Kurincippattu is a Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 poetic work in the Pathinenmaelkanakku anthology of Tamil literature

Tamil literature

Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution...

, belonging to the Sangam period corresponding to between 100 BCE – 100 CE. "Kurincippattu" contains 261 lines of poems in the Achiriyappa meter. Kurincippattu tells the story about the love affair between the hero and the heroine. The poems were written by the poet Kapilar. An ancient note at the end of this poem notes that Kapilar wrote this to explain the beauty of Tamil poetry to a north Indian king names Brhadatta.

"Kurincippattu" describes the kurinchi landscape

Sangam landscape

The Sangam landscape is the name given to a poetic device that was characteristic of love poetry in classical Tamil Sangam literature. The core of the device was the categorisation of poems into different tiṇais or modes, depending on the nature, location, mood and type of relationship...

 of the mountainous terrain and mentions almost 100 different plant names. Some of these are Atumpu (Ipomoea pes-caprae

Ipomoea pes-caprae

Ipomoea pes-caprae, also known as Beach Morning Glory or Goat's Foot, is a common pantropical creeping vine belonging to the family Convolvulaceae. It grows on the upper parts of beaches and endures salted air. It is one of the most common and most widely distributed salt tolerant plants and...

), Aati (Lablab bean), pinti (Saraca indica

Ashoka tree

Saraca asoca is a plant belonging to the Caesalpiniaceae subfamily of the legume family. It is an important tree in the cultural traditions of the Indian Subcontinent and adjacent areas.-Description:...

), tumpai (Leucas aspera

Lamiaceae

The mints, taxonomically known as Lamiaceae or Labiatae, are a family of flowering plants. They have traditionally been considered closely related to Verbenaceae, but in the 1990s, phylogenetic studies suggested that many genera classified in Verbenaceae belong instead in Lamiaceae...

) and nanti (Ervatamia divaricata

Tabernaemontana

Tabernaemontana is a genus of 100-110 species of flowering plants in the family Apocynaceae. It has a pan-tropical distribution. These plants are shrubs and small trees growing to 1-15 m tall. The leaves are evergreen, opposite, 3-25 cm long, with milky sap; hence it is one of the diverse plant...

)

Kurincippattu story

The hero and the heroine fall in love. They do not want their parents to know of this relationship. Perhaps they fear their disapproval. Perhaps they are attracted by the forbidden! The hero and the heroine try to arrange frequent clandestine trysts, but sometimes it is impossible. Whenever she cannot meet with her dear lover, she pines for him and wastes away. Her parents are at a loss to the reasons for her apparent sickness. They try various remedies but the heroine shows no sign of recovery. Such state of affair lasts for a while and one day a friend of the heroine come to her parents and divulges the reason for heroine's 'sickness'. She reveals the clandestine affair of the hero and the heroine, but in a manner that makes the parents feel favourable towards the love affair.