The Kural

Thiruvalluvar

We know very little about the life of our poet. As in the case of so many of the world’s greatest men of the past, we have only to make our own conjectures even as to the time at which he flourished. Tradition says that he lived at Mylapore, Madras, where he had a friend in a rich merchant captain of the name of Elêla Shingan. This Shingan is described as the sixth descendant of a Chôla prince who, according to the Mahâvamsho of Ceylon, carried on a successful war against that island about 140 BC. This would give the 1st century AD as the probable date at which Thiruvalluvar flourished. Again, tradition declares that the Kural was published at the Madura College of poets in the reign of the Pânḍian Ugrapperuvajudi.2 Shrîmân M. Srînivâsa Aiyangâr in his scholarly book of Tamil Studies gives the date of accession of this king tentatively as 125 AD. Again, verse 55 of the Kural is quoted in Shilappadhikâram and Maṇimêkhalai, two great poems in the Tamil language, which have been determined on other evidence to have been written about the first or second century AD. We can therefore take it that our poet flourished between the 1st and 3rd centuries of the Christian era. Shrîmân M. Râghava Aiyangâr, writing in his able work on Chêran Chen-Kuṭṭuvan, has recently suggested the 5th century AD as the probable date of the two works above mentioned. But as it is admitted that the Kural is earlier in date than those two poems, this theory does not affect the limits above fixed for our Poet.

The very name of the poet is unknown to history, for the word Thiruvalluvar only means “the devotee of the valluva caste.” The valluvas are pariahs who proclaim the orders and commands promulgated by the king, by beat of drum from the back of elephants. From an encomiastic stanza on the author which tradition has preserved, it appears that he was born at Madura, the capital of the Pânḍias. Tradition declares that he was the child of a Brahman father named Bhagavan and a pariah mother Adi who had been brought up by another Brahman and given in marriage to Bhagavan. Six other children are named as the issue of this union, all of whom have dabbled in poetry.

Not much else is known about Thiruvalluvar besides the following bare facts. He was a weaver in Mylapore, having chosen weaving as the most innocent of all professions. He lived a happy family life until the death of his wife Vâsuki who was a model of every wifely virtue. Then he is said to have renounced the world and become an ascetic. A small book on the mysteries of wisdom, called Jnânaveṭṭi, is also attributed to him but the evidence of style seems to be against his authorship of it.

The Tamil people love to tell stories about his married life, which may be true or may be false, but which certainly serve to show not only what was their conception of the ideal home but also that Thiruvalluvar’s married life was in perfect agreement with the ideal as understood by them. Artless simplicity and unquestioning obedience to the husband are the first qualities that the East requires in the wife. Thiruvalluvar is said to have tested the faith of his prospective wife in him by asking her to boil and cook for him a handful of nailheads and other iron pieces. She took them in perfect faith and did as she was bid. The poet felt that she was the proper helpmate for him and married her. The fame of the happiness of their married life spread far and wide. A sage once visited him in order to ascertain for himself the truth of the report and to ask him whether he would recommend him to get married. Instead of answering the question directly, Thiruvalluvar wanted that the sage should draw his own conclusion after staying with him for some time. So he invited him to be his guest for a few days. One day as he and the guest were seated at their morning meal of cold rice and his wife was drawing water at the well in the yard, he called out to her saying that the rice was too hot for him to eat. Without questioning anything she left the water-pot even as she was drawing it up, and, hurrying to her husband’s side, fanned the rice that was served on the leaf. Wonder of wonders, steam rose from the cold rice as she fanned it and, what was still more miraculous, the pot that she had left to itself in order to obey her husband’s call remained hanging in mid air in the same position in which she had left it! Another day, in broad daylight, as he was working at his loom, Thiruvalluvar dropped the shuttle on the floor and called for a light to look for it. Vâsuki lit a light and brought it to him without even the slightest consciousness of the unreasonableness of the request. The sage had received the Poet’s answer: married life is the best even for scholars and searchers after truth if they can find a wife like Vâsuki; otherwise they had better continue single all their life.

The verse that is said to have escaped the lips of our Poet on the death of her who was the helpmate of his peaceful domestic life, is of a pathetic interest:

O loving one! O thou who usedst to cook delicious dishes for me and who hast never disobeyed me! who wouldst chafe my feet at night and sleep after I had slept and wake before I had waked! Art thou going away from me now, O artless one? When shall these eyes know sleep again?

These are about all the things that have come down to us regarding the life of one of the greatest geniuses of the world.

The Kural

Now as regards the work of the Master. It is divided into three parts, the first of which is devoted to Righteousness, the second to Politics, and the third to Love. These three things together with Heavenly Bliss as the fourth, are called by Hindu writers as the four objectives of life. Thiruvalluvar does not treat of the fourth objective separately and Hindus say that he has submitted himself to the orthodox rule that none but a Brahman should be a teacher of spiritual truth to mankind. But the first Part of the Kural, and especially the second section of it, inculcates every principle the following of which leads to self-realisation, which is the highest happiness that can be enjoyed by man here or hereafter.

Part I—Righteousness

Under the title of Righteousness our author treats of the life of the householder and of the life of the ascetic. Every virtue that goes to make a good husband and a good father, a good neighbour and a good man, is inculcated by the poet in 19 chapters. 13 more chapters deal with the life of the ascetic and the virtues to be practised by him. The first four chapters of the Part serve as an introduction to the whole work; and the chapter that ends the section on the life of the householder is devoted to Fame as a great motive force to do good, while that which ends the whole Part treats of Destiny or rather the potential force which is behind every man impelling him to action good or evil, and which is the general resultant of all his thoughts and actions in his previous births.

Some of the grandest thoughts that have ever been uttered by man are to be found in this Part. Though it is difficult to select, we may specially mention verses 76, 115, 128, 156, 207, 247, 314, 341, 360 and 363.

What is the grand feature of the first Part is its healthy outlook on life. “The chiefest blessing,” declares our author, “is an honourable home, and its crowning glory is worthy offspring.” How charming is his love for children! “The touch of children is the delight of the body.” It is only they who have not listened to the prattle of their little ones that are attracted by the guitar and the flute! The Poet insists greatly on the love of mankind and the honouring of the guest as among the chief virtues of a man. The man that loveth not is like a dry tree in the wilderness. Kindness of speech is inculcated as a special virtue by itself. Such vices as fornication, envy, coveting, slander, vain speaking and injuring a neighbour are condemned, and such virtues as uprightness, forgiveness, obligation and good will to all, and charity, are recommended, and the first section ends with a chapter on Glory, for “they alone live who live without blemish: and they alone die who have lived without glory.” It will thus be seen that it is a cheerful, smiling, benignant humanity that Thiruvalluvar wants to produce in his country and in the world.

But the life of man ends not with this world. When man has fulfilled his duties towards society by living a life of usefulness and virtue, and by giving birth to children to take his place in the play of humanity, he has to think of another life, the life that is beyond death. The householder has ascended a few rungs on the ladder of life with the help of his righteous conduct, but from his more exalted position he sees a larger righteousness unfold itself before him. He has to go through a life of stricter discipline than before. He has now to practise mercy to all living beings, abjure flesh-meat, mortify his body and concentrate his thoughts, and thus obtain a higher spiritual power and vision, purify his mind by a strict adherence to truth, and conquer his anger and every temptation to injure or kill even the smallest of creatures. Most of the virtues treated of here should also of course be practised by the householder, though many of them only in a lesser degree; but they are placed in this section on account of their more intimate relation to the ascetic. This life of discipline removes the veils of ignorance covering the soul one after another, the eyes of the ascetic are opened, and he sees that the phenomenal life is no better than a dream and a shadow, a thing that is today but passes away tomorrow. He therefore renounces his attachments to this world utterly, and then be realises the Truth. “Heaven is nearer to him than the Earth” now. But there is yet the insidious foe of Desire which, taking a thousand forms and a thousand shapes, tempts men even the most spiritually minded, and until that is killed once for all there is no permanent bliss for the soul. And so the killing of Desire forms appropriately the last chapter of the section on the Life of the Ascetic.

The chapter on Destiny requires some explanation. The word used by the poet is Ûj and its original meaning is old or ancient. The idea underlying the word is the accumulated unspent force of a man’s actions in all his past lives. The Hindu belief is that all actions good and bad alike have, in addition to their visible physical effect in life, an invisible effect in the unseen world which transforms itself again into visible effects only later on. Using the phraseology of physical science may help a good deal to understand what we mean. Of the total force of every action of a man—including thought and word also in the word action—one part goes off as kinetic energy and that is represented by its visible effects that appear immediately the action is ended. But another part remains unspent for the time being and, whether it is much or little, it is stored up somewhere in the universe to uncoil itself as time and opportunity offer themselves. The storing up is certainly in part in the character of the man who does the action. But another and sometimes the major part of it is in Nature and in the memory of consciousness of fellow-men. Now the innumerable actions, conscious and unconscious, of a man’s life go on accumulating this potential energy until the very end of his life on earth, if not even beyond. Some of this potential energy is being turned to kinetic every moment of his life, but all the same a large portion remains unspent at the moment of death and accompanies the soul in its transmigration into another body. It is this energy waiting to materialise itself in the new life of the soul that our philosophical writers call by the name of karma or Ûj. The idea of the all but omnipotent force of this karma can now be rightly grasped by the reader, whether he is convinced of the truth of it as a fact or not. It is powerful because it forms part and parcel of a man’s character as the original tendencies with which he is born. And the portion of it that has formed part of Nature and remains in the memory of fellow-men must be even more powerful as it is much more beyond the control of the subject’s will than his inward tendencies. We hope these words will be sufficient to make the reader understand the trend of chapter 38 to which the title Destiny is given only for want of a better word to express the above ideas. That the ideas expressed in this chapter are however quite compatible with an active and energetic life, the author shows everywhere and especially in verses 619 and 620 and chapter 27.

The position of this chapter at the end of the Part on Righteousness may be explained thus. The author who is not a lawgiver in the sense that he has the power to compel the observance of his laws, has however to see that his laws are obeyed by those to whom they are intended. He requires a sanction to compel men to pursue the path of righteousness that he has showed with such infinite love to them. And what higher sanction is there than the knowledge that if a man does evil he will carry a load of evil which will make him unhappy and cursed in his next birth, and that if he does good he will have laid by a treasure which will be a blessing to him whenever and wherever he happens to live his next birth?