Sangam Literature

Collection of classical literature from the
Tamil culture, composed during the
early centuries of the common era;
Sangam (also spelled Cankam) means
“academy.” The most famous texts in
Sangam literature are eight collections
of short poems. Three of these collections fall into the genre called puram
(“the outer part”); the other five are in
the genre called akam (“the inner part”).
Puram poetry was “public” verse,
describing the deeds of kings, war,
death, and other heroic actions. Akam
poetry was about an individual’s inner
experience, especially cultured love, of
which the Sangam poets distinguished
five developed moods: union, patient
waiting, unfaithfulness, separation, and
hardship. Each of these moods had welldeveloped symbolic associations,
including associations with a specific
type of landscape, time of day and year,
flora, fauna, and types of people; such
richly developed symbolism gives these
poems incredible symbolic depth. The
akam poems are arguably the literary
antecedents to devotional (bhakti)
poetry, which first developed in Tamil
Nadu. For further information see A.K.
Ramanujan (trans.), The Interior
Landscape, 1994; and Glenn Yocum,
“Shrines, Shamanism, and Love Poetry:
Elements in the Emergence of Popular
Tamil Bhakti,” in the Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, Vol. 41,
No. 1, 1973. See also Tamil epics and
Tamil language.