Tamila și latina: Tiruvaḷḷuvar și Tirukkuṟaḷ
Tamil and Latin: Tiruvaḷḷuvar and Tirukkuṟaḷ

Summary/Abstract: When speaking about Rome and India, one is tempted to think of an enormous gap separating these two countries, a gap which becomes more obvious not only when having a brief look at any world map, but also when analyzing the belief systems specific to each of the two cultures. However, these two peoples have been in contact with each other from the earliest strata of recorded history, as many ancient written accounts prove. The present paper focuses on such a tangential point, revealing on the one hand a reputed literary work produced in one of the oldest tongues of India, which also holds the status of being a ‘classical language’, and, on the other hand, the acknowledgement of that literary product by a famous Father of the Catholic Church, the Jesuit Missionary Constantinus Josephus Beschi. The above-mentioned work is the renowned Tirukkuṟaḷ whose author, Tiruvaḷḷuvar, wrote it in literary Tamiḻ. This ancient masterpiece has caught the learned men’s attention; thus many translations of it have been published across the centuries in many parts of the world. A very famous one – one that is truly representative for the European region – is Father Beschi’s Latin translation, which appeared in 1730 and which is the first translation of the Tirukkuṟaḷ in a language of the European continent. As little is known in our country about the ancient Tamiḻ literature, the development of the main topic will be preceded by a short presentation of the Tamils’ earliest works. Therefore, it is only after having shortly dived into the beauty of the classical past that the reader will be introduced to the main ideas of this compilation of ancient wisdom that the Tirukkuṟaḷ is. Of course, fragments taken both from the original work and from its first Latin translation will be added and given a Romanian meaning.

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