Generic Flexibility and Literary Innovation in the Tamil Talapurāṇam Genre

Abstract

Tamil “temple legends” (talappurāṇam) stand in contrast to their Sanskrit counterparts (kṣetra-māhātmya) mainly due to their complex poetic style. While Tamil talapurāṇams are categorized as pĕrumkāppipyam (parallel to Sanskrit mahākāvya), the genre itself, which gained much popularity between the 16th and 19th centuries, remains fluid in structure, style, and content. This very fluidity, I argue, made the talapurāṇam an ideal site for literary experimentation, offering poets unprecedented creative freedom within the framework of devotional literature. This paper demonstrates this argument, taking as case study the Taṇikaippurāṇam, an 18th-century talapurāṇam by the scholar-poet Kacciyappa Muṉivar, about the Murukaṉ shrine in Tiruttaṇi. The analysis centers on a chapter describing Murukaṉ’s courtship of Valli, which, while based on the 15th-century Kantappurāṇam, is crafted as a medieval kovai, a genre derived from classical Tamil akam poetry. Through examining segments of the Taṇikaippurāṇam’s kovai section, I analyze the implications of Kacciyappa Muṉivar’s stylistic choices and their impact on the narrative. I further suggest that the flexibility of the talapurāṇam genre enabled poets to push boundaries of both devotional and literary expression, creating works that were simultaneously traditional and experimental.