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The sun sets over a lotus pond. A lotus stands open in the foreground, palmyra palms line the far bank, and birds fly home across the sky.

திருக்குறள்

Two lines.
A whole life.

Read all 1,330 couplets of the Tirukkural, see how its ideas connect, and bring your own questions to it.

Four palm-leaf pages with the first couplets of the Kural cut into them, held by a red cord between wooden boards, with an iron stylus beside them.

The Kural is about the life you are already living.

Each couplet is two lines long. Together its 133 chapters take up what fills an ordinary life: how to speak, whom to trust, how to earn and spend, how to bear a wrong, what to do with desire.

காலத்தி னாற்செய்த நன்றி சிறிதெனினும்ஞாலத்தின் மாணப் பெரிது.

“A good deed done at the right time, though small, is far greater than the world.”

Kural 102, plain reading written by an AI

What are you facing?

Each opens a walk through what the Kural says about it.

The couplet most people know

அகர முதல எழுத்தெல்லாம் ஆதிபகவன் முதற்றே உலகு.

agara muḍala eḻuṭṭellām āḍipagavaṉ muḍaṟṟē ulagu.

“As all letters begin with A, the world begins with the First Lord.”
Kural 1, plain reading written by an AI

From: Chapter 1, Praising God

More couplets people carry with them

Read a couplet at a time, or see the whole book at once.

Explore lays it all out: every couplet, idea, state of mind and life situation on one map, with the threads between them.

The map of the Kural drawn as a night sky: its chapters in a ring of lights, its couplets and ideas as stars joined by fine threads, above a dark line of palmyra palms.

What is on the map

Chapters
133
Couplets
1,330
Ideas
117
States of mind
129
Life situations
58
Characters
4

6,862 connections between them: which couplet defines an idea, which state heals another, which couplets answer which situations.

Point at the map, or tap on a phone. Drag sideways to turn it.

Drawing the graph
Point at anything to see what it connects to.

Three parts, 133 chapters, ten couplets in each.

Read it in order, with the Tamil, its romanisation, a plain reading and parimēlaḻagar’s commentary for every couplet.

  1. All 133

    Pick any chapter. Read remembers where you stopped.

    Righteousness
    Wealth
    Desire

Come in however suits you.

A hooded bullock cart stands unyoked on a bund at dusk, its wheel against the sunset, with palmyra palms beside it and a pale road running up to the sun.

Your first five minutes

A short lesson on Kural 100: the setting, the couplet, what it means in plain words, and an example from everyday life.

A small clay oil lamp burns on a stone ledge beside a tied bundle of palm leaves.

Write what is on your mind

Reflect suggests the states, situations and couplets your words touch. You keep the ones that fit. Everything stays in this browser.

Follow one thing to the next

Couplets 96, 31 and 757 lead from a sweet word to compassion. Lineage lays chains like this out step by step.

  1. Kind Speech
  2. Righteousness
  3. Wealth
  4. Compassion

Ask the text

Answers are built from the couplets and show which ones they draw on.

Free to use, private by default.

  • An AI wrote the English

    The readings and the links between couplets were written by an AI (Anthropic’s Claude), not by a scholar or translator. They’re still in draft and need review, so treat them as a reading of the text and not as authority.

  • Your thoughts stay with you

    Reflections are saved on this device, in this browser. They don't sync anywhere; export them when you want to move them.

  • AI is optional

    Reading, search, the graph and suggestions all work without a language model. If you connect one, only the text you choose is sent.

  • Built on open texts

    The Tamil starts from an open dataset and was checked line by line against Project Madurai and Tamil Wikisource. parimēlaḻagar’s Tamil comes from Tamil Wikisource.

Begin anywhere. Every couplet leads to the rest.

Kural Graphகுறள் வரைபடம்

An AI wrote the readings on this site. They’re still in draft and need review. The pictures on this page were painted by a computer program, not by an artist.

The interface is adapted from GitaViśva. Source code: github.com/carun/kural-graph.