TamilThagaval/aimperum_kaappiyangal-silappadhikaram

📚 Silappathikaram Dataset (சிலப்பதிகாரம் தரவுத்தொகுப்பு)

🧾 Dataset Summary

Silappathikaram (சிலப்பதிகாரம்) is one of the Aimperum Kaappiyangal (Five Great Tamil Epics). This dataset presents a structured digital representation of the epic, preserving its literary, cultural, and ethical significance for modern computational use.

The epic was composed by Ilango Adigal (இளங்கோ அடிகள்), the brother of the Chera king Senguttuvan. Renouncing royal life, Ilango Adigal embraced asceticism and authored this monumental work.

This dataset focuses on faithful text preservation and structural clarity, making it suitable for Tamil NLP, digital humanities, and educational platforms.

📖 Literary Overview

Silappathikaram narrates the tragic story of Kovalan, Kannagi, and Madhavi.

Kannagi represents the ideal of karpu (chastity and moral strength).

Madhavi, a gifted dancer from the courtesan tradition, lives with dignity and fidelity.

Kovalan, after losing his wealth, travels to Madurai to sell Kannagi’s anklet (silambu).

Due to a grave judicial error, Kovalan is falsely accused of stealing the queen’s anklet and is executed. Kannagi proves his innocence by breaking her anklet—revealing rubies instead of pearls—exposing the king’s injustice.

Overcome by guilt, the king dies instantly, followed by the queen. In righteous fury, Kannagi curses Madurai, sparing only Brahmins, women, children, and the virtuous.

This epic is a timeless exploration of justice, morality, fate, and feminine moral power.

🧩 Dataset Structure

The dataset is organized hierarchically to reflect the original literary form: json { "kaandam": "புகார் காண்டம்", "kaathaigal": [ { "kaathai": "மங்கல வாழ்த்துப் பாடல்", "poems": [ { "number": 5, "poem": "..." } ] } ] } json

Fields Description

kaandam: Major division of the epic

kaathai: Sub-division (chapter)

poems: List of verses

number: Poem index as per the text

poem: Original Tamil verse

🎯 Intended Uses

This dataset can be used for:

Tamil Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Classical Tamil literature analysis

Digital humanities research

Educational platforms and e-learning tools

Text classification, summarization, and semantic analysis

Cultural and ethical studies

⚠️ Limitations

The dataset contains classical Tamil, which may require specialized tokenization.

No modern Tamil paraphrasing is included (text is preserved as-is).

Interpretations and commentaries are not embedded unless explicitly stated.

🏷️ Languages

Tamil (ta)

📜 License

This dataset is intended for educational, research, and non-commercial use. Classical Tamil literary works are part of the public domain; however, digitization effort attribution is appreciated.

🙏 Acknowledgements

Original text source: Tamil classical literature

Digitization & structuring: TamilThagaval Community

Inspired by the legacy of Ilango Adigal