Tancaivanan Kovai is a poetic work composed in the Tamil language by notable poet named Poyya Moliyar (Poiyamoliyar). The literary work has made considerable contribution in Tamil literature. Tancaivanan Kovai elaborately describes the tale of romantic love between the protagonist and his lover, who are a fictional couple. The Tamil poetic work belongs to the kovai genre. The Kovai is a moderately new type of literary work in the history of Tamil literature. The works of Kovai are also used as examples in certain grammatical works. The poetic collection of Tancaivanan Kovai contains around four hundred verses and all of the poems states the name of the feudatory ruler reigned over the region and ruled from a location known as Tancakkur or Thanchakur.
Content of Tancaivanan Kovai
Each of the verses in Tancaivanan Kovai represents an incident or an aspect, known as turai, of love and its emotional stage. It mentions about the first meeting of two lovers, the pre- marital and post-marital stages of the couple, moodiness or utal, life with children and various other aspects, in a systematic sequence like in a biography. The plot of the poetic work narrates the love story of the two central characters, the hero and the heroine. The parents of the heroine of the poems are unaware about the love affair of their daughter with the protagonist. After the parents observe certain physical changes in their daughter, they believe the condition to be a disease and decide to cure her. But the friend of the heroine reveals the actual reason of the suffering to the parents of the heroine in an appropriate manner and time, so that the romantic relationship of the couple is acceptable to them.
The friend of the heroine narrates that one day when both of them were traveling through the grove, a wild elephant started to chase them. Both of them were terrified with the suddenness of the incident and began to cry for help. At that moment in time, a young man came to their help and pulled the heroine to his left side. Then he threw a spear at the charging elephant and prevented it from attacking the two maidens. As the spear pierced through the flesh of the elephant, its blood splashed on the right side of the brave hero. The tears of the heroine merged with the black linings drenched the left side of the young man. The friend of the heroine also mentions that at the time, the hero appearance resembled the look of Lord Shiva with his consort Umadavi (Parvati) on his left.
Every verses in the collection of Tancaivanan Kovai focuses either on an emotional situation or an incident. Therefore all of the four hundred poems narrate the tale in a methodical and systematic sequence. Most of the poems in this literary work are renowned for flights of creativity and imagination.
