Classical Tamil poetry dating back at least to the first three centuries of the Christian era is among the finest of world literature. Though there are reasons to believe that ancient Tamil itself had along with poetic tradition and a large body of literature, only a grammatical treatise in verse called the Tolkāppiyam, the Eight Anthologies (Eṭṭuttokai) and the Ten Long Poems (Pattuppāṭṭu) have survived the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Numerous texts produced by the three academies or Caṅkams might have also stood the test of time but the Tamils, for reasons not clearly known, did not save them from the ravages of time.
Tamil poetics, unique in some aspects and distinct from Sanskritpoetics, divide poetry into akam (interior) and puram (exterior). A symbolic key' and a highly developed and complex use of interior landscape are its unique features.
Puranānūru also referred to as Puram, Purappāṭṭu, and PurampuNānūru by commentators like Naccinārkkiniyar is an anthology of 400 puram poems written by 156 poets. We know neither the poet who compiled it nor the patron-king who got it compiled. Two poems (267 and 268) have not been accounted for while some lines in 43pieces are missing. Much more than any other anthology of the Caṅkam period, this one has served as a source of the political, social, and economic history of the Tamils, as its poems speak of the three major kings, the numerous minor ones, the chieftains and the philanthropists of the Tamil land and of their glorious deeds. The poems on the royal trinity appear first, the opening eighteen pieces celebrating them in the curious order of a cēran, a pāṇṭiyan and acōlan. These are followed by poems on the rulers of small kingdoms, some prominent leaders like veḷirs and poems on war, grief caused by death, hero-stones, and self-immolation by women. Later such poems are interspersed with ones that teach aram to kings and others that may be brought under the categories of Guide poems for bards of war (pāṇārruppaṭai), Guide poems for Viralis (Viraliārruppaṭai), and linked by tiṇai and turai. Since one of the manuscript versions of Puranānūru had at its beginning the title aranilai, Dr. U.V. Cāminātaiyar feels that the anthology might have been originally divided into three sections called aranilai, poruḷnilai and inpanilai.
At the end of every poem, there are inscriptions giving the tiṇaiand turai, the author and the protagonist of the poem, and the context in which it was sung. Naccinārkkiniyar contends that some of the colophons are wrong with regard to their identification of tiṇai and turai. But no such doubts have been raised about the authenticity of the authorship of any poem. An old commentary on the first 266poems is extant though we know nothing about the commentator. From some of his observations, it is evident that there ought to have been an earlier commentary the fate of which is not known.