அகநானூறு

Akanāṉūṟu — The Four Hundred Interior Poems

Sangam Anthology · c. 300 BCE – 300 CE

The Akanāṉūṟu (அகம் = interior + நானூறு = four hundred) is the great anthology of akam poetry from the Sangam age — four hundred long poems on the inward life of love.

Where puṟam poems sing of kings and battle, akam poems sing of lovers — the secret tryst in the mountains, the wife waiting at home through the rains, the lover's chariot crossing the desert, the seashore-girl scanning the horizon for sails. Each poem belongs to one of five landscapes (tiṇai), and the landscape is itself the emotion: mountains for first love, fields for marital quarrels, desert for separation.

Each poem is presented in full — the original Tamil with line breaks preserved, a romanized transliteration, English translation, Tamil prose commentary (உரை), an alternative English rendering, plus the poet, the dramatic speaker, the situation (turai), the landscape (thinai), and a literary note.