I may be consulting informally with my parents, books, or friends, if I have problems in deciphering the meanings for these maxims.
I am a mere Tamil aficionado and do not have any scholarly exposure to Tamil. Therefore, I decided to start learning at least one maxim a day to understand and share the same with my friends, thereby critically expounding some of these great puranic works of Classical Tamil. Most of those words are seldom used in the contemporary Tamil dialects. Scholarly Tamil, especially those works that date back to several centuries, always need some probing to understand. After a long time, I felt so good at the level of an intellectual debate we had on a seemingly fleeting and trivial issue. Anyway, while we debated and arrived at a consensus on what it means, my brilliant and intelligent friend countered me as to how that maxim contradicts another one in a different place. The ethical treatise that my friend was referring to was ஆத்திச்சூடி, which is pronounced as 'AA-thi-chOO-di.' It means, "A garland of 'aththi' flowers," probably alluding to the Saivite God of Creation - Lord Shiva, who use to be caparisoned with this floral garland. In this, what does ஏற்பது ('yEr-padhu') mean?" For example, I do have a confusion as to what ஏற்பது இகழ்ச்சி ('yEr-padhu igazh-chEE') means.
However, I don't understand all those maxims as they are composed and rendered in scholarly Tamil. However, on Sunday, January 9th, 2005, while I was at Publix, shopping for my groceries, I got a call from my dear friend Velraja, who with all his inquisitiveness asked me, "Rex, I was playing a Tamil cassette for kids that comprises the moral maxims of our great old Poetess Auvaiyaar, which are rendered as songs. Due to hectic schedules at work-front, I had to play truant on this one for a long time now.
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