From : The Hindu
Photo : http://www.hindu.com/
Countless are the philosophers and poets who have celebrated homo sapiens. To quote a few: “Numberless are the world's wonders, but none more wonderful than man” (Sophocles); “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculties” (Shakespeare); “Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls” (Sri Aurobindo).
There have also been glorious attempts at tracing the history of humanity from a refreshingly new perspective, as, for instance, by H.G.Wells ( Outline of History), Arnold Toynbee ( A Study of History), Will Durant ( The Story of Philosophy) and Stephen Hawking ( A Brief History of Time). But Kulottungan's masterpiece in Tamil, Maanuda Yaathirai (pilgrimage of mankind) “pursues things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” He may not be as tall as any of those scholars but has the advantage of standing on their shoulders, and this he exploits to the hilt. An intellectual with a wide range of interest and who is perfectly at home both in science and literature, Kulottungan has a natural commitment to cosmopolitanism and internationalism, and he can view the entire world as a single family and all human beings as his kith and kin.
There have also been glorious attempts at tracing the history of humanity from a refreshingly new perspective, as, for instance, by H.G.Wells ( Outline of History), Arnold Toynbee ( A Study of History), Will Durant ( The Story of Philosophy) and Stephen Hawking ( A Brief History of Time). But Kulottungan's masterpiece in Tamil, Maanuda Yaathirai (pilgrimage of mankind) “pursues things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” He may not be as tall as any of those scholars but has the advantage of standing on their shoulders, and this he exploits to the hilt. An intellectual with a wide range of interest and who is perfectly at home both in science and literature, Kulottungan has a natural commitment to cosmopolitanism and internationalism, and he can view the entire world as a single family and all human beings as his kith and kin.
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