Martha Ann Selby

Dating from the early decades of the third century C.E., the Ainkurunuru is believed to be the world's earliest anthology of classical Tamil love poetry. Commissioned by a Cera-dynasty king and composed by five masterful poets, the anthology illustrates the five landscapes of reciprocal love: jealous quarreling, anxious waiting and lamentation, clandestine love before marriage, elopement and love in separation, and patient waiting after marriage. Despite its centrality to literary and intellectual traditions, the Ainkurunuru remains relatively unknown beyond specialists. Martha Ann Selby, well-known translator of classical Indian poetry and literature, takes the bold step of opening this anthology to all readers, presenting crystalline translations of 500 poems dense with natural imagery and early examples of South Indian culture. Because of their form's short length, the anthology's five authors rely on double entendre and sophisticated techniques of suggestion, giving their poems an almost haikulike feel. Groups of verse center on one unique figure, in some cases an object or an animal, in others a line of direct address or a specific conversation or situation. Selby introduces each section with a biographical sketch of the poet and the conventions at work within the landscape. She then incorporates notes explaining shifting contexts. Excerpt: He has gone off all by himselfbeyond the wasteswhere tigers used to prowland the toothbrush trees grow tall,their trunks parched,on the flinty mountains, while the lovely folds of your loins, wide as a chariot's seat, vanish as your circlet worked from gold grows far too large for you.

The Five Hundred Short Poems of the Ainkurunuru

Tamil Love Poetry

A Selection From Old Tamil, Prakrit And Sanskrit Poetry While The Striped Frogs Croak And The Toads Peep, The Rains Have Begun. And Now, He Will Be The Monsoon Guest Of Your Fine Wrists And Ample Shoulders. Driving His Tall Chariot With Its Tinkling Bells, Our Lover Will Come Back Today. Ainkurunuru 468 Dating From The First To Late Fourteenth Centuries Ce, This Collection Of 188 Poems Is Gleaned From The Three Literary Languages Of Classical India Old Tamil, Prãkrit And Sanskrit. Martha Ann Selby Combines Her Unique Mastery Of These Languages With Her Scholarship And Poetical Skills To Offer A Pan-Indian Flavour Of The Changing Seasons. The Poems Celebrate The Rhythm And Beauty Of The Cycle Of Time: Summer, The Rainy Season, Autumn, Early Winter, Late Winter, And Spring. Nature Is Portrayed Through A Range Of Sensual, Sexual And Colourful Images And Allegories. The Autumn Poems, For Example, Depict A World Washed Clean By Rains, Ready For Love, Specifically, Clandestine Love, Set In The Hills Among Mists And Blooming Wild Cane At Night. Readers Will Appreciate The Collection S Fine Poetic Quality And Be Spellbound By The Unique Beauty Of India S Six Seasons.

A Selection from Old Tamil, Prakrit and Sanskrit Poetry

The Circle of Six Seasons

Indira Viswanathan Peterson

ÿHow perceptions of land and space influence social and aesthetic conditions in the Tamil region of India. This interdisciplinary work explores how people in the Tamil region of India think about space and land, and how this, in turn, influences the creation of the social and aesthetic world they live in. Contributors focus on the notion of geography in its strictest sense, on verbal descriptions of land and space and how these descriptions build and inform diverse social and aesthetic realities. The essays examine texts drawn from a range of time periods and a variety of sources in Tamil culture, including imaginative literature, historical events and narratives, religious rituals, and daily life in contemporary Tamil Nadu. The book clearly demonstrates the ways in which early Tamil aesthetic and linguistic paradigms have survived to the present as living, vital expressions through which contemporary boundaries and social identities are shaped and constructed.  a wonderfully coherent volume that enables an exploration of continuities and disjuncture over time in the Tamil interdigitation of space, personhood, and emotion. ÿJournal of the Royal Anthropological Institute  a fascinating collection of essays. ÿJournal of Oriental Research A valuable collection of essays. ÿReligious Studies Review This excellent book represents an important contribution to the cultural constructions of space. Through a series of reflections on ways in which people of Tamil Nadu have conceptualized and created and enacted space, over a long period of roughly two millennia, the volume offers a vivid longitudinal portrait based in one particular cultural region.  Richard H. Davis, Bard College This is a fascinating collection on conceptions of space in Tamil culture treated from quite varying perspectives. The essays cohere wonderfully, and the reader emerges with a sense of the vibrant reality of this category and of its fluid nature. I found many intriguing and unexpected ideas throughout.  George L. Hart, University of California at Berkeleyÿ Contributors include Daud Ali, Isabelle Clark-Decs, Norman J. Cutler, Sara Dickey, D. Dennis Hudson, Diane P. Mines, Samuel K. Parker, Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Susan Seizer, and Martha Ann Selby.

Cultural Constructions of Space and Place in South India

Tamil Geographies

How perceptions of land and space influence social and aesthetic conditions in the Tamil region of India.

Like red earth and streaming rain, our loving hearts merged all by themselves. Captured in these centuries-old verses are the intoxication of new love, the romance of courtship, and the longing of separated lovers. Here are the voices of older women advising their younger friends, the words of messengers conveying secrets between lovers, and the musings of lovers to themselves. Culled from large anthologies that date from as early as the first century CE to as late as the eighth, Martha Ann Selby's masterful translations allow the poems to stand on their own in English while still maintaining the flavors of the original verses as reflected in idiom and structure. The book's 200 erotic poems are composed in India's three classical languages: Old Tamil, Maharastri Prakit, and Sanskrit, and grouped according to themes, with annotations provided whenever a brief gloss is necessary. After opening with several informative essays on the poems and how to read them, their origin, and the languages in which they were composed, the book proceeds with the delicate images, voices, and emotions of the verses themselves.

Martha Ann Selby

Books

Your next favorite book is out there