Introduction to the Holy Kural
Scripture of Saivite Hinduism

Many years ago when I was in Sri Lanka -- that was in 1949 -- I made a vow to bring together the best of the East and the best of the West. I was first introduced to the Holy Kural in those early days. To me it is one of the most important scriptures of the East. It is very practical. It contains wonderful insights of life and really teaches us how to deal With the various feelings and circumstances that come to us in our interactions with others. In this sense the Kural is the most relevant sacred text I know, applying to everyday matters and common concerns.

Although it has been translated into English by many scholars, the Holy Kural has never been widely known in the Western world. There is a similar work, written in modern times by the mystic Kahil Gibran, called the Prophet which has been widely distributed. Everyone knows and loves this great work. The Holy Kural parallels the Prophet in many ways. Both books speak in profound yet useful terms of love and friendship, of health and death, of joy and sorrow. It is my hope that the Holy Kural will soon find its place beside the Prophet and be known by the world for the gem that it is.

The Holy Kural was written by a weaver who lived with his wife, Vasuki, in what is today a part of Madras in South India in the st century before the birth of Christ. Details of his life are meager. It is known that his wife was the perfect example of devotion and obedience to her husband, and several stories are told depicting the harmony in their mar- riage. This was Tiruvalluvar's only work, and though it is relatively short, it was sufficient to bring renown to a humble weaver, making him a venerated sage and lawgiver of the Tamil Dravidian people.

In the Tamil language "Tiru" means "holy" or "sacred," and "Kural" means anything that is brief or short. In this case it describes the very difficult and disciplined venpa meter in which the verses were written. Each verse is extremely short, containing only two lines of fourteen syllables. In fact, it is the shortest form of stanza in the Tamil language. In many ways these couplets are similar to the Sanskrit sloka. The entire scripture consists of 133 chapters with each chapter elucidat' a different aspect of human virtue or human fault. There are ten kural couplets per chapter, making a total of 1,330 couplets in the entire scripture. In his work Tiruvalluvar chose a topic - such as children, friendship or avoidance of anger - and gave us ten different couplets on the one subject. To properly understand his perspective on a subject, each of the ten couplets must be read, for they are like facets of a gem - all reflecting the light of his understanding slightly differently and adding to the richness of his comprehension. It has been explained to me that the saint spent the fullness of his life quietly observing, simply observing the human condition. Then, toward the end of his life, he was asked to speak out and share the wisdom others in the community knew he possessed. The Holy Kural is his response.

This edition of the Holy Kural has been several years in the preparation. While in Sri Lanka in 1975 1 asked one of the Sannyasin to bring into American English the essential meaning of the verses. There had never been a translation in modern American English. He studied the various translations. Later he returned to the monastery here in Hawaii and with another Sannyasin worked in the hours before dawn for many months. There were five objectives in their work - to be faithful to the original Tamil in meaning and style, to be clear and understandable, to be brief whenever possible so as to capture the saint's succinct style, to be subtle and profound, and finally to have the verses as graceful and refined in English as they are in Tamil. This was not an easy task, as you can imagine. It was further complicated by the fact that the text was written twenty centuries ago in a classical form of Tamil that is difficult to understand today. It is like trying to read the Old English works of Chaucer. They had to react on exactly what the saint meant, for often his verses are obscure and subtle. They had to catch the same meaning, the same insight, to discover the same area of consciousness which the saint held as he wrote. And then they had to speak out that perception in the vernacular of our day. Realizing that much meaning would be lost if the attempt was made to use rhyming verse in the translation, I asked the Sannyasins to not attempt that, but to work in prose instead.

As you will see, this abridged edition contains four of the ten verses for the first thirty-eight chapters. We have completed the abridged translations through chapter 108, but the limitations of the Inspired Talks do not allow all the chapters to be included here. The verses here are, to me, the most meaningful and pertinent ones to serve as an introduction to this ancient scripture in the West. They represent the essence of the saint's insights on the topics of the first chapters. We hope that this small selection will find its way into your heart and encourage further study of the Holy Kural in its fuller form.

The total scripture is divided into four sections: the Preface, Virtue, Wealth and Love. In not speaking of the fourth and final objective of human existence, moksha or spiritual liberation, Saint Tiruvalluvar was able to reach out with his message of goodness and touch the lives of many generations. Certainly he knew that in speaking of virtue and love he was leading the soul to the liberation which he perhaps held too sacred, or too advanced, to openly discuss. That is why it was awesome to be on San Marga today and to see the two larger-than-life black granite statues made for us in South India sitting together - the one who spoke on virtue wealth and love and the other who spoke so potently on liberation in his great work, The Tirumantiram. The whole of the way of Saivite Hinduism is contained in the world of these two eminent saints.

The Holy Kural should be used in everyday life - its verses commited to memory and meditated upon, quoted freely as your very own. You will sound wise if you do remember and share these jewels. One of the greatest benefits of this scripture is to guide our actions and our thoughts, to direct our purpose in life and refine our interactions with our fellow man. Problems can be resolved in the light of the saint's wisdom. If something is going along wrong in your life, bring the forces of life back into harmony by studying the Holy Kural and applying its knowledge. That is perhaps its main function - to perfect and protect our lives in the everyday world by preventing mistakes which can cause an unhappy karma, by preventing erroneous attitudes which can bring unnecessary sorrow into our experience. Yet, there is nothing in the Kural that has to be obeyed. Each of the couplets contains such insight, however, that we are drawn to it and want to obey.

Use the verses in this scripture to provide guidelines for effective and virtuous action in your life. It can be our refuge in times of confusion, a source of inspiration when we feel less than inspired, a central hub around which the endless play of Lord Siva's maya revolves. Of course, it can be studied so as to comprehend the nature of virtue and the difficulties caused by transgressing virtue's natural laws. It does not contain a single concept or expression that would offend another faith, and thus it is a fine introduction to the scriptures of the East. The Holy Kural may well be the meeting ground, the common ground, of all religions. It could be called a Common Creed for the modern world. But above all it is to be used by the individual to bring the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of Saivite Hinduism, into our lives. I hope you will all allow Saint Tiruvalluvar's insights to speak your own intuition and reveal from within yourself the laws which he too discovered within himself. Do not look upon this scripture as something "out there." Meditation and reflection will reveal that its knowledge lies within, vibrantly alive, dynamically real. It is impossible to not be moved by the grand compassion and the direct discernment of the Kural. Let it enrich your life as you journey along this Eternal Path, the Sanatana Dharma. I would suggest that you commit to memory as many stanzas as you can. Many have done this, keeping them on the tip of their tongue and in the forefront of their mind. Impress them on the subconscious mind and thereby make a gridwork for living that takes you swiftly to the goal and brings joy in the process, for Hinduism is a joyous religion. I would also suggest that you teach these gems to the children.

This advice and admonition, coming from the world's most ancient faith and culture, will enrich every child's understanding of goodness, right conduct and right thought. It is one of the most astute scriptures in the world today. It should be memorized, especially by small children. It will create a positive conscience for their inner decisions, guiding how they will conduct themselves through life. Small children all through South India memorize the Holy Kural in order to be able to chant it verse after verse - many can recite the entire 1,330 verses by heart. This gives them a code of living that remains with them the rest of their lives. It is crucial that children be given the benefit of strong principles from an early age, especially in these times when television and the stories, plots and scenes that children see on television which form the code of living for their lives provide opposite and obscure values. The Holy Kural is therefore most important. It is essential that the values which are the substance of the Holy Kural - the do's as well as the don'ts - be carried over into the next generation with courage and persistence and fortitude so that our descendants, the heirs of a future which we are even now in the process of creating, are benefited by these age-old insights into universal laws, humanitarian laws and plain common sense.

This is the responsibility of all parents and those who teach our children. They may use this translation freely, drawing upon its storehouse of virtuous living. Quote from these verses freely. Use them as your very own.

In Saivite Hinduism we believe that the soul, man's soul created by Siva, is returning to the Source which it already is, and this maturation is effected and directed by karma, through experience, through a succession of lives that provide experience from which inner knowledge is attained. This passage through one life and then another brings the soul ever closer to its true, effulgent being. Saivites believe that the soul can and does ultimately merge with Siva, with God, Absolute Reality. It becomes one with God, united in an ultimate experience, or non-experience, called Self-realization, which in turn leads to moksha or liberation from the necessity for further incarnation. This is the final goal, and the Holy Kural provides a foundation upon which the quest for that goal may proceed with confidence and stability.

Gurudeva,
H.H. Sivaya Subramuniyaswami,
on Saint Tiruvalluvar's Guru Puja Day,
February 15, 1979

The following page Credits & Acknowledgements relates to the source of the text of the above address, the translation of the Tirukural, the full text which has been used here with this web publication of this wonderful ancient observation of life, and the formal copyright provisions attached thereto by the Himalayan Academy.