The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #61129 Message #981025
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
10-Jul-03 - 11:38 PM
Thread Name: origin of music quote???
Subject: RE: origin of music quote???
You're looking at a translation from the Tamil language. I doubt very much that you'll find that this poet was an English-speaking poet.
I did an advanced search in Google and found this (emphasis mine):
The tirukkuraL is an ancient book of wisdom, the greatest classic of the Tamil language, the distillation of the essential genius of the Tamil nation. Its author was the sage tiruvaLLuvar, a Paraiyan weaver who lived at Mayilapur (the site of present-day Madras) in the early Christian era. (It is interesting to note that the function of tiruvaLLuvar continues that of the Paraiyans and the other lowest castes in the older Tamil cankam era, on whom the performance of sacred rites and sacred speech depended.) He composed 133 chapters, each containing ten couplets of Tamil verse. The three main sections of the book treat the subjects of aram, Virtue (Chapters 1-38); poruL, Wealth and Statecraft (39-108); and kâmam, Erotic Love (109-133). This last section tells a love story. It clearly draws upon the heritage of the ancient Tamil akam poems from the cankam anthologies, showing the stages of the course of Love.
More of this and all of its links can be found here.