Valaiyapadhi (Tamil: வளையாபதி, romanized: Vaḷaiyāpati, lit. 'Unbending Man'; transl. Strong Man), also spelled Valayapathi, is one of the five great Tamil epics, but one that is almost entirely lost.[1][2] It is a story of a father who has two wives, abandons one who gives birth to their son, and the son grows up and seeks his real father.[1] The dominant emotion of this epic is love, and its predominant object is the inculcation of Jain principles and doctrines.[3]
Palm-leaf manuscripts of the epic likely existed until the 19th-century, but presently only uncertain fragments of the epic are known from commentaries and the 14th-century anthology Purattirattu. Based on these fragments, the epic appears to be the story of a merchant with an overseas trading business who married two women.[1] He abandoned one, who later gives birth to his son. He has children with the other wife too. The abandoned son is bullied by overseas kids for not knowing the name of his father.[1] His mother then discloses the father's name. The son travels and confronts his father, who first refuses to acknowledge him. Then, with the aid of a goddess, he brings his mother whose presence proves his claim. The father accepts the boy, and helps him start his own merchant business.[1]
The surviving stanzas of the epic, and the commentaries that mention Valayapathi, suggest that it was partly a text that was disputing and criticizing other Indian religions,[4] that it supported the ideologies found in early Jainism, such as asceticism, horrors at meat-eating (Non-violence), and monastic aversion to women (Celibacy).[5] It is therefore "almost certain" to be a Jain epic, written by a Tamil Jain ascetic, states Kamil Zvelebil – a Tamil literature scholar.[5] According to Zvelebil, it was probably composed in or about the 10th-century CE.[5]