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TIRUKKURAL
An Abridgement of Śāstras
R. Nagaswamy
13. G.U. POPE
13.1. COLONIAL ATTEMPT TO CHRISTINAISE TIRUKKUṚAḶ
by R. Nagaswamy
Pope was born on 14th April 1820, to a Scottish merchant. He was a born scholar, with his mind set on learning languages but embraced the profession of a Christian missionary whose life work was to convert people to sectrarian Christianity. He came to Madras in 1840, by ship to do missionary activity of conversion and thourghout his life his primary concern was that profession. He soon realized that his knowledge of local language was essential to convert people and so started learning Tamiḻ. His love of Tamiḻ was born out of this compulsion and not because of his love of Tamiḻ which was only a tool of conversion. Soon he was sent to Sawerpuram in Thirunelveli district, where he started to convert people to Christianity. A sketch of his life published by the Śaiva Siddhānta Publishing Society which glorifies him as the embodiment of Tamiḻ studies. Any reader of his introduction to translation of Kuṟaḷ would see how he was mainly responsible for twisting Tamiḻ studies by declaring Tiruvaḷḷuvar was a Christian. The Śaiva Siddhānta publication society which published his work in 1978, has supported his disservice to Tamiḻ. Pope first work was Christava-tattva-deepika, Nannūl, Nālaṭiyār, Thiruvācakam, Purapparuḷ vembamālai, etc., cannot be understood or translated without a knowledge of Sanskrit.
Pope tried to kindle in the hearts of the Tamiḻians, a love of the noble language. His zeal for the Tamiḻ can be gathered from the following words from his preface to his Thiruvācakam, the speech of a dying people may perhaps may be allowed to die. But this cannot be said of the Tamiḻ race. “Heaven forbid - Let the Tamiḻians ceased to be ashamed of their vernacular (Pope in the life of G.U. Pope - Kazagam publications P-VII)”. This was written by Pope towards the end of his life when he was getting needy to publish his Thiruvācakam. This version is unacceptable, because it was the time when two great Tamiḻ scholar Dr.U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer and Arumuga Navalar of Yazhpanam, besides Ramalinga Vaḷḷalār and others were active in bringing out excellent works in Tamiḻ who was ashamed of Tamiḻ as claimed by Pope in 1900, he wrote. “This is to show that men must understand systems they attack them and that missionaries especially much to learn in regard to such Indian religion and my book will enable all Europeans who desire it to acquire this knowledge. (P-XXI)”. It seems clear that Pope in his own words, his writings were addressed to Europeans, especially the missionary to attack the Indian religions for which he made several attempts like calling Vaḷḷuvar a christian 1887. This was kindling Tamiḻ chauanism. While Pope appealed to what he called “Tamiḻ race” - a deliberate choice to wean them away from their parent. One can imagine when such is the approach of the author to attack native language, and religion, what kind of translations one can expect from such a person, especially the text like Tirukkuṟaḷ, Tiruvācakam, Naṉṉūl, etc., His translations in many places are either deliberately twisted or imperfect. So, the claim that Pope did glorious service is to be viewed in this direction.
“East and West have influenced one another in a very real and not yet thoroughly understood way from the earliest times. It is undoubtedly a noteworthy fact that from this Mylapore on which eyes of Christendom have ever rested as the one sacred spot in India of Apostolic labour, comes the one oriental book, much of whose teaching is an echo of the ‘Sermon on the Mount’.
The name Kuṟaḷ is given par excellence to this the poet's great and only work; which consists of 133 chapters, each containing 10 couplets and thus numbers 2,660 lines.
Kuṟaḷ means ‘anything short’ and is properly the name of the couplet, as begin the shortest species of stanza in the Tamiḻ language.
Thiruvaḷḷuvar's poem is thus by no means a long one; though in value it far outs the whole of the remaining Tamiḻ literature and is one of the select great works which have entered into the very soul of which can never die. According to a custom not unknown in Europe a series of verses (most of them very modern) bearing the names of all the great Tamiḻ poets is prefixed to the Kuṟaḷ under the name of ‘The Garland of Tiruvaḷḷuvar’ and the subject of his excellence with every variety of hyperbole.
Several of those are neat. One by Paranar says that as Vishnu when he appeared as Vāmana (Kuṟaḷ means dwarf also) or the dwarf measure with two steps heaven and earth so with the two lines of his diminutive Veṇpā-footed Kuṟaḷ verse has Tiruvaḷḷuvar measured the Universe.
மாலுங் குறளாய் வளர்ந்திரண்டு மாணடியான்
ஞால முழுது நயந்தளந்தான்; வாலறிவன்
வள்ளுவருந் தங்குறள்வெண்பா வடியால் வையத்தார்
உள்ளுவ வெல்லாம் அளந்தார் ஓர்ந்து.
Complete in itself the sole work of its author, it has come down the stream of ages absolutely uninjured - hardly a single various reading of any importance being found - and every rival sect in the Tamiḻ country claims the Kuṟaḷ as its own and has furnished it with commentary and critical apparatus accordingly.
Tradition declares that Tiruvaḷḷuvar composed his Kuṟaḷ at the request of his neighbors in order that the Tamiḻ People might have a Vedam of their own; and it was doubtless intended to become the abiding authority on all ethical subjects for the Tamiḻ country. The author must have already possessed a great reputation, or this request would not have been made; yet there are no traces of any other writings of his.
The Kuṟaḷ when finished is said to have been taken by its author to Madura where there was a college of learned Tamiḻ scholars, supposed to have been founded in the days of Vamca Cekhara an ancient king of the Pandya kingdom. In this college Śiva himself had condemned to appear as forty-ninth professor, especially devoting himself to the exposition of the Tamiḻ language. The god also bestowed on the college a sacred bench of solid diamond, on which no one could sit who was not at fault as scholar. Lists are given of the forty-eight members of this academy but there are no genuine remains of their writings. The result of the appearance of Tiruvaḷḷuvar is variously stated. The general idea is that the high-caste assembly would not permit him to take his seat on the bench with learned pundits on account of his want of caste; but that meekly acquiescing in his own exclusion be simply requested permission to lay his book on the end of the seat. On this being granted the book was placed where the poet should have been seated, and the Lotus-tank. This story is obviously inconsistent with the idea which is usually prevalent that the president was Kapilar, himself a Pariah, and a brother of Thiruvaḷḷuvar.
The truth seems to be that the Madura school of Tamil Literature now too full of Sanskrit influences, was supreme till the advent of the ‘St. Thome poet’, whose fame at once eclipsed that of the southern sages.
There are no data whatever which may enable us to fix with precision the period at which our poet flourished. I think between A.D 800 and 1000 is its probable date. The style is not archaic - far less so than that of the Civaga Chintamani. Remembering that this author was not fettered by caste prejudices, that his greatest friend was a sea-captain that he lived at St. Thome, that he was evidently an ‘eclictic’ that Christian influences were at the time at work in the neighbourhood, and that many passages are strikingly Christian in their spirit, I cannot feel any hesitation in saying that the Christian scriptures were among the sources from which the poet derived his inspiration.” (Pope has not cited one single Kural reflecting Christian thought)
Dr.Graul, a devoted student of Tamiḻ Literatue, published an edition in Leipzig and in London in 1856 with German and Latin translations. It is very valuable, though incomplete owing to his lamented death and has serious misprints.
The purely native editions issued under the editorship of the late learned Pandit Saravanaperumal aiyar of Madras are very correct and valuable.
Twelve native commentators have illustrated by verbal commentaries the whole text but the student will do well to disregard the meanings read into the verses by persons native or Europeans who are anxious to prove that the Tamiḻ sage taught their own favourite dogmas. (—Pope)
Vaḷḷuvar as generally very simple and his commentaries very profound. Thus Pope dismisses all the native commentaries and his alone as true. As against see his own statement that he is not giving a true translation.
“In regard to the philosophico-theological system taught in the Kuṟaḷ various opinions have naturally been held. Every Hindu sect claims the great poet, and strives to interpret his verses so as to favour its own dogmas. Something on these subjects will be found in the notes to each chapter. The Jains especially consider him their own, and he has certainly used several of their technical terms, and seems to have been cognizant of the latest developments of that system.
There is one couplet, however, that is destructive of the idea that Tiruvaḷḷuvar was a Jain. In the Ch.III., fourth couplet, a story regarding Indra is referred to as proving that ascetics have power over the gods. The sage was Gautama, who cursed Indra for deceiving the sage's wife, Ahalya. Now according to Jain ideas, a sage could have no wife, nor could he feel the emotion of anger, nor had he the power to inflict punishment. A Jain would not believe the story, and could scarcely use it as the author of the Kuṟaḷ has done. But in as far as it is Oriental Thiruvaḷḷuvar's teaching is just such as the study of Hinduism, in light of Śaṅkara's reforms, combined with that of the Jain system in its later developments and of the Bhagavad gita, might have produced.”
“There is no trace in the Kuṟaḷ of many things, systems, doctrine, and practices, current in South India at different periods, because, I suppose they had been eliminated form the sage's own eclectic system of faith and practice and because his work is didactic and not controversial.” (—Pope) (This is statement arising out of Tamiḻ customs and manners. Many of them are based on Dharma Śāstras and are practiced to this day even 200 years after Pope.
What philosophy he teaches seems to be of the eclectic school as represented by the Bhagavad gita.
‘Of Bhakti-that compound of, the introduction of which into India I still think (with Weber) is mainly due to the influence of Christianity - the first chapter of the Kural is beautiful exposition.’
“The Kural owes much of its popularity to its exquisite poetic form striking idea expressed in a refined and intricate metre. No translation can convey an idea of its charming effect. It is truly an apple of gold in a network of silver. Something of the same kind is found in the Greek epigrams in Martial and the Latin elegiac verse. There is a beauty in the periodic character of the Tamiḻ construction in many of these verses that reminds the reader of the happiest efforts of Propertius. Probably the Tamiḻ sage adopted it as being the best representative in Tamiḻ of the Sanskrit sloka.”
The brevity rendered necessary by the form gives an oracular effect to the utterances of the great Tamiḻ ‘Master of the Sentences’. They are the choicest of moral epigrams.
The selection of the most difficult metre in the language - one permitting no deviations from strict rule and requiring such wonderful condensation - for a long work showed that the author intended to expend upon it his utmost of power and to make it a ‘possession for ever’ a delight of many generations.
The laws of the Veṇpā metre in which the Kuṟaḷ is composed are very curious and in fact unique in prosody. They will be explained farther on; but the student of Tamiḻ is referred to my Third Tamil Grammar sublimioris Tamuliccci idiomatis, by the great Beschi, the whole subject of Tamiḻ Poetry is discussed. The late lamented Dr.A.C.Burnell, M.C.S, (among his very many benefactions to ôiental learning), issued a reprint of this valuable, which is most faithful to its native sources, the best of which are printed in my Third Grammar.
The following is an analysis of the whole Kuṟaḷ as given in the commentary of Parimēlaḻakar.
It is divided into three books treating of virtue, wealth and pleasure. The Naṉṉūl, as standard Tamiḻ Grammar of much later date has the rule.
The benefit derived from a treatise must be the attaining to virtue, wealth, enjoyment, heaven (Delivarance). In the 26th sloka of the Hitopadesa the same enumeration is given:
धर्मार्थ काम मोक्षाणाम्
Our author treated of only three of these. Did he leave his work incomplete? or did he refrain from any exposition of Vīṭu or Mokṣa because he resolved to take only the practical view of things? I suppose he was not satisfied with the glimpses he had obtained of man's future and waited for light; or perhaps, he thought his people not prepared for higher teaching. Ch.XXXV- XXXVII gives us his nearest approach to the subject.” (—Pope)