Tolstoy Quoted This Tamil Book in 1908 and a 133-Foot Statue Honours Its Author. Nobody Knows His Real Name, or His Century

Yasnaya Polyana, 14 December 1908: a Russian novelist copies out a Tamil poem

The letter is dated "December 14th, 1908" and signed from Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's estate. It answers a letter from the editor of Free Hindustan, the Indian revolutionary Tarak Nath Das, about India's struggle against British rule. Tolstoy's reply is long and severe. Violence, he says, will only make Indians copy the thing they hate. (Tolstoy, "A Letter to a Hindu", 1908, English Wikisource)

To show that his "law of love" is universal, he lines up quotations from the world's scriptures. One block is six sentences in italics. The fourth reads: "The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness." Under the block he writes a source: "The Hindu Kural." (same)

That sentence is a loose English version of a Tamil couplet numbered 314:

இன்னாசெய் தாரை ஒறுத்தல் அவர்நாண நன்னயஞ் செய்து விடல்.

The missionary scholar G.U. Pope had rendered it in 1886: "To punish wrong, with kindly benefits the doers ply; / Thus shame their souls; but pass the ill unheeded by." (Kural 314, Tamil text, Project Madurai; Pope, The 'Sacred' Kurral, 1886, p. 43)

Tolstoy's six sayings are, in order, couplets 311, 312, 313, 314, 315 and 319 of one chapter, the 32nd, on not doing harm. The letter then passed "from hand to hand" until it reached Mohandas Gandhi. In an introduction dated "19th November, 1909" he wrote that he would "translate it myself into Gujarati". (Gandhi, Introduction to "A Letter to a Hindu", Wikisource)

So a Tamil couplet reached a Russian estate and came back to an Indian lawyer, through several translations. Nobody along the way could name the poet. Nobody can.

At a glance

• 1,330 couplets. "133 chapters, each containing 10 couplets; and thus numbers 2,660 lines." (Pope 1886, Introduction, p. iii)
• Three books, not four. Virtue (aṟam) takes chapters 1–38, Wealth (poruḷ) 39–108, Love (kāmam) 109–133. There is no book on liberation. (Pope 1886, Introduction, pp. vii–ix; Zvelebil 1973, p. 155)
• Seven feet, two lines. Every couplet is a kuṟaḷ veṇpā: four metrical feet in the first line, three in the second. (Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan, 1973, p. 166)
• A date range of more than a thousand years. Pope guessed 800 to 1000 CE; Kamil Zvelebil proposed 450 to 550 CE; a Tamil Nadu convention puts the poet's birth in 31 BCE. (Pope, p. iv; Zvelebil, pp. 155–156; Wikipedia, "Valluvar year")
• Kautilya's four tests. Couplet 501 tests a candidate by virtue, wealth, pleasure and fear for his life; Arthashastra I.10 tests ministers by religious, monetary, love and fear "allurements". (Kural 501; Shamasastry 1915, pp. 15–17)
• Ordered into school. On 26 April 2016 the Madras High Court directed that all 108 chapters of the first two books be taught in classes VI to XII. (S. Rajarathinam v. Secretary to the Government, 2016 SCC OnLine Mad 2373)

First, the words a beginner needs

Kural (குறள், kuṟaḷ). "Short": the two-line verse form, and so one couplet. (Pope, p. iii)

Thirukkural (திருக்குறள், Tirukkuṟaḷ). "The sacred kural". Tiru is an honorific, like "Sri". Among its nine traditional names are "The Tamil Veda" and "The common Veda". (Zvelebil, pp. 155–156)

Thiruvalluvar. The poet. It is a title, not a name: "the sacred Valluvar". Pope explains valluvar as the priests of a community then placed at the bottom of the caste order. (Pope, p. i)

Aram (அறம், aṟam). Virtue, right conduct. The first book. Usually matched with the Sanskrit dharma.

Porul (பொருள், poruḷ). Wealth, and with it statecraft: ministers, armies, allies, money. The second and longest book. Matched with artha.

Inbam or Kamam (இன்பம், iṉpam; காமம், kāmam). Pleasure; love between a man and a woman. The third book. Matched with kāma.

The aims of life. Sanskrit thought names three aims, dharma, artha and kama, and often a fourth, moksha, liberation from rebirth. (Pope, p. vii)

Chapter (அதிகாரம், atikāram). A group of exactly ten couplets on one subject.

Venba (வெண்பா, veṇpā). The strict Tamil metre the Kural uses. Zvelebil calls it "the most difficult" of classical stanza forms. (Zvelebil, p. 166)

Commentary (உரை, urai). A prose explanation, couplet by couplet. Parimelalakar's is the most famous. (Zvelebil, p. 257)

Arthashastra and Manu. The Sanskrit manual of statecraft attributed to Kautilya, quoted from R. Shamasastry's 1915 translation; and the Laws of Manu, a law code on duty, caste, food and kingship, quoted from Georg Bühler's 1886 translation.

The claim we are testing

Three things are often said: the Kural is "more than two thousand years old", "owes nothing to Sanskrit", and is "above caste and creed". Layer by layer:

1. It has three books on virtue, wealth and love, matching dharma, artha and kama, with no book on moksha. True; the same three words open couplet 501, and Zvelebil judges the three-part division "probably" the author's own. (Pope, p. vii; Kural 501; Zvelebil, p. 158)
2. It is more than two thousand years old. Unsupported. The 31 BCE birth year is a commemorative convention. The two scholars we opened put it between 450 and 1000 CE, from its language and style. (Pope, p. iv; Zvelebil, pp. 155–156, 169)
3. It owes nothing to Sanskrit. Myth. Several couplets track the Arthashastra and Manu closely, and its most celebrated commentator says so. (Zvelebil, p. 171; Parimelalakar on Kural 381)
4. It is Sanskrit ethics in Tamil verse. Also a myth. On sacrifice, meat, birth and God's justice it contradicts Manu, and its book on love belongs to Tamil poetry. (Kural 259, 972, 1062; Manu V.39, V.56; Zvelebil, pp. 157, 166, 171)
5. It is universal. True of how it speaks. A French scholar wrote in 1848 that its author addresses mankind "without regard to castes, peoples or beliefs". (Ariel, quoted by Pope, p. i)

A book you can hold in one breath

Open the Kural and count. There are 133 chapters of exactly ten couplets. Each couplet has two lines and seven metrical feet, four in the first line and three in the second. That makes 1,330 couplets and, as Pope worked out, 2,660 lines. (Pope, p. iii; Zvelebil, p. 166) Each verse is shorter than a text message.

The first couplet sets the pattern:

அகர முதல எழுத்தெல்லாம் ஆதி பகவன் முதற்றே உலகு.

Pope: "A, as its first of letters, every speech maintains; / The 'Primal Deity' is First through all the world's domains." (Kural 1, Project Madurai; Pope, p. 3) The alphabet starts with a; the world starts with God. In his notes Pope sets beside it Bhagavad Gita 10.33, where Krishna says akṣarāṇām akāro 'smi, "of letters I am the letter A". (Pope, Notes, p. 183; Gita 10.33, Sanskrit Wikisource) The Tamil-Sanskrit conversation starts with the first word.

The book divides by subject into three. Virtue takes chapters 1 to 38, couplets 1 to 380. Wealth takes chapters 39 to 108, couplets 381 to 1080: 700 couplets, more than half the book. Love takes chapters 109 to 133, couplets 1081 to 1330: 250 couplets. (Pope, Introduction, pp. vii–ix; Project Madurai text) Zvelebil gives the same count. (Zvelebil, p. 155) A book on how to live spends more space on ministers, spies and armies than on anything else.

A poet with a title instead of a name

Pope put it bluntly: "It is strange that the poet and his one great work are both without a name." (Pope, p. i) "Thiruvalluvar" and "Thirukkural" are both descriptions.

Everything else is tradition, and traditions disagree. Pope reports that the poet was a weaver of Mylapore, which he describes as "now a suburb of Madras", with the captain of a small vessel for a friend. (Pope, pp. i–ii) He also reports a tale he calls "wild and utterly incredible": a Brahmin father and a "no-caste mother". (Pope, p. ii) Zvelebil adds others: a farmer, because he praised farming; an officer of the king; the chief of the royal criers. (Zvelebil, p. 156)

Pope also tells the legend of the first reading. The academy of poets at Madurai would not seat a man of his birth on their sacred bench, so he laid his book at one end of it. The bench vanished, "leaving the learned professors afloat in the Lotus-tank". (Pope, p. iv) The book outranks the men who would not seat its author.

What religion was he? Every sect has claimed him. Pope noted that the Jains "consider him their own". (Pope, p. v) Zvelebil argued that the Kural's names for God, "he who walked upon the (lotus) flower" (couplet 3) and "the one of eight-fold qualities" (couplet 9), suit a Jain saint, and concluded that the author "was probably a learned Jain". (Zvelebil, pp. 155, 157) Pope, a Christian missionary, had his own candidate: "I cannot feel any hesitation in saying that the Christian Scriptures were among the sources from which the poet derived his inspiration." (Pope, p. iv) Zvelebil's reply: that hypothesis "is based on vague impressions". (Zvelebil, p. 157)

When?

The dates are worse. Pope: "There are no data whatever which may enable us to fix with precision the period at which our poet flourished. I think between A.D. 800 and 1000 is its probable date." The style, he said, was "not archaic". (Pope, p. iv)

Zvelebil, using the history of the Tamil language, moved it earlier. The Kural has grammatical forms absent from the oldest Tamil poems and more Sanskrit loanwords, so it is later than the classical Sangam poems, but earlier than the rise of Tamil devotional (bhakti) poetry. His conclusion: "probably sometime between 450-550 A.D." (Zvelebil, pp. 156, 169)

One limit is firm: the book is older than Parimelalakar's commentary on it, written in the second half of the 13th century or the first half of the 14th. (Zvelebil, p. 257)

And there is a date many Tamils know. The Tamil Nadu government counts a "Thiruvalluvar year" from a birth in 31 BCE, a date proposed by the Tamil scholar Maraimalai Adigal. (Wikipedia, "Valluvar year") That is a commemorative convention, with no document from the poet's time behind it.

The proposed dates run from 31 BCE to 1000 CE, a spread of more than a thousand years. The honest answer: probably the middle of the first millennium CE, and nobody can name the century with certainty.

Four tests Kautilya would recognise

Open the second book at chapter 51, which Pope titles "Examination before reposing confidence". Couplet 501:

அறம்பொருள் இன்பம் உயிரச்சம் நான்கின் திறந்தெரிந்து தேறப் படும்.

Pope: "How treats he virtue, wealth and pleasure? How, when life's at stake, / Comports himself? This four-fold test of man will full assurance make." (Kural 501, Project Madurai; Pope, p. 72)

The first line names, in order, the subjects of the poet's three books, aṟam, poruḷ, iṉpam, then adds a fourth test, uyir-accam, "fear for one's life".

Now open the Arthashastra, Book I, chapter 10, "Ascertaining by Temptations Purity or Impurity in the Character of Ministers". The king sets four traps through spies. A dismissed priest invites each minister to replace an "unrighteous" king: "religious allurement". A dismissed commander offers "immense wealth" for the king's murder: "monetary allurement". A woman spy says the queen "is enamoured of thee": "love allurement". Imprisoned ministers are tempted to revolt: "allurement under fear". (Arthashastra I.10, Shamasastry 1915, pp. 15–17)

Virtue, wealth, pleasure, fear. Same four, same order. Zvelebil's verdict is that couplet 501 "is based undoubtedly on Kauṭilya I.10". (Zvelebil, p. 171)

But Valluvar keeps the principle and drops the trick. The test survives; the entrapment does not.

Six limbs and a king

The second book opens with couplet 381:

படைகுடி கூழ்அமைச்சு நட்பரண் ஆறும் உடையான் அரசருள் ஏறு.

Pope: "An army, people, wealth, a minister, friends, fort: six things — / Who owns them all, a lion lives amid the kings." (Kural 381, Project Madurai; Pope, p. 57)

The Arthashastra opens Book VI: "The king, the minister, the country, the fort, the treasury, the army and the friend, and the enemy are the elements of sovereignty." (Arthashastra VI.1, Shamasastry 1915, p. 287) Leave aside the enemy and Kautilya's list is the king plus Valluvar's six.

The Kural's most famous commentator says so. In Arumuka Navalar's 1861 printing, Parimelalakar's note on couplet 381 reads, in part:

அமைச்சு, நாடு, அரண், பொருள், படை, நட்பென்பதே முறையாயினும், ஈண்டுச் செய்யுணோக்கிப் பிறழ வைத்தார் … வடநூலார் இவற்றிற்கு அங்கமென்பது பெயர்கொடுத்ததூஉம் அது நோக்கி.

In our translation: "Though the proper order is minister, country, fort, wealth, army, ally, here he has set them out of order to suit the verse. … It is with this in view that the northern authors gave these the name aṅga, limbs." (Parimelalakar on Kural 381, Arumuka Navalar ed., 1861, Wikimedia Commons scan)

The skipped clause supplies "this": because the king must have all six, his rule fails if even one is missing. "The northern authors" (vaṭanūlār) are the Sanskrit writers, and the "proper" order he gives is Kautilya's own order after the king. He saw no scandal in this. He simply pointed it out.

Where Valluvar and Manu say the same thing

Zvelebil also lists parallels with the Laws of Manu. (Zvelebil, p. 171) Two are close enough to set side by side.

The five a householder must feed. Couplet 43:

தென்புலத்தார் தெய்வம் விருந்தொக்கல் தானென்றாங்கு ஐம்புலத்தாறு ஓம்பல் தலை.

Pope: "The manes, God, guests, kindred, self, in due degree, / These five to cherish well is chiefest charity." (Kural 43; Pope, p. 9) The "manes" are the spirits of one's ancestors.

Manu III.72, in Bühler's 1886 translation: "But he who does not feed these five, the gods, his guests, those whom he is bound to maintain, the manes, and himself, lives not, though he breathes." (Bühler, Laws of Manu, SBE XXV, p. 88) Same five. Zvelebil calls couplet 43 "almost a translation". (Zvelebil, p. 171)

Learning is digging for water. Couplet 396:

தொட்டனைத் தூறும் மணற்கேணி மாந்தர்க்குக் கற்றனைத் தூறும் அறிவு.

Pope: "In sandy soil, when deep you delve, you reach the springs below; / The more you learn, the freer streams of wisdom flow." (Kural 396; Pope, p. 59) The Tamil is plainer: a well in sand yields water as deep as you dig; a person yields knowledge as much as he learns.

Manu II.218: "As the man who digs with a spade (into the ground) obtains water, even so an obedient (pupil) obtains the knowledge which lies (hidden) in his teacher." (Bühler, p. 69) Zvelebil cites it as "Mānav. II.212"; in Bühler's translation this verse is II.218, and his II.212 is a different verse.

The image is the same, but the lesson is not. Manu's water is in the teacher, and the pupil must be obedient to draw it. Valluvar's water is in the ground, and anyone who digs gets it.

And where he walks away

From here the differences grow sharper.

Sacrifice. Manu V.39: "Svayambhu (the Self-existent) himself created animals for the sake of sacrifices … hence the slaughtering (of beasts) for sacrifices is not slaughtering (in the ordinary sense of the word)." (Bühler, p. 175) Now couplet 259:

அவிசொரிந் தாயிரம் வேட்டலின் ஒன்றன் உயிர்செகுத் துண்ணாமை நன்று.

Pope: "Than thousand rich oblations, with libations rare, / Better the flesh of slaughtered beings not to share." (Kural 259; Pope, p. 36) Not to kill and eat one creature is better than a thousand fire-sacrifices. It reads like a reply.

Meat. Manu V.56: "There is no sin in eating meat, in (drinking) spirituous liquor, and in carnal intercourse, for that is the natural way of created beings, but abstention brings great rewards." (Bühler, p. 177) Valluvar gives a whole chapter, couplets 251 to 260, to refusing meat. Zvelebil reads the Kural's ethics here as "a reflection of the Jaina moral code". (Zvelebil, p. 157)

Birth. Couplet 972:

பிறப்பொக்கும் எல்லா உயிர்க்கும் சிறப்பொவ்வா செய்தொழில் வேற்றுமை யான்.

Pope: "All men that live are one in circumstance of birth; / Diversities of works give each his special worth." (Kural 972; Pope, p. 132)

Valluvar does not abolish the Brahmin. He redefines him. Couplet 30, அந்தணர் என்போர் அறவோர்மற் றெவ்வுயிர்க்கும் / செந்தண்மை பூண்டொழுக லான்: "Towards all that breathe, with seemly graciousness adorned they live; / And thus to virtue's sons the name of 'Anthanar' men give." (Kural 30; Pope, p. 6) The anthanar, a Tamil word for Brahmins, are whoever is kind to every creature. Couplet 134, மறப்பினும் ஓத்துக் கொளலாகும் பார்ப்பான் / பிறப்பொழுக்கங் குன்றக் கெடும்: "Though he forget, the Brahman may regain his Vedic lore; / Failing in 'decorum due,' birthright's gone for evermore." (Kural 134; Pope, p. 20) A forgotten Veda can be relearned; lost conduct cannot.

God's justice. Couplet 1062 may be the angriest two lines in the book:

இரந்தும் உயிர்வாழ்தல் வேண்டின் பரந்து கெடுக உலகியற்றி யான்.

Pope: "If he that shaped the world desires that men should begging go, / Through life's long course, let him a wanderer be and perish so." (Kural 1062; Pope, p. 143) If the creator meant some to live by begging, let him wander and perish himself.

Liberation. Valluvar wrote no book on moksha. Pope thought he "waited for light". (Pope, p. vii) Zvelebil's answer is simpler: his moral code was "eminently empirical, practical, pragmatic". (Zvelebil, p. 158)

Love. The third book is not a Tamil Kamasutra. The Sanskrit works on love are śāstra, systematic manuals; the Kural's third book, Zvelebil writes, "is a poetic picture of eros". (Zvelebil, p. 166, n. 1) The book's last couplet, 1330, is about a lovers' quarrel: ஊடுதல் காமத்திற்கு இன்பம் அதற்கின்பம் / கூடி முயங்கப் பெறின். Pope: "A 'feigned aversion' coy to pleasure gives a zest; / The pleasure's crowned when breast is clasped to breast." (Kural 1330; Pope, p. 182)

The part of the book Victorians would not read

The Kural reached print in Madras in 1812, in what the Commons record of its title page calls "the first known edition". A University of Toronto copy catalogued under 1812 has the bare text bound with the Nāladiyār, another Tamil book of moral verse. (Commons file record; University of Toronto copy, archive.org)

English translation came in stages. W.H. Drew, a missionary in Madras, published the first part of an edition with the Parimelalakar commentary and an English translation in 1840; a second part is catalogued under 1852. The whole, as Pope records, covered "63 chapters". (Drew, The Cural of Tiruvalluvar, Madras: American Mission Press, 1840, and Part 2, Madras: Christian Knowledge Society's Press, 1852, archive.org catalogue; Pope, p. v) John Lazarus's edition of 1885 added "an English translation of the text". (Lazarus, The Kural of Tiruvalluvar, Madras, 1885, archive.org title page) Pope's complete verse translation came in 1886.

Pope explains one reason. Of the third book, Drew had said "it could not be translated into any European language without exposing the translator to infamy". Pope disagreed, but admitted: "This prejudice kept me from reading the third part of the Kurral for some years." (Pope, Introduction, pp. xii–xiii) So for Drew, and for years for Pope, nearly one-fifth of the book was off limits: 250 of its 1,330 couplets.

Pope himself came to the Kural at Mylapore: "in 1840 my missionary life began there". (Pope, p. ii) Forty-six years later he published it in London with a grammar, lexicon and concordance. In a sonnet printed before his preface he addressed the poet directly: "Sage VALLUVAR, priest of thy lowly clan, / No tongue repeats, no speech reveals thy name". (Pope 1886, sonnet before the Preface)

Read the actual document

"அறம்பொருள் இன்பம் உயிரச்சம் நான்கின் திறந்தெரிந்து தேறப் படும். How treats he virtue, wealth and pleasure? How, when life's at stake, Comports himself? This four-fold test of man will full assurance make." — Tirukkural, couplet 501, Tamil text (Project Madurai); English by G.U. Pope, The 'Sacred' Kurral (London: W.H. Allen, 1886), p. 72

In plain words: before you give a man power, find out four things. Does he do right? What does he do when money is on the table? When desire is? When he is afraid for his life? The first three are the poet's own three books, turned into a job interview. The fourth is the test Kautilya also put last: fear. Kautilya ran his tests with spies. Valluvar asks you only to watch.

The strongest case for the other side

The other side says: stop measuring the Kural against Sanskrit. Its best witness is the same Zvelebil who listed the borrowings.

First, the borrowings are "in itself, of no great importance", he wrote; a learned poet would know the main Sanskrit works. What matters more is that Valluvar was "a very integral part of the non-Sanskritic and pre-Sanskritic Tamil tradition". (Zvelebil, p. 171)

Second, the language. Zvelebil took S. Vaiyapuri Pillai's list of 137 Sanskrit loanwords in the Kural and struck out words since shown to be Dravidian, the native family of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. The list "shrinks considerably; from 137 items to about 102". (Zvelebil, pp. 170–171) Across 1,330 couplets, that is not a book written in borrowed words.

Third, the shared ideas may come from neither side. Zvelebil makes this point against Pope's Christian thesis: what reminds a reader of the Sermon on the Mount belongs "to the sphere of 'natural law'". (Zvelebil, p. 157) The same caution applies to Sanskrit: the five a householder must feed could be common wisdom both traditions drew on. A parallel alone does not show which way borrowing ran.

Fourth, the antiquity case rests on the Tamil tradition that places the Kural among the oldest works of the language. We found no primary text that dates it early, so we cannot weigh it.

What we could not prove

• The poet's name, birthplace, caste or religion. Pope's weaver of Mylapore, the Brahmin-father legend, the learned Jain and the royal crier are all traditions or inferences. (Pope, pp. i–ii; Zvelebil, pp. 155–157) No document from his lifetime names him.
• The 31 BCE date. We could not open the Tamil Nadu gazette notification of the Thiruvalluvar year, nor the record of the scholars' meeting said to have chosen 31 BCE. Secondary accounts disagree on those years, so we give neither.
• The 1812 printer. The Commons record puts "Naynapragasanar" in its author field, and the title page appears to name a Ñānappirakācan (Gnanaprakasam), but the photograph is too blurred for us to read the full imprint. Popular accounts say the book was printed from wooden blocks; we found no primary statement of that.
• That "every Tamil child memorises" the Kural. The 2016 court order directs that 108 chapters be taught. We found no survey of how many children memorise them.
• The direction of every borrowing. Zvelebil asserts it for couplet 501 ("undoubtedly"); for others he says "parallel" or "echo", and so do we.
• The page of the 1861 commentary. We read Parimelalakar on couplet 381 from a single-page Commons scan of Arumuka Navalar's edition and could not fix its page number. The translation is ours.

Why it still matters today

Walk into a Chennai Metro coach and you may find a Kural on the wall beside the helpline number. One photographed in 2018 carries couplet 416, எனைத்தானும் நல்லவை கேட்க அனைத்தானும் / ஆன்ற பெருமை தரும். Pope: "Let each man good things learn, for e'en as he / Shall learn, he gains increase of perfect dignity." (Kural 416; Pope, p. 61)

On 26 April 2016 the Madras High Court directed the Tamil Nadu government to put all 108 chapters of the first two books into the syllabus for classes VI to XII. The court said its principles would give students "inner strength to withstand any storm". (2016 SCC OnLine Mad 2373, as reported by SCC Online) The 108 are the 38 chapters of Virtue and the 70 of Wealth; the book on love was left out.

On a rock off Kanyakumari stands a statue of the poet, unveiled at six in the evening on 1 January 2000. The figure is 95 feet tall on a 38-foot pedestal, 133 feet in all. The pedestal stands for the 38 chapters on virtue; the figure for the books on wealth and love. (Hinduism Today, "India's Statue of Liberation", May/June 2000)

There is a quieter lesson. The argument is usually framed as "Tamil or Sanskrit". The text is both: a Tamil poet kept Kautilya's four tests and Manu's five duties, threw out the sacrifice and the birth-rank, and wrote it all in a strict Tamil metre. His most celebrated commentator, a Brahmin of Kanchipuram, noted the Sanskrit parallel without embarrassment. (Zvelebil, p. 257) That is a living tradition: agreement where it is earned, disagreement in plain words.

Verdict

The documents prove the shape: 133 chapters of ten couplets, 1,330 couplets in a seven-foot metre, three books whose subjects couplet 501 names in order, and no book on liberation. They prove that Tolstoy quoted six couplets from one chapter in December 1908.

They prove a conversation with Sanskrit. Couplet 501 follows Arthashastra I.10's four tests in order; couplet 381 lists Kautilya's limbs of the state, as Parimelalakar noted; couplet 43 nearly translates Manu III.72. And they prove a quarrel: couplet 259 against Manu V.39 on sacrifice, 972 on birth, 1062 against a creator who allows beggary.

They do not prove the poet's name, caste, religion or century. The 31 BCE date is a commemoration, not a finding. The best evidence we opened, the Kural's own grammar, points to roughly 450 to 550 CE, offered by its proposer as a suggestion.

Our opinion: the Kural is neither a Tamil copy of Sanskrit ethics nor a book sealed off from it. It is a reply, by a reader who had done the reading and decided for himself, as couplet 423 advises: எப்பொருள் யார்யார்வாய்க் கேட்பினும் அப்பொருள் / மெய்ப்பொருள் காண்ப தறிவு. "Though things diverse from divers sages' lips we learn, / 'Tis wisdom's part in each the true thing to discern." (Kural 423; Pope, p. 62)