SANADHANA DHARMA  

Tirukural

(Tamil) "Holy couplets." A treasury of Hindu ethical insight and a literary masterpiece of the Tamil language, written by Saiva Saint Tiruvalluvar (ca 200 bce) near present-day Chennai. The text focuses primarily on the first three goals of life--artha (wealth), dharma (conduct) and kama (desire)--but also includes 13 chapters on renunciate dharma, relating to life's fourth goal, moksha (liberation). In an extraordinarily compact verse form of 14 syllables, the poet presents 133 subjects of ten verses each on relationships, human strengths and foibles, statecraft and more. One of the world's earliest ethical texts, In fact, it is sworn on in South Indian courts of law.

Her pride and ignorance

The most knowledgeable woman of the Cankam age, proved her ignorance in a very simple incident. Once when the learned lady was on her way to Madurai, she rested under a blackberry tree.

The lord in a guise of a shepherd boy asked her whether she wanted a hot or cold fruit. When she wanted him to help her in getting fruits from the tree she answered that she wanted the latter. When the fruits fell on the ground, the lady took them and tried to puff off the sand on the fruits (a gesture usually done to reduces the heat of edibles).

Then the boy asked her why she had chosen the hot fruit instead of cold. Then only Avvaiyar realized her ignorance and pride, and understood from the lord the meaning of her action. Her pride and ignorance vanished and she became simpler and more enlightened (Tiruppugazh 441).

His given name at birth was Muthiah. But when he made his exit from this world, at the age of 54, on October 16, 1981, millions of Tamils remembered him only by the name Kannadasan. For Tamils all over the world, he epitomised Tamil poetry. Even the illiterate, who couldn't read and memorise the poetry of Kamban or the maxims of Valluvan, could hum the compositions of poet Kannadasan.

A number count of his publications shows a tally of 109 volumes, which include 21 novels and 10 volumes of essays on Hinduism, captioned Arthamulla Indu Matham (Meaningful Hinduism). In addition, he produced about 4000 poems and approximately 5000 movie lyrics, between 1944 and 1981, all with an eighth grade education at the formal level. He was also an excellent example of this century's Tamil goliard.