Master Valluvan, the long-misunderstood Tamil
Mentor
T.Wignesan
“The Kurral owes much of its popularity to its exquisite poetic form. A kurral is a couplet containing a
complete and striking idea expressed in a refined and intricate metre. No
translation can convey an idea of its charming effect. […] The brevity rendered
necessary by the form [composed in the Venpa metre] gives an oracular effect to
the utterances of the great Tamil ‘Master of the sentences.’ They are the
choicest of moral epigrams. […] Tiruvalluvar
is generally very simple, and his commentators very profound.”
Rev. G.U. Pope, Former Fellow
of
[Pardon these futile measly words from your great Potiya height: they
can hardly belittle your true worth.]
Under what leaky hutment roof by
stamped-mud floors
trembling clair-oscuro straw-wick kuttuvilakku
on the stark anvil of crisp phrase and sparse
syntax
by the raging nama-nir rhyming brine
at Mayilapur’s S.Thomé sandy doors
while peacocks danced to your innate
pulsating chimes
have you chipped away at uncut gems
Those the Yavanas brought
with the monsoons
or such as your sea-daring captain friend
Elela-Cinkan’s
Even those the Christian missionaries
preached
in daredevil enticement
after St.Thomas fell to a vel stuck in
his bosom
or of
those like you who were stamped
underfoot
Caste in cast-iron
strictures
Priest only to the proclaimer paraiyar drum-beaters
The warp and woof of intricately woven venpa verse
elevating your weaving clan
to fresh artistic heights
YET
in the humbled ways of your birth
on whose steps have you pitched your ears
whose wisdom have you had to pilfer
filter
whose ways have you had to ape
whose mere thoughts have you then had to
set aright
ennoble
and remould into inextinguishable lines
Or had you tread the ahimsa path of gentle-foot Jains
Treading gently the earth for
fear of loping boot pains
SEVEN STARK WORDS
Seven alliterative blockbuster words struck so
they rhymed initially in juxta-positioning lineal parallels
pausing but in the fourth
to resume breath in the fifth
Leaving the interstitial morphemes in
resonating ellipses
The economy of your parsing
has wreaked havoc down the ages
in all trans-explicatory tongues
Tough-minded men come from
afar
with other gods to serve
and sacrifices to make in
the name of their Lords
bent your versification to limp rhyme
and left meaning a hung pursuit
in the hands of plagiarists professors preachers
who
not knowing nor divining the
reason for your craftsman’s
concatenation of
weighted phonemes
advanced theories for your elastic
pregnant mind
strung myriads of pages in exegeses
(much perhaps to your amusement now)
each staking a claim to posterity
the villainous hanging on your lips
In a time devoid of papered
learning for the poor
When to be born a Sudra or
Pariah was a sin
When masters were those
top-heavy manically-mantric Brahmin priests
Preying on the duped loyal
sycophantic Vaishyas
wishing to earn karmic merit with
their agricultural gain at their altar feet
such servant-financers as they by
legions now lay their souls down
as even the long-gone royally
leisure-dispensing Kshaktriyas
how would he who sought the spread of
knowledge
not seek to encapsulate learning in
mnemonic couplets
arranged according to rigid
design
for those who could not count either
Ten fingers in the hand so
Ten the number of facets of a
thought
a subject
a theme
even if theme subject thought were
stretched too thin
Whether
or not relations with the uncultured enamour
Do not seek to succour what should sour
What does it matter if you gain or lose
inferiors
Who feather their own nests and leave you in
a mess
Those who look to the benefit that accrues
from friendship
And those who covet largesse are thick as
thieves
Better
be content to walk alone than surround yourself
With friends who’d ditch you like wild
stallions in battle
It’s better to sever than solder vile ties
With the petty-minded who’d fail you in need
By far it’d serve you better to be snubbed
by the wise
Than be warmed by the company of
narrow-minded fools
It’s infinitely more useful to bear your
enemies’ scorn
Than court raucous revellers who’d warm you
up with guffaws
Friends who’d proffer help remonstrate and
find fault
Might
as well shun them with scarcely a farewell
Friends who please by word and yet act
otherwise
Crop up as a rude shock even in dreams
Turn away from the friend who snuggles up in
private
While he seeks to denounce you in a public
place
[Tirukkural, Chapter 82: “Evil Friendship”]
No-one contests your
calligraphic diamond cutter’s skills
Nor your codifier rôle of
existing customs beliefs
of kingly
comportment
of the wife’s
place
of manner of
securing friendships
of the obtention and dispensation of education
of the seductions in
the dainty maiden’s coyness
Nor of your infinite wisdom of
the times
Nor of your observation of the
passing of life about you
Nor alas! of your inveterate nay obsessive need
to pontificate
in what is
evident to the even half-baked
PERHAPS
What mattered was to get the
lesson through
even
one in ten was well worth the while
if remembered by the unfortunate by
birth
Who never traversed the
threshold of class and caste
who never even buckled exceeding numbers
on their toes
To you the ten-by-tens by one-hundred-and-thirty
perhaps you planned a florilège
in old age
by weeding out for posterity’s privileged
classes
the few quoted over and over
katka kasatara karka karrapin
nitka atatkut taka
vilampu suttapun aratu arate
navinal sutta vatu
and you
might never have thought
the mighty today are like those trodden
poor of your day
who
at least were shackled to
ignorance by force by godly fear
a racially
discriminating Overlord
now the privileged in blindness give
you lip-service
and
a lot of money
hoping by this gesture to earn your
merit
not
earn YOU merit
and the society’s accolade
You remain abused still
by the undistinguishing crowd
who upon the mention of your name
rise to feel proud
of what then
than
in their shored-up selves
of belonging in
the self-same pigment and
tongue
None of your real worth passes
into them
Nor the reason for your
epigrammatic lines
Pray
Should I then beg forgiveness
for this affront
Some apart
much remains redundant
obvious
inapt by way of pointing to fresher
vistas
and these that follow the rarity of your
verse
imbibe nothing else from this
age’s handy cornucopia
of
instant wisdom
Your lines served an eminent
purpose in your time
now we bed our minds down by encyclopaedic
libraries
we live on another planet
Your chain-ganged lines served
to teach the meek
the lame of mind
the dislocated of your time
Yes some still wallow in the same myth
today
not from want of will
but from the fear of rebirth
imprisoned in conditioned belief
and the essor of Dravidian identity
only defering to
the feigned purity of Aryanising blood
reverts to the same mythic
belief
some kind of imagined power of breed
History is in the past
It cannot help the present to
liberate itself
If one has not understood the difference
If one has not disowned and
let fall meaningless myths
If you dear Valuvan
lived in these times
Would you not have disowned
your own lines
well perhaps some or more
not all finding their way into a florilège of
your choice
for you know how love in the
third part changed with moeurs
changing with the times
so has the art of governance
and the unconscionable ways
and practices of the artha classes
other precautions more
pressing than mere friendship
would have compelled you to
jettison many a couplet
Who knows even your first ten would have found their
way
into a bin
ethical lines of advice
would
turn sour in today’s ear
No child would heed to the
letter your admonitions of behaviour
Nor no wife take her place in
the humiliating role of kitchen-helper
No king will base his reign on
your strict plans of concern for etiquette
No youth seek virtue in the
puritanical preachment of bygone observances
One singular contention
No peasant revolution
No women’s liberation
No religious reformation
grace your pages
the establishment the status quo the traditional hierarchy the Almighty
All find mindful foundation
in your ardent didacticism
and extend licence to those who cry sacrilege
in the coming dismantling of the clans
of castial power
Is
poetry only meant for teaching what is time-honoured
what is authorised
what seeks not to rock the
ship of fate
Helas! My universally-renowned peerless ancestor!
I’d like to think
You’d be the first to have
recognized the always changing world
The first to have accepted the
parting of ways
For your intelligence your foresight and hindsight
Your immensely powerful quill
would have sought other remedies
other means to convince
a wayward world
a
world far too gone and worldly-wise
to hatch the nuances of your admonishing word
all afresh
N’empêche
your name is a comet
hurtling down the ages
© T.Wignesan 2001
December 2001,
[Published in Third Eye, a literary magazine
(Co-Editor: S. Jeyasankar) published by the Faculty of Arts,