Historical dictionary of Classical Tamil
TamilexHistorical dictionary
of Classical Tamil
of Classical Tamil
Tamilex monthly seminar: Roland Ferenczi
4 November 2025
Photo: Roland Ferenczi
Mustard and Pigs
or How to Defend Yourself Against the Enemy
This presentation draws on classical Tamil and Sanskrit sources to trace the presence of ancient war machines and defensive technologies in early South Asia. Along the way, we will encounter pigs, mustard, and boiling cauldrons on fortress walls; so a friendly warning to sensitive listeners: early warfare was as inventive as it was unsettling.
The goal is to show how fortifications and siege devices are imagined, described, and reinterpreted across two major literary traditions. In Sanskrit texts, such as the Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Arthaśāstra, and Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra, we find early and elaborate depictions of siege engines and architectural mechanisms. By contrast, classical Tamil poetry—particularly the Puṟanāṉūṟu and Patiṟṟuppattu—tends to describe warfare in poetic and formulaic terms, with little technical detail. Only from the 5th century onward (Cilappatikāram), and especially toward the end of the first millennium (Cīvakacintāmaṇi), do Tamil sources begin to present longer, more sophisticated portrayals of fortifications and warcraft, often reflecting contact with northern traditions.
By reading these texts together, this talk reconstructs a forgotten world of fortresses, engines, and inventive defences, and asks what their echoes tell us about the literary memory of war in premodern South Asia.
The Tamilex monthly seminar will take place on 4 November 2025, at 10:30 CET (15:00 IST). This will be hybrid event; for the Zoom link, please contact Charles Li(charles.li"AT"uni-hamburg.de).
