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The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil; The Purananuru. Translated and edited by GEORGE L. HART and HANK HEIFETZ. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xxxvii, 397 pp. $39.50 (cloth).
This unique translation of the Purananuru, an Old Tamil anthology comprising four hundred poems, all most likely composed between the first and third centuries CE, is undoubtedly George L. Hart and Hank Heifetz's most successful collaboration to date. The poems are all set in the puram or "exterior" mode and depict many facets of public life-they are about "heroism, death, glory, stoicism" (p. xi)-but are also largely about complex issues of patronage, that fragile triangle of relations of poet, bard, and patron. Composed by over 150 poets (including 10 women) and one among eight of the classical Tamil anthologies, the Pur_ananuru is a "testament of pre-Aryan South India and, to a significant extent, of pre-Aryan India" (p. xv).
Hart's introductory notes include meditations on early Tamil society, its organization, and its layering of classes from high to low. Most useful and thought provoking are the sections on low-caste performers, poets, and particularly the brief section on the Purananuru's disputed "orality" (pp. xxiii-xxv), in which Hart juxtaposes the undeniable complexity of the poems with the suggestion that they were extemporized, bringing into the picture such interesting issues as form, mimicry, and the intricate social contexts of performance. On more formal matters, Hart provides a beautiful discussion of the relationship between meter and meaning (pp. xxv-xxviii).
Hart and Heifetz have taken great care to mimic structural features, particularly in terms of rhythm and the off-kilter enjambment that is so typical of much early poetry in Tamil. And admirably, the translators do not shy away from the difficulties of Tamil syntax. Many of the translations are right on...