134 - A Critical Edition and an Anno-tated Translation of the Akananuru

The Akananuru is an anthology of four hundred long poems (12-30 lines) on love (akam) that belongs to the Eight Collections (ettuttokai) of the Classical Tamil Cankam corpus. Its first book, Kalirriyanainirai (“Row of Bull Elephants”), comprising the first one-hundred twenty poems, is here critically re-edited on the basis of the surviving eight manuscripts – among which five are fairly old palm-leaf copies – and of the numerous quotations found in the grammatical tradition. A special layout has been developed to allow the synoptic representation of both extant transmission strands. The edition is accompanied by an interlinear English version and by an annotated translation. The introduction (in English and in Tamil) discusses in detail the history of the text and the editing procedure. Volume 3 comprises an edition of the old commentary, a complete analytical concordance, a glossary and several indexes.