The Subtleties of Sulking
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yāriṉuṅ kātala meṉṟēṉā vūṭiṉāḷ / yāriṉum yāriṉu meṉṟu.
I said we love each other more than anyone does; at that she sulked, saying, 'Than whom? Than whom?'
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“'I love you more than all beside,' 'T was thus I gently spoke; / 'What all, what all?' she instant cried; And all her anger woke.”
“I said to her, I love thee above all: and behold, she frowned at once asking, Above whom? and above whom?”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
யாரினும் காதலம் என்றேனா= காமம் நுகர்தற்குரிய இருவராயினார் யாவரினும் மிக்க காதல் உடையேம் என்பது கருதி யாரினும் காதலம் என்றேனாக; யாரினும் யாரினும் என்று ஊடினாள்= நின் தோழி அது கருதாது, என்னால் காதலிக்கப்பட்ட மகளிர் பலருள்ளும் நின்கண் காதலுடையேன் என்றேனாகக் கருதி, அம்மகளிர் யாரினும் என்கண் காதலுடையர் ஆனீர் என்று சொல்லிப் புலந்தாள், எ-று.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar takes the couplet in two pieces. The first is யாரினும் காதலம் என்றேனா. He expands the man's meaning as 'thinking that we have more love than any two who are fit to enjoy love, I said we love more than anyone' — so on the speaker's side the comparison runs between one couple and other couples. The second piece is யாரினும் யாரினும் என்று ஊடினாள். Here the commentator says அது கருதாது, she did not take it that way: she understood him to mean 'of the many women I have loved, it is you I love most', and she sulked, saying 'so you have come to love me more than any of those women'. Two things in this gloss are worth noticing. First, he fills in the unstated field of comparison twice over, once for each speaker, and fills it with different populations: pairs on his side, persons on hers. Second, he never says she was wrong. அது கருதாது only reports that she reckoned otherwise, and he then reconstructs her sentence in full rather than correcting it — which leaves both readings standing inside the one word, where the couplet put them.