Pearls of Wisdom from Thirukkural - Softcover

H.Ramachandran had a Master s Degree in Physics and taught physics at The Loyola College, Chennai for many years. He was also a great scholar in English and Tamil Literature and has written several books, essays on various topics, plays and short stories in these two languages. He died in the year 1980.

The use of poetry as a means to illustrate, codify, illuminate, and transmit wisdom from one generation to the next goes back thousands of years in recorded human history -- with reference to oral traditions that extend even further back in human history than that. Thirulvalluvar was a poet who lived in Southern India some two thousand years ago. His verse has been the subject of hundreds of learned treatise and scholarly analysis down through the centuries. Now an English language edition of "Pearls Of Wisdom For The Art Of Living Today From Insights Into Thirukkural" by the late academician and an expert in Tamil literature H. Ramachandran provides a thoughtful and thought-provoking illustrative analysis of Thirulvalluvar's work that is more than just a simple translation of an ancient book of poems. Rather this post-humously published edition provides the contemporary reader with illuminating essays dealing the essential concepts embedded within the pre-Christian poetry. "Pearls Of Wisdom For The Art Of Living Today" is welcome and highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in Tamil literature and poetry in general, and the works of Thirulvalluvar in particular. --Mid West Book Review

Among the unique features of this book is the author s brilliant analysis of the chronology of creation by Thiruvalluar, of the various parts of the Thirukkural namely Araththuppal, Porul Paal, Kamathuppal and Oozh as well as the preface and the invocation to God(s). There are interesting discussions on the subject with infusion of logic, which come most naturally to the author by virtue of his training in science. The author has the courage to question stalwarts on Thirukkural like Parimelazhagar on these matters, without belittling the great contribution made by Parimelazhagar towards a better understanding of Thirukkural. The present author goes even further, and as no one has ever done before, compares Thiruvalluvar to the other all-time great poets and philosophers like Shakespeare, Kalidasa, Tolstoy, Schweitzer, etc. Then the author pronounces his judgment that Thiruvalluvar, in addition to being on par with the best of them, actually deserves even more praise than any one of them, in view of the fact that Thiruvalluvar lived centuries ahead of all the others and was a pioneer in his field, with no one to emulate or derive inspiration from. The extraordinary rate of growth of technology and the alarming development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction have brought humanity to the very brink of extinction. Man is still immature and intolerant of other s views and cultures and religions, no matter how much he has been outpaced by science and technology. It is like giving a Stradivarius Violin to a monkey so that it can play music like Yehudi Menuhin. The greed and selfishness of a few men in the present world is still wrecking and destroying millions of lives, while the silent majority watches it being totally powerless. Thiruvalluvar had a fairly good estimate of the population of the kingdoms of his time in Tamil Nadu and postulated the principles of administration and government tailored to those numbers. Amazingly, such principles are equally valid and can be followed usefully even in the modern era. In Araththuppal, Thiruvalluvar says that the best morality dictates that no living being should come to harm. In Porulpal, though, Thiruvalluvar says it is all right for a King to destroy enemies in order to protect his subjects. This seems to be an apparent contradiction. The author extricates the reader from making such apparent but dangerous misconceptions about Thiruvalluvar and leads him away safely using convincing arguments. --From the Preface by Dr.K.Ganesan

Among the unique features of this book is the author s brilliant analysis of the chronology of creation by Thiruvalluar, of the various parts of the Thirukkural namely Araththuppal, Porul Paal, Kamathuppal and Oozh as well as the preface and the invocation to God(s). There are interesting discussions on the subject with infusion of logic, which come most naturally to the author by virtue of his training in science. The author has the courage to question stalwarts on Thirukkural like Parimelazhagar on these matters, without belittling the great contribution made by Parimelazhagar towards a better understanding of Thirukkural. The present author goes even further, and as no one has ever done before, compares Thiruvalluvar to the other all-time great poets and philosophers like Shakespeare, Kalidasa, Tolstoy, Schweitzer, etc. Then the author pronounces his judgment that Thiruvalluvar, in addition to being on par with the best of them, actually deserves even more praise than any one of them, in view of the fact that Thiruvalluvar lived centuries ahead of all the others and was a pioneer in his field, with no one to emulate or derive inspiration from. The extraordinary rate of growth of technology and the alarming development of nuclear weapons of mass destruction have brought humanity to the very brink of extinction. Man is still immature and intolerant of other s views and cultures and religions, no matter how much he has been outpaced by science and technology. It is like giving a Stradivarius Violin to a monkey so that it can play music like Yehudi Menuhin. The greed and selfishness of a few men in the present world is still wrecking and destroying millions of lives, while the silent majority watches it being totally powerless. Thiruvalluvar had a fairly good estimate of the population of the kingdoms of his time in Tamil Nadu and postulated the principles of administration and government tailored to those numbers. Amazingly, such principles are equally valid and can be followed usefully even in the modern era. In Araththuppal, Thiruvalluvar says that the best morality dictates that no living being should come to harm. In Porulpal, though, Thiruvalluvar says it is all right for a King to destroy enemies in order to protect his subjects. This seems to be an apparent contradiction. The author extricates the reader from making such apparent but dangerous misconceptions about Thiruvalluvar and leads him away safely using convincing arguments. --From the Preface by Dr.K.Ganesan