The paripoorna avatara
In his Peria Thirumozhi, Thirumangai Azhvar has an entire padhigam (set of 10 verses) extolling Lord Narayana’s dasavataras, explained M.A. Venkatakrishnan in a discourse. He writes about nine of them in order in nine separate verses, but does not devote a separate verse for Kalki avatara. That is because a padhigam can, by definition, contain only 10 verses, of which the tenth has to be the phala sruti verse. So it would not have been possible to allocate a separate pasuram for Kalki. But Thirumangai Azhvar mentions Kalki in the phala sruti verse. There are three avataras in which the name ‘Rama’ features. We have the Parasurama and Balarama avataras in addition to Dasaratha Rama.
While talking of Parasurama and Balarama in the phala sruti verse, Thriumangai Azhvar refers to Parasurama and Balarama as ‘Rama.’ But for Dasaratha Rama, he uses the Tamil word “thAnAi,” showing that this Dasaratha Rama was a paripoorna avatara, a complete avatara. The Ramayana is read with reverence, because it tells us about this avatara. We have only two Itihasas — the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Among them, Ramayana is superior, says Pillai Lokachariar. That is because it is entirely about the Lord’s avatara, whereas, the Mahabharata is mainly about two warring factions of a family.
Itihasa means something that states what happened, in just the way it happened. Puranas were written after the events described in them took place. So, there is the chance of interpolations. That makes the Itihasas score on grounds of accuracy.