Tiruvaḷḷuvar

c. 450 - c. 550 CE · Tamil (South India) · Ethics, Political Philosophy, Tamil Didactic Poetry, Philosophy of Love, Indian Philosophy

Spotless be thou in mind! This only merits virtue's name; All else, mere pomp of idle sound, no real worth can claim.

Tiruvaḷḷuvar is the author of the *Tirukkuṟaḷ*, 1,330 couplets in Tamil, and almost nothing else is known of him. The lives told of him — a weaver of Mylapore, the son of a Brahmin father and a Paraiyar mother, the husband of the devoted Vāsuki, a poet whose book silenced the academy of Madurai — are later legend, and the work has been dated anywhere from before the Christian era to the sixth century; Kamil Zvelebil's estimate of about 450 to 550 is the one most cited. Jains, Śaivas, Vaiṣṇavas and Buddhists have all claimed him, and a nineteenth-century missionary, G. U. Pope, who translated…

Topics Tiruvaḷḷuvar addresses

• aṟam, poruḷ and iṉpam as three aims of life
• absence of a book on vīṭu
• virtue as a spotless mind
• praise of God by his attributes
• excellence of rain
• greatness of ascetics
• illaṟam, the householder's virtue
• tuṟavaṟam, the renouncer's virtue
• the virtuous wife
• hospitality to the guest
• pleasant words
• gratitude
• aruḷ, grace toward all living beings
• renunciation of flesh
• not killing as the first good
• truthfulness, the word that does not lie
• ūḻ, fate as ripening of past deeds
• effort against fate
• the right sceptre and the cruel sceptre
• the king exists for his people
• spies as the king's eyes
• choosing and trusting men
• knowing the right time and place
• learning and hearing

Questions to put to Tiruvaḷḷuvar

Aṟam: Virtue and the Spotless Mind

• What do you mean when you say virtue is a spotless mind and everything else is mere noise?
• Why do you place the householder's life above the hard penance of ascetics?
• What's the difference between the virtue of the householder and the virtue of the renouncer?
• Why is not killing the first of all goods, and not lying the second?
• What role does grace toward all living beings play in your teaching of virtue?
• Why does your book end the section on virtue with fate rather than with release or salvation?

God, the Common Veda, and the Creeds

• Why do you praise God only by his qualities and name no temple or creed in your opening chapter?
• What do you mean by calling your book the word that does not lie and the common Veda of all?
• How do you understand the one who passed over the flower and the shore beyond the sea of births?
• Why have Jain, Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava and Buddhist readers each claimed you as their own?
• What makes your teaching readable by every human being regardless of their faith?

The Right Sceptre: Kingship, Justice, and Statecraft

• How does a king's justice affect the rains and the harvest?
• You say a king who oppresses his people is crueller than a murderer — what's the argument behind that?
• How do you reconcile counselling a king to use spies and cut down enemies early with your insistence on virtue?
• What qualities must a king look for before trusting a minister or an envoy?
• Why does knowing the right time and the right place matter as much as knowing the right thing to do?

Fate, Effort, and the Shape of a Life

• If fate is stronger than any scheme a person devises, why do you command unremitting effort?
• What do you mean when you say effort brings its reward even when fate makes the labour vain?
• Why did you place fate at the close of the Book of Virtue rather than at the close of the Book of Wealth?
• How should someone live when they have done everything right and still failed?
• What's the difference between accepting fate and simply giving up?

Birth, Worth, and the Equality of Works

• What do you mean when you say all who live are one in birth and differences of worth come from deeds?
• How do you hold together the idea that birth doesn't determine worth with your praise of a good family's instinct for shame and decorum?
• Why do you call the ploughman the linch-pin of the world?
• How should I understand your view that the unlearned of noble birth rank below the learned of humble birth?

Love, the Lady's Voice, and the Third Book

• Why did you give love its own book alongside virtue and statecraft as one of the three aims of life?
• What's the difference between secret love before marriage and wedded love in your third book?
• You give the lady her own voice in grief, longing and feigned anger — what does that choice say about how you see love?
• How do you see the tension between a man's devotion to his wife and his duty to his work and his name?
• What does the evening's sorrow and the dream of the absent lover tell us about the nature of longing?

Converse with Tiruvaḷḷuvar on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Tiruvaḷḷuvar's own writing, cited to the page.