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The Kural · Chapter

CXIV: Overpassing the Bounds of Decorum explained

This chapter explores the overwhelming nature of love and passion that drives lovers to abandon all shame and decorum, symbolized by the riding of the palmyra stalk.

What happens

This chapter explores the overwhelming nature of love and passion that drives lovers to abandon all shame and decorum, symbolized by the riding of the palmyra stalk. The lover describes how passion has eroded his firmness and delicacy, leaving him with no recourse but this desperate act. The beloved, tender and artless, is the source of his anguish, and he laments the loss of his former composure, while a woman who resists such outward display is praised for her restraint.

Themes in this chapter

  • Love and Marriage

    The chapter delves into the passionate, often painful side of love, where decorum is sacrificed for the expression of deep emotional and physical longing.

  • The Vanity of Worldly Life

    The lover's abandonment of firmness and delicacy highlights the transient and consuming nature of worldly passions, contrasting with spiritual ideals.

Characters to notice

  • Bouderie

    The lover experiencing the pangs of passion and resorting to riding the palmyra stalk.

  • Pallor

    The beloved who is tender as a flower and causes the lover's anguish.

  • the Kural

    The text itself, as the source of these verses on love and decorum.

Key passages

  • “To those who are torn from their loved one and suffer the pangs of their passion there is no other resource left but the riding of the palmyra stalk.”

    For lovers separated from their beloved and tormented by desire, the only remaining outlet is the desperate act of riding the palmyra stalk.

    This sets the theme of the chapter: passion overriding all other considerations.

  • “Firmness and delicacy I had formerly: but now I possess only the stalk of the palmyra that is ridden by the lovelorn lover.”

    I once had self-control and refinement, but now all I have left is the palmyra stalk, the symbol of a lovesick person's despair.

    The lover laments the loss of his former virtues to overwhelming passion.

  • “Nothing is grander than the woman who refuseth to ride the palm-stalk even when the passion of her heart is deep as the ocean.”

    There is no greater nobility than a woman who resists the urge to publicly display her love, even when her feelings are immense.

    This contrasts the lover's actions with an ideal of restraint.

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