Jaina Literature in Tamil

Author(s): A Chakravarti, K V Ramesh
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 57

A. CHAKRAVARTI :
the early Jainas. It is no secret, therefore, that they generally resent the very suggestion that this great ethical work must have been written by a Jaina scholar.
According to one tradition the author of this work is said to be one Tiruvalluvar about whom nothing is known except what is concocted by the imagination of a modern writer who is responsible for the fictitious story relating to Tiruvalluvar. That he is born of a Cāņdāla woman, that he was a brother and contemporary of almost all great Tamil writers are some of the absurd instances mentioned in this life of Tiruvalluvar. To mention it is enough to discredit it. But the more enthusiastic among the modern Tamil scholars and modern Tamils have elevated him into a Godhead and built temples in his name and conducted annual festivals analogous to the festivals associated with the other Hindu deities. And the author is claimed to be one of the Hindu deities and the work is considered to be the revelation by such a deity. From such quarters, one cannot ordinarily expect application of historical criticism. So much so, whenever any hypothesis is suggested as a result of critical examination of the contents, it is rejected with a vehemence characteristic of uninstructed religious zeal. Many so-called critics who have written something or other about this great work have been careful to maintain that peculiar intellectual attitude which Samuel Johnson had when
1. G. U. Pope: The Sacred Kurra! (1886), Introduction,
pp. i-ii.