Thursday, July 22, 2010

Chapter One - Verse nine

The actual verse in the Tamil language

Kolil poriyin gunamilavae engunathan
thaalai vanakaath thalai

This verse informs about the nature of the perfect soul (individual) and its characters. The eight characters of God described in the above 8 verses are the essence of this chapter.

Kolil
This means the human body

Poriyin
This means the senses

Guna milavae
This word has two syllabuses.
Guna means self consciousness and “Ellavay” not having.

The above phrase means one “not having any purity in the body (actions) senses (emotions) and self consciousness (thoughts)”

En gunathan
En – means eight and gunathan means the qualities

Thalai
This means God

Vanakaath
This means “not worshipping”

Thalai
Thalai means the head, but it means the “exemplary individual”. It is like a synonym for “the head man”.
This them translates as “the exemplary individual (soul) not worshipping the God with the 8 qualities”

Thus the whole sentence can be translated as:-

“The exemplary individual (soul) that does not worship the 8 quality God, will not having any purity in the body (actions) senses (emotions) and self consciousness (thoughts)”

This verse informs of the destination it needs to take to reach God. God is said to have 8 qualities and this is the “perfectness” of God. Similarly, the soul must also attain perfection.


Significance to the Siddhanta theology


This is an important verse where for the first time in any Tamil theological concept, it is stated that God has eight qualities and this is said in verse number nine.

And in verse eight, the direct synonym for Civa is stated, thus the theological concept of God or the God Civa must have the eight qualities. Thus these eight qualities must describe the “Perfect God”.

We must not forget that this Thirukkurral concept was put forward in BC 50, when none of the books we are following now regarding “theology and hymns” were present yet.

The other is the perfection of the soul. Now it is stated that this perfection can only be attained, if the soul through the human form it has taken (matter, life and knowledge) is able to understand (mental) the meaning of (qualities) God, accept that these eight qualities are the perfection of God (without emotion) and put to practice (action) of what is required of the soul (individual) to reach God (Civa here).

Thus the most important work here is to search for the eight qualities of God, which are directly or subtly informed or explained to us within the 10 verses of the Thirukkural. Thrukkural must have the answer with the verses itself, if not the eight would become an abstract concept.

We have dealt with this separately.

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