Kaviri Mainthan

Kaviri Mainthan is a Tamil language novel by Anusha Venkatesh. It was published in January 2007 by Avenue Press, as a sequel to the historical novel Ponniyin Selvan, written in the 1950s by Kalki Krishnamurthy. The 1300-page sequel tells the story of one of the secondary characters in Ponniyin Selvan, Kanda Maran, the prince of Kadambur, with the background of Chola politics.
The story starts five years from the point at which Ponniyin Selvan ends, and aptly at the same place - Veeraanam lake. Several new characters have been added including the Paluvur Princess Loka and Saint Karuvur Thevar. The sequel is different from other sequels because it was written in the post-nationalisation of copyright. Previous sequels could not use the characters of the original novel because that would amount to infringement of intellectual property.
Uthama Sola (Senthan Amudan) is the Chola king and Pungulazhi the boat girl is the empress. Vanthiyathevan and Arulmozhi (now married) are off in the high seas fighting the pirates. The salient feature of this book is that Arul Mozhi (still 9 years away from the throne) gets to learn of life and religion and philosophy, all ofwhich lead to great achievements in his later years as an emperor.
Kalki ended his novel Ponniyin Selvan rather abruptly. However, he had given a broad guideline on how he visualised a sequel. There were 10 points or more in which Kalki explains the after life of his characters. Kaviri Mainthan has faithfully followed those guide lines. Most importantly the sequel is said to unravel the mystery of the character that assassinates Aditya Karikalan.

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