from the intoxication of great joy.” “Thoughtlessness” has been taken to mean “foregetfulness.” There is a world of difference betwixt the two and one cannot be substituted for the other. Probably the later was Lazarus’s translation.

Drew apart from giving certain novel interpretations for the Kuṟaḷ has also done a great service to Tamil by revealing it to the English people.

Only the 630 Couplets was Drew able to give an English translation. The remaining were taken up by John Lazarus (a native missionary). It is apparent that Drew was the incentive for John Lazarus’s work.

Dr. Pope was the first to translate the entire Kuṟaḷ into English. He has rendered it into English poetry, paying heed to the rhymes.

It is interesting here to note that Dr. Pope has called his translated work “The Sacred Kural.” Writing about the author he says “We may, fairly, I say, picture pacing alone the sea-shore with the Christian teachers and imbibing Christian ideas, tinged with the peculiarities of the Alexandrian school and day by day working them into his own wonderful Kuṟaḷ.⁶³ He finds the Kuṟaḷ an “echo of the Sermon on the Mount.”⁶⁴ Pope believes that Tiruvaḷḷuvar drew his inspiration from Christian Scriptures.⁶⁵

He declares that every sect in Tamilnad claims the Kuṟaḷ as its own, “and has furnished it with commentary and critical apparatus accordingly.” This is true to himself also. He claims Vaḷḷuvar to have been greatly influenced by the Christians.

The belief of Dr. Pope that Christian ideas expressed in the Kuṟaḷ presuppose a regular interconnection between the Kuṟaḷ and the Christian Scriptures, however, may be taken for granted only after later research proves it. When two ideas have been similarly expressed at two different parts of the world during different

63. P. T. S. K. Introduction P. (III)

64. Ibid. P. (III)

65. Ibid. P. (IV)