Tirukkural-On Virtue-On The Blessing Of Children-Kural 6 3

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The idea here is that, while a man's wealth are his children, their worth will be determined by their own actions.

V.v.s Iyer refers to this couplet as a very knotty one, probably because of the juxtaposition of two different ideas and the interpretation of the word 'porul' in two ways in the same Kural. Actually 'porul' in the first portion means wealth, while 'porul' in the next refers to their 'worth'.

But this is not really so strange when we consider usage in Tamil literature such as the following:

Obviously both the ideas of wealth and worth are together involved in the comparison of the children to gold.