V. The Characters in the Epic of the Anklet

C. JESUDASAN and H. JESUDASAN in their A History of Tamil Literature, Y.M.C.A. Publishing House, Calcutta, 1961, have written about the characters in the Epic of the Anklet. The Reading is from pages 54 to 58.

THE STORY IS primarily the story of a woman. There is no hero except for the heroine. The heroine alone matters to the poet. Wedded in her twelfth year, beautiful with all the shy graces of a sheltered and beloved girl, she is so unblemished that she is the pride and toast, not of the men of her place, but only of the women who surround her with affection. To be an attraction to any man but her husband, is apparently a sin for a woman, the sin of which Sīta was guilty, but not Kaṇṇahi. Of how Kaṇṇahi receives her husband's wooing, we have no idea. She just does not speak at first. We may infer that she is gracious silence, like Coriolanus' wife. Pining in Kovalan's absence, she is advised to undertake a pilgrimage. She replies briefly : 'It is not right.' Of course, silence does not mean she has no ideas. She has a dream which she tells as briefly as possible to her confidante. She seems to have seen herself as the centre of the great drama in which she is so shortly to play a part. She only says, 'I think my husband will come. We walked to a great city in my dream and then, what I saw was ridiculous. There seemed to be a great disaster, probably fire', and shuts her mouth to more details.

When Kovalan returns, if we expect a passionate scene of reconciliation, we are disappointed. There are no recriminations, no explanations. Kaṇṇahi simply offers her anklet when Kovalan confesses poverty. It is not correct to interpret that as an extravagant act of offering her husband money to spend on his prostitute. He is in genuine distress, and she is simply showing him a way out of it. How he is touched by her silent acceptance of him back to the shelter of her love, he reveals later in a passionate outburst of love. On the way to the great city, when they have not yet passed the limits of their own city, she asks like a child, 'How far is it yet to Madurai?' Once, we see her bustling about in her wifely devotion, preparing a meal for Kovalan, the last he was to take. But all her quiet beauty and silence serve as foil to the passion of her outburst in the Pāṇḍya's presence. True, when Kaṇṇahi merely smiles a sad smile in reply to her in-laws' sympathetic remarks about her loneliness, when she is a young deserted wife in her husband's home, great depths are suggested by the poet. Her quiet patience merely betokens depth, a depth of emotion dedicated purely to her husband.