Thiruvalluvar

01Seven words a verse

A kural is a couplet of seven metrical feet, four in the first line and three in the second. Thiruvalluvar wrote 1,330 of them, ten to a chapter, in 133 chapters, divided into three books: Aram (dharma, 38 chapters), Porul (artha, statecraft and wealth, 70) and Inbam (kama, love, 25). He does not stop for stories. Each couplet says one thing and stops. The first begins with the letter A and with God: as A is the first of letters, so the eternal Bhagwan is first in the world. Parimelalakar’s commentary of the 13th century is the classic guide.

02Valluvar today

Tradition says he was a weaver of Mylapore, in present-day Chennai, whose wife Vasuki was a model of devotion, and a temple to him stands there. His date is not settled; the Tamil Nadu government counts the Thiruvalluvar year from 31 BCE. G. U. Pope’s English translation appeared in 1886, and the Kural has since gone into dozens of languages. On 1 January 2000 the statue at Kanyakumari was unveiled on the rock beside the Vivekananda Rock Memorial: 95 feet of figure on a 38-foot pedestal, the 38 chapters of Aram carrying the 95 of Porul and Inbam.

Place · Ancient shrine at the meeting of three seasKanyakumari Bhagavathy Amman TempleAt the southern tip of Bharat, where the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal meet, the Devi stands as a maiden still waiting for Shiva. Vivekananda meditated on the rock offshore in 1892.Read →