Naṟṟiṇai

Natrinai (Tamil: நற்றிணை), a classical Tamil poetic work, is a book of Ettuthokai, a Sangam literature anthology. Natrinai contains 400 poems dealing with the five landscapes of Sangam poetry – kurinchi, mullai, marutham, neithal and paalai. This belongs to some of the oldest extant Tamil literature and is dated to belong to the Sangam age (100 BCE - 200 CE). The stanzas are of varying lengths of between nine and twelve lines each. The Pandya king Maaran Vazhuthi patronised this collection. It is not known who made this collection.

Compilation

It was compiled by Pāratam-pāṭiyap-Peruntēvanar under the patronage of Pandya king, King Māran Vazhuthi. Peruntēvanar also wrote an invocatory stanza after its compilation.

Authors of 56 poems are not known. The names of 192 authors are known. Poem 234 is missing and considered extinct. Part of the 385th poem is also missing from all available manuscript copies.

The original manuscript did not classify the poems into the various thinais (landscapes). They were introduced later in the nineteenth century when this book was first printed.

English Translations

1. “The Natrinai Four Hundred” translated by Professor A.Dakshinamurthy published by the International Institute of Tamil Studies, Chennai in the year 2000.

References

Mudaliyar, Singaravelu A., Apithana Cintamani, An encyclopaedia of Tamil Literature, (1931) - Reprinted by Asian Educational Services, New Delhi (1983)

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