Tivyappirapantam

Annotated Translation with Glossary of the Nālāyira Tivyappirapantam

Dr. Suganya Anandakichenin, Dr. Lynn Ate, Dr. Erin McCann, Prof. Dr. Eva Wilden

Since NETamil project, a team of scholars has been working on a complete new English translation of the Nālāyira Tivappirapantam, the Four-Thousand Divine Compositions of the Śrīvaiṣṇava. These sacred texts, still canonical today, also form an important cornerstone of any lexicographical effort for Tamil. They are in part a direct continuation of Caṅkam poetic techniques and vocabulary, but at the same time one of the entry point for Sanskrit, since the mythological material goes largely back to northern narrative traditions such as the Mahābhārata. Since these texts are still so important, the manuscripts number in the hundreds, so that a critical edition would not be feasible, nor, perhaps, desirable: the transmission does not contain a huge amount of variation but rather mirrors the regional background of the copyists and their local ways of spelling. A number of works have already appeared in print.