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If you want the whole Tamil classic in English, read Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma’s The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural (Beacon Press, 2022). If you are drawn to the love poems and to a feminist, decolonial reading of them, read Meena Kandasamy’s The Book of Desire (Galley Beggar Press and Penguin Books India, 2023). Those two answers come from the central comparison in Suchitra Ramachandran’s essay “‘Kural’ versus ‘Kural’,” published by Scroll.in on March 5, 2023, which sets the two books side by side and asks what their choices say about translation as both an aesthetic act and a political one.
The two books, and why the title says “versus”
The word “versus” is a framing device. It contrasts two approaches to the same tradition, not two works of equal scope. Pruiksma translates the complete text. Kandasamy translates only the third of its three sections, the one on love and desire. Any comparison has to begin with that difference before it can address style.
| Feature | Pruiksma, The Kural | Kandasamy, The Book of Desire |
|---|---|---|
| Translator | Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma | Meena Kandasamy |
| Year of translation (as identified by the Scroll.in essay) | 2022 | 2023 |
| Publisher | Beacon Press (confirmed on the publisher’s page) | Galley Beggar Press and Penguin Books India (as identified in the essay) |
| Scope | Complete work, described by Beacon Press as 1,330 short verses | The love and desire section only (inbam, also called kamathuppaal) |
| Commentary | Notes that explore word choices (per Beacon Press) | Framing stated in the foreword, as the essay describes it; the essay does not report a notes apparatus |
| Stated approach | Attention to the original’s music and concise two-line form | Feminist interventionist and Tamil decolonial translation, according to the essay’s account of the foreword |
The source text in brief
The Kural, also called the Tirukkural, is attributed to Tiruvalluvar and written in Tamil. Ramachandran describes it as 1,330 poems arranged in three sections: aram (right living), porul (material life), and inbam (love). Because the two translations divide the text differently, a reader who opens Kandasamy’s book expecting the whole ethical and political framework will not find it there. The essay treats that gap as part of the story rather than a flaw in either book.
The aesthetic axis: sound, compression and form
Ramachandran presents Pruiksma as preserving the sound of the original and its two-line economy, with notes used to open up meanings instead of explaining them away. In this reading, the aesthetic achievement lies in keeping the poems short and musical in English, and the notes make visible the choices the translator made.
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Kandasamy works in a different register. The essay values the forcefulness of her handling of female voices but criticises some of her four-line renderings and specific word choices as overextended or limiting. The disagreement is less about whether her book is powerful than about whether her expansion of the verses serves the compression that gives the original its force.
The political axis: gender, history and translation choices
The essay’s political argument rests on a single question, which Ramachandran frames as: “How does this personal, aesthetic element in translation square with political considerations?” She argues that choices about what gets translated, how it is presented, and how language relations shape reception can influence which works gain prestige and how readers understand the culture they represent.
A concrete example is the word karpu. Pruiksma renders it as “fidelity” rather than the historically common “chastity.” According to the essay, this is a deliberate departure from older English usage, and it reframes a gendered virtue in a way that changes how the passage reads. Ramachandran treats this as an evaluation of Pruiksma’s choices rather than as proof that his rendering settles the text’s gender politics. The same caution applies to the feminist claims made for Kandasamy: the essay credits her stated intentions and then tests them against specific lines.
Reading the love poems as akam
The critic also stresses that the love poems draw on akam, a classical Tamil poetics of interiority. In this tradition, speakers are stylised, lovers’ stories follow conventional moments, landscapes carry emotional associations, and metaphors recur. The essay uses this to caution against reading the poems as straightforward autobiography by Tiruvalluvar. For a reader coming to Kandasamy’s book with a personal-confession expectation, this is the most useful correction the essay offers.
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Figures the essay reports
- 1,330 poems. Reported by Scroll.in in 2023. Beacon Press independently describes Pruiksma’s book as containing 1,330 short philosophical verses.
- More than 60 English translations. Reported by Scroll.in in 2023. This count is attributed to the essay and was not independently checked against a bibliography for this article.
- 1794. The essay dates Nathaniel Edward Kingsley’s earliest English translation attempt to this year. The chronology is the essay’s account.
- 2022 and 2023. The years the essay gives for the Pruiksma and Kandasamy translations, respectively.
Which book fits which reader
- You want the whole work. Start with Pruiksma. It is the only one of the two that covers all three sections, and its notes are the place to see how the translator handled individual words.
- You want the love poems and a feminist reading. Start with Kandasamy. Her book is the focused choice, but it is a rendering of one section and should not be treated as a version of the whole Kural.
- You want to judge translation choices for yourself. Read the love section in both books. The essay’s own method, comparing a few verses across the two versions, is the clearest way to see where the aesthetic and political decisions diverge.
The essay is a critical reading from 2023. Editions, prices and availability change, so check each publisher’s current listing before buying, and treat the essay’s judgments as one informed critic’s evaluation rather than a consensus verdict.
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