Kambar

Kambar is the most technically accomplished Tamil poet after the Sangam period. His Kambaramayanam runs to over 10,000 verses in the viruttam metre — and every verse demonstrates an extraordinary command of sound, imagery, and compressed meaning. He was patronized by a chieftain named Sadaiyappa Vallal, under the broader umbrella of Chola cultural power. The legend that he recited his Ramayana in Chidambaram and that Tamil scholars found 400 errors in it — errors he accepted and corrected — is probably apocryphal, but it tells us what Tamil scholars thought of him: the most disciplined, the most demanding, the one who held his own work to impossible standards.

Kambar's similes (உவமை) are famous across Tamil literary history. His contemporaries and later scholars considered them unmatched. He describes Ravana's army at night like the sea, Sita's beauty like a list of impossible contradictions, Rama's arrow like a thought that moves faster than itself. The viruttam metre he uses allows a rhythmic density that akaval does not — each verse has an internal music that rewards reading aloud. He is the poet whose sound proves his meaning.

Kambar is considered the peak of classical Tamil literary achievement after the Sangam age. "Kambar vandhaan, Tamil vandhaan" (கம்பர் வந்தான், தமிழ் வந்தான் — "Kambar came, Tamil came") is a saying. Tamil literature before Kambar was one thing; after him, everything was measured against his standard.