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!