For example, the term Thirukkural is a cir formed by combining the two words thiru and kua. 58.

The text has been dated variously from 300 BCE to 5th century CE.

The traditional accounts describe it as the last work of the third Sangam, but linguistic analysis suggests a later date of 450 to 500 CE and that it was composed after the Sangam period.

The text has been translated into at least 40 Indian and non-Indian languages, making it one of the most translated ancient works.

The Kural is considered a masterpiece and one of the most important texts of the Tamil Literature.

The Tamil people and the government of Tamil Nadu have long celebrated and upheld the text with reverence.

Tiru is an honorific Tamil term that corresponds to the universally Indian, Sanskrit term sri meaning holy, sacred, excellent, honorable, and beautiful.

The term tiru has as many as 19 different meanings.

Kural means something that is short, concise, and abridged.

Etymologically, kural is the shortened form of kural paattu, which is derived from kuruvenpaattu, one of the two Tamil poetic forms explained by Tolkappiyam, the other one being neduvenpaattu.

According to Miron Winslow, kural is used as a literary term to indicate a metrical line of 2 feet, or a distich or couplet of short lines, the first of 4 and the second of 3 feet.

Thus, Tirukkural literally comes to mean sacred couplets.

According to traditional accounts, it was the last work of the third Sangam, and was subjected to a divine test (which it passed).

The scholars who believe this tradition, such as Somasundara Bharathiar and M.

Historian K. K. Pillay assigned it to the early 1st century CE.

According to Kamil Zvelebil, a Czech scholar of Tamil literature, these early dates such as 300 BCE to 1 BCE are unacceptable and not supported by evidence within the text.

The diction and grammar of the Kural, and Valluvars indebtedness to some earlier Sanskrit sources, suggest that he lived after the early Tamil bardic poets, but before Tamil bhakti poets era.

His proposal is based on the evidence that the Kural text contains a large proportion of Sanskrit loan words, shows awareness and indebtedness to some Sanskrit texts best dated to the first half of the 1st millennium CE, and the grammatical innovations in the language of the Kural literature.

Later scholars Thomas Burrow and Murray Barnson Emeneau show that 35 of these are of Dravidian origin and not Sanskrit loan words.

Zvelebil states that an additional few have uncertain etymology and that future studies may prove those to be Dravidian.

The 102 remaining loan words from Sanskrit are not negligible, and some of the teachings in the Kural text, according to Zvelebil, are undoubtedly based on the then extant Sanskrit works such as the Arthashastra and Manusmriti (also called the Manavadharmasastra ).

The text also features a higher number of Sanskrit loan words compared with these older texts.

According to Zvelebil, besides being part of the ancient Tamil literary tradition, the author was also a part of the one great Indian ethical, didactic tradition as a few of the verses in the Kural text are undoubtedly translations of the verses of earlier Indian texts.

Saint Valluvar). 34 There is negligible authentic information available about Valluvars life.

In fact, neither his actual name nor the original title of his work can be determined with certainty.

The Kural text itself does not name its author.

The name Thiruvalluvar was first mentioned in the later era text Tiruvalluva Maalai, a Shaivite Hindu text also of unclear date.

However, the Tiruvalluva Maalai does not mention anything about Valluvars birth, family, caste or background.

No other authentic pre-colonial texts have been found to support any legends about the life of Valluvar.

Starting around early 19th century, numerous inconsistent legends on Valluvar in various Indian languages and English were published.

Along with various versions of his birth circumstances, many state he went to a mountain and met the legendary Agastya and other sages.

There are also accounts claiming that, during his return journey, Valluvar sat under a tree whose shadow sat still over him and did not move the entire day, he killed a demon, and many more.

Scholars consider these and all associated aspects of these hagiographic stories to be fiction and ahistorical, a feature common to international and Indian folklore.

The alleged low birth, high birth and being a pariah in the traditional accounts are also doubtful.

This has led almost every major religious group in India, including Christianity, to claim the work and its author as one of their own.

In a manner similar to speculations of the authors biography, there has been much speculation about his religion with no historical evidence.

The 19th-century Christian missionary George Uglow Pope, for example, claimed that Valluvar must have lived in the 9th century CE, come in contact with Christian teachers such as Pantaenus of Alexandria, imbibed Christian ideas and peculiarities of Alexandrian teachers and then wrote the wonderful Kurral with an echo of the Sermon of the Mount.

This theory is ahistorical and discredited.

According to Zvelebil, the ethics and ideas in Valluvars work are not Christian ethics.

Albert Schweitzer hints that the dating of the Kural has suffered, along with so many other literary and historical dates, philosophies and mythologies of India, a severe mauling at the hands of the Christian Missionaries, anxious to post-date all irrefutable examples of religious maturity to the Christian era.

This can be observed in his treatment of the concept of ahimsa or non-violence, which is the principal concept of both the religions.

He theorizes that Valluvar was probably a learned Jain with eclectic leanings, who was well acquainted with the earlier Tamil literature and also had knowledge of the Sanskrit texts.

Nevertheless, early Digambara or Svetambara Jaina texts do not mention Valluvar or the Kural text.

The first claim of Valluvar as an authority appears in a 16th-century Jain text.

Each kural or couplet contains exactly seven words, known as cir s, with four cir s on the first line and three on the second, following the kural metre.

A cir is a single or a combination of more than one Tamil word.

For example, the term Thirukkural is a cir formed by combining the two words thiru and kua.

Thirukkural Word For Word Meaning