Tirukkural-On Virtue- On Love Or Affection-Kural 72

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Anbilaar ellaam thamakkuriyar anbudaiyaar
Enbum uriyar pirarkku.

Those without affection in their hearts will keep all they have for themselves;The tender-hearted will even give away their bones.

Though in its immediate application, by virtue of its position in this chapter, this Kural would refer to the self-effacing love of a member of the family, its real meaning would cover all the self-sacrificing great men of the world. The idea is that such great men belong to mankind even to the very last drop of their blood.

History is full of such instances of really great men. It is this all-encompassing love that fundamentally makes for greatness, as it did for Prince Gautama, the Buddha. The bible says, ' Greater love than this no man hath, that he lay down his life for his friends" (St. John 15:13) the reference is to the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who came down on earth assuming full human nature and so suffered in full as a human being would and finally died on the cross to save humanity.

It happened again with men, who loved their fellowmen intensely, like Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. It was, therefore, the great love that these sages, and others like them, bore for mankind, that made them reach out to help the poor and the downtrodden and in the process, become martyrs to the cause. Their love too was sacrificial, as was their death, in the sense that it enabled others to live. Mother Teresa, of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, was living example of such greatness.

Such great persons are described in Manimekalai as:-
Thanekaena vaalaap pirarkuriyaalan
Pirarku aram muyalum periyoan
Purananuru itself would say that this world exists because of the presence in it of great men of that stamp.

Undaalamma evulakam
Thanakkena muyalaa noandraal
Pirarkena vaalunar unmaiyaanae

Another point that calls for emphasis, in this context, is the perspective that it is this all-encompassing and self-sacrificing love that makes for greatness. It was this which transformed the shy and self-effacing lawyer called Mohandas Gandhi into one of the world"s greatest men. It was this quality again that gave the Mahatma his soul-force, which enabled him to wrest India"s Independence from the British rulers in such a unique manner. And when communal riots broke out in consequence of the partition of India and escalated into the dimensions of a holocaust in the punjab, it was Gandhiji"s soul-force which made no distinction between caste and community that kept the peace in Calcutta and East Bengal as a one-man boundary force. And finally it was this same compassion that led Gandhiji to the sacrificial altar.

Though this chapter generally relates to love as between members of a family, this particular Kural, in its idea, covers a wider field, extending not only to the loved ones in the family, but to all humanity. In fact, I would say that this Kural is more penetrating in its depth and wider in its sweep, than any in the chapter 25 on 'arul".