Cheran Chenguttuvan, the brother of Ilango Adigal

As the saying goes “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity“

Of all the responsibilities that I have seen, the one of the brother endears me. That is also because I had my own sister and was practically a brother to a dozen more cousins who were born after me. An interesting aspect of evolution is that having one sister makes you careful. With so many sister like figures in my early life, it was confusing. Am I supposed to be nice? What does it mean? Should I fight? Am I losing? The confusion between competition and protection causes a yin-yang in our decision-making every time. As I grew older, I started looking at most people like I did my sister. There were plenty of stories where the brotherly responsibilities inspired me. There are three which come to my mind immediately.

1. Bharatha, the brother of Rama
2. Ilango Adigal, the brother of Cheran Chenguttuvan
3. Ravana, the brother of Surpanaka

While each of these stories are great in its own way, I want to focus on the one of Cheran Chenguttuvan and Ilango Adigal. Let me share the story as I remember it.

Imayavarampan Cheralatan was a Chera King who rules in the Chera Kingdom in the 6th – 7th Century BCE. Chera was a Tamil kingdom, though it is the area of modern Kerala. He had two sons, the eldest one was Chenguttuvan and the younger one was Illango. The princes grew up fond of each other. As legend has it, an astrologer tells Cheralatan that his younger son Illango would become the king and not Chenguttuvan. The prediction gets the king worried as he sees no good way this can happen. In their tradition the first born prince always becomes the king, unless he gets killed or his younger sibling pushes him aside in an act of war. Seeing his father worried about the prospect of him either dethroning Chenguttuvan or preventing him from ever becoming the king, Illango decided something extraordinary. He goes to a nearby Jain monastry and becomes a Jain monk. He renounces not just the throne but the entire life of royalty to ensure his brother can get his due. Prince Ilango becomes Ilango Adigal and goes on to write one of the 5 great epics in Tamil Literature, Silapathigraram. In his work, he goes on to praise his brother Chenguttuvan as a powerful and respected ruler who conquered the Kadambu tribe, and the Kongar people. He is also mentioned as a figure of importance in the introduction of the Pattini cult, which worships Kannagi, the virtuous wife in the epic.

People mostly resort to actions that favour them or put others down. It is relatively common to do the right thing when there is no upside. It is hard or next to impossible to do something when there is a downside, and by just staying quiet, you have a considerable upside. We all talk of sibling rivalry. For every sibling who supports each other, hundreds end up fighting each other or severing relationships. The sacrifice of Prince Ilango is beyond my comprehension. There is something deeply poetic about the story itself, which I am glad resulted in the epic we have today.