Flowers in Thirukkural – An unusual case

Thirukkural is a very famous, the most famous perhaps, didactic work in Tamil literature. Credited to Thiruvalluvar, of whom we know nothing more solid than his name – which must be based on his social class rather than a given name, the work is placed variously between 200 BC and 200 AD. True to one of its many alternative names – Ulagappothumarai (lit. The Common Code for the World), the Kural remains neutral and secular in many aspects (however, for the same reason, almost all major religions of India have claimed this work to be belonging to their ideology! The neutrality allows everyone to skew the couplets as per their biases. I should also note that there are explicit mentions of a few gods from Hinduism.) The Kural is not only able to maintain its neutrality and applicability across regions, but also across time – for it always intrigues me that a work written more or less two thousand years ago should make so much sense even today!

The work, which contains 1330 couplets (of the Kural Venpaa meter – the namesake) is primarily divided in to three classes, known as Paal – viz: Arathuppaal, Porutpaal and Kaamathuppaal. These are further divided in to Iyals (a collection of chapters of similar theme) and Adhikaarams (~chapters). Each Adhikaaram contains ten couplets talking about a given heading (like, for example, Hospitality, Verity, Education, Speech, etc) Thus the 1330 couplets are organized in to 130 adhikaarams which are further grouped in to 9 iyals which fall under the three paals. (The Arathuppaal has four iyals and 38 adhikaarams, the Porutpaal has 3 iyals and 70 adhikaarams and the Kaamathuppaal has 2 iyals and 25 adhikaarams.)

Tamil literary tradition (which must be much older than the Thirukkural itself as indicated by the existing grammar and literature) classifies the context of a song in to one of two major types: The Agam and the Puram.

The Agam (lit. Inside) deals with what happens inside a person – that is mostly one’s love affair (both happy and sad).

The Puram (lit. Outside), on the other hand, deals with what happens outside a person – his social achievements (valour and magnanimity taking the major portion), general observations about life, didactic advises, etc.

With a cursory glance (even with what I have introduced above) one will see Thirukkural too to be fitting in to this agam-puram tradition of the Tamils, yet, it is not actually the case is the pivotal argument of this article.

Why not? The Arathuppaal and the Porutpaal falls under the Puram and the Kaamathupaal sure enough falls under the Agam, don’t they?

Do they?

All of the literature before Thiruvalluvar, the Sangam literature, have meticulously followed these literary traditions in Tamil – so much so that even a novice in Sangam literature will be able to tell the agam and puram songs apart. Even literature after Thiruvalluvar or his contemporaries have mostly followed this tradition (the 17 other works of Pathinenkeezhkanakku, a collection of 18 books with which Thirukkural is also placed, also have this clear cut difference). But, Thiruvalluvar have clearly raised the bar – he has consciously kept his book as a common one – one which can be correlated to any culture of any time – Ulagappothumarai!

This aspect can be identified, as one of the many ways, by analyzing how Thiruvalluvar have used flowers in his work – particularly in the Kaamathuppaal.

Tamil literary tradition abounds with the use of flowers as markers. Flowers are an indispensable element in any Sangam songs. However, Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural names only a few flowers and none of them are from the long list of flowers used all along the Sangam poetry as markers.

Let us get ourselves acquainted, at least to a basic level, of how Sangam tradition uses flowers as markers and then come back to see how Thiruvalluvar avoids them, to get a more clear picture of Thiruvalluvar’s stance.

The Agam and Puram classifications of Tamil literature have further classifications. These are called Thinai (lit. type or genre) and are used to identify the prominent theme of a song.

The Agathinai are five in number (there are two more thinais usually added to this, but let us not get very deep in to the complexity of Tamil grammar here!) These have their own themes, landscapes, flora and fauna, people (their professions, songs, culture, gods, food, etc), time of day and time of year, etc. These are devised keeping in mind that a particular aspect of love (mood /theme) will be best expressed in a particular scene setting (landscape, season, time of day, etc).

Following is a crisp summary of the above details:

We can note that the very names of these Thinais are names of flowers or trees. The same goes with Puram classification as well. Most of the major thinais of Puram are also named after flowers: Vetchi, Karanthai, Vanji, Kaanji, Uzhignai, Nochi, Thumbai, Vaagai… (detailing these will unnecessarily expand this article; let us confine ourselves to the Agam and Kaamathuppaal).

With such background, one will be really surprised to know that Thiruvalluvar have, in all, mentioned only three flowers in his entire work.

Yes, just three! They are Anichcham [Scarlet pimpernel] (couplets 90, 1111, 1115 & 1120), Thaamarai [Lotus] (cts. 617 & 1103) and Kuvalai [Water lily] (ct. 1114).

Apart from these he have used the terms ‘malar’ and ‘poo’ in a few places (Malar – cts. 3, 595, 1112, 1231 & Poo – cts. 1112, 1305, 1313) (both terms mean ‘flower’ in Tamil)

What is the message delivered by this?

There is also the very bold and very obvious rejection of the Thinai classification in his structuring of the Kaamathuppaal. It is not following the traditional 5 classes (detailed above) but is simply classifying his songs in to ‘Kalaviyal’ (love before marriage) and ‘Karpiyal’ (love after marriage). Though one can easily argue that these two encompasses the five classes of the Sangam Agam tradition (Kurijni and a part of Paalai falling within Kalaviyal & Mullai, Marudham, Neithal and a part of Paalai falling within Karpiyal) they clearly are not meant to be! (One of the oldest and best commentators of Thirukkural, Parimelazhagar, mistakes this deviation as Sanskrit influence, the Samgraha-Viraha classification of that literature!)

Thiruvalluvar is not following the age old (even for his time!) Sangam Tamil tradition. He is not using flowers as markers to his songs, he is not putting them under such classifications as Thinai and Thurai (scene setting, sub-classification of Thinai) and is not even willing to give clues by using the well known flower markers. He have also deviated from some other things which are clear stamps of the Tamil tradition (such as Sacrificing goats to cure heroine’s (love, which is mistaken as a) disease, Heroine eloping with the Hero (when parents oppose their marriage) and Hero and Heroine getting in to fights because hero has affairs with prostitutes – this one is particularly interesting, Thiruvalluvar invents a whole new set of fine ideas for the Heroine to feign anger with the hero, instead of letting him to go to prostitutes!)

Why should he do all this? (Again, there are people who argues that these deviations are indication that Thiruvalluvar does not belong with the traditional Tamil poets, but is a Jain, who opposed all these. As I have mentioned already, and am going to do again in conclusion, Thiruvalluvar simply maintains neutrality to all religion, culture, region and time!)

The answer is quite simple: Thiruvalluvar has consciously composed his work to be a Common code for the entire world – Ulagapothumarai.

There are so many things which would appeal to everyone alike – people across various religion, culture, language, region and time. What’s more? Thiruvalluvar was able to attract people of different philosophies and ideologies too. He is an ardent devotee, a pious Jain / Buddhist, a true Christian, he’s even an atheist! Can one man be all that?

Thirukkural is not about one’s religion or culture, it is all about one’s way of living. The basic code of the entire book is live for others. Give as much as possible to others and the society you live in. Be good. Be truthful. Do your duty without any deviation. (All this sounds familiar? Any good ideology should be telling you this!)

So, flowers in Thirukkural, rather the missing of many of them, indicates to us the very nature the book should be credited for, this tells us how we should approach the book, and what one should look for in it.

Hope you will...

Thanks for spending your valuable time in reading this, I’d be gladder if you could take a little more time to comment or discuss your view points... Another thanks in advance for that!

An Indian Girl I Met (One Indian Girl - Book Review)

My Rating: 5/5 (why not?)

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NB: I know quite a lot of people have trouble with CB, I don't know why or for what, but they simply do! Let me tell you just this before you read my review of his latest book: I am a Tamil. In Tamil we have a huge amount of literature for which we know nothing about the authors, except their names in most of the cases. We don't care, or may be, I DON'T CARE! I don't waste my time researching (uselessly) about the origins of Thiruvalluvar, for example, the great author of the greatest work in any language, Thirukkural. It is even hypothesized that the Kural might be an anthology, written by a set of authors. There are quite a good amount of debates as well about the religious orientation of the author. To me, all this seems illogical. For me, I see Thiruvalluvar through with what I should see him, his work - the Thirukkural. He may be a single person, or a group - I couldn't care less! For me, the one who wrote the Thirukkural is Thiruvalluvar and I love and respect him a lot (the same goes for the other hundred / thousand such unknown authors of Tamil and Sanskrit!) So, for me CB is the author of this wonderful book One Indian Girl or whoever might have contributed, I see CB through the book, not the book through CB! Now for the review...

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Very few books have put me in a state of a beautiful paradox - that of wanting the story to end as quickly as it could and at the same time wishing it would last forever. That the story gains pace so rapidly and engagingly makes me to want to get to the end and see what is there - what happens to Radhika Mehta, in this case - but at the same time make me feel a hole in my stomach that grows bigger with the realization that the story is going to end, and I'll soon be not looking at the life of a person I've came to know so well... One Indian Girl did that magic for me!

Despite the book’s back cover's claim that you'll hate the protagonist, Radhika Mehta, because she earns a lot (damn lot, like half a million dollar a year! She telling her anual compensation to her parents over phone and saying 'Of course it’s all legal, dad. What are you saying? I promise it’s legal. Goldman Sachs is a reputed firm'* was such a beautiful moment!) and have had relationships and so on... I could very well empathize with her and start caring for her. During the initial chapters of the novel, the liberalist and conservationist in me had huge arguments (just like Radhika and her mini-me do) but towards the end I could not hear them any more! Not to forget the feminists (and anti-pseudo-feminists) in me, they were in a lot of confusion and were gone too at the end - they too must have got lost in the story and its beauty like me, perhaps!

CB gives a very new perspective to feminism and it goes much deeper. I so much want to talk about Brijest Gulati, but am afraid I might ruin the read for you (if you will!)

The end is one of the most beautiful that I have read. Couldn't be any better (though it had the CB trade mark Bollywood touch in the scene setting!)

If you have expected me to reproduce the story line just short of the end, in the name of a review, sorry! That's not what I do... But, let me tell you this: Me taking my time to sit, write and post a review (or sort of!) is an expression of how much I liked the story... It felt good - the feel good stuff.

Is it literature? May be or may not be... But, it made me feel good... And that's all is there to it, as far as I’m concerned!

Thank you CB, you haven't let me down (I pre-ordered the book!)

Thanks for reading. Do share your experience, if you have read the book.

PS: You wanna argue? You are welcome... But, kindly don't expect me to join, since I have other useful things to do... Thank you!

*Reproduced only as a quote, no copyright violation intended!

Is the old Tamil grammar Agathiyam truly lost?

The current Tamil script, what we call as the phonetic script (a letter/symbol representing each phoneme of a language), evolved from the Tamizhi (or Tamil-Brahmi) script. It is obvious that these Brahmi scripts (the precursors of all Indian scripts) are not indigenous. They probably have originated from the Aramaic scripts (compare Brahmi and Aramaic and you’ll know, and regarding the direction in which it is distributed, the evidences comes from archeology)

These scripts, at the earliest, must have reached the Indian subcontinent by about 800 - 600 BC. But, clearly the languages of this land, Tamil and Sanskrit, are much older than this period.

So, how are people writing these languages, for hundreds of years, before these scripts arrived here? What indigenous writing system we had?

We must have had a pictographic / ideographic writing system as our original form of writing (similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs and/or Chinese scripts)

This idea can be supported with some titles seen in the names of Sangam poetry.

We had titles like ‘kanakkaayan’ and ‘ezhuthan’.

Kanakku (கணக்கு) refers to the Tamil Nedunganakku (the Tamil Alphabets) and one who is well versed in it (technically a primary teacher) is called ‘kanakkaayar’.

On the other hand, ‘ezhuthu’ must have referred to the old picto-/ideo-graphs. One who is able to read and write the old (and the then obsolete) writing system, must have been called with this title.

Ezhuthu in Tamil means to draw. Even now, this word also means drawing as well as letters. This clearly supports both the fact that we had an original pictorgraphic writing system and that was replaced by the alphabetic system (as a matter of convenience and standardization).

Coming back to Agathiyam, this must have been a grammar book written in the old form of writing, as well as including grammar rules for and based on that writing system.

As the writing system gets replaced by the ‘new’ phonetic system, people would have slowly felt the need for a new grammar, which is in and is based on the new writing system - the Tholkaapiyam was created.

This is one possible way how Tamil must have lost its most important grammar work - it became obsolete. The same must be true for other literature as well; some of them must have been transliterated, while others have been lost due to lack of this. 

Also, consider the fact that these literature are written in palm-leaf manuscripts, which will last only for a couple hundred years, they need to be copied down in new leafs to conduct them to the future - once the pictographs had none to read or interpret them, they were lost to eternity! 

During the reign of Raja Raja Chola, who patronized the Tamil script that evolved from the Pallava grantham, the precursor of our present script, he have transliterated some old inscriptions and copper-plate grants which are written in a older script, Vatteluthu, a direct descendant of Tamizhi. This was mentioned in the inscriptions itself. And a couple of inscriptions and copper-plate grants are now available in both the scripts! This is a process which is very similar to the one I described above!

So, is the Agathiyam still available? May be! 

But, even if it is, we will not be able to ‘read’ it, not with confidence and clarity - much like the Indus Valley Scripts - and who, knows, some of those IVC scripts are actually fragments of Agathiyam (or some other Tamil literature!)

Could Agathiyam be lost because Tamils had no script at that time, and they are not know to have a 'orally transmitting' tradition?

This is also possible. 

However, regarding oral transmission, there is this case with Tamils: The ‘legend’ (if not history,) of how the grammar ‘Iraiyanar Agaporul’ and its commentary by Nakeerar (Madurai “Kanakkaayanaar”’s son, note this ‘kanakku’) came in to being narrates how poets of the Sangam (Pandiya kingdom) were asked to go to other places to gain a living, since the country was affected by a severe drought. When the poets came back after many years (or many generations, possibly) they were able to “recollect” and reproduce the Tamil grammars (most likely the Tholkaappiyam) except for the Porul Ilakkanam. This is when divine intervention happens (as per the legend) and God of Madurai himself gives the Iraiyanaar Agapporul (and hence the name!)

Now, renowned research scholar Mayilai Seeni. Venkatasami is of the opinion that even this text (Iraiyanaar Agapporul) is basically a reproduction of Tholkappiyam’s Porul Athikaaram - he notice a lot of similarity between the two.

So, this might be an indication that Tamils too had the tradition of handing down things orally.

I need not go at length with this, for even when they had palm-leaf manuscripts, they didn’t mass produce them - so, essentially it will be like one copy per region and all those who wish to use it must undergo teaching under a teacher and memorize the text (the term ‘paadam odal’ or ‘paadam kettal’ refers to this, even now I have heard old people saying ‘enakku adu paadam illai’ if they don’t know something by heart!)

Clearly, all literature, including technical ones, are codified in to verses (like the Venpaa, for example) to enable easy memorization. So, Tamils did have the tradition!

I also opine that script does affects a languages grammar.

For example, any English grammar text will talk about punctuation. That is part of the way English works. Tamil was not in need of punctuation marks - we had ‘particles’ that take care of stress and other things (like, ‘thaan’ for emphasizing), but, any recent Tamil grammar will also talk about punctuation marks in Tamil - this is clearly a script driven addition!

In olden days, the usage of pulli, and the practice of not putting one explicitly in inscriptions and palm-leaves must have had its impact in the grammar - we see Tamil having well specified rules as to the doubling of consonants and consonant clusters - this makes the words easy to read even without the pulli marked!