Person · Tamil poet-philosopher
Thiruvalluvar
Also known as Tiruvaḷḷuvar, Valluvar, Tiruvalluvar
The poet to whom the Tirukkural is attributed, though the text names no author and the name Thiruvalluvar, 'saint Valluvar', first appears in the later Tiruvalluva Maalai. Almost nothing authentic is known of him: traditional dates run from the fourth century BCE to the early fifth century CE, and current scholarly consensus puts him around 500 CE. Every major Indian religion, and nineteenth-century missionaries, have claimed him, and Tamil Nadu counts its Valluvar year from 31 BCE.
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Traditional / narrative attribution
Worth knowing
The statue at Kanyakumari, unveiled on 1 January 2000, is 133 feet high for the Kural's 133 chapters. A nineteenth-century French translator remarked that the book and its author were equally nameless.
Every biographical detail is disputed. Kamil Zvelebil thought him probably a learned Jain; the Tiruvalluva Maalai says he was born in Madurai, the Kapilar Akaval at Mylapore, and a 2005 claim places him in Kanyakumari district. Proposed dates range from 300 BCE to the sixth century CE.
Connections (4)
- Traditional linkTirukkural
The Tirukkural is the work on which Valluvar's whole identity rests, yet the attribution is traditional rather than internal: the text names no author, and the title Thiruvalluvar first appears in the later, undated Tiruvalluva Maalai. Everything said about his life, religion and date is inferred from the couplets. Kamil Zvelebil dated the work to about 450–500 CE from its language and its debts to earlier Tamil and Sanskrit treatises, while traditionalists hold it to be the last work of the third Sangam.
- Associated withKanyakumari
A 133-foot statue of Valluvar was unveiled on 1 January 2000 at Kanyakumari, the southern tip of the subcontinent where the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean meet. Its height stands for the Kural's 133 chapters and its three raised fingers for the three books on virtue, wealth and love. The temple architect V. Ganapati Sthapati designed it. A 2005 local research claim also places Valluvar's birth in Kanyakumari district.
- BirthplaceMadras / Chennai
Tradition places Valluvar at Mayilapuram, the present Mylapore neighbourhood of Chennai. The poem Kapilar Akaval says he was born on top of an iluppai tree there, and the early sixteenth-century Valluvar shrine within the Ekambareeswara-Kamakshi temple complex in Mylapore keeps such a tree as its holy tree, with his seated statue holding a palm-leaf Kural beneath it. Chennai also built Valluvar Kottam, a temple-like memorial with a granite chariot, in 1976.
- Associated withJainism
Kamil Zvelebil judged Valluvar probably a learned Jain with eclectic leanings, and early nineteenth-century writers already proposed a Jain author; Francis Whyte Ellis's 1819 translation records that the Tamil community debated whether he was Jain or Hindu. The case rests largely on the Kural's treatment of ahimsa. Communities in Mylapore and Tiruchuli meanwhile worship him as the sixty-fourth Shaiva Nayanar, so the Jain tie is an argued attribution, not a record.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Thiruvalluvar". Kamil Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan (1973); Stuart Blackburn, "Corruption and Redemption: The Legend of Valluvar and Tamil Literary History", Modern Asian Studies (2000).
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