The recording was made during a 38 hour serial performance of the story’s many episodes over 18 nights as it was sung by a well-known local bard, in front of a village audience. A few weeks later the same bard patiently voiced the story over many days allowing a local scribe to write it down. A 1972 publication compares these two versions in depth and is available online (Beck 1972). A full translation of that oral retelling was published in 1992 (Beck 1992). The story’s early history is unknown but it is believed to have reached its modern form in the fifteenth or sixteenth century when many local Tamil legends were first recorded on palm leaves. The first known publication of this epic appeared as a chap book in 1902 and though badly deteriorated it is mentioned in the catalog of the British Museum.

The Ponnivala Nadu legend resembles the Epic of Gilgamesh in several respects and will interest a wide audience for multiple reasons. The story also mirrors the Mahabharata in some ways, particularly in terms of the divine parentage details that surround its key characters. Nonetheless, the story differs greatly from the Mahabharata overall. Although a variety of links to India’s national epic are present, these connections are largely superficial. This local story remains unique and independent in terms of its basic structure and outlook.

The story covers three generations and describes the evolution of one heroic family. Many themes have been woven into this basic fabric, including several perspectives on marital relationships, father-son bonds, brother-brother differences, and the significance of brother-sister ties. The core family in this epic account undergoes many difficult experiences, including an exodus due to drought, a period when they serve as labourers under a powerful king, and then their immigration to a new homeland where the presiding ruler asks them to initiate a new, plough-based farming economy by felling a forest thought to be populated by just a few hunters and craftsmen. Significantly, those early inhabitants resist this encroachment, echoing what is known from other sources about the actual history of this area. At first the story’s heroes are backed by that distant king, but by the time the grandsons inherit their father’s ploughed fields, this hierarchical relationship has become uncomfortable. Eventually the family’s key descendants, a set of male twins, rebel against that distant king and win independence. Notably, the twins embody a long Indo-European tradition that placed a high value on dual-kingship models. This is one of several themes central to this epic that reflect a cluster of much older core concepts.

The Legend of Ponnivala Nadu includes a role for several gods and goddesses whose interventions highlight local beliefs about divine fate, deep concerns surrounding social responsibility, questions attempting to differentiate moral from immoral behaviour, and views featuring a personal sacrifice followed by rebirth. This story is also special for the way in which it bridges Hinduism’s main Vaisnavite-Shaivite divide. Here Shiva and Vishnu are brothers-in-law and their actions balance out. Although these two gods are rivals in this legend, they also cooperate in a variety of ways, making for an interesting, implicit local message from its singers about tolerance and about uniting to face a higher, cosmic challenge.

Furthermore, there are several prominent heroines in this story who lend the epic a key female coloration that one might call its mystic underlay. All of these women enjoy divine connections. Superficially studied, the twin male heroes in the third generation of this story stand out, but if one looks deeper one realizes that the heroes’ sister (a triplet born alongside these two men) proves key to how matters unfold. This sister represents the youngest of the seven bright stars of the Pleiades constellation. Her prominence in the epic is another story thread that appears to have very ancient Indo-European roots. This same thread also marks the story as fundamentally different from India’s famous Mahabharata tradition. This “little sister” appears on earth with a mission: she is there to guide and to constrain her brothers’ raw zeal and ambition. Along with the secret powers of women, this epic also speaks eloquently about the core importance of protecting the basic birth-death cycles, for both humans and animals. In this folk epic all of the lead women remain childless until the gods intervene to help them obtain male offspring. Of course, these divinely “fathered” sons also serve as visible markers of this heroic family’s periodic and miraculous re-infusion with (immaculately delivered) divine semen.

The Legend of Ponnivala story bears links to multiple local shines, most of which honor the story’s heroes and also their fine riding horses (never chariots) using colorful, painted folk statues. The epic’s main protagonists are also celebrated in various folk festivals. In some of these, local story enthusiasts become “possessed” by the heroes’ hovering spirits. Those devotees then “die” by falling down lifeless while reliving a battle their heroes once fought with a group of forest enemies. Late at night the fallen men are then revived by a pre-puberty girl, their magical younger sister. The story is also memorialized in advertising, used in naming local companies and more. It is a great text for teachers and offers a wide variety of topics for study. The story has been animated in a thirteen-hour, serialized video format (Beck 2013; available by contacting the Executive Producer). It also exists as a two-volume, full-color, graphic novel (Beck 2015). It is recommended for courses focused on multicultural understanding and comparative religion, and it illustrates how local bards once constructed a vivid tale that remains popular in rural areas to this day.