The Twin Tamil Epics: Silappadikaram and Manimekhalai

The Silappadikaram means “The Tale of an Anklet”. An anklet is a ring worn round the ankle. The whole story turns on one anklet.

1. How does the plot run, step by step?

Kovalan and Kannaki are the heroes. Both belong to merchant families in the city of Puhar. They marry young. Kovalan is sixteen and Kannaki is twelve.

Kovalan then falls in love with Madavi, a courtesan and dancing-girl of Puhar. He spends all his wealth on her. Then he returns to Kannaki, and the couple leave for Madurai to start a new life.

In Madurai, Kovalan tries to sell Kannaki’s anklet. A goldsmith falsely tells the Pandya king that Kovalan stole the queen’s anklet. The king orders Kovalan beheaded without a second thought.

Kannaki goes to the palace. She shows her other anklet and proves the one Kovalan held was hers, not the queen’s. The king faints and dies of shock.

In grief, Kannaki throws her left breast over the city and curses it to burn. The fire god burns Madurai. He spares Brahman sages, cows, chaste women, children and the aged.

The story is Kannaki’s own, from her marriage to her rise to heaven.

2. Who is Manimekalai in this story?

Manimekalai is the daughter of Kovalan and Madavi. She is not Kannaki’s child.

Some books call her Kannaki’s stepdaughter. That word is wrong. A stepdaughter is the child of a husband or wife from another marriage. Manimekalai’s mother is Madavi.

Say it this way: Manimekalai is Kovalan’s daughter by Madavi. In the Manimekalai, the sea-goddess says Kovalan named his daughter after her.

3. What are iyal, isai and natakam?

Dikshitar translated the Silappadikaram into English in 1939. He calls it a “tragi-comedy”. Its main marks, he writes, are “iyal, isai, and nātakam”.

These are three Tamil words. Iyal means literary Tamil, isai means music and natakam means drama. The epic mixes all three. Most of its story is tragic.

Think of a film with a script, songs and acting. The epic blends words, music and stage in the same way.

4. How is the poem divided?

The poem has thirty parts. Each part is called a canto, which means a section of a long poem. Verma adds that the poem is also split into three larger books. They are named after the cities of Puhar, Madurai and Vanji.

Dikshitar’s preface says the poet wrote it on request. He was asked to tell a story that concerns all three crowned Tamil kings. The three kings were the Chera, the Chola and the Pandya.

5. Who was Ilango Adigal, and why did he renounce?

Ilango Adigal is the poet of the Silappadikaram. He was a Chera prince. Adigal is a title of respect for a holy man.

His father, King Ceralatan, once heard an astrologer’s prediction. The king would die soon, and the throne would pass to his younger son. The younger son was Ilango.

Ilango saw how this shocked his elder brother Senguttuvan, the heir. So he became a monk. A monk cannot be king.

Ilango is often called a Jain, a follower of the Jain religion. Dikshitar says this is only contended, not proved. He points out that Ilango attended Vedic sacrifices, which a Jain would not do.

Write “traditionally called a Jain monk”. Do not state it as a settled fact.

6. How are Sattanar and the two epics linked?

Sattanar was a Sangam poet and a friend of Ilango. He also appears as a character inside the Silappadikaram.

Dikshitar calls him “the reputed author of the Manimekalai, which is a continuation of the theme contained in the Silappadikaram”. Reputed means believed by tradition.

The 1923 English version of the Manimekalai agrees. Its foreword says the two works are “a twin epic” and that the authors were friends. It calls the second author “a corn merchant of Madura”.

7. When were the epics composed?

The date is disputed. Dikshitar places the Silappadikaram in the 2nd century CE. He ties it to Gajabahu, the king of Ceylon, who attended the Pattini temple’s opening.

He admits that this link “has not found acceptance with the learned author of the History of the Tamils”. A newer paper by Verma (2025) says the poem was “composed in the fifth century c.e.”.

The CDS paper of 2017 also calls it a “fifth century” epic. Historian Nilakanta Sastri says its “authorship and date are not free from besetting doubts”.

Do not give one firm date. Say “between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, still debated”.

8. Is the Silappadikaram in the NCERT books?

Yes. The NCERT arts book (Class 11, Introduction to the History of Arts) lists it. It names three important treatises on the arts, written between about 500 BCE and 600 CE. A treatise is a long, formal work on one subject.

The three are the Natyashastra by Bharata Muni, the Vishnu-dharmottara Purana with its Chitra-sutra, and the Silappadigaram by Ilango Adigal.

9. How did Kannaki become the goddess Pattini?

A deity tells Kannaki what will come. On the fourteenth day, her husband will call her to heaven in a celestial car. Kannaki walks west to a hill and stands under a tree. There she rises to heaven in the car.

The hill people tell the Chera king Senguttuvan. He decides to honour her. He brings a stone from the Himalayas and bathes it in the river Ganga. Then he sets up a temple to the goddess Pattini. Gajabahu of Ceylon attends.

The epic ends with Kannaki worshipped as a goddess. Verma points out that the characters are “ordinary human beings belonging to the merchant class”. They have “no divine attributes”. Kannaki is made a goddess only at the end of the poem.

10. What is the Jain element in the epic?

Kavunti is a Jain ascetic. An ascetic is a person who gives up comforts for religion. She joins Kovalan and Kannaki on their road to Madurai and comforts them.

Dikshitar writes that the twin epics “betray clear influence of the Buddha and the Jaina cults”. This is why CDS asked about “Jaina elements”.

So the Silappadikaram has Jain elements, and the Manimekalai follows the Buddha. Keep those two labels apart in the exam hall.

11. How does the heroine reach the alms-bowl?

An alms-bowl is a bowl used to collect food for the poor. This bowl is called Aputhra’s Holy Grail. It never runs empty.

The sea-goddess Manimekala-Devi is the guardian-spirit of the island of Manipallavam. She carries Manimekalai through the air to the island at night.

On the island, a celestial spirit tells the heroine where the bowl will appear. It rises in a tank called Gomukhi. This happens on the day of Visakha, the anniversary of the Buddha’s birth.

So the goddess does not hand over the bowl. The tank gives it.

12. Why is the goddess called Manimekala?

The goddess tells the heroine why. She says she once saved Kovalan’s ancestor from a shipwreck. Out of thanks, Kovalan named his daughter after her.

So the heroine carries the goddess’s name.

13. How does she become a nun, and what does she study?

Manimekalai grows up admiring the Buddha. She puts on “the garb of a Buddhist mendicant nun”. A mendicant is a person who lives on gifts of food.

She goes to Vanji and hears teachers of ten different schools explain their creeds. A creed is a set of beliefs. None of them satisfy her.

She then goes to Kanchi. There the sage Aravana teaches her the Buddha’s law. Her mother Madavi and Suthamathi are with him too.

14. How do the two epics compare, and which Great Epics are lost?

The two works are counted among the “five great poems” in Tamil. The 1923 preface names the other three as Jivaka-Chintamani, Valayapathi and Kundalakesi.

It adds that Valayapathi and Kundalakesi “are not extant”. Extant means still surviving. That book is old, so treat the point as a 1923 view.

15. What did CDS ask about the Silappadikaram?

CDS means the Combined Defence Services exam. It has asked about this epic twice. Both questions are shown word for word below.

The first asked what the epic refers to. The second asked which river it praises. The 2017 stem also calls the epic a “fifth century” work, which matches Verma.

Learn one trap. The 2016 answer is Jain elements, so a Jain label belongs with the Silappadikaram. A Buddhist label belongs with the Manimekalai.