Critical Studies in Kural by M.S.Purnalingam Pillai first published in 1929.

The name “ Thiruvalluvar ” means “ the great man of the Valluva community ” and the title “ Kural ” signifies the metre of the poem. Both the author and his work have borne no proper or distinctive names. Nor is anything reliable known either of his parentage, or of his career. But the work exists or is extant as a whole, unadulterated by schismatic and unimpaired or untampered with by copyists in the procession of ages. That the poet was a keen observer of nature, animate and inanimate, a diligent student of ancient classics on ahapporul and purapporul, .on rhetoric and dialectic, on morality and statecraft, on agriculture and medicine, on folk-lore, tree-and-plant-lore, and on sex psychology and erotic diplomacy, and was a practical thinker and reformer, is beyond all cavil or question. Nobody doubts his poetic artistry (vide Tiru-Valluva-mallai, stanza 45, ‘ elutthu-asai etc.’) and his noble sentiments in his masterpiece of Tamil literature composed of apophthegms in brief couplets.