SILAPPADHIKAARAM or the Anklet Story is one of the five major epics of the Tamils, and easily the most literary and impressive and effective, variously dated from the 2nd to the 10th century it is a moral tale narrating how the results of past events overtake present lives. It incidentally explores how a mortal woman gets recognition as an immortal Goddess.
The epic is unique in that it has a heroine instead of a hero flouting epic conventions and in that it tells a highly emotional story in a literary manner that can be recognised as achieving emotional stasis. The body of the work is in blank verse and attempts a most realistic manner in spite of the supernatural etc. in it it is interspersed with metrical compositions forming a rare collection of folk songs.
