Contrary to prevalent notion that Saudi Arabia resists culture and literature from realms beyond its predominantly Islamic society, the Tirukkural found a keen audience at a recent literary event in the country, according to Prof A. Jahir Husain of the University of Madras.
When the Chennai-based academic’s Arabic translation of the Tirukural was read out at the International Poets’ Conference organised by Society for Culture and Art, affiliated to Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture, the organisers and participants asked why such a great work of literature was not made available to them all these years.
“I read out a total of 40 couplets from ‘Inpathu Pal’ (Love) in Tamil and a poet from Saudi Arabia rendered my Arabic translations. It was very well appreciated and I became a hero at once. They even erected my cut-out outside the venue,” says Jahir Husain, Assistant Professor and Chairman of Arabic of the Department of Arabic, Persian and Urdu, whose trip was facilitated by the Saudi Arabia-based Tamil Nadu Welfare Association.
“We must remember that pre-Islamic society in Saudi Arabia celebrated poetry. The similes in Tirukural captured their attention instantly,” he explains.
Prof. Husain has translated the Tirukural,
widely considered a compendium of time-tested wisdom, as part of the Tamil Nadu government’s project to translate Tamil literary works into other languages. It is already available in 80 languages and Mr. Husain completed the translation in 2013 and is awaiting its release.
Even though his former colleague Prof. Yosuf Kokan had translated Tirukural from English to Arabic, Prof. Husain did the translation directly from Tamil.
“I drew on Mu. Varadarajan’s commentary for my translation and ensured that it remained a couplet even in Arabic,” says Prof. Husain, who has earlier translated Palestine poet Mahmoud Darwish's work ‘I do not despair’ in Tamil.
Following his presentation in Saudi Arabia which drew attention from fellow poets in the Arabic world, he was invited to a conference on Arabic Culture and UAE Heritage, organised by the Calicut University, where poets from Dubai, Syria and Morocco participated.
“The moral principles articulated by Tirukural made a tremendous impact on everyone. Now, I have decided to introduce more and more Arabic literature to Tamil and vice-versa,” says Mr. Husain, who did his doctorate in Hadith literature.
Scholar from Madras University, who translated the classic directly from Tamil, got his Arabic translation read out at a poets’ meet
