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The Kural

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About this book

One of the great works of classical Tamil literature, the Tirukkural gathers 1,330 rhymed couplets composed by the poet and moralist Thiruvalluvar. The couplets are grouped into three sections covering virtue, wealth and statecraft, and love, offering compact guidance on how a person should live, govern, and feel. Each verse is brief enough to memorize yet dense with meaning, and the work has been quoted and studied across South India for well over a millennium. This edition presents V. V. S. Aiyar's English translation, which carries the aphorisms to readers beyond Tamil. Admired for its secular, humane outlook, the Kural remains a foundation of Tamil ethical thought.

About the author

Thiruvalluvar

Thiruvalluvar was a Tamil poet and philosopher whose life is known almost entirely through legend. Traditionally placed in the early centuries of the common era, he is honored across the Tamil world as the author of the Tirukkural, a work that shaped ethical thought for generations.

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