Tiruvachakam-The Hindu Testament of Love (An Old And Rare Book)

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Ratna Ma Navaratnam, a well known educationist and scholar, was born in a pious family noted for Hin- du culture, in Jaffna, Ceylon. She was educated in Presidency Col- lege, Madras, the Annamali University and the Institute of Education, London. She has had a brilliant academic record, obtaining First Class in the English Honours Degree, M.Litt., Philosophy and M.A., Education, London with distinctions and Gold Medals. She was a delegate at the Geneva Conference for Interestional Understanding in 1951, and continues to be an active member in many cultural and women's organisations, a past President of the Royal Asiatic Society, President of the National Education Society and on the Editorial Board of the 'Tamil Culture', Madras. For over ten years, she was head of Ramanathan College, a premier Hindu Institution in Ceylon and joined the Educational Service in 1944.

She has written several books for children, books on poetry and appreci- ation of Indian Classics and her popular book on "New Frontiers in East - West Philosophies of Education" has been acclaimed as a bridge builder between East and West in Educa- tional Thought and Prac- tice. She was travelled widely in India, Western Europe and the United Kingdom.

Her inherited spiritual associations, her personal contacts with great religious mystics, thinkers and writers of East and West and coming under the potential influence of the Great Guru, Maha Yogar Swamigal of Columbuturai, enabled her to pursue relentlessly the search into the mystic fountains of the Saiva Siddhanta seers. In this task, she was guided by well known philosopher and scholars like Professor K. Subramaniam Pillai, Pro- fessor K. Swaminathan, Professor T. P. Meenakshi Sundaram and Dr. A. Chidambaranatha Chettiar.

The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has earlier published three books by the author, namely Kartikeya the Testa- ment of Wisdom, The Vision of Siva in Periya Puranam and The call of Mahasakii Mother Divine.

St. Manikkavachakar's Tiruvachakam is a great poem of sublime beauty and forms the subject of an inexhaustible study. Few feats of the human mind have equalled that of Manivachakar's expression of an absolute Love and faith in God, man, and the world and of translating such joy into exquisite poesy. In order to interpret this Poem of poems, this Testament of Love, we found it essential to formulate an acceptable general Idea of Great Poetry, gleaned from the theories of poetry advanced by the seers of East and West, and then proceeded to interpret the essence of the beauty of thought and diction embodied in each section of this wondrous Poem.

The work of translating this poetry of 'Incantation' has never been an easy one and attempts have been made by many reputed scholars to translate the stanzas of Tiruvachakam from Tamil into English. In our translation, we have tried to render in terms of feeling rather than of intellect those profound experiences of the poet whose communication to our minds depends on all our relevant feelings and impulses being raised into the completest harmony. In the absence of an adequate terminology of feeling, we were compelled to adapt the static intellectual terms to the dynamic realities of feeling. For a fuller appreciation of Triuvachakam, readers are requested to refer to standard editions like Dr. Pope's monumental work on Triuvachakam. References which are made in our work to the cantos and poems in Tiruvachakam follow also the pattern and order adopted in standard editions both in Tamil and English of Tiruvachakam.