The Kural

with other ingredients as well as food; and those of the apothecary are kindness and consideration to the anxiety of the patient, purity of thought, word, and deed, ability to compound drugs, and common sense. ↩

The grateful remembrance of neighbours, which can be earned only by freely helping others, is the only thing that can be said to really survive a man. ↩

The post pities the uncomplaining patience with which the goodman bears every burden. ↩

To be taken as the words of an indigent man sinking under the load of his poverty. ↩

Of others. ↩

For the joy and glory of liberality would be absent from life: see next verse. ↩

The fancy is that the rebuff of the dodger kills the beggar; if its virulence is so great, it should kill the dodger himself who nurses it in his bosom. ↩

Every one of the verses in this part are to be taken as the words either of the love or of the ladylove or of the confidante of the ladylove. ↩

See note to verse 918. ↩

I.e., but for the vestment men would be smitten by their beauty and die. It is usual for mahouts to cover with a metal plate the eyes of elephants which are expected to become rabid. ↩

For it giveth more joy than all the other tricks of the beloved taken together. ↩

The fancy is that the lover is seated in her very eye. ↩

For eyes close automatically when being painted. ↩

Wrongly thinking that he has abandoned her and attributing her sleeplessness to it. ↩

See here. ↩

And leave me to die by stopping the outcry. See here before reading this chapter. ↩

The eclipse of the moon to see which everybody in India comes out of his home. ↩

See 1160 below. ↩

The fancy is that her grief at the very thought of his parting is so intense that her arms have lost flesh and allowed the bracelets to slip of themselves. ↩

Whenever men have a heavy burden to carry, they divide it into two equal bundles and attach each one of them to one end of a longish pole which is then lifted and carried on the shoulder by the middle. ↩

All else but me are asleep: by being awake I bear Night company and help her to go on with her work. ↩

The fancy seems to be something like this: As evil spirits are warded off by devotion accompanied by the uttering of the name of God, so it should have been possible to ward off pallor of the body by thinking of the beloved and uttering his praises. If, in spite of this, pallor should overspread her frame, there should be some witchcraft somewhere to nullify the effects of her endeavours to keep it at a distance. Parimêlajahar gives a different explanation. ↩

The maid is to be supposed to have tried to console the mistress saying. “Thy beloved is not gone far away: be calm, be will return soon.” The text is to be taken an the reply of the mistress to this supposed address. ↩

Note the sudden change of mood. ↩

See note to verse 1163. ↩

Sneezing is believed to indicate that a friend or relative is thinking of the one who sneezes. ↩

The maid is to be supposed to have said, “As it is remembrance that causes thee all this sorrow, why dost thou not try to forget thy beloved for some time?” The text is to taken as the reply of the mistress to this supposed address. ↩

Note the sudden change of mood. ↩

I.e. I dream that he embraces me. ↩

For morning assuages her grief and evening intensifies it. ↩

For having believed such a palpable absurdity. ↩

The artless simplicity of women is exaggerated by poets in a thousand ways. Here the wife is supposed to be unable to tell the number of days that have elapsed since the parting of the husband by means of a calendar or by memory. So she is described as making a mark on the wall for every day that has elapsed since his departure, and then counting the marks, touching them one by one with her fingers, whenever she wants to calculate the day of his return. ↩

The fear that the husband is going again to part: the pair are now to be supposed to have met again after their separation. ↩

So intense is my grief even at anticipated separation. ↩

See next verse. ↩

Thou art not one of those few, as thou woundest me in thy sulks. ↩

I.e. by taking her part when she is in the sulks. ↩

I.e. his wife. ↩

Sulks. ↩

For she thought that he contemplated the possibility of parting in the next life. ↩

See note to verse 1203. ↩

Colophon

The Kural
was published before the 5th century CE by
Thiruvalluvar.
It was translated from Old Tamil in 1916 by
V. V. S. Aiyar.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Weijia Cheng,
and is based on a