When one has read his book through, the one impression that abides in the mind is that virtue and honour and manliness triumph over everything, and that vice and degradation are to be eschewed even should they bring pleasure and profit. This is the master-thought that runs through the whole book “even as the thread that is seen through the crystal bead.” Certain verses in the Second Part, like 830 for example, may look as if they would take away a little from this high praise. But we must understand that the author makes a clear distinction between private morality and State necessity. In private life, for instance, forgiveness is one of the greatest virtues and chapter 16 sings its praises abundantly. But, for the king as the representative of the State it is only a limited virtue. He must punish the guilty as a matter of course. Not only that. When he has an enemy, he is not to sit quiet, allowing him to grow in power and strength, but he must attack and subdue him before he becomes strong enough to menace him seriously (879). And when a neighbouring prince defies him, he should not forgive him but humble his pride at once (880). But all the same, the king and the State have not a carte blanche to do what they please with regard to their subjects or their neighbours. They shall not think of acquiring even kingdoms by means for which they shall have to blush (1016). And “to try to lay by wealth by means of guile is like trying to preserve water in a pot of clay that is not baked” (660).
While admiring the high moral purpose and the sublime ethics of Thiruvalluvar, Christian writers, actuated by what we may call for want of a better term a spell of religious chauvinism, cannot resist the temptation of making use of this very moral elevation of the poet to attack the religions of India in an insidious manner. Dr. Pope repeats in substance what Beschi, Digot, and others have written, and speaks of the Kural as “the one oriental book, much of whose teaching is an echo of the Sermon on the Mount,” and says of the author, “Without doubt Christian influences most affected him … we see in Thiruvalluvar a noble, truth-loving and devout man, feeling in the darkness after God, if haply he might find him.” And in another place, with a patronising air towards the great sage and his people he remarks, “I suppose he was not satisfied with the glimpses he had obtained of man’s future, and awaited for light; or, perhaps, he thought his people not prepared for higher teaching.” The reverend gentleman insinuates in these and similar remarks that Thiruvalluvar’s book could not have been so moral in its tone but for his having listened to the doctrines of Christ from the descendants of those who must have, according to a scarcely credible theory, received the teachings of the Apostle St. Thomas at Mylapore.
Writing as Thiruvalluvar does on almost all things that concern man’s life here as well as hereafter, it is easy to find parallels to his maxims among the greater writers of almost every nation in the world. But that is no reason for at once jumping to the conclusion that he must have listened to the words of any sage in particular. Whatever be the truth as to St. Thomas having preached at Mylapore, the author of the Kural does not show that he has ever heard of any of the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. Christians have a tendency to think that the ideas of forgiving one’s enemies, abstaining from returning evil for evil, humility etc. have been first taught to the world only by Jesus Christ. To say that these ideas are not autochthonous to any great nation that has developed a distinct civilisation of its own, one must possess a much greater amount of learning than falls to the lot of the ordinary man. But it can be safely asserted that these ideas were the common property of great minds at least four centuries before Jesus was born. And Thiruvalluvar had enough in the sacred literature of India, to say nothing of his own Illumined Self, to enable him to build these truths in his grand scheme of life without being indebted in any way to the teachings of Jesus.
So again among Hindus, Buddhists and Jains and Shaivas are each fond of asserting that the sage belonged to their own particular persuasion. But if every one of these religions can claim many of his teachings as its own, none of them can deny that they also belong to its rivals. And each of them will find it difficult to reconcile some of his ideas with its orthodox doctrines. For instance, almost all the names by which Thiruvalluvar refers to the Lord in his first chapter apply distinctively to the Buddha and to the Arhat of the Jains. But the Jains have to find an explanation for his reference to a creator of the universe (1062), for the high regard that he has for the sacred character of the Brahmans, their Gods, their sacrifices, and their Vedas (543, 560, 413, 134), for his Brahman division of life into four states (41), and for his attributing of anger to ascetics (29). The Buddhists have to explain his reference to the five principles of matter (271) while they admit only four, his approval of self-mortification and austerities (Ch. 27), and his condemnation of the eating of meat (Ch. 26). On the other hand, neither Shiva nor Vishnu nor any other God of the Hindu pantheon is by name spoken of as the supreme God anywhere in the book. The truth therefore appears to be that in whatever persuasion Thiruvalluvar
