A Grammar of Tirukkural


Book Description




Kural


Book Description

A celebrated work by the greatest poet of classical Tamil literature Tiruvalluvar probably lived and wrote between the second century BC and the eighth century AD though his dates have not been conclusively established. The work by which he is known, the Kural, comprises 1,330 couplets and is divided into three sections—Virtue, Wealth and Love—and is based on the first three of the four supreme aims prescribed by Hindu tradition: dharma (virtue), artha (wealth), kama (love) and moksha (salvation). Taken together, the three books of the Kural inform, criticize and teach the reader, in brilliantly styled and pithy verse, about life, love and the ways of the world. Translated and edited with an introduction by P.S. Sundaram




Weaver's Wisdom


Book Description

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, a living legend, yoga master and author of Merging with Siva, recognized the immense value of the Tirukural in 1949 as a young seeker in Sri Lanka. Decades later, he instructed two of his swamis to translate it from classical Tamil into American English, and had an renowned artist in South India illustrate the 108 chapters. Here is the fruit of those efforts, the gentle, profound world of Asian ethics and simple humanness. Yet, Weaver's Wisdom's universality makes it a book you can share with anyone. It contains fortune cookies you can snack on before sleep or at anytime. Its charming wit and common sense will uplift and inspire you and your whole family.




A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry


Book Description

A reference tool for those who seek an understanding of the structure of classical Tamil poetry. This poetry reflects indigenous literary and cultural traditions of southern India, and therefore, a study of it is imperative for obtaining a balanced view of India's past and present cultures. The language which produced this poetry, Tamil, is the only living language of modern India that has an uninterrupted history spanning more than two millennia, and therefore, a study of it becomes even more crucial for a thorough understanding of India's linguistic complexity. Includes a bibliography.




Tamil


Book Description

Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography. Two stories animate Shulman’s narrative. The first concerns the evolution of Tamil’s distinctive modes of speaking, thinking, and singing. The second describes Tamil’s major expressive themes, the stunning poems of love and war known as Sangam poetry, and Tamil’s influence as a shaping force within Hinduism. Shulman tracks Tamil from its earliest traces at the end of the first millennium BCE through the classical period, 850 to 1200 CE, when Tamil-speaking rulers held sway over southern India, and into late-medieval and modern times, including the deeply contentious politics that overshadow Tamil today. Tamil is more than a language, Shulman says. It is a body of knowledge, much of it intrinsic to an ancient culture and sensibility. “Tamil” can mean both “knowing how to love”—in the manner of classical love poetry—and “being a civilized person.” It is thus a kind of grammar, not merely of the language in its spoken and written forms but of the creative potential of its speakers.




Give, Eat, and Live


Book Description

Give, Eat, and Live is a selection of poems translated from the 12th century Tamil poet Avvaiyar, arguably one of the most important female poets in Tamil's two-thousand-and-five-hundred years of literary history, and certainly one of the best known, of any gender. Although people across the state of Tamil Nadu know many of her works by heart, she has received little attention outside India, owing largely to the lack of decent translations. The one comprehensive work in English, Avvaiyar, a great Tamil poetess, by C. Rajagopalachari (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1971), has long since been out of print and renders Avvaiyar's poems in accurate but wooden translations. This book, by contrast, seeks to render her finest songs in a supple and poetically charged English that allows both her intellect and poetry to shine. The selection includes poems from two of Avvaiyar's major books on the good life, Muturai: The Word that Endures, and Nalvali: The Right Road. It also includes a generous sampling of poetry that was written separately and later gathered into collections. All of them use a Tamil form called venpa, dating back to the late Sangam period (first to third century C.E.). Though they speak of ethics, they do not cease to be poetry, employing imagery drawn from the Tamil landscape as well as a deeply musical line. These are poems meant to be chanted and sung. Many of these poems have been published individually, not only in India by the country's leading journal of Indian literature in translation, but also by the Temenos Academy in London. Give, Eat, and Live, in turn, will bring her work the wider attention it has long since deserved. Both aficionados of Indian literature and lovers of poetry alike will savor this first literary translation of one of Tamil's best loved poets.




A Higher Sanskrit Grammar, for the Use of Schools and Colleges


Book Description

The present grammar has been prepared with a view to meet the growing educational need of university students. The author has done his best to bring the present grammar up to the requirements of the students. In writing the various chapters of this book, the author has closely followed Pannini, as explained by Bhattoji Diksita. Many of the rules given here are translations of the relevant Sutras of Panini. The original Sutras are given in footnotes, where necessary. Sandhis and declensions are fully treated; compounds which dominate classical Sanskrit literature have received special attention; formation of feminine bases has been illustrated; Taddhita affixes have been arranged in an alphabetical order. A special feature of the present grammar is the chapter on the Conjugation of Verbs. The general rules given are amply illustrated by examples. All the verbs which change their pada when preceded by particular prepositions are given in an alphabetical order. The chapter on Syntax contains almost everything given in the first 20 chapters of author's Guide to Sanskrit Composition; the chapter on Prosody is based on the Chandomanjari and the Vrttaratnakara. The author has spared no pains to make the book as useful and as complete as possible.




The Smile of Murugan


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First All-India Tirukkural Research Seminar Papers, May 1972


Book Description

Comparative study of the Tirukkur̥aḷ, ancient Tamil didactic verse work by Thiruvalluvar, and other similar works in the other languages of India.




On Translating Tirukkural


Book Description

On problems faced in translating Tamil literature into English; with special reference to Tirukkur̲aḷ, ancient didactic work, by Tiruvaḷḷuvar, Tamil author.