- Lived:
- c. 12th century — tradition says born at Therazhundur in the Kāverī delta, the heartland of the Chola empire; worked, by the legends, between a patron's house at Thiruvennainallur, the Chola court, and the island temple of Śrīraṅgam (Srirangam)
- Field:
- poetry — the Rāmāvatāram, popularly the Kamba Rāmāyaṇam: the Tamil retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa, held by most Tamil readers to be the finest poem in their language
- The Big Idea:
- A retelling can be an argument. Kambar took the most famous story in India and changed it as he went — his Rāma is God from the first page, his Rāvaṇa is magnificent, his abduction scene rewritten so the villain's hands never touch Sītā — and Tamils decided the result outranked the original.
- In their words:
- "With their endless, unceasing play they make all the worlds, sustain them, and take them away — they are the Lord; in them alone we take refuge." (the Rāmāvatāram's opening invocation, our rendering)
- If you remember one thing:
- The Rāmāyaṇa is not one book with translations; it is a family of tellings, each complete in itself — and the proof is a twelfth-century Tamil poet confident enough to correct Vālmīki and beloved enough to get away with it.