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Lot Essay
In addition to his widely admired and critically acclaimed painting practice, K.K. Hebbar’s lyrical drawings have won him much praise over the years. The artist has been lauded for needing only a few assured lines to express complex phenomena like the grace of a dancer’s movements, the virtuosity of a musician’s playing, or the quiet dignity of rural labor.
Interestingly, it was these ‘singing lines’ that Hebbar turned to when commissioned by A.S. Raman, art editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, to illustrate a serialized version of the classic Tamil poem, Silappadikaram, in 1964. Scheduled to run each week from the autumn of 1964 to the spring of the following year in this widely read periodical, Hebbar created a body of 51 exquisite drawings to be published alongside Alain Daniélou’s English translation of this saga, one of the five great epics of Tamil literature.
Silappadikaram, the earliest Tamil epic most probably composed around the fifth century CE, is attributed to the prince-ascetic Illango Adigal, said to be the brother of the Chera King Senguttuvan, who ruled over Southwest India during the second century CE. According to legend, an astrologer predicted that he would become the ruler of the land. To prevent this from happening, especially when his brother, the rightful king, was still alive, the prince renounced his royal life, becoming a Jain monk and taking the name of Illango Adigal.
Adigal’s magnum opus, Silappadikaram, is not a religious tale, but rather the tragic love story of an ordinary couple, Kannagi and her husband Kovalan, that grapples with themes of good and evil, faithfulness and betrayal, and joy and sorrow like most other epic poems across cultures and civilizations. In the foreword to his award winning 1993 translation of this work, The Tale of the Anklet: An Epic of South India, R. Parthasarathy underlines the literary importance of this text, noting that Silappadikaram is to Tamil culture what the Iliad is to the Greeks.
The name Silappadikaram was coined by combining the words silambu and adikaram, or anklet and story. The everyday hero and heroine in this tale, Kovalan and Kannagi, go through some ups and downs in the early years of their marriage. After resolving these issues, largely due to Kannagi’s patience and devotion, the couple set out on a journey to Madurai, capital of the Pandya Kingdom, to sell one of her jeweled anklets and rebuild their life together. In the Madurai bazaar, Kovalan meets a goldsmith, who happens to have stolen a similar anklet from the Pandyan Queen. Seeing an opportunity, the goldsmith reports Kovalan as the thief, and the King immediately orders him to be executed for a crime he did not commit. Kannagi proves her husband’s innocence posthumously by breaking open her other anklet and showing that its contents are different from those of the Queen. She then leaves, cursing the King and people of Madurai, leading to the former’s death and the city burning to the ground. In the last book of the epic, the gods meet Kannagi and take her to heaven. Learning of her story, she is hailed by the people as a goddess herself, and a temple is built to worship her as Pattini.
In his sensitive yet modern artistic interpretation of this story, Hebbar brought its characters and episodes to life through his minimal yet complex line drawings. Echoing the rhythmic quality of the cantos of the epic, the artist eschewed intricate detail in the interest of clean lines that seemed to dance across the page. “He simplified forms, often drawing continuously without lifting his pen and omitting elements that hindered this primary goal. Through exaggeration and distortion of certain parts, he aimed for maximum effect with minimal lines, thereby establishing his unique artistic style” (J. Bhattacharya ed., Illango Adigl's Silappadikaram; The Poetic Narration in Lines by K K Hebbar, Kolkata, 2025, unpaginated).
“Indian art history has always drawn deeply from epics and classical literature, and Hebbar’s interpretation of Silappadikaram is no different. Its relevance lies in its core theme, justice and injustice, which remains urgent even today [...] Hebbar’s lines carry strength, silence, and intensity in equal measure, much like the epic itself” (J. Bhattacharya, ‘Hebbar’s interpretation of Tamil epic Silappadikaram on showcase in Delhi’ Times of India, 23 September 2025, accessed January 2026).
Interestingly, it was these ‘singing lines’ that Hebbar turned to when commissioned by A.S. Raman, art editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, to illustrate a serialized version of the classic Tamil poem, Silappadikaram, in 1964. Scheduled to run each week from the autumn of 1964 to the spring of the following year in this widely read periodical, Hebbar created a body of 51 exquisite drawings to be published alongside Alain Daniélou’s English translation of this saga, one of the five great epics of Tamil literature.
Silappadikaram, the earliest Tamil epic most probably composed around the fifth century CE, is attributed to the prince-ascetic Illango Adigal, said to be the brother of the Chera King Senguttuvan, who ruled over Southwest India during the second century CE. According to legend, an astrologer predicted that he would become the ruler of the land. To prevent this from happening, especially when his brother, the rightful king, was still alive, the prince renounced his royal life, becoming a Jain monk and taking the name of Illango Adigal.
Adigal’s magnum opus, Silappadikaram, is not a religious tale, but rather the tragic love story of an ordinary couple, Kannagi and her husband Kovalan, that grapples with themes of good and evil, faithfulness and betrayal, and joy and sorrow like most other epic poems across cultures and civilizations. In the foreword to his award winning 1993 translation of this work, The Tale of the Anklet: An Epic of South India, R. Parthasarathy underlines the literary importance of this text, noting that Silappadikaram is to Tamil culture what the Iliad is to the Greeks.
The name Silappadikaram was coined by combining the words silambu and adikaram, or anklet and story. The everyday hero and heroine in this tale, Kovalan and Kannagi, go through some ups and downs in the early years of their marriage. After resolving these issues, largely due to Kannagi’s patience and devotion, the couple set out on a journey to Madurai, capital of the Pandya Kingdom, to sell one of her jeweled anklets and rebuild their life together. In the Madurai bazaar, Kovalan meets a goldsmith, who happens to have stolen a similar anklet from the Pandyan Queen. Seeing an opportunity, the goldsmith reports Kovalan as the thief, and the King immediately orders him to be executed for a crime he did not commit. Kannagi proves her husband’s innocence posthumously by breaking open her other anklet and showing that its contents are different from those of the Queen. She then leaves, cursing the King and people of Madurai, leading to the former’s death and the city burning to the ground. In the last book of the epic, the gods meet Kannagi and take her to heaven. Learning of her story, she is hailed by the people as a goddess herself, and a temple is built to worship her as Pattini.
In his sensitive yet modern artistic interpretation of this story, Hebbar brought its characters and episodes to life through his minimal yet complex line drawings. Echoing the rhythmic quality of the cantos of the epic, the artist eschewed intricate detail in the interest of clean lines that seemed to dance across the page. “He simplified forms, often drawing continuously without lifting his pen and omitting elements that hindered this primary goal. Through exaggeration and distortion of certain parts, he aimed for maximum effect with minimal lines, thereby establishing his unique artistic style” (J. Bhattacharya ed., Illango Adigl's Silappadikaram; The Poetic Narration in Lines by K K Hebbar, Kolkata, 2025, unpaginated).
“Indian art history has always drawn deeply from epics and classical literature, and Hebbar’s interpretation of Silappadikaram is no different. Its relevance lies in its core theme, justice and injustice, which remains urgent even today [...] Hebbar’s lines carry strength, silence, and intensity in equal measure, much like the epic itself” (J. Bhattacharya, ‘Hebbar’s interpretation of Tamil epic Silappadikaram on showcase in Delhi’ Times of India, 23 September 2025, accessed January 2026).