Preface
Tamil is one of the oldest classical languages of the world and it has been described as "the
only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a
classical past[1]."
The variety and quality of classical Tamil literature has led to its being
described as "one of the great classical traditions and literatures of the
world[2]." Tamil
literature has existed
for over 2300 years. The earliest
period of Tamil literature, Sangam
literature, is dated
from 300 BC – 300 AD.
Among the literary classics of Tamil, Thirukkural written by Thiruvalluvar enjoys a special place.
Thirukkural consists of 133 chapters with each chapter containing ten couplets
(kurals). ‘Thiru’ is an honorific prefix which stands for “sacred”. In spite of the uncertainty of the time
period of Thiruvalluvar, it is generally believed that he wrote Thirukkural
about 2000 years ago. Thirukkural’s subject matter encompasses virtue, wealth
and love which were considered as the three major goals of human life in
ancient India. The highly acclaimed German philosopher and Nobel laureate, Dr.
Albert Schweitzer says about Thirukkural that “There hardly exists in the
literature of the world, a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty
wisdom[3].”
During the
early years of my childhood, I did not attend regular school and I was mostly
homeschooled by my father. My father wanted to me to memorize all the 1330
couplets of Thirukkural. Although I did not memorize all of Thirukkural, I
memorized a substantial number of the couplets. At that young age, I did not
understand the meaning of the couplets. I memorized them for two reasons. One
was to satisfy my father’s requirements and to please him. The second reason
was to compete with my elder brother Dr. R. Bhaskaran to demonstrate my ability
to challenge him in reciting the couplets of Thirukkural. As I grew older, what
I learnt from Thirukkural made more sense and I began to be fascinated by the
depth of the profound wisdom contained in the couplets of Thirukkural.
I always wanted to do an in-depth study
of Thirukkural. But, due to other priorities, I could not concentrate on
Thirukkural. In 2003, I had the opportunity, or I must say I had the good
fortune of meeting Dr. T. Murugarathanam, who was formerly a Professor of Tamil
and Thirukkural Chair at Madurai Kamarajar University, Madurai, India. I
listened to his scholarly lecture on Thirukkural. At that very moment, my
latent interest in Thirukkural was revived. Soon after that, I met with my
friends in the Greater Washington D.C. area, and we formed a Tamil Literary
Study Group in 2003. This was an informal group dedicated to the study of Tamil
literature. Our first project was the study of Thirukkural. Thanks to my
brother Dr. R. Bhaskaran and Dr. T. Murugarathanam, I was able to get more than
forty books on Thirukkural from India. The books I received from India included
the original text and commentaries on Thirukkural written by outstanding Tamil
scholars over the past several centuries and several English translations of
Thirukkural by eminent European and Indian scholars. Our study group met every two
weeks in public libraries and we continued our in-depth study of Thirukkural
with the help of all those books for almost five years. I served as the moderator during the study
group meetings.
As a result of the on-going study, our
interest in Thirukkural got more intense and we wanted to promote Thirukkural
in North America and in the western world. With this objective in mind, we
organized a very successful International Conference on Thirukkural in which
the eminent scholar Dr. V. C. Kulandaiswami, former Vice – Chancellor of
several Indian universities and the famous Tamil scholar Dr. George L. Hart,
Tamil Chair, University of California, Berkeley, California delivered the
Keynote addresses. I had the opportunity to serve as the Coordinator for this successful
Conference. The study of Thirukkural with my friends and the International
Conference on Thirukkural further rekindled my passion for promoting
Thirukkural. Since 2003, I have written many articles for various Tamil
organizations in USA and delivered lectures on Thirukkural in several cities in
USA and India.
On several occasions, I have discussed
the ideas of Thiruvalluvar with my American friends. When they hear the
practical wisdom imbedded in the kurals, they admire Thiruvalluvar’s genius and
invariably ask for a book in English that they can read. Most of the books I am
aware of are translations of Thirukkural. Thirukkural is very compact and
Thiruvalluvar has expressed profound ideas in a very succinct manner in the
form of couplets. Unfortunately, most of the translators, have attempted to
translate the Thirukkural couplets into two lines of poetry or prose in
English. These translations do not do justice to the original and the reader
fails to get the true insight into the wisdom of Thiruvalluvar as contained in
Thirukkural.
So far, Thirukkural has been translated
into more than 37 languages of the world and there are more than 35
translations in English alone. In spite of this many translations, Thirukkural
is still not well known outside of Tamil Nadu, the state of India where
Thiruvalluvar was born. For example, in the western world, even if they have
never read the “Analects of Confucius”, most of the educated people would
recognize that Confucius was a Chinese philosopher. But, most of the westerners
have perhaps never heard the name Thiruvalluvar let alone his magnum opus
Thirukkural. Therefore, it appears that we have a long way to go before
Thiruvalluvar is recognized in the western world as a great philosopher who
offered practical guidelines for a purposeful life.
It is my sincere belief that
translations alone do not help the readers to understand and appreciate
Thirukkural. Although one can grasp Thiruvalluvar’s ideas about a particular
topic by reading a specific kural or a chapter, one can get a comprehensive
picture of Thiruvalluvar’s ideas on specific topics only by reading the entire
text with substantial explanations. By reading a single kural or a chapter, one
will not get the complete picture. This is akin to “seeing the tree and missing
the forest”. In my opinion, in order to promote Thirukkural, we need more books
about Thirukkural written in a simple style explaining Thiruvalluvar’s ideas
about various aspects of life with suitable examples, if applicable.
I want to do my part- however
insignificant and limited in scope it may be - to promote Thirukkural among the
people who have no knowledge of Tamil. With this goal in mind, I have ventured
to write a series of essays on Thirukkural. These essays cover various topics such
as Thiruvalluvar’s concept on virtue, management, leadership, love, compassion,
humanism, humanitarianism, country, spirituality, learning, knowledge, wisdom,
friendship, pre and post marital love and others. These essays are completely
based on Thirukkural. The reader is expected to have no knowledge of Tamil or
Thirukkural.
In this book, Thiruvalluvar is referred
to as Valluvar for short. Valluvar’s book Thirukkural is referred to as the
Kural (with a capital “K”) and the couplets are referred to as kural (with a
lower case “k”). Whenever the idea in a kural is included, the number of the
kural is included in the parenthesis. I have adopted the translations of
several authors. In some places, I have taken the liberty to paraphrase the
idea from a kural instead of translating it. Each essay is independent.
Therefore, the reader may find some ideas and kurals are repeated in those
essays.
I hope that the readers will find these
essays useful to get a basic understanding of the wisdom of Thiruvalluvar and
his message. I sincerely welcome comments from the readers so that I can
further improve the essays to make them more useful to the readers. I request
the readers to feel free to contact me via email at prabu0111@gmail.com to offer their comments and criticisms.
Dr. R. Prabhakaran
Bel Air, Maryland, USA
[1] Zvelabil, Kamil: The Smile of Murugan Leiden 1973, p11-12
[2] Hart, George L: Statement on the Status of Tamil as a Classical Language, the University of California Berkeley
Department of South Asian Studies – Tamil
[3]
Schweitzer, Albert: Indian Thought and its Development, The Beacon Press,
Boston, 1936
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