Discuss the relationship between kingship and chastity in cilappatikaram.
Answers
Explanation:
Amongst all the well known epics of the world, this is probably the only one which has a female as the central character. While the focus is on the chastity and the fidelity of Kannagi, there is no denying that she is the hero of the epic. Her character is above suspicion and her chastity had the power to invoke the gods, who had no choice but to attend to her (this is similar to the character of Nalayani Kannagi in Tamil means ‘virgin’, this gives rise to the comparison of Kannagi with the Panch-kanyas of the two epics, Ramayan and Mahabharat. Her heroism shows up when she doesn’t take her husband’s death as her destiny and simply end her life. She rushes to the court, gets her husband’s name absolved of the allegation, and punishes both the king and the city which had harmed her husband and her marital life. Unfortunately in present times, she is remembered more for her chastity than her courage to question the Kings judgement and even punishing him and his kingdom for the same.
At a time when Sanskrit dramas were eulogising the Kings and the Gods, this Tamil literature had the courage to eulogise an ordinary mortal and show the royalty, guilty of injustice. It sure needed courage to write an epic where one was questioning the sense of justice of the King. Even if we accept that the epic was based on an already known folktale, the author did not take liberty to change this aspect, as we have seen such changes take place in numerous instances in other versions of the established epics.