In about 1730 AD, the Tamil Thirukkural was translated
into Latin by Fr. Beschi, one of the greatest European
Tamil scholars. Rev. Beschi an Italian Christian
missionary who came to India learnt Tamil grammars and
literature to carry on his missionary work. He wore
saffron dress like sadhus and assumed the Tamil name
Veeramamunivar. He composed the story of Jesus Christ in
the form of an epic poem in the name Thembavani. He also
wrote a prabandham called "Kavalur Kalambagam" and a
grammatical treatise "Thonnool". He also wrote "Vedhiyar
Ozukkam" and "Paramarthaguru".
Tamil is the most ancient of the languages now spoken in
India and belongs to the Dravidian family comprised of 23
languages. These languages are spoken mainly in the
southern part of India as well as in a few regions of
central and northern parts of India. The Bruhui language
of the Dravidian group is spoken at present in the
Baluchistan region of Pakistan near the river Sindhu.
Excavations at Harapa and Monhanjadaro in this region
evidence the ancientness of the Dravidian languages to
5000 B.C. The word Dravidian also originates from the
word Tamil/Thamil.
The other classical languages of the world are Latin,
Hebrew, Greek, and Sanskrit. All of these languages
contain Tamil words. This shows the antiquity of Tamil.
Further these languages are not spoken today. There are a
number of Tamil words found even in English, for example
the English words mango, cash, curry, catamaran, coir,
coolie to name a few, have Tamil origins. Tamil is
recognized today as the earliest language possessing an
unbroken history of literary production for the past
twenty centuries. In the earliest times all Tamil
literary works were composed in poetic form. All books
were written in verse.
Tamil has its own independent script and literary history
dating back from the early pre Christian era. There are
247 characters in the Tamil script, which may be
condensed to 38-40. With little change over the centuries
literate readers can easily follow the ancient works
today. Christian missionaries working in South India and
Sri Lanka introduced printing and simplified Tamil prose
writing only in the eighteenth century.
The meaning of the word Tamil is sweet, beauty and
naturalness. This word occurs in the Tholkappiam, the
earliest text written work in Tamil. Tholkappiam is a
grammatical work belonging to the third century B.C. In
the ancient literature the word Tamil also denotes the
race, country, people and army. Tamil is rich in
vocabulary showing subtle and minute differences in
meaning. For example, the word vaaymai denotes truth by
words. The word unmai denotes truth by mind (thought)
while the word meymai stands for truth by body (action).
There are seven words in Tamil to denote the various
stages of flower from bud to dry flower. - wiz, arumpu,
mottu, mukai, malar, alar, vii, and cemmal.
Many books become obsolete during the lifetime of the
author, some after a century; some others after a few
centuries; but obsolete they do become. Thirukkal as a
book that deals with 'the Art of Living', is gaining
increasing acceptance. It consists of thousand three
hundred and thirty couplets called Kurals each being an
epigram, simple forcible and at the same time
captivating. It is said to occupy in the literature of
world a place comparable to the Confucian analects,
Plato's dialogues, Aristotle's ethics and Seneca's
writings. The author of this great work Thiruvalluvar
lived between the third and the first century B.C. During
this period, Tamil Nadu had wide international contacts
with countries ranging from Egypt, Greece, and Rome in
the west, Burma, Malaysia, and China in the east. A
representative of the Pandya King attended the coronation
of Emperor Augustus in Rome, as mentioned by Strabo, A
Greek who wrote his Geography in the first century
AD.
An arrestingly astute couplet of the poet was explained
in English to Dr. Graul, a great German Scholar; and he
was so much taken with it that he learned the Tamil
language in order to enjoy Kural in the original and then
preceded to translate it into German in 1854 and into
Latin in 1856. After translating a good portion of the
Thirukkural, Dr. Graul declared, "No translation can
convey any idea of its charming effect. It is truly an
apple of gold in a network of silver".
Scholars who have studied it in western translations (of
which several exist) have been impressed by its universal
appeal. Albert Schweitzer who read it in German
translation says in his book Indian Thought and
Development (1951) " there hardly exists in the
literature of the world a book of lofty maxims".
M. Ariel, a great French Savant, translated in 1848 some
fragments of the Kural into French and he referred to an
earlier French translation of the Kural made by some
unknown author in 1730 AD and kept in the Bibliotheque
Nationale of France. It may perhaps be relevant to
recapture the assessment of M. Ariel, who says: "that
which above all is wonderful in the Kural is the fact
that its author addresses himself without regard to
castes, peoples, or beliefs, to the whole community of
mankind, that he formulates sovereign morality and
absolute reason; that he proclaims In their eternal
abstractness, virtue and truth; that it presents, as it
were, in one group, the highest laws of domestic and
social life; that he is equally perfect in thought, in
language and in poetry, in the austere metaphysical
contemplation of the great mysteries of the Divine nature
as in the easy and graceful analysis of the tenderest
emotions of the heart".
The following observations of Rev. Dr. G. U. Pope, who translated the
Kural
into English in 1886, deserve mention: " It is certainly
not an anthology but the perfect and most elaborate work
of one master". There was a notion among the European
Christian Missionaries that humility, charity, and
forgiveness of injuries are virtues, which have not been
preached by non-Christian nations. He exploded this
prejudice and observed, "Grant says that humility,
charity and forgiveness of injuries are not described by
Aristotle. Now these three are everywhere forcibly
inculcated by this Tamil moralist (Thiruvalluvar).
Rev. Dr. J. Lazarus, a missionary himself, proclaimed,
"The Kural cannot be improved nor its plan made more
perfect. It is a perfect mosaic in itself. A slight
change in the size, shape or color of a single stone
would mar the beauty of the whole. It is refreshing to
think that a Nation, which has produced so great a man
and so unique a work, cannot be a hopeless despicable
race. The morality he preached could not have grown
except out of an essentially moral soil".
Rev. Percival, a perceptive English critic, proclaimed;
"nothing certainly in the whole compass of human language
can equal the force and terseness of the sententious
distiches in which the author conveys the lessons of
wisdom he utters".
It is, therefore, no surprise that Thirukural is the most
translated of the Tamil works. It has been translated
into Latin, German, French, Dutch, Finish, Polish,
Russian, Chinese, Fiji, Malay, and Burmese and into such
Indian languages as Sanskrit, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali,
Hindi, Telugu, and Malayalam. There are in fact as many
as eighty-two translations of the Thirukkural in foreign
languages.
Umaruppulavar wrote the history of Nabigal Nayagam in
epic form in the name "Seerappuranam". In Tamil not only
literary works but also classics in the fields of
Astrology, Medicine etc, were made in verse forms. Even
dictionaries were written in verse. They were called the
'Nigandus' (Thesauruses).
In 1862, Dr. M. Winslow, a Christian missionary in Tamil
Nadu, compiled a comprehensive dictionary called the
"Winslow's Tamil and English Dictionary", which has
English meanings for 67,000. Tamil words embracing both
the common and poetic dialects including principal
astronomical, astrological, mythological, botanical,
scientific and official terms as well as the names of
many authors, poets, heroes and gods. Another famous poet
in Tamil is Kambar (twelfth century A.D). His epic
Ramayanam consists of more than ten thousand verses. The
story is planned as the story of growing universal
brotherhood and of a federation of kingdoms of love and
justice ruled by ideal brothers without any distinction,
caste etc.
Both as a geographically widespread Indian language, and
as the language of groups of ethnic and sociological
interest, Tamil came to be studied in the USA and Tamil
language found a place in the teaching programs
especially of the Universities of Pennsylvania, Chicago,
Wisconsin, California, and Kansas state, and in the
rotating summer school.
The development of the South Asian Programmes in
Universities assumed new proportions and coordinated the
research of several scholars in different branches of
Tamilology by the incorporation of the American Institute
of Indian studies. This Institute has supported
financially a number of scholars including R.E.
Frykenberg, Burton Stein and Eugene F. Irschick to work
on various aspects of Tamilology. In addition to Oxford,
Cambridge, Leyden, and Uppsala, the Sudasien Institute in
Heidelberg has a multidisciplinary programme, which
includes various aspects of Tamil Studies and the
teaching of Tamil at different levels. The University of
Bonn, and the University of Stockholm also introduced
Tamil. The works of the Leningrad and Moscow scholars,
together with the pupils of Dr. Arno Lehman make the
Eastern Europe conspicuous among schools, which
contribute, to Tamil Studies. Other countries like
Australia, Canada, South America, Israel, Italy, Japan,
and Philippines also developed active interest in
Tamilology. The creation of the Department of Indian
Studies in the University of Malaya with its South East
Asian orientation, its emphasis on Tamil Studies and its
schedule of publications is a turning point in the
history of Tamil Studies.
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