Thirukural is a work of Tamil literature by Thiruvalluvar written in the form of couplets expounding various aspects of life. It contains 1330 couplets divided into 133 chapters of 10 couplets each. Each couplet consists of seven words, with four words on the first line and three on the second. The word "Thirukkural" is composed of two words Thiru and Kural which mean `Sacred' and `Couplet' respectively. Like the Confucian Lun Yu, which is translated as "Sacred Sayings", the common English rendering of Thiruk-Kural is Sacred Couplets.
Here is an extract from the Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature, would suffice to highlight the value of Kural as a classic of international repute.
"Sacred Couplets is considered a masterpiece of human thought, compared in India and abroad to the Bible, John Milton's Paradise Lost, and the works of Plato. .........The Thirukkural is an all inclusive moral guide whose foremost moral imperatives are not to kill and to tell the truth" - (Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature)
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Here is my tribute to one of the greatest works in literature. This is the translation I could find so far, would keep updating the pages as and when I get better translations for the Sacred Couplets.
Happy Reading…
Thirukal English Translations
5 comments:
Hey me first...hehehehhe..!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
nice post dude .....
good u post every day
excellent post Pal...hope the information will help people understand this invaluable work of wisdom.
Wikipedia has an English entry for it here.
And here (I think) is the Tamil entry for it.
Oh, and you may want to check out the External Links in the above Wikipedia entries.
@ ghost particle, ajay...
thanks
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