peace, kills his enemies, wins over and marries every pretty girl he meets, then regains the kingdom his father had lost. After enjoying power, sex and begetting many sons with his numerous wives, he renounces the world and becomes a Jaina ascetic. Kundalakesi The Kundalakesi epic has partially survived into the modern age in fragments, such as in commentaries written centuries later. From these fragments, it appears to be a tragic love story about a Hindu or Jain girl of merchant caste named Kundalakesi who falls in love with Kalan – a Buddhist criminal on a death sentence. The girl's rich merchant father gets the criminal pardoned and freed, the girl marries him. Over time, their love fades and they start irritating each other. During an argument, Kundalakesi reminds him of his criminal past which angers Kalan. A few days later, he invites her to a hike up a hill. When they reach the top, he tells her that he will now kill her. The wife requests that he let circum-ambulate him – her husband – three times like a god, before her death and he agrees. When she is behind him, she pushes her husband over into the valley below and kills him. She feels remorse for her actions and pines for the boy she once fell in love with and married. She meets teachers of various religious traditions, adopts Buddhism, renounces and becomes a nun, then achieves Nirvana. Vaḷaiyāpati Vaḷaiyāpati is another lost work, that has survived in fragments as quoted in other Tamil texts. 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. The available content and the commentaries that mention Valayapathi, suggest that it was partly a jain text that disputed and criticized other Indian religions, that it supported the ideologies found in early Jainism, such as asceticism, horrors at meat consumption, and monastic aversion to women. It is therefore "almost certain" to be a Jain epic, written by a Jain ascetic, states Kamil Zvelebil – a Tamil literature scholar. However, the substantial sections on Shaivism have led to uncertainty. Style The great Tamil commentator Atiyarkkunallar (12th–13th century CE) wrote that poems were of two kinds – Col thodar nilai ceyyuḷ () or poems connected by virtue of their formal properties and Poruḷ toṭar nilai ceyyuḷ