"guide for bards with the small lute") is an ancient Tamil poem, likely the last composed in the Pattuppattu anthology of the Sangam literature.
[4][5] The Ciṟupāṇāṟṟuppaṭai poem, also referred to as Sirupanattrupadai,[6] is named after sirupanar – a class of minstrels who sang their bards while playing a small yal (yazh, lute).
[2][7] The poem's vivid description of a bard's poverty before he found a patron is "rather powerful", states Zvelebil:[9] In the ruined kitchen lay the barking bitch That whelped of late with bent cared brood too young To open their eyes, that suck not the milkless teats Upon the earth piled up by ants that swarm On the walls, on which the roof had fallen down, Sprout mushrooms hollow.
There that day the wife Of the drummer with a lean and slender waist And bangled wrists whom cruel hunger gnawed Did saltless cook the herb her sharp nails plucked From refuse heaps, and made a meal of it With poor relations, having closed the door Ashamed to be so seen by prying folk Such poverty was then by him removed Similarly striking is the poet's detailed painting of a woman's body with words in lines 14–40, with antati phrases some of which are also found in earlier Sangam poems.
[9][7] This poem uses "the sun being orbited by planets" as an analogy in the lines below displaying the heliocentric understanding of the planetary system by Tamil people circa.