VII. Lofty Maxims

The Tirukkuraḷ is a great classic of wisdom literature, and is compared with similar world literature. ALBERT SCHWEITZER who has written extensively on Ethics has said that there hardly exists in the world a collection of maxims in which We find so much lofty wisdom. He writes down his impressions concerning the Tirukkural in his book Indian Thought and its Development, pages 200 to 205, Adam and Charles Black, London, 1951. The Tirukkuraḷ also appears to synthetise the ethical thought of the classical period of Tamil Literature.

THAT THE IDEA of active love did arise in the popular ethics of India in fairly ancient times we know from many stories we meet in her literature and especially through the ethical maxims found in the Kural, a work which probably belongs to the 2nd century A.D.

The Kural is a collection of 1330 maxims in distich form, attributed to the weaver Tiruva˜˜uvar. In the matter of authorship it is probable that not all the maxims are Tiruvaḷḷuvar's own, but that he also versified some which were ancient possessions of the people.

Kural means short strophe. Tiruvaḷḷuvar is really not a name, but a title borne by the religious teachers who work among the lower castes in the south of India.

The work is written in the Tamil language. This, like Canarese, which also belongs to the south of India, is an indigenous Indian language (Dravidian), not Indo-Aryan.

We know nothing certain about the life of Tiruvaḷḷuvar.

What a difference between the Kural and the Laws of Manu, which originated some four centuries before it! In the latter, under the dominance of the Brahmanic spirit, world and life affirmation is still just tolerated alongside world and life negation. In the Kural world and life negation is only like a distant cloud in the sky. In 250 maxims-they form the concluding part of the work-earthly love is lauded. Later times, because they cause offence, interpret them allegorically as concerning the love of the soul to God.

Christianity similarly interprets the Song of Solomon, a love-song probably originally sung at weddings and later absorbed into the Old Testament, as if it described the relations of the soul to its heavenly Redeemer.