Interpreting Tirukkural: the role of commentary in the creation of a text.

• Author: Cutler, Norman

INTRODUCTION NOW, WHEN THEORIES OF TEXTUAL interpretation and interpretive practice are so much on the minds of literary scholars, it comes as no surprise that textual commentary of various kinds has become a topic of compelling interest for South Asianists. This is appropriate not only in light of current intellectual fashion, but, more importantly, because in traditional Indian culture a literary composition is rarely if ever appreciated as a self-contained "text-in-itself." To the contrary, texts are almost always embedded in contexts--for instance, as oral performance before an audience, as a component of a hereditary body of knowledge, as an accompaniment to ritual--that either explicitly or implicitly contain elements of commentary. While textual commentaries may come in many different forms, certain commentaries which appear in written form have taken on a life of their own in Indian intellectual life, without however being entirely disengaged from the "root" texts with which they are associated. Some of India's most distinguished contributions in the fields of grammar, philosophy, religious thought, poetics, and social thought, among others, come to us in the form of commentaries, many of which, in all likelihood, have their origins in oral discourses before audiences of students and disciples. Some of the most influential classic commentaries of this sort are in Sanskrit, but perhaps less well known is the fact that Tamil also has a rich commentarial literature with a long and distinguished history.(1) A particularly interesting example of a relatively early Tamil text which has frequently been the object of commentary is Tirukkural (fifth/sixth century A.D.?) whose author, according to tradition, was the legendary poet and sage Tiruvalluvar.(2) Tirukkural contains 1330 couplets that address a wide range of topics pertaining to right behavior and the human condition. The text is divided into three major portions (pal), respectively designated "virtuous conduct" (aram), "prosperity" (porul), and "pleasure" (inpam or kamam). These three, with the addition of a fourth element, "release" (vitu), are known in Tamil as urutipporul, "those things (porul) which provide a firm support (uruti) "for the world"."(3) While the semantic similarity between the four urutipporul and the four purusarthas--dharma, artha, kama, and moksa--is self-evident, the ideas expressed in Tirukkural's verses are only superficially similar to Sanskrit sastric discourse on these subjects. Irrespective of the value Tirukkural may have as an original contribution to India's "wisdom literature," what is probably most remarkable about this text is the enormous prestige it commands. This is reflected in some of the other names by which the text is known, such as tamilmarai ("Tamil Veda"), poyyamoli ("speech that does not lie"), and teyva nul ("divine text").(4) There is evidence that Tirukkural has long occupied an honored place in the Tamil literary canon. For example, quotations from or allusions to verses from Tirukkural have been identified in classic works such as Cilappatikaram, Manimekalai, and the Tamil Ramayana of Kampan.(5) Further, the prestige commanded by the text is mirrored by the reverence with which its putative author, Tiruvalluvar, is remembered in legend. But perhaps the most revealing index of Tirukkural's stature in Tamil literary culture is the great attraction it historically has held and continues to hold for commentators. It is true that other works, especially Tolkappiyam, a classic work on grammar, poetics and rhetoric, and some of the poems of the alvars, the Tamil Vaisnava saints, have also been extensively interpreted in commentaries,(6) but it is probably fair to say that more commentaries have been written on Tirukkural than on any other Tamil text. There are ten "old" commentaries on Tirukkural,(7) culminating chronologically, and many scholars would also say intellectually, in the commentary of Parimelalakar, who most likely lived during the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century. Only five of these, including Parimelalakar's commentary, are extant, however.(8) But the available commentarial literature on Tirukkural is not limited to these. A recently published bibliography of Tamil commentarial literature includes 115 entries for commentaries on Tirukkural or portions of the text published between 1838 and 1976. While some of these represent editions of the text with one or more of the "old" commentaries, the majority are of "recent" authorship; that is to say, they have been written during the past 150 years, and many during the past 50 years.(9) Among these, M. Varadarajan's Tirukkural telivurai,(10) a kind of layman's guide to Tirukkural which provides a paraphrase for each verse in a comparatively modern idiom, has set what may be a record in the world of Tamil publishing. Originally published in 1949, at last count it has gone through 103 printings. Obviously, this ancient text still enjoys great popularity with the Tamil public. A TEXT IN WANT OF COMMENTARY One cannot help but wonder why Tirukkural has received such intensive and persistent attention as an object of interpretation. The answer no doubt partly lies in the text's prestige, but there are also certain formal features that render Tirukkural fertile terrain for commentary, for instance, the extreme brevity and density of its couplets.(11) Though not always, in many cases the expression of an idea in a kural verse remains ambiguous or incomplete until it is fleshed out through interpretation. By virtue of their brevity Tirukkural's verses invite two kinds of interpretive activities, both of which are well represented in the many commentaries on the text. First, commentators channel the verses' meaning by filling in "gaps"(12) and resolving ambiguities. Secondly, because Tirukkural's spare verses are largely devoid of the kinds of contextual cues that play a major role in the verbal communication of meaning, commentators take it upon themselves to supply such cues. This is an essential aspect of the commentarial enterprise, and when Tirukkural's commentators offer conflicting interpretations for a verse, the source of disagreement often can be traced to the different ways in which they contextualize the verse.(13) Also, commentators have been drawn to the challenge of elucidating the structure of the text as a whole and determining how that structure affects the meaning of individual verses. On the one hand, Tirukkural's verses are frequently treated as self-contained aphorisms. In Tamil culture Tirukkural is the quintessentially quotable text. Educated Tamils often quote verses from Tirukkural in response to real-life situations, much as they would quote a proverb,(14) and under such circumstances the "context of situation" is a major factor in specifying a verse's meaning. Verses from Tirukkural are also frequently employed as invocations at public gatherings and as epigraphs. In these and comparable circumstances individual verses are disengaged from their position in a larger textual structure. But despite the quotability of Tirukkural's verses and the seeming ease with which they may be detached from their textual moorings, one would be hard-pressed to find a Tamil scholar who would concede that Tirukkural is best described as an anthology of quotable aphorisms. Among other reasons, the arrangement of the text's 1330 verses belies such a description. The division of Tirukkural into three portions--"virtuous conduct," "prosperity," and "pleasure"--establishes a framework that has direct consequences for interpretation of the verses contained in each. While the verses contained in the portion on "pleasure" are governed by conventions unique to that portion,(15) it is not always clear why verses included in the portions on "virtuous conduct" and "prosperity" are included in the one and not the other. Further, one's apprehension of the meaning carried by a verse may depend upon whether "virtuous conduct" or "prosperity" is invoked as an interpretive frame.(16) There are also other aspects of Tirukkural's structure that have consequences for the interpretation of its verses. Every verse in Tirukkural belongs to a "chapter" (atikaram) of ten verses, and each chapter bears a title which putatively, and in most cases fairly obviously, identifies the topic or theme treated in its constituent verses. The division of Tirukkural into portions and chapters, as well as the order of chapters, are commonly accepted as "original" features of the text. Commentators have also grouped the chapters included in each of the three major portions of the text into "sub-sections" (iyal), and they differ on how the text is to be divided at this intermediate level of organization. Moreover, the early commentators order the verses within each chapter in a variety of ways, though most modern editions reflect Parimelalakar's order. The hierarchical and to some degree variable arrangement of verses found in all editions of Tirukkural provides commentators with a foundation for interpretation of the patterns of meaning that emerge when attention is directed to the interrelationship among verses and to ways in which individual verses are contextualized within encompassing structures of meaning. But despite the fact that some critics have described Tirukkural as a "perfect total structure" in which every verse occupies an indispensable place in a meticulously crafted whole,(17) neither the precise nature of Tirukkural's total structure of meaning nor the degree to which the text is undergirded by a coherent and consistent plan is self-evident. Tirukkural's 1330 verses neither communicate a continuous narrative nor a consecutively reasoned argument with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. Certainly there are numerous thematic connections among verses and chapters, but these criss-cross in many directions to form a complex web of...