Ainkurunuru
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Ainkurunuru (Tamil: ஐங்குறுநூறு, Aiṅkuṟunūṟu meaning five hundred short poems[1]) is a classical Tamil poetic work and traditionally the third of the Eight Anthologies (Ettuthokai) in the Sangam literature.[2] It is divided into five groups of 100 short stanzas of 3 to 6 lines, each hundred subdivided into 10s, or pattu. The five groups are based on tinai (landscapes): riverine, sea coast, mountain, arid and pastoral.[2][3] According to Martha Selby, the love poems in Ainkurunuru are generally dated from about the late-2nd-to-3rd-century-CE (Sangam period).[3] According to Takanobu Takahashi – a Tamil literature scholar, these poems were likely composed between 300 and 350 CE based on the linguistic evidence, while Kamil Zvelebil – another Tamil literature scholar – suggests the Ainkurunuru poems were composed by 210 CE,[3] with some of the poems dated to 100 BCE.[4]
The Ainkurunuru anthology manuscript includes a colophon which states it to be a Chera (Kerala) text, rather than the more common Pandyan kingdom-based.[5] The poems in this book were written by five authors and were compiled by Kudalur Kilar at the behest of Chera King Yanaikkatcey Mantaran Ceral Irumporai.[citation needed]