ABOUT THIRUVALLUVAR

Here in US many people ask me, "Who is Thiruvalluvar ?". All these are highly educated people from India, who have studied about other great thinkers of the world like Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Kautilya, Machiavelli, Rousseau,Laski, but unfortunately  not heard of Thiruvalluvar, the author of ageless tamil classical literature Thirukural.

Thirukural is the only book translated in many world languages next to Bible and Kuran. Bible and Kuran are religious books, Thirukural is a non religious treatise on the "Art of living".

Rev Beschie translated it into Latin, G.U. Pope into English, Fredrich Rucker into Germany, P.G.Dumast into French etc.

No clue is available to trace the birth and life of Thiruvalluvar from his work or other literary works or archaeological ruins. There are many stories, all are baseless fictions. His actual name is unknown. Majority of the people agreed his name to be Thiruvalluvar and birth year as 30 BC. In Tamilnadu, his birthday is celebrated adjoining Pongal and is a government holiday.

Its interesting to note that his Kurals do not speak of any particular religion. His God is Almighty, the creator of the Universe.

Thirukural is written as couplets (has only two lines). First line has four words and second line three words for a total of only seven words. Thirukural has three sections on: virtue, wealth and love. There are 133 chapters, each having 10 couplets totally 1330 Kurals. In these seven words Thiruvalluvar speaks on almost all the subjects like management, medical diagnosis, positive thinking, covetousness, tyranny, hypocrisy, penury, nepotism, unscrupulousness etc.

As a mark of great respect to THIRUVALLUVAR, a 133 feet rock statue is erected at Kanyakumari (South India) where Arabian sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian ocean confluence. It is a pilgrim place for many people.

I have selected fifty  Kurals of general interest and explaining them with modern thoughts. I am over whelmed by the encouragement received from different people. Even those who had studied Kurals in their degree are writing to say, "When we studied earlier we could not understand the depth, but now we could understand the various dimensions of these Kurals". Many thanks to all the encouragement received.

My humble ambition is to educate people on THIRUKURAL which speaks on the "Art of living". It should not go unheard by our global educated and enlightened friends.


Visit the blog titbitsfromvincent.blogspot.com/.

M.S.VINCENT. California, USA (March 2010)