TIRUVALLAVAR, the literary name of the author of the Kural, a book of Buddhistics, in the Tamil language, generally acknowledged to be unequalled in any of the languages of India, and • amongst the Tamils Tiruvallavar occupies the first place as a moralist. He is said to have been the son of a Pariah woman by a Brahman father, and to have been. brought up by a Valluvan, a priest of the Pariah caste, at Mailapur, a, suburb of Madras. His real name is not known, but he is generally supposed to have lived about the 9th century. During the reign of Vamsa Sekhara, Pandiya ruler, a college had been established at Madura, with a council or sangattar of 48 pro fessors, whose successors seem to have abandoned the teaching of Tamil, and devoted their attention to the cultivation of Sanskrit literature. The influence of Tiruvallavar, however, induced the Pandiya ruler to reintroduce the Tamil, on which the professors are said to have drowned them selves; but the Tamil progressed, and in the course of the 9th century there appeared a number of the most classical Tamil writers amongst whom were the poetess Avayar, and die poet Kamben, the translator of the Mutiny:mum. The Kural advo
cates moral duties and practical virtues above ceremonial observances and speculative devotion ; but it inculcates respect to Brahmans and ascetics, and alludes to ludra and to various parts of the Hindu pantheon. It is a didactic poem, with maxims on the moral aims of man, full of tender and true ideas, but adheriug to the view of transmigration of souls, from which release is to be sought in the Btuldbistic method. His principal work is the Kural of short lines with four and three footed strophes, with initial rhymes and alliterations in the middle. It is a tradition that he was brother of Auveyai or Avayar. He lived at St. Thom6, and appears to have had an intimate friend called Elela Singan.