Tirumur
̄
ai). This is Tirukko ̄vaiya ̄r, a learned poem attributed to the S ́aiva saint-
poet Ma ̄n.ikkava ̄cakar. Though, by historical accident, he is not numbered
among the 63 na ̄yan
̄
ma ̄r,^4 Ma ̄n.ikkava ̄cakar is nevertheless one of the most
highly revered of the Tamil S ́aiva poet-saints. The eighth Tirumur
̄
aiis composed
of his two works: Tiruva ̄cakam, a collection of 51 poems of various genres, all of
which conform fairly closely to the model of bhakti poetry described above, and
a pirapantam poem, Tirukko ̄vaiya ̄r, a much more difficult, learned poem which
exemplifies a genre called ko ̄vai. The ko ̄vai, perhaps more than any other post-
can.kam genre, evolved from the conventional apparatus of can.kam poetry: the
personae and situations represented in verses of a ko ̄vai are lifted directly from
the akam poetic tradition.
One feature that sets apart the verses of a ko ̄vaipoem from those of the
can.kam era anthologies of akam poems is the sequential arrangement of its
verses: the storyline which is merely implicit in the akam anthologies becomes
the dominant principle of textual structure in Tirukko ̄vaiya ̄r. But there is also
another feature that distinguishes the verses of a ko ̄vaipoem from earlier akam
verses: a ko ̄vai celebrates either a human or a divine hero by folding references
to this hero into each verse of the poem, for instance, through a simile or
through a description of the setting for an incident depicted in the verse. In
Ma ̄n.ikkava ̄cakar’s ko ̄vai the hero is S ́iva, and thus each ofTirukko ̄vaiya ̄r’s 400
verses contains a S ́aiva element. In a certain sense the author of every ko ̄vai
poem engages in a balancing act. From one perspective the poetics of akam
poetry dominates this genre. The narrative framework of a ko ̄vai poem is a legacy
of akam poetry, as are the personae who populate the narrative and the specific
situations represented in each verse. But from another perspective the foremost
purpose of the author of a ko ̄vai poem is to praise a heroic figure, usually either
a king or a deity, and the akam narrative framework serves a means to this end.
Theko ̄vaiis not the only pirapantamgenre that facilitates the celebration of
either a human or a divine hero(ine). Another genre, popular beginning from
the early fifteenth century is called pil.l.aittamil
̄
, “a Tamil [poem][in praise of]
a child.” In a pil.l.aittamil
̄
poem “a poet assumes a maternal voice to praise an
extraordinary being (deity, prophet, saint, or hero), envisioning him or her in the
form of a baby” (Richman 1997: 3). Not all pil..laittamil
̄
poems are devoted to
Hindu subjects, though Hindu gods, goddesses, and saints are well represented
in the corpus ofpil.l.aittamil
̄
literature.^5 In keeping with its status as a learned lit-
erary genre, the form and content ofpil.l.aittamil
̄
poems are closely governed by
convention, though this genre does not, like the ko ̄vai, closely model itself on
can.kam poetry. All pil.l.aittamil
̄
poems are structured in terms of ten sections,
calledparuvam, each of which “takes as its subject matter a specific childhood
activity: for example, a child giving the mother a kiss, a little girl bathing in the
river, or a little boy beating a toy drum” (Richman 1997: 10).
While one of the Vais.n.ava bhakti poets, Periya ̄l
̄
va ̄r (ninth century), adopted
a maternal voice in his poems of devotion to the baby Kr.s.n.a, the first pil.l.aittamil
poem that fully articulates the paruvam structure is the Tiruccentu ̄r Pil ̄
.l.aittamil ̄
composed by Pakal
̄
ikku ̄ ttar (late fourteenth to early fifteenth centuries) in praise150 norman cutler