Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Ancient History
Episode: Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma, "The Kural: Tiruvalluvar's Tirukkural" (Beacon Press, 2022)
Description: The Kural (Beacon Press, 2022), is a new translation of the Tamil classical masterpiece Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural, by Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma, who is an author, poet, performer, and teacher. The interview is an overview of the incomparable translation. Thomas tells us about the book’s inception, the commentary of notes, social conditions of the time Tirukkural was written, multiple ways the book could be read, and how The Kural is inexplicably important in the apocalyptic times we are living in. The interview ends with a wonderful recitation of a verse from The Kural, in both Tamil and English.Shruti Dixit...