Abstaining from Intoxicants
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kaḷḷuṇṇāp pōḻtiṟ kaḷittāṉaik kāṇuṅkā / luḷḷāṉko luṇṭataṉ cōrvu.
In an hour when he is not drinking, when he sees a man in his cups — does he never once think of the same slackness that was his own?
▸Other translations · Pope (1886) & Aiyar (1916)
“When one, in sober interval, a drunken man espies, / Does he not think, 'Such is my folly in my revelries'?”
“The man who seeth while he is sober the drunken state of another man, cannot he picture to himself his own state when he is drunk?”
Parimelazhagar’s commentary
13th century · public domainParimelazhagar’s own words come first, unaltered. The plain reading follows below.
கள் உண்ணாப் போழ்தில் களித்தானைக்= கள்ளுண்பான் ஒருவன், தான் அஃது உண்ணாது தெளிந்திருந்த பொழுதின்கண் உண்டுகளித்த பிறனைக் காணும் அன்றே; காணுங்கால் உண்டதன் சோர்வு உள்ளான்கொல்= காணுங்கால் தான் உண்டபொழுது உளதாம் சோர்வினை, அவன் சோர்வால் அதுவும் இற்று என்று கருதான் போலும்.
Source: Tamil Wikisource
Parimelazhagar explains that a man who drinks will, during an interval in which he is sober, see another man who has drunk and become intoxicated. When he sees him, he does not appear to consider that the slackness present in himself when he drank was just this. The picture standing in front of him is an exact image of his own condition, and his clarity is intact, and the recognition still does not occur. The commentary does not charge him with dishonesty; it wonders aloud, in the form of a question, that the thought does not seem to come.