Part I—Righteousness
Under the title of Righteousness our author treats of the life of the householder and of the life of the ascetic. Every virtue that goes to make a good husband and a good father, a good neighbour and a good man, is inculcated by the poet in 19 chapters. 13 more chapters deal with the life of the ascetic and the virtues to be practised by him. The first four chapters of the Part serve as an introduction to the whole work; and the chapter that ends the section on the life of the householder is devoted to Fame as a great motive force to do good, while that which ends the whole Part treats of Destiny or rather the potential force which is behind every man impelling him to action good or evil, and which is the general resultant of all his thoughts and actions in his previous births.
Some of the grandest thoughts that have ever been uttered by man are to be found in this Part. Though it is difficult to select, we may specially mention verses 76, 115, 128, 156, 207, 247, 314, 341, 360 and 363.
What is the grand feature of the first Part is its healthy outlook on life. “The chiefest blessing,” declares our author, “is an honourable home, and its crowning glory is worthy offspring.” How charming is his love for children! “The touch of children is the delight of the body.” It is only they who have not listened to the prattle of their little ones that are attracted by the guitar and the flute! The Poet insists greatly on the love of mankind and the honouring of the guest as among the chief virtues of a man. The man that loveth not is like a dry tree in the wilderness. Kindness of speech is inculcated as a special virtue by itself. Such vices as fornication, envy, coveting, slander, vain speaking and injuring a neighbour are condemned, and such virtues as uprightness, forgiveness, obligation and good will to all, and charity, are recommended, and the first section ends with a chapter on Glory, for “they alone live who live without blemish: and they alone die who have lived without glory.” It will thus be seen that it is a cheerful, smiling, benignant humanity that Thiruvalluvar wants to produce in his country and in the world.
But the life of man ends not with this world. When man has fulfilled his duties towards society by living a life of usefulness and virtue, and by giving birth to children to take his place in the play of humanity, he has to think of another life, the life that is beyond death. The householder has ascended a few rungs on the ladder of life with the help of his righteous conduct, but from his more exalted position he sees a larger righteousness unfold itself before him. He has to go through a life of stricter discipline than before. He has now to practise mercy to all living beings, abjure flesh-meat, mortify his body and concentrate his thoughts, and thus obtain a higher spiritual power and vision, purify his mind by a strict adherence to truth, and conquer his anger and every temptation to injure or kill even the smallest of creatures. Most of the virtues treated of here should also of course be practised by the householder, though many of them only in a lesser degree; but they are placed in this section on account of their more intimate relation to the ascetic. This life of discipline removes the veils of ignorance covering the soul one after another, the eyes of the ascetic are opened, and he sees that the phenomenal life is no better than a dream and a shadow, a thing that is today but passes away tomorrow. He therefore renounces his attachments to this world utterly, and then be realises the Truth. “Heaven is nearer to him than the Earth” now. But there is yet the insidious foe of Desire which, taking a thousand forms and a thousand shapes, tempts men even the most spiritually minded, and until that is killed once for all there is no permanent bliss for the soul. And so the killing of Desire forms appropriately the last chapter of the section on the Life of the Ascetic.
The chapter on Destiny requires some explanation. The word used by the poet is Ûj and its original meaning is old or ancient. The idea underlying the word is the accumulated unspent force of a man’s actions in all his past lives. The Hindu belief is that all actions good and bad alike have, in addition to their visible physical effect in life, an invisible effect in the unseen world which transforms itself again into visible effects only later on. Using the phraseology of physical science may help a good deal to understand what we mean. Of the total force of every action of a man—including thought and word also in the word action—one part goes off as kinetic energy and that is represented by its visible effects that appear immediately the action is ended. But another part remains unspent for the time being and, whether it is much or little, it is stored up somewhere in the universe to uncoil itself as time and opportunity offer themselves. The storing up is certainly in part in the character of the man who does the action. But another and sometimes the major part of it is in Nature and in the memory of consciousness of fellow-men. Now the innumerable actions, conscious and unconscious, of a man’s life go on accumulating this potential energy until the very end of his life on earth, if not even beyond. Some of this potential energy is being turned to kinetic every moment of his life, but all the same a large portion remains unspent at the moment of death and accompanies the soul in its transmigration into another body. It is this energy waiting to materialise itself in the new life of the soul that our philosophical writers call by the name of karma or Ûj. The idea of the all but omnipotent force of this karma can now be rightly grasped by the reader, whether he is convinced of the truth of it as a fact or not. It is powerful because it forms part and parcel of a man’s character as the original tendencies with which he is born. And the portion of it that has formed part of Nature and remains in the memory of fellow-men must be even more powerful as it is much more beyond the control of the subject’s will than his inward tendencies. We hope these words will be sufficient to make the reader understand the trend of chapter 38 to which the title Destiny is given only for want of a better word to express the above ideas. That the ideas expressed in this chapter are however quite compatible with an active and energetic life, the author shows everywhere and especially in verses 619 and 620 and chapter 27.
The position of this chapter at the end of the Part on Righteousness may be explained thus. The author who is not a lawgiver in the sense that he has the power to compel the observance of his laws, has however to see that his laws are obeyed by those to whom they are intended. He requires a sanction to compel men to pursue the path of righteousness that he has showed with such infinite love to them. And what higher sanction is there than the knowledge that if a man does evil he will carry a load of evil which will make him unhappy and cursed in his next birth, and that if he does good he will have laid by a treasure which will be a blessing to him whenever and wherever he happens to live his next birth?