Kambar was a well known poet belonging to the 12th century, famous for writing the Irāmāvatāram, the Tamil version of Srimad Ramayanam a.k.a Kamba Ramayanam. According to the Wikipedia page of Kambar’s Irāmāvatāram the following has been said about the compilation of this present version:
As with many historic compilations, it was very difficult to discard the interpolations and addendum which have been added over a period of time to the original. This task was taken up a committee of scholars headed by T. P. Meenakshisundaram called the Kamban Kazhagam (Kamban Academy). The compilation published by this committee in 1976 is what is used as the standard today.
The emboldened portion is what the question is concerned with.
Question
- Which incidents/ portions of the text have been considered as ‘interpolations and addenda’, and have been excluded from the current version.
- What is the basis on which these excluded incidents have been labelled as interpolated? Has the academy relied on and (very evidently in many places) tried to stick to the vulgate of the Valmiki Ramayana for this purpose? Is there a very old manuscript of Kamban?
A link to any detailed paper published on how the standardised text was created and which incidents were excluded/ included by them and the basis for these, would be acceptable. - Is there any place which recites a different version of the Irāmāvatāram?
Note: Please especially focus on incidents such as - Sita Swayamvar, Lakshmana Rekha, Ayomukhi, Kalanemi, The Killing of Ravana and Uttarakanda (not there currently).
