Tamil prosody

Tamil prosody is the system of metre, rhyme and sound by which Tamil verse has been composed for two thousand years, and it is unlike Sanskrit prosody in a way that matters: Tamil rhymes on the second syllable of each line rather than at the end. That rule, etukai, is the single most distinctive feature of Tamil verse, and it holds from the Sangam poems through the Thirukkural to film lyrics written last year. The grammar of it is set out in the Tolkappiyam, which is the oldest surviving Tamil work of any kind.

The units are the asai, built from the nerasai and the nirai asai, which combine into cir, feet, which combine into adi, lines. Four main metres: venba, the tightest, used for the Thirukkural and for aphorism; asiriyappa, the Sangam narrative metre; kalippa, used for longer emotional verse; and vanjippa. The binding devices are monai, alliteration on the first letter of each foot or line, and etukai, the rhyme on the second syllable, and thalai, the rules governing which foot may follow which. A venba has a fixed and very restrictive final foot.

Taught in Tamil schools as part of the language syllabus, usually from about twelve, and studied properly in Tamil literature degrees. The traditional method is to learn the Tolkappiyam and the later Yapparunkalam by memorisation with a teacher, scanning poems aloud until the ear takes over. Poets say the rules become automatic after a few years and that a trained Tamil ear hears a broken venba immediately without counting. Film lyricists learn it informally and many of the best known ones trained in it formally.

The Tolkappiyam, of uncertain date and probably layered, is the foundation and covers sound, word and subject matter as well as metre. Later treatises, the Yapparunkalam and Yapparunkalakkarikai of about the eleventh century, systematise the metres. The Sangam corpus is the body of practice the rules were abstracted from, not the other way round, which Tamil scholarship insists on. Modern free verse, from Bharati onward and especially from the 1960s, broke with the metres deliberately, and the argument about whether unmetered Tamil verse is Tamil poetry has been running for a century.

Tamil Nadu

Taught in the school syllabus and in the literature departments, and still the working knowledge of lyricists and poets.

Sri Lanka

Taught in the Tamil schools of the north and east with the same treatises.

Kerala

The Tamil speaking districts keep it, and Malayalam developed its own prosody out of a shared background.

Festivals

• Tamil New Year · Puthandu

Related arts

• Carnatic music
• Bharatanatyam