A Path to Purposeful Living by V.P.Palam

A review by
       Mani Velupillai      

     The Kural, a Tamil classic by Valluvar (circa 200 BC), bears witness to what American Missionary Dr.M.Winslow (compiler of Tamil-English Dictionary, 1862) meant by his comment: “It is not perhaps extravagant to say that in its poetic form Tamil is more polished and exact than Greek, and in both dialects (common and literary) with its borrowed treasures more copious than Latin. In its fullness and power, it more resembles English and German than any other living language.”
          Many a scholar has expounded on The Kural, written in such a profound, versatile and sophisticated Tamil language, to their respective audience at great length in an effort to do justice to Valluvar.  A Path to Purposeful Living by V.P.Palam, “Based on the Sacred Kural,” consists of commentaries on the 1,330 couplets authored by Valluvar in verse. One wonders why V.P.Palam should versify his commentaries on a work authored by Valluvar in verse. A versified commentary on a work in verse seems unprecedented and unenviable. It would appear V.P.Palam’s versified commentaries themselves deserve further commentaries, not in verse but in prose as usual.    
          The commentator appears to have been influenced by successive editors of The Kural, who added the honorific Thiru to its author and his work (turning them into Thiruvalluvar and Thirukural respectively). He tracked this honorific down to its literal sense of holy or sacred and treats The Kural as a holy scripture. “Thus have we received the Bhagavat Gita, the Tri Pitaka, the Holy Bible and the Holy Koran…” claims V.P.Palam. ‘In this line of the sacred scriptural tradition the last, but not the least, is the Sacred Kural’ (commentator’s emphasis). Hence the author of The Kural is not a secular philosopher Valluvar but a venerable cleric St.Valluvar!
           No doubt The Bhagavat Gita and Hinduism fall back on each other for sustenance. That is, perhaps, the case with The Tri Pitaka and Buddhism, The Bible and Christianity, The Koran and Islam etc. The Kural, however, is not a scripture which falls back on any religion but simply a Tamil classic of ethics a code of ethics based on reason and reality. Perhaps The Kural is similar to religion purely in ethical terms, but surely not in terms of the rest of the religious elements of faith, myths and rituals. Couplet 280 is indicative of Valluvar’s aversion to rites and rituals:
            No need of tonsure or long hair
            If one but avoids what the world condemns.
           This explains why scholars of different and rival persuasions, including Fr. Beschi of the Society of Jesus (1700-1742), G.U.Pope (1820-1908), Francis White Ellis (d.1819),  Rev.W.H.Drew, Rev.John Lazarus, Ariel, Graul and others have been able to identify themselves with The Kural.
             To be fair with V.P.Palam and his predecessors one must admit that Valluvar’s bibliography does include Dharmasastra by Manu, Arthasastra by Kautilya and Kamasutra by Vatsyayana. But Valluvar, like the Buddha, rejects Manu’s Varnashrama (casteism) and declares ‘Birth is alike to all…’ (972) and thunders:
          Call them Brahmins who are virtuous
           And kind to all that live (30).
          P.S.Sundaram (whose translation of The Kural was published as a Penguin Classic in 1991) points out ‘Valluvar was no ascetic’. In allusion to the following couplet he claims, ‘Napoleon, at any rate as First Consul, would have, we may be sure, won his enthusiastic approval!”:
          ‘A world conqueror bides his time
          Unperturbed’ (485).
          P.S.Sundaram adds, ‘It is not the work of a mystic but of a down-to-earth man of the world, concerned with the home and the community. But while Valluvar is eminently practical he is no opportunist. He is a statesman not a politician, a realist who is not a cynic’.  
          There are 10 chapters (100 couplets) on warfare, capable of reminding the reader of The Art of War by Sun-tzu (circa 500 BC). All these stark facts as well as the pithily expressed aphorisms which run into 133 chapters and 1,330 couplets amount to a code of ethics applicable to both laymen and statesmen, which bear no resemblance to a typical scripture.
          Let’s look at the very first couplet which refers to an ontological point:
          A begins the alphabet
          And God, primordial, the world (P.S.Sundaram).

          V.P.Palam’s commentary on the same couplet runs as follows:
          ‘A’ is the first and fount of sounds and alphabets all
          So too, the first and fount of all things, large and small-
          From the atomic particles whirling in a round-race
          To the mighty galaxies swirling through far-off space-
          That pervade the expanding cosmic world
          Is the Supreme primeval Lord.
          One is amazed at such a prosaic commentary by V.P.Palam, in emulation of Parimeelazhar, which is avowedly intended to do justice to Valluvar. Tamil readers who have already read and understood the same couplet in the original could find this elaborate commentary quite interesting. According to the commentator himself, “It has been credibly reported that some erudite scholars of the Tamil Country could deliver a compact discourse, on a single kural of their choice, holding the attention of a critical audience, even up to an hour without sliding into a boring monotony of empty verbosity.”  No doubt  V.P.Palam is such a scholar. One could, however, reduce his commentary in his own words to:
          A is the first of all alphabets
          So is the Supreme primeval Lord of the cosmic world.    

          Let’s compare different interpretations of couplet 336:
          Existing yesterday, to-day to nothing hurled
          Such greatness owns the transitory world  (G.U.Pope).

         “He was here yesterday,” gloats the earth over man,
          “Today he is gone”  (P.S.Sundaram).

          This world possesses the greatness of one
           Who yesterday was and to-day is not (W.H.Drew).
           But yesterday a man was and to-day he is not:
           That is the wonder of wonders in this world (V.V.S.Iyer)

Yesterday the good soul was very much alive, talking to me far into the night
Today he is no more! How on earth did it suddenly occur?
That, alas, is the Magna Carta of the world-order, we can never flout
And that is life’s melancholy irony we all have to accept and endure.
Before Death stares in our face and delivers the final knock out
Why not we do good, feel good and be ready to face our Maker?
[Planning long to give a gift to kith and kin or settle a grouse or debt?
Do it now! Do not wait till you die or see their death notice in the Internet!]
                                                                                                                 (V.P.Palam)
           While all the above interpretations including the commentary by V.P.Palam typically and professionally revolve around the axis of couplet 336, his commentary is liable to make one wonder if it flies off at a tangent. So one could again reduce V.P.Palam’s commentary to a couple of lines and in his own words (which incidentally do not include the ironical use of “Greatness” by Valluvar):
           Yesterday the good soul was very much alive,
           Today he is no more!
          A Path to Purposeful Living by V.P.Palam, however, is a boon to young Tamils ensconced in the West, who are more fluent in English than in Tamil, and to Tamil translators, both amateur and professional, at home and abroad. Despite the potential eccentricities sparsely embedded in this book its author has undoubtedly done his best to do justice to Valluvar, to do so with the utmost passion and cogency.
          In emulation of V.P.Palam’s flair for Latin and Greek terms one could suggest that, if and when he re-edits his magnum opus in the future, he  had better consider the possibility of inserting each one of the couplets in the original (Tamil) and his translation into English in addition to his commentary.
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       Mani Velupillai                                                                                                        2006/03/20

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