By Kollengode S Venkataraman Written in 2000
Sometime back (January 12, 2000) the Times of India published a translation of one of Guru Nanak’s 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, now 50 years old, recalled a Tamil verse that I later learned was composed by Munaippaadiyaar in the work Aranerich-charam, அறநெறிச்சாரம்,I had memorized for no good reason while attending high school in Chennai. The rhythm and rhyming in the verse were the attraction for me to commit it to memory.
. இன்சொல் விளைநிலமா ஈதலே வித்தாக
. வன்சொற் களைபறித்து வாய்மை எருவட்டி
. அன்புநீர் பாய்ச்சி அறக்கதிர் ஈனுமோர்
. பைங்கூழ் சிறுகாலைச் செய்.
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 every day. You’ll harvest Dharma.
The identity, not only in thoughts, but also in the pastoral imagery in articulating them, between the 14th century 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 identical.
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. In fact, in the Tamil verse, not a single word is traceable to Sanskrit.
Then, how do we explain such similarity in thoughts between the Tamil poet Munaippaadiyaar and Nanak Dev? We can only speculate:
Aldous Huxley, in his anthology The Perennial Philosophy, says, enlightened souls separated by thousands of miles and belonging to different cultures, and living several centuries apart, often even unaware of each other’s existence, have shown remarkable identity in expressing themselves spiritually.
The implication here is that the identity in man’s 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 life’s enigmas, such intellectual exercises are only annoying distractions. END