Making the Signs Known
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kaṇṇiṟainta kārikaik kāmpērtōṭ pētaikkup / peṇṇiṟainta nīrmai peritu.
Her beauty fills my eyes and her shoulders are shaped like the bamboo; and in this artless one, the reserve said to fill womankind is greater still.
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“The simple one whose beauty fills mine eye, whose shoulders curve / Like bambu stem, hath all a woman's modest sweet reserve.”
“Ah! More than a woman’s reserve hath my artless one, whose beauty filleth my eyes and whose arms are even as bamboo stems.”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
கண் நிறைந்த காரிகைக் காம்பு ஏர் தோள் பேதைக்கு= என்கண்நிறைந்த அழகினையும், வேயை ஒத்த தோளினையும் உடைய நின்பேதைக்கு; பெண்நிறைந்த நீர்மை பெரிது= பெண்பாலாரிடத்து நிறைந்த மடமை அவ்வளவன்றி மிகுந்தது, எ-று.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar reads this as something said about her rather than to her. The one you speak of has beauty that fills my eye and shoulders like bamboo, and what she also has is maṭamai — the unknowing simplicity that the classical world counted among the qualities proper to a woman. His point is about quantity. She does not merely have the ordinary measure of it; she has more, and the line's last word says so. It should be named plainly that the compliment rests on a standard modern readers do not share: the text treats a woman's not-knowing as a virtue and measures her against it. What the speaker actually reports is the effect on him. There is so much reserve in the way that nothing reaches him in words, which is why the whole chapter is about reading her instead.