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Sangam poetry and Gurunanak. Sangam poetry and Gurunanak.

Topic started by Ravi Sundaram (@ 192.149.1.187) on Fri Oct 6 11:16:14 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Hi, I read the following article in Pittsburgh Patrika. Could anyone tell me what the original
tamil poem was.

Thanks/

A 1st Century(?) Tamil Poet & 15th Centurys Nanak
Sometime back (January 13, 2000), the Times of India published the translation of one of
Guru Nanaks verses:
Let mind be the peasant that does the farming.
Hard work be the water; the body, the field.
Let His name be the seed and contentment the cover.
You must don the dress of humility,
Then alone will love be born with His favor.
Such a person is blessed.
Even as I was reading it, I recalled a Sangam-period Tamil verse composed probably
before 2nd century AD that I had memorized while attending school in Chennai. Freely
translated, the Tamil verse means:
With pleasant words as the soil, charity as the seed,
While removing the weeds of harsh words,
And with Truth as the nutrient, and love as water,
Indulge in farming for a while everyday. Youll harvest Dharma.
The identity, not only in thoughts, but also in the pastoral imagery in articulating them,
between the anonymous 2nd century Sangam-era Tamil poet and the 15th century Guru
Nanak is, indeed, striking.
Guru Nanak in his Punjabi-speaking northwest India was separated from the Tamil
country in deep Southern India by several major languages of the time: Telugu, Kannada,
Marathi, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri and Avadhi. And yet the ideas and expressions are
so similar.
It is quite unlikely that in the tumultuous time of his life, Guru Nanak would have had
the luxury of learning the literary traditions of a language so far removed from both
Punjabi and Sanskrit. As a mater of fact, in the Tamil verse, not a single word is traceable
to Sanskrit.
Then, how do we explain such similarity in thoughts between the anonymous Tamil
poet and Nanak Dev? We can only speculate:
Aldous Huxley, in his anthology The Perennial Philosophy says that enlightened souls
separated by thousands of miles and belonging to different cultures, and living several
centuries apart, often even unaware of each others existence, have shown remarkable
identity in expressing themselves spiritually.
The implication here is that the identity in mans spiritual quest transcends the
boundaries of time, space, languages, and cultures.
Academics trying to figure out the missing link may even succeed in explaining how
such thoughts and ideas permeated. And theologians, given their penchant for
spiritual arrogance, will quarrel forever on who preceded whom. However, for
people trying to make some sense out of lifes enigmas, such intellectual exercises are
only annoying distractions. K S Venkataraman

Pittsburgh Patrika' web site is:
patrika.50megs.com

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