Page:The Kural or The Maxims Of Tiruvalluvar.pdf/57

 ambassador who is allowed full freedom of negotiation."

I shall give but one example of the commentator's criticism. In verse 338 which reads, The fledgeling abandoneth the broken shell of the egg and flieth away: that is the symbol of the love between the soul and the body, the word kuḍambai which Parimêlajahar explains as the shell of the egg had been explained by others as nest, either of which meanings being correct from the etymological point of view. It is in these words that he supports his own rendering as against the other :

“As the author says abandoneth (more literally abandoneth to itself) we obtain the unseparatedness of the shell in the previous stage : that is, its contemporaneous origin with the embryo and its remaining as the matrix and support of the same until the very moment of separation. Hence it is the symbol of the body. As the bird is one with the shell in the beginning and as it enters not thereinto after the breaking thereof, the same is the symbol of the soul. Though there are other Rh