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WorkTiruvaḷḷuvar

The Kural

Tamil couplets that put not killing above telling the truth, and a good family life first among the roads to salvation.

by Tiruvaḷḷuvar120 passages held

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Original title
Tirukkuṟaḷ
Original language
Tamil

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Overview

Every couplet in this book has seven words, four on the first line and three on the second, and there are 1,330 of them, ten to a chapter. The Tirukkuṟaḷ, "the sacred couplets", usually called the Kural, is a Tamil manual for a good life. It was composed and handed down, not written in reply to anyone, and it argues through its arrangement. It takes three aims in turn: aṟam, virtue, in 38 chapters; poruḷ, wealth and the running of a state, in 70; and iṉpam, love, in 25, where a man and a woman speak by turns. The virtue it teaches is the householder's. Of all who seek salvation, one couplet says, the greatest are those who lead a good family life. The book puts not killing above even truthfulness, ranks refusing to kill and eat living things above a thousand fire sacrifices, and holds that all people are born alike and differ only in how they live. The text never names its author. Later tradition calls him Tiruvaḷḷuvar and counts the book the last work of the third Sangam, the legendary assembly of poets at Madurai. Jains, Hindus and Buddhists have each claimed him, and the couplets name no sect. Most historians now place the book around 500 CE, close to the 450 to 500 CE given by the Czech Tamil scholar Kamil Zvelebil. When the Italian Jesuit Costanzo Beschi put the book into Latin in 1730, he left out the third part. Tolstoy drew on it in "A Letter to a Hindu" in 1908, and the letter brought the Kural to Gandhi. V. V. S. Aiyar, a Tamil revolutionary exiled in French Pondicherry, published a complete English prose version in 1916. In 1968 the government of Tamil Nadu ordered a couplet displayed in every government bus.

Key concepts

What are aṟam, poruḷ and iṉpam?

They are the three aims of a human life, and the Kural is built on them: aṟam, virtue or right conduct; poruḷ, wealth and the running of a state; iṉpam, the pleasure of love. Each gets its own part, in that order. Virtue comes first because the other two stand on it: wealth gained by means that are not evil, one couplet says, brings forth both righteousness and happiness.

What does virtue actually ask of a person in the Kural?

Above all a clean heart. Be pure in heart, one couplet says, and all righteousness is contained in that, everything else is empty sound. Virtue is therefore not ritual or dress but the state a person acts from, and the Kural claims it pays: the only true delight comes from it, all else is pain and shame. Its plainest sign is ordinary kindness, a gracious look and kind words that come from the heart.

What does the Kural mean by love, before the love poems?

Care for others, and the Kural makes it the seat of life itself: whoever lacks it is only a mass of bone wrapped in skin. Those without love live for themselves, while those who love give even their bones for others' needs. The image it chooses is harsh: as the sun burns a worm that has no bones, virtue burns the person who does not love. Romantic love comes later, as a separate aim.

Who is the God the Kural opens with?

A God described rather than named. The first couplet calls him the Great Original: as the letter A starts the alphabet, he is the starting point of all that exists. Later lines call him the one of perfect intelligence and the one who has conquered all attachments, whose feet are the refuge for crossing the ocean of births and deaths. The couplets name no sect and cite no scripture.

Is giving up the world good or bad in the Kural?

Good, for those who choose it, though it is not the only road. Beside the householder's life the Kural sets the life of the ascetic, in chapters of its own. Whatever a person has renounced, one couplet says, they are freed from the grief that thing would bring, and the feelings of I and mine are called vanity and pride. Those who renounce utterly are on the path to salvation, the rest are caught in a snare.

Why does the Kural praise rain right after God?

Because everything else depends on it, virtue included. Rain is called the immortal drink: it gives every food that tastes sweet and is itself part of what people eat, and if the heavens dry up, neither sacrifices to the gods nor feasts are held. The chapter ends on its boldest step: nothing on earth can go on without water, so even right conduct depends in the end on rain.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Virtue Kept at Home

Must a person leave family and goods behind to be good, or can the good life be led in an ordinary household? The Kural answers for the household, and then asks more of it than any hermitage would.

Aṟam, the first of the book's three aims, belongs to the householder: whoever feeds the guest, helps the pilgrim and keeps a family well is called greatest among those who seek salvation, and no robe or matted hair is needed. Yet the demands are severe. Not killing ranks above even truthfulness, refusing meat above a thousand fire sacrifices, and an injury is to be answered with a kindness that shames the one who did it. Holiness worn as a costume is exposed as a fowler hiding in a bush.

  • virtue
  • compassion
  • nonviolence
  • generosity
  • integrity
  • self-control
  • anger

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Wealth and the Straight Sceptre

Can money and power be pursued without loss of virtue? Seventy chapters on poruḷ treat getting rich, governing and learning as honourable work, provided the means stay clean.

Poruḷ is the book's longest part, and nothing in it is ashamed of wealth: amass it, one couplet says, for no steel cuts an enemy's pride more sharply, and this world is closed to the penniless as the next is closed to the merciless. A ruler wins by a sceptre held straight, not by the lance. Ploughing is the first of trades, begging a disgrace. Against all of it stands destiny, called stronger than any plan, until a later chapter lets steady labour defy it.

  • wealth
  • justice
  • leadership
  • prudence
  • judgment
  • practical wisdom
  • education
  • knowledge
  • labor
  • courage
  • social status

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Whom to Trust

How does anyone tell a friend from a flatterer, or an enemy who smiles from one who does not? The couplets teach a reader to test people before needing them.

Friendship in the Kural is judged by what it does in trouble. The true friend moves as fast as a hand catching a garment that the wind has blown aside, and misfortune is welcomed as the rod that measures who stays. Love that keeps accounts of how much each side gives is called a kind of begging. The warnings are concrete: an enemy's friendship is an anvil for hammering, and even his joined hands may hide a weapon. Kind words are preferred as ripe fruit to unripe.

  • friendship
  • trust
  • loyalty
  • deception
  • communication
  • conflict

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Love in Two Voices

Why would a book of rules for virtue and statecraft end with a lover and his beloved speaking by turns? Iṉpam, pleasure in love, is the third aim, and the book treats it as part of a whole life rather than a lapse from one.

In the twenty-five closing chapters no one lectures. A man and a woman speak in turn, through first sight, secret meetings, his absence on campaign and her waiting, when a single day crawls as slowly as seven. A desperate lover may threaten to ride the palmyra stalk, a step the book counts as overpassing the bounds of decorum, and a woman is praised for refusing it. The book ends on the lovers' quarrel, sulking that is the salt of love so long as it is not overdone.

  • love
  • romantic love
  • desire
  • separation
  • longing
  • grief

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Within this work

passages held
120
distinct concepts
251
by passages held, corpus-wide
#469

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “desire” and “love”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 11 pairings. 97 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
desirelove6
compassionnonviolence5
desireromantic love4
compassiongenerosity1
compassionlove1
compassionvirtue1
generositylove1
generositynonviolence1
loveromantic love1
lovevirtue1
prudencevirtue1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. The Kural (Tirukkuṟaḷ) you are here EN
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