________________
198
Studies in Jainology, Prakrit
religious faith as a growing member of a family and society and gradually may have developed his scholarship and built his wordly wisdon, as nurtured by ecletic attitude and catholic spirit, and then presented these sweet, meaningful, cpigrammatic, diadactic couplets to the world, so as to reach straightway the hearts of people at large. And in the course of all these developments, his own ethico-religious equipment and convictions must have played a crucial rolc, particularly in shaping the design, nature and spirit of the Contents of the Tirukkural. Taking into consideration the earliest impact of Jainism on the Tamil land (c.400 B.C. onwards) and the early period of Tamil language and literature, we should remember that it were the Jainas who did the pioneering work of cultivating the Tamil language and gave it a literary form of refinement so as to reach classical dignity. It were the Jainas who produced works of considerable merit in the various branches of that literature, the gnomic and ethico-didactic works catering humanitarian values. Thus thc Jain teachers and scholars happen to be the real apostles of culture and learning in the Tamil country in early days and Tiruvalluvar was one of them. These points have already emanated from the researches of Shri T.N.Shivaraj Pillai (Chronology of early Tamilians), Prof.Chakravarti Nayanar, (Jain Literature in Tamil) and Prof.S. Vaiyapuri Pillai (History of Tamil Language and Literature) etc. But taking a critical view of these and some other such points, I would humbly state that the Jaina tradition, which is history in its core, has in this case a grain of truth and not the whole truth, that Kundakundācārya alias Elācārya was the author of the Tirukkural. Because Kundakundācārya, though moved over the bulk of the South Indian region, now covered by parts of Karnatak, Andhra Pradesa and Tamil Nadu, has not composed any work in any language of these areas, but in Prākrit (Jaina sauraseni) alone. Moreover this great philosopher Acarya could not have bothered over subjects like Artha and kāma. Then Prof.Chakravarti's view that the Tirukkural was composed by Elācārya, a disciple of Kundakundācārya, also has no evidence,
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
