The linguistic evidence is, as usual critical. We do not see in this work the archaic features of the Tamiḻ of Saṅgam anthologies, and we do find elements, both lexical and morphological, that are first attested in the Pallava-Pāṅḍya period, or even later, including the relatively young nominal plural forms in kal. Yet the Tirukkuṟaḷ definitely found a place within the classical Tamiḻ canon as the first, most visible item in the Eighteen Minor Works, its popularity clearly attested by a heterogeneous collection of fifty-three panegyric verses on it called the Tiruvaḷḷuva-Mālai, perhaps from Cōḻa times. Moreover, we should recall that Tamiḻ had an objective mechanics of canonization. The wide-spread popular story about Tiruvaḷḷuvar's birth and literary carrier, Tiruvaḷḷuvar carittiram, says that when this low-caste (or even out-caste) poet sought the authorization of the Madurai Saṅgam for his book, the academicians told him to place the palm-leaf manuscript on the renowned Saṅgam plank floating in the Golden Lotus Tank of the temple. He did so, and the plank at once contracted itself to the site of the Manuscript, unceremoniously hurling the forty nine great poet-scholars who usually sat there into the water. The Tirukkuṟaḷ thus triumphed over all other Tamil books and ever since has been clearly "in".
This same popular account interestingly identifies the poet as the son of a Brāhmin father, Bhagavan, and a Dalit mother, Ātiyāl (the two names constitute a gloss on the opening couplet of the text). Abandoned at birth, the baby was rescued and nursedby a weaver (Vaḷḷuvan) from Mayilapur (Mylapore in Chennai) then later adopted by a Veḷḷāḷa farmer. The standard iconography makes him an honest weaver - a bona fide left-hand artisan with a pedigree, well suited to a book of universalistic textures and context free values. But he is also seen, not by chance, as a magically potent Siddha yogi and exorcist, befriended by the great Śaiva Siddha Tirumūlar; when he died, birds who pecked at his body were turned to gold. This association with esoteric yoga, sorcery, and alchemy also suits the left-hand environment; but it is tempered by the poet's biological and/or metaphysical links to both Brāhmin and Dalit communities as well as to merchants, in the form of his close friend and disciple Elelasimha, and however briefly, to right-hand peasant-farmers. Like his book, Tiruvaḷḷuvar thus effectively belongs to everyone, though, as black burn has shown in a thorough study, his Paraiya-Dalit nature in integral to the thick web of stories woven around him in both premodern and modern times.
“Are we, then, to assume that the putative author of the Tirukkuṟaḷ was a metrical wizard who produced one marvel after another over 1330 verses? I doubt it. Indeed, I am somewhat skeptical about the unitary nature of the book altogether, despite the traditional view reflected in the many medieval commentaries on it (most authoritative among them by Parimēlaḻakar, probably in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century) I tend to think of it as a collection, thematically organized, of Kuṟaḷ verses that deal, first with ethics and practical wisdom, widely defined - what came to be known as nīti in later times - and then with the favoriteTamiḻ theme of loving and its vicissitudes, it makes sense to expand our discussion a little to see how this topic was treated in the Tirukkuṟaḷ. First, however, we need a moment again, to consider dating and the canon.
As mentioned earlier, this book is part of the larger set of the Eighteen Minor works, usually thought to come after the Saṅgam period proper. That would mean, in my view, that we would want to place Tiruvaḷḷuvar (as a collective person in the middle of the first millennium, or some what later). Because of several statements in the opening chapters of Tirukkuṟaḷ including the benedictions-like first decade, there is a wide-spread scholarly view that the author was a Jain. In this case, too, the left-hand, orientation of the work is preserved, the historic constituency of the Jains (and the Budddhists) was largely urban and mercantile. Whatever original framing of this work, its author appears in the Tamiḻ imagination as an iconoclast and a social rebel. At the same time he is an exemplary householder, highly idealized, perfectly submissive - wife, Vacuki (who bears the name of a great serpent; nothing in the Vaḷḷuvar story is entirely normative). The first two large sections of the Tirukkuṟaḷ — Arattuppāl on Dharma and Poruṭpāl on fortune (including Political science) — have negative things to say about courtseans (a whole chapter 92, is devoted to denouncing such women) one couplet (91.1) also says that only a fool is in love with his wife. On the other hand, love per se, is celebrated.
