Poets of the Tamil Anthologies: Ancient Poems of Love and War

by George L. Hart III (Translator)

The poems of ancient Tamil are one of India's most important contributions to world literature. Presented here in English translation is a selection of roughly three hundred poems from five of the earliest poetic anthologies of classical Tamil literature. These lyrical poems are intimately related to the agricultural society that produced them, and their direct connection with the earth as well as their use of ornament and suggestion give them a quality unlike that of any other poetic tradition.

Originally published in 1979.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Genres: Poetry, India

224 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1979

Reviews

[Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful. The war poems, in particular, are agonisingly good.

[Mark Surya]

one sad thing about classics in non-western languages in that we tend to center around a single "definitive" translation. Ramanujan's translations are one of my desert-island books, but these definitely deserve to be more widely available and better known. In certain poems my family prefers Hart distinctly.