This essay argues that the imagery of battle in Cayankontār's twelfth-century
poem, the Kalinkattupparani, composed at the court of Kulō ttunka Cō
la,
may tell us little about the practicalities of warfare in medieval India, but it
does help us understand the meaning of war for medieval south Indian courts.
Its imagery, corroborated by inscriptional accounts, at first suggests linkages
with earlier notions of agonistic sacrifice, but on closer examination, as this
essay demonstrates, it produces a world of feasting, death and laughter that
occupies a more contrary and autonomous space within conceptions of
sovereignty in early medieval India.
