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Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
195
expressed in sweet language and in the beaufitul Tamil maxim-like or epigrammatic style, memorable and quite wholesome for recitation, reflection and assimilation in one's daily life. They have been commented upon, paraphrased and explained by several scholars and widely translated both in India and abroad.
This didactic poetic work contains in all 1330 couplets, classified topic-wise in groups of 10 each, making thus in all 133 chapters, called Adhikāras, divided in three main parts known as Muppal in the following order:
(i) Aran-Dharma (Ethical Discipline for Householders and Renunciators).
(ii) Porul-Artha (Socio-economic, Political and Administrative Matters).
(iii) Inbam-Kāma (Idealised Love).
Thus, the poet Tiruvalluvar has covered, with remarkable brcvity and yet case, man's all the four Puruşārthas - Objectives of Life (the last i.e., Moksa - Liberation, Perfection or Final Bcautitude being precisely implied in the First Part itself).
Owing to lack of exaet information about the author and also for want of either precise internal evidence or external references etc., the date of this classic could not be pinpointed; and hence scholars, basing their studies with different angles of vision, have tried to fix different dates for it. We find that generally three dates have been proposed; Some scholars hold that it is c.100 A.D.. Somc c.300 A.D. and some others c.600 A.D. : (1) Those, like Prof.A.Chakravarti Nayanar, associating the author of the Kura! with the Jaina Sage Elācārya, and also those others identifying the work with the classic of great antiquity or belonging to the pre-Sangam Age, assign it to c.100 A.D. (and even a little earlier). (ii) But Prof.Mecnaxisundaram places it not earlier than 300 A.D. presenting the following observations, It is difficult to fix the date of the Kural. But one may point out that Tiruvalluvar may not have written the stylized language of Sangam poets, which
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