V.V.S. Aiyar on
PARIMELALAKAR
No man that writes or, speaks about the Kural can forget to refer to its greatest commentator Parimelalakar.Parimelalakar was a Brahman scholar who lived and taught at Kanchi about 600 years ago. Nine commentators had interpreted the Kural before him. But it was: reserved for him alone, to enter into the very mind of the author, as it were, and bring out every beauty and thought that lie imbedded in the original. But, for his. commentary none in modern days could understand the full significance of the original verses.
His commentary is as terse and vigorous as the Kural itself in point of style. The reasonings by which he condemns readings and renderings other than his own are a study in sharp,incisive, logical, and dignified criticism. I am tempted to give an example of his method of commenting. I take verse 687 which would stand thus in literal translation:
Knowing his duty, considering the time, judging the place (and) deliberating, (who) speaks (is) head.
Here is the commentary:
Knowing his duty: understanding how to comport
himself before foreign princes;
Considering the time: judging the moods of those
princes;
Judging the place: judging the proper place to
address to them the business for which he has gone;
Deliberating: meditating within himself before-
hand as to how he should delive his message;
(Who) speaks (is) head: who delivers the same in
that manner is the fittest among ambassadors.
“The manner of comporting himself before princes consists in weighing the political situation of their Kingdom as well as that of his own king, weighing his own status as ambassador, and regulating thereon the formalities to be observed in visiting and speaking to the prince etc. Mood is the state of mind that is prepared to receive in good part what he (the envoy) is going to say. As it depends on time the author speaks of it under the heading of time. The place referred to is the place where there are men who are friendiy to the ambassador. Deliberation consists in imagining the words that he is going to use, the possible replies of the otherside, his own rejoinders etc. in all their possiblen developments.
As the northern writers (Sanskrit authors) add the carriers of written messages to the other two classes of ambassadors* and classify envoys into three classes, namely,first (lit. head), second (lit. the middle), and third (lit. lowest or last), our author uses the word head so as to apply to their classification also. The word ambassador is supplied by the title of the chapter.
These five verses (683 to 687) describe thequalifications of the ambassador who is allowed full freedom of negotiation.
* Explained in the commentators note to the title of the chapter as he who speaks only what he is told to speak, and he who is allowed a wide discretion as to what he is to speak, the word speak being used in the sense of negotiating.
I shall give but one example of the commentator’s criticism. In verse 338 which reads; The fledgeling abandoneth the broken shell of the egg and fiieth away: that is the symbol of the love between the soul and the body, the word kudambai which Parimelalakar explains as the shell of the egg had been explained by others as nest. either of which-meanings being correct from the etymological point of view. It is in these words that our scholiast supports his own rendering as against the other:
“As the author says abandoneth (more literally abandoneth to itself) we obtain the unseparatedness of the shell in the previous stage: that is, its contemporaneous origin with the embryo and its remaining as the matrix and support of the same until the very moment of separation. Hence it is the symbol of the body. As the bird is one with the shell in the beginning and as it enters not thereinto after the breaking thereof, the same is the symbol of the soul. Though there are other beings that are ovipatous, it is the bird that is taken as the symbol of the soul here as it alone flies away from the shell. The word love is denotative of want of love. As the conscious, immaterial soul and the dull, material body are the very opposites of each other, know that there can be no attachment between them but what,comes of karma.
“Now there are those who would explain kudambai as nest. But as its origin is not contemporaneous with that of the bird, and as the bird goes again into it after leaving it, the reader will see that it cannot symbolise the body.”
After these two examples it is quite superfluous to expatiate any more to the reader on the great qualities of the commentator. The Tamil people have preserved this commentary with the most religious care. Indeed it as well as the Kural have been among the greatest sources of inspiration
to the princes of the Tamil country for good and just rule and for successful statecraft. Even thirty years ago the Zemindars of the Tamil land were great lovers of the Kural and their children were carefully initiated into the rules of state policy and good government that abound in it and in Parimelalakar. Would that these great books were again restored to their proper place in the curricula of study of our young men both rich and poor!
In undertaking this translation, my object has been not only to spread a knowledge of Tiruvalluvar’s grand work as widely as possible in the world, but also to induce my own countrymen speaking other languages than Tamil to retranslate it into their different vernaculars, so that the words of a great moral teacher who intended his message for all the world and for all time, may not fail at least now to reach the ears of the poorest of the poor and the simplest of the simple of his own countrymen, and to sow in their hearts the seeds of a noble, dignified, virtuous, and manly life. If I shall be able to say to myself that I have contributed something towards spreading the ideas of the Great Master among a wider audience among my countrymen, I shall consider that I have been amply rewarded for my labours.”
-1916 V.V. S.AIYAR
(The above preface is, but for some slight alterations,substantially the same that appeared in the first edition in 1916.
Since then I understand that Pandit Kshemanand Rohat has rendered this English translation into Hindi, and that ShrimansGopal Rao of Ellore and Garimalla Satyanaryana have translated some portions of the same into Telugu. All three works, I understand. are still in manuscript. The addresses of these gentlemen are unknown to me. V. V. S Aiyar.)
