Kural Read online

  Acknowledgements

  My understanding of the Kural owes a lot to V.M. Gopalakrishnamachariar’s edition of the book which included an excellent commentary on it by Parimeelazhahar. Parimeelazhahar, the thirteenth century commentator, sounds as terse and obscure in his rendering of the Kural as Valluvar himself, but Gopalakrishnamachariar’s edition is a great boon as he uses simple and modernized Tamil.

  Also helpful was an edition brought out by the Dharmapuram Mutt, which comprised not only a commentary by Parimeelazhahar but also by four other commentators who were amongst the ten ancient scholars to have commented on the Kural.

  There are several English translations of the Kural (either in full or in parts) by F.W. Ellis, G.U. Pope, W.H. Drew, John Lazarus, H.A. Popley, V.R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), K. Sreenivasan, K.C. Kamliah, Suddhananda Bharati and G. Vanmikanathan. I have consulted all of these and benefitted most from Rajaji’s rendering.

  The advice given to me by Professor K. Swaminathan, by far the greatest and most perceptive of Indian teachers of English, also helped me. I have also benefitted by one general suggestion made by Professor A.K. Ramanujan. M. Shanmukham Pillai’s work in Tamil “The Prosody and Various Readings in Tirukkural”, published by the University of Madras has been an invaluable aid.

  Parts of my Introduction to this book also appeared earlier in the New Quest (May–June, 1979) in an article entitled “The Kural and its Translators”.

  Madras

  June 1990

  P.S. Sundaram

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  UK | Canada | Ireland | Australia

  New Zealand | India | South Africa

  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  This collection published 1990

  Copyright © P.S. Sundaram 1989, 1990

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  ISBN: 978-0-144-00009-8

  This digital edition published in 2012.

  e-ISBN: 978-9-351-18015-9

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.