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TULSI-PRAJNĀ, Oct.-December, 1991
faith as a growing member of a family and society and gradually may have developed his scholarship and built his wordly wisdom, as nurtured by ecletic attitude and catholic spirit, and then presented these sweet, meaningful, epigrammatic, 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 role, parti. cularly 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 the Jain teachers and scholars happen to be the real apostles of culture and learning in the Tamil country in early days and Tiruvalļuvar was one of them. These points have already emanated from the reseaches of shri T.N. Shivaraj pillai (Chronology of early Tamilians), prof. Chakravarti Naynar, (Jain Literature in Tamil) and prof. S, Vaiyapuri pillai (History of Tamil language and Literature) etc. But taking a critical view af 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 auther of the Tirukkuşaļ. Because Kundakundācārya, though moved over the bulk of the South Indian region, now covered by parts of Karnāțak, Āndhra pradeśa and Tamil Nādu, has not composed any work in any language of these areas, but in prakrit (Jaina Sauraseni) alone. Moreover this great philosopher Ācārya 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, internal or external. But we have a good external evidence, for saving that Tiruvalluvar was of Jain faith, in the admittance (though rather reluctantly) of ths Hindu Commentator on the Kural, parimelalagār, and in the citing of the Kural as 'em-oltu'-'our authority” by the Jain commentator Sa mayadivākara. Hence agreeing with prof, S. Vaiyapuri Pillai's view that “Tiruvalluvar was Jain admits of no doubt", but revising it on certain grounds, I would propose my own view in this regard as follows :
Tiruvallvar, in all probability, was a Jaina householder (grhastha
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