananuru (99), Kalithokai (12), Pathitruppathu (8); none for Paripadal.

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("starhopp3r/sangam", split="train")
akam = ds.filter(lambda r: r["thinai"] and "Kurinji" in r["thinai"])
print(ds[0]["tamil_text"])
print(ds[0]["english_translation"])

License & attribution

The Old Tamil source texts are ancient works in the public domain. The English translations, notes, glossaries and Tamil urai are © Vaidehi Herbert, all rights reserved, published on sangamtranslationsbyvaidehi.com. This dataset redistributes them for research and educational use with attribution; contact the translator for any commercial use. If you use this dataset, please credit Vaidehi Herbert and link to her site.

Known limitations

• Lost poems (Natrinai 234, Ainkurunuru 129–130, Purananuru 267–268, Pathitruppathu decades 1 & 10) are absent, matching the manuscript tradition.
• A handful of typos in the source site's headers (e.g. "Akanānūruu 32") were worked around during parsing; original header text is preserved in title_english.
• The ten idylls and Paripadal are long poems translated section by section; section titles are kept inline in tamil_text and english_translation, and notes/meanings concatenate the per-section notes in order.
• Metadata conventions follow the source and vary by work: most poet/thinai/thurai values are romanized, but works whose headers are Tamil-only (the ten idylls, Pathitruppathu, a few Purananuru poems) carry Tamil-script values. Paripadal rows have no Tamil section titles on the source, so title_tamil there holds the source's transliterated header (e.g. "8. Murukan").
• Kurunthokai has 401 numbered poems (modern editions include poem 401). Pathitruppathu additionally has 8 pathikam (epilog) rows, one per surviving decade.
• In tamil_text/english_translation, \n separates verse lines and \n\n separates stanzas/paragraphs.