An introdution to Thirukkural

The Sangam Period

The Sangam period (300 BC to 200 AD) is an important stage in the history of Southern India. During this period of time, Sangams or Association of Tamil poets existed and flourished under the royal patronage of the Pandiyan Empire. The Sangam literature was composed by 473 poets, some 102 anonymous. According to Nilakanta Sastri, the poets came from diverse backgrounds: some were from a royal family, some merchants, some Brahmins, some farmers. At least 27 of the poets were women.

The literary works compiled and presented during the first two Sangams were mostly lost and the only remaining work was the ancient literature known as Tolkappiyam. The third Sangam took place in Madurai and was attended by numerous Tamil poets, however, much of the works did not survive, except for a handful. These were compiled and categorized based on functionality and length. The available literature from this period was categorised and compiled in the 10th century into two categories based roughly on chronology. The categories are the patiṉeṇmēlkaṇakku ("the eighteen greater text series") comprising Ettuthogai (or Ettuttokai, "Eight Anthologies") and the Pattuppāṭṭu ("Ten Idylls"). Thirukkural belonged to one of the compilation called Pathinenkizhkanakku (or 18 minor works), which mostly dealt with literature related to ethics and morality.

Thirukkural

Thirukkural is an ancient Tamil literary text written by Thiruvalluvar, who is known as 'Poyyamozhippulavar' (true sage). Thiruvalluvar was a scholarly poet lived at Mylapore, Chennai It is the most read and celebrated literary piece in Tamil literature. Thirukkural deals with the themes of love, family, divinity, sincerity, leadership, responsibility and other virtues. It is often said that there is no aspect of life which is not covered by Kural. It is included in the academic syllabus from the time of British reign in India. The Kural is praised for the presentation of its themes and virtues and considered to be ideal to propagate and teach to form a great generation. It is one the most translated classic literary texts in Indian literature. It is written in complex Kural venba metre.


Thirukkural is considered to be written in the period around  2nd century BC. It is a part of Sangam literature that maintains all the glory of the period. The Thirukkural which is known as The Tamil Bible can be literally translated as "Sacred Verses". It consists of 1,330 couplets or kurals that is divided into three books on virtue (aram - dharma), wealth (porul - artha) and love (inbam - kama). The content is arranged in the form of couplets and each couplet is composed of seven words. The first row contains four words and the second three words.


Scholars compare the teachings in Tirukkural  with those in other ancient thoughts such as the Confucian sayings in Lun Yu, Hitopadesa, Panchatantra, Manusmriti, Tirumandiram, Book of Proverbs in the Bible, sayings of the Buddha in Dhammapada, and the ethical works of Persian origin such as Gulistan and Bustan, in addition to the holy books of various religions. The Kural has been widely praised within and outside India for its universal, non-denominational values. Thirukkural has been widely admired by scholars and influential leaders such as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Constantius Joseph Besch etc. Thiruvalluvar and his greatest work Thirukkural have been celebrated and upheld as a text of reverence by the Tamil people for centuries.

Commentaries and translations

The Kural is one of the most reviewed of all works in Tamil literature.The prominent ten medieval commentators of Kural lived between the 10th and the 13th centuries CE. They are Manakkudavar, Dharumar, Dhamatthar, Nacchar, Paridhiyar, Thirumalaiyar, Mallar, Pari Perumal, Kaalingar, and Parimelalhagar.

Of these, only the works of Manakkudavar, Paridhi, Kaalingar, Pari Perumal, and Parimelalhagar are available today. The works of Dharumar, Dhaamatthar, and Nacchar are only partially available. The commentaries by Thirumalaiyar and Mallar are lost completely. The best known among these are the commentaries by Parimelalhagar, Kaalingar, and Manakkudavar.

The best known and influential historic commentary on the Kural text is the Parimelalhakiyar virutti. It was written by Parimelalhagar – a Vaishnava Brahmin, likely based in Kanchipuram, who lived about or before 1272 CE based on an inscription discovered in a Hindu temple dedicated to Varadaraja. Along with the Kural text, this commentary has been widely published and is in itself a Tamil classic. Parimelalhagar's commentary has survived over the centuries in many folk and scholarly versions.

Several modern commentaries started appearing in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of these, the commentaries by Kaviraja Pandithar and U. V. Swaminatha Iyer are considered classic by modern scholars.

The Kural has been the most frequently translated ancient Tamil text. It has been translated in as many as 35 global languages, including 27 foreign languages such as English, French, German, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Portuguese and Spanish and Chinese was the latest one. So far, 96 scholars have translated Thirukkural in English and the first was done by Rev. G.U. Pope. The book has also been translated into ‘Vaagriboli,’ the language of Narikuravas – the tribal community in Chennai. By the end of the 20th century, there were about 24 translations of the Kural in English alone.

* Indian languages: Sanskrit, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, and Urdu

* Non-Indian languages: Burmese, Malay, Chinese, Fijian, Latin, French, German, Russian, Polish, Swedish, and English

Publications and Chapters

The first translation of the work appeared in Malayalam in 1595 and the first paper print is traceable to 1812. The Kural was the first book to be published in Tamil, followed by the Naladiyar. Subsequent editions of the work appeared in 1831, 1833, 1838, 1840, and 1842. The work has been continuously in print ever since.

The Kural is structured into 133 chapters, each containing 10 couplets and a total of 1,330 couplets. Out of the 247 Tamil alphabets, just 37 have been used in the Thirukural. The Kural text begins with an invocation of God and then praises the rain for being the vitalizer of all life forms on earth. It proceeds to describe the qualities of a righteous person and the author’s main aim was not to produce a work of art, but rather an instructive text focused on wisdom, justice, and ethics.



·         Chapters 1–4: Introduction

·         Chapters 5–24: Domestic virtue

·         Chapters 25–38: Ascetic virtue

·         Chapters 39–63: Royalty, the qualities of the leader of men

·         Chapters 64–73: The subject and the ruler

·         Chapters 74–96: Essential parts of state, shrewdness in public life

·         Chapters 97–108: Reaching perfection in social life

·         Chapters 109–115: Concealed love

·         Chapters 116–133: Wedded love

Translations of some couplets from The Thirukkural

* What is the soul to the body?

   Such is the bond between me and my lady. (1122)



* Righteousness is all about

   removing the four flaws-

   envy, desire, anger and harmful words. (35)



* Is it of any use to possess women

   by imposing physical barriers?

         A woman will remain virtuous

         only on her own volition. (57)