Jain epics as rare as tigers vanish
by Tamil stripes into the palm-leaf shelves
where heroes are housewives - saints die famished
businessmen and dancing girls are selves
before which kings reel in judgement and gods
retire - but just as tigers have dunked
themselves swimming across floods then trod
the far banks so an emperor turned monk
and vomited up from his own sea
of blood ; - yet they’ll take forever those fasts
and pilgrimages - some ecology
of mind possible instead of the past’s
transcription - at least the tiger’s unclenched
that epic in time definitely quenched
Oxford
1 September 2018
Candragupta Maurya (reigned 321-297 BCE) famously became a Jain monk, and committed Sallekhana, fasting to death. Jainism is a non-theistic religion or philosophy, concerned with the moral economy of the universe. The Jain influence on India is incalculable, especially on the Tamil and Kannada literatures of Tamilnadu and Karnataka. The first two Mauryan emperors had fought against the Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras, the Cholas and the Pandyas.
Three of the five classic Tamil epics are allegedly composed by Jains, but two of the five are almost entirely lost. I refer to four of the epics, Cillappatikaram, Manimekalai, Civaka Cintamani and the lost Velayapathi.