Grace, whether it is mother

The rendition of Dr.S.M.Diaz I.P.S. Ph.D., in English reads;

Compassion, which is the child of love, can be

carefully tendered and brought up,

Only by the wet-nurse of fairly prosperous wealth

We are all well aware that Thiruvalluvar, the master craftsman who has thoughtfully chiseled the code of living common to this world in the form of kural more than twenty long centuries before, has divided the sphere of existence into spiritual and physical. The divine poet proclaims that just as grace of god is essential for life in the other world, so also wealth is essential for leading life in this world. Thiruvalluvar chiefly concerned with the life in this world demarcates the method by which that life is to be lived. Even though in chapter 25 Valluvar has glorified the State of Grace, still, the mind of the poet dwells much on the side of wealth to cope up with the basic requirements of every day life as evident from the kural below;

The graceless could never inherit the world beyond,

So too this world, by the poor. 248

In line with such principle, Valluvar has classified the method as to how to earn that wealth in Chapter 76 under the caption “Method to earn wealth”. Just as Thiruvalluvar has dwelt on wealth in chapter 25 dealing with Grace, so also in chapter 76 which elucidates the method to earn wealth, Valluvar declares with certainty that if the earnings required for living in this world were not secured in line with grace and love, then such accrual is fit to be vanquished as enemies, as shown below;

With grace and with love, if wealth earned trails not,

Repel it as rivals in the dust. 755

The divine poet has crafted thousands of years before the couplets by a thoughtful selection of words and meticulously fused them together either with a simile or a metaphor or with any other figures of speech as appropriate to the message on the anvil. Each couplet has been forged in such a way that when it is unlocked, the seed of wisdom embedded therein spreads as a tree of meaning. Just as proton and neutron within the nucleus of atom are inextricably fused together with each other, so also the kural is an amalgamation of the idea with the figure of speech. In that sense, every couplet of Thirukkural is a scientific equation with a mathematical precision, resulting in a meaningful realization

None of the couplet in Thirukkural is susceptible to any interpretation contrary to the central idea inherent in it. If the couplet is subjected to any interpretation to arrive at the meaning embedded therein, then, it is a sign of failure on the part of the delineating/interpreting/translating mind to grasp the grand wisdom of the divine poet. Therefore, any attempt to interpret would alter the course of meaning away from the port of kural. Persisting in that attempt would tantamount to hunting a blue whale with fishing net and would cloud the syntax negatively in a web of contradiction.

The transliteration of Kural No 757 in chapter 76:

Arulenum anbeen kulavi porulenum

Selva cheviliyal undu.

The supreme among the figure of speech is simile and next comes metaphor. Thiruvalluvar has effectively employed both simile and metaphor as excellent figures of speech. The greatest grammatical treatise of classical Tamil is Tholkappium which is said to have existed centuries prior to the composition of Thirukkural. Tholkappium defines the manifestation of a simile as to have been inherent in four ingredients—the act, the result, the physical and the form. In the commentary of Ilam Puranar, the Book of Simile appears. But in the commentary of Nacchinarkkiniyar, it is not available for reasons not known to us. In the commentary of Peraasiriyar who lived after Ilam Puranar but prior to Nacchinarkkiniyar, the Book on Simile is available.

Tholkappiyam in Sutra 274 of Ilam Puranar and sutra 278 of Peraasiriyar states that among the similes lined up, there ought to be an order of priority. And the thing purported as a simile should be in a higher order than that of the one denoted by the simile. Grace is the act of god and love is the act of humanity. Therefore, grace, the manifestation of the supreme has been given precedence over love which is of lesser import in association with grace. In the same way wealth which is “a whole” has been given precedence over the riches, “a part of the whole”. Again grace and love are lined up in priority before wealth and riches.

Tholkappiyam in sutra 278 of Ilam Puranar and sutra 282 of Peraasiriyar, holds that a simile need not be explicit in its application and therefore the explicit and implicit ought to be correlated before considering the meaning. The act of giving birth itself used as a simile is implicit in the mother and on the other side wealth and riches considered as the nurse is explicit. Just as the act of birth is correlated to the mother and the act of rearing is correlated to the nurse and together they are related to the child common to both the mother and the nurse.

Tholkappiyam in sutra 280 of Ilam Puranar and sutra 284 of Peraasiriyar, hold that the meaning denoted by the simile itself could be used as a simile. However according to the rule of priority child used as a simile to denote the life in this world has been given precedence. Even if the one denoted by the simile is deployed as simile, the order of priority should not be affected.

In line with the above grammatical proposition, now the syntax of this couplet could be dismantled and its schematic design laid bare into three parts for critical analysis of the meaning embedded in its right perspective;

“Compassion and love are correlated with wealth and riches

Compassion in association with love, is equated to mother (implicit)

The act of giving birth denotes Mother

.

Wealth and riches are analogous to compassion and love

Wealth in association with riches is equated to nurse (explicit)

The act of bringing up is related to Nurse

Child denotes life in this world”.

(Implicit)

It is vital to note that Valluvar has not made the term “mother” explicit but designed it implicit by suggesting “the act of giving birth”. It is an unmistakable signature of nature. Therefore, the eloquence of maternity is unique in the realm of humanity. Nobody else can give birth to a child other than a mother. In the act of giving birth, the idea of mother is effectively embedded without any deflection in the needle of suggestion and emphatically signed as writing on a wall. By suggesting the act, Valluvar makes the person concerned implied in the syntax of the verse. Any expression explicit would be rendered superfluous affecting the syntax of the couplet and the meticulousness of the verse. But when the meaning in the couplet is allowed to run its passage, then like the heated metal of mercury, the meaning encrypted therein expands in association with the warmth of mother.

It is evident from the above that the commentators and the translators have not only related the child to love as its mother but also named it as grace. The very act of giving birth has been employed as a simile to denote the mother, qualified by grace and love as metaphors. The commentators and translators have not only detached the simile from the metaphors but also split the metaphors into two and reunited them together as mother and child by the simile, the act of giving birth.

The child given birth to by the grace of love and tendered by riches of the wealthy nurse is actually the symbol of life we lead in this world. Therefore, if the child is to be considered as grace and love as its mother, then, the cohesion of wealth and riches used as a simile and correlated to a nurse and intended as a bridge to the mother, would suffer from imbalance in the syntax. Therefore, grace is not to be construed as the child of love as purported by the commentators and the translators but it is to be appreciated that together with love, grace is to be forged into the state of mother as intended by the divine poet.

In Thirumandhiram, in Second Thanthiram under Chapter 14 titled “Conception of embryo”, Thirumoolar has declared with certainty that conception is not consequent on the consummation of conjugal bliss but it is an event inscrutable to human intelligence. Even today such a sprout of human creation remains an enigma to the highly accomplished scientific intelligence scanning the cosmic conception.

470 Giver was unaware, receiver was ignorant

Smith of life conscious, but divulged to none

Counting of fate, god became resident there

Destroyed by this delusion, lower I remain.

It is evident from the above assertion that the soul of life is blessed as a child into the womb of mother by the grace of god. It is history that five wombs were denied the privilege of bearing Vallalar. Then, the sixth one was selected. Even there, only after the passage of four children, as fifth, the conception of Vallalar as progeny was implanted within the womb of mother’s love by the grace of god.

In the same way, the pangs of pain and the bliss of bearing the child as sung by Pattinathaar in a soulful melody beginning with the line “Aiyirandu thingalaai….(For the span of moons ten….),” express the love of mother for the child she delivers into this world. None other than the mother is invested with such love whose magnitude is greater to the child in gratitude than that of both heaven and earth put together. Therefore, the grace of god together with the love of mother gives birth to the child of life in this world and that child is brought up by wealth and riches symbolized as a nurse.

Grace is experienced from eternity, love from maternity. Grace is eternal, love is maternal and the causal name of the great Saint Thayumaanavar elucidates the excellence of the state of god descending as a mother.

Whether eternity could be considered as the child of maternity?

Now the meaning of the couplet crystallizes into the following:

The child of life given birth to by the gracious love is tendered in this world by the riches of a wealthy nurse.

Accordingly, now the rendition of the kural in Tamil descends into English by replication in the following verse;

Child borne by the grace of love, by the riches

Of a wealthy nurse, reared. kural 757

It can be asserted that even in the absence of Tholkappiyam, the meaning in Kural 757 could be delineated by reading it in consonance with other kurals. We are all aware that Thiruvalluvar has spoken about love and grace in two different chapters, the former in chapter 8 and the latter in chapter 25.

Let us again recall the commentary of Parimelalagar

Grace reaches out to the suffering without considering any relationship. Love reaching out to the suffering considering only the relationship, when flows in excess of its reach, then, love yields grace. Inasmuch as love has only yielded grace, love has been considered as mother and grace as its child.

It is placed on record that when Parimelalagar explains grace as one which goes out to the suffering without considering the relationship on the physical level, Vallalar holds that grace reaches out to the suffering considering its relationship of oneness on the plane of soul.

Chapter 8 speaks about the state of love;

Worms boneless scorched by rays of the sun; so too

The loveless, by righteousness.77

Love paves the way to state of soul; those without,

Encase physique in bones and hide. 80

Love finds expression between the relations, the friends, the known and that love is conditioned by such relationship, friendship and acquaintance. Then such love conditioned by relationship is not real love. When love transcends the barrier of relationship in any manner, such love ascends to the state of unconditional love. At that state, love is not actually yielding grace in its spate but love is actually replaced by grace. It is like the soul passing from the state of sleep into the state of wakefulness and it is not analogous to the process of supra mental evolution where one transforms into the other as taught by Sri Aurobindo in his “Life Divine”. It is because that state of unconditional love known as grace is not new to the soul which has already tasted the bliss of grace in full on the lap of the Omnipotent.

Vallalar declares that the monarch who could subjugate the entire world with his might, the warrior who could buckle his enemies to bended knees with his valour and the jeevan mukhta who has controlled his senses and lives in bliss, are consumed alike as leaves of autumn in the flames of hunger. They are disoriented in their senses and petrified in the state of their living. Now the soul cognizing the agony transcends by the realization of its earlier oneness with other souls and melts in the furnace of suffering for the other. In that molten state, all the variety of designs such as colour, caste, creed, religion and linguistics emanating from the moulds of karma into which the souls have been cast into in the present birth, evaporate like drops of snow in the rays of sun. That is the state of experience of soul to which Vallalar summons us to join by explaining that as the truth of nature and that as the life of excellence.

That is actually the state of Tatvamasi in which the soul undergoes the suffering of the other soul pitted against the onslaught of hunger and embraces the suffering soul with extended hands in compassion with its right to unity. Compassion manifesting on the plane of soul is the condition precedent for qualifying oneself to the art of deathlessness according to Vallalar. According to Vallalar, the term Asi is not the state confluence of Tat with Tvam but it is the confluence of Tvam with Tvam, human with the human and not god with human. If human being fails to understand another human being, how that human being could understand god, much less could understand its relationship with god? With this question Vallalar sails away from the principles of deathlessness as postulated in the “Sutha Sadhagam” by Kumara Deva which is concerned with the vedantic union of human with god.

Chapter 25 of Thirukkural speaks about the state of grace;

By saving souls one reigning in grace, comes to nought

Of one’s soul dreaded karma. 244

The penniless may blossom by chance; the graceless

Could never, to brim over, it is rare. 246

Valluvar declares that only by saving the suffering souls one can reign in grace and consequently gain immunity from the onslaught of fate to which even a jeevan mukhta is subjected to as a victim. Vallallar goes to the extent of saying that a jeevan mukhta is to prostrate at the feet of the compassionate soul. If the declaration of Thirumoolar that the act of karma dissipates only with the grace of sivam present in the song of Thirumandhiram (Sixth Thanthiram Chapter 7), below is juxtaposed with kural 244 shown above, then, one can realize the difference between the siddhantic union of god with the human and the sanmarkka union of human with human which is a condition precedent to union of human with god.

1622 With the grace of sivam, some become deities

With the grace of sivam, some on par with gods

With the grace of sivam, act of karma dissipates

Grace of sivam in conflux, eternity ever that is.

In Seventh Thanthiram, Thirumoolar under Chapter 9 and in chapter 10 sings about the grace of god shown to the devotees;

1769 Being born in grace and tendered in grace

Immersed in grace, relaxed and vanished,

Being fed with the food of grace blissful

Nandhi in grace accessed my astral.

1790 In state of exile, one conquered in grace

In state of asylum, one conquered in wealth

Ignorance both retreat, on His entry into mind,

With that as wisdom, state of god descends”.

It is not the intention of this article by any chance to subjugate Thirukkural exalted by all the linguistic groups alike as the gospel common for the entire world, to the richest grammatical variety of Tholkappiyam which is concerned with one of the languages of this world however classic it may be in its cognate expressions. Tholkappiyam is a grammatical treatise of a particular language. Thirukkural is a divine thought achieved at the height of realization by an exalted soul to guide the humanity in its entirety to live a meaningful life on the crust of this earth and accordingly could not be limited by the grammatical excellence of one language.

The researchers in the field of Tholkappiyam are unanimous that the first edition of Tholkappium (Alphabet) was published in 1848 and the second edition in 1868 (Word). The third edition (Meaning) was published in 1885. The sutras were actually transferred from the palm leaves damaged due to bacterial and fungal infection. During the transfer, the disjointed sutras were coupled without denoting any gap in between. This necessitated the commentators at a later date to bridge the gap with words they deemed fit to redeem the sutras from mutilation.

No wonder that Vallalar has declared in his great sermon on October 22^nd 1873 at Siddi Valagam that such wrongs have been committed even in “Tholkappiyam” and “Panineeyam”. Some biographers of Vallalar even thought aloud in writing that such a claim ought to have been put into the lips of Vallalar by the over enthusiastic devotees who had recorded the speech of Vallalar. It is because in the considered opinion of the biographers, ancient grammatical works such as “Tholkappiyam” and “Panineeyam” could hardly be faulted even by the most accomplished research scholars.

But we are not oblivious to the fact that the great Saint has cast aside the well established spiritual doctrines of the Vedas and Agamas which are thousands of years old on the ground that they distort Truth by symbolic representations. Now, one can understand that there may be a grain of truth in the claim recorded on October 22^nd 1873, even if such claim is said to have been an interpolation.

Vallalar, just as praying for all the souls of this world so also with same intensity denounced that all the Vedas, agamas, gospels of religions and spiritual doctrines are simply interpretations of the ABSOLUTE who can be accessed to only by living in truth leaving falsehood and exaggeration. Only in the fountain of truth, grace springs which can wet in spiritual oneness the parched souls scorched in the flames of suffering. Therefore, there may be million keys in our hands but the gates of heaven would remain locked for ever and ever. At the same time, for one who has left falsehood even if the key is lost, the gates are thrown open by the grace of god.

A last word before summing up…..

This article is not written with a view to teaching anyone about anything but with intent to share the experiences recollected in the solitude of sat vichara in all humility. The flames of fire lit in the kitchen of dharma salai in the year 1867 by the grace of god and by the maternal love of Vallalar to appease the hunger of stricken souls, are being kindled and kindled and sustained by the riches of the compassionate souls all around this world day by day till date. It is because, as our Master sings…..

“Grace is the nature of us; Grace is the form of us

Grace is the figure of us, said so oh Lord;

Grace is the base of us; Grace is the peak of us

Grace is the centre of us, said so oh Lord;

Grace is the reason of us; Grace is the mind of us

Grace is the quality of us, said so oh Lord;

Grace is the origin of us; Grace is the goal of us

Grace is the dwelling of us, said so oh Lord;

Grace is the guard of us; Grace is the act of us

Grace is the wish of us, said so oh Lord;”

Aghaval

Whether it is right to declare that such ennobling grace Vallalar sings in a soulful rapture, could be considered as the child of love especially when Valluvar has thousands of years before held that such grace could immunize the saving soul from the onslaught of sanchitha, praraptha and agamiya karma at one stroke?

With regards

sivajayakumar