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Thembavani (Tamil : தேம்பாவணி; transl. A Garland of Unfading Honey-Sweet Verses [1] ) [2] [3] is a Tamil classic poetical work by Veeramamunivar (Costanzo Joseph Beschi) [4] [5] (Tamil : வீரமாமுனிவர்) on the life of Saint Joseph, the legal father of Jesus of Nazareth. [6] It is divided into thirty-six cantos, containing 3,615 stanzas.
The poem begins with the birth of Joseph, called Valan. He becomes a staunch ascetic who later marries Mary, a resolute virgin. Through divine intervention, Mary gives birth to a son. The following episodes describe the family's lives. The work ends with Valan's coronation by the Triune God in heavenly glory. Finally, kings from the Holy Roman Empire (England, Ireland, Spain, Gaul, Prussia, Norway, Lusitania, Genoa, Etruria, Parthia, Cyprus, Paeonia) come to Vienna at the invitation of Leopold I to install the statue of the hero of the epic.
Thembavani has over 100 references to events and teachings in the Bible. It has an abundance of historical, biblical and fictional characters, including Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Joseph of Old Testament, Samson, David and Goliath, Nebuchadnezzar, Tobit and Tobias, John the Baptist, Herod, Kunnan, Navakan, Surami, etc. Its actions take place in several places like Bethlehem, Judea, Nazareth, Egypt, Heliopolis, Gaza, Jericho, Sinai, Beersheba, etc.
The epic comprises 3,615 rhymed quatrains in Tamil with 90 variations, and M. Dominic Raj has translated it into English in unrhymed quatrains of free verse following the ‘Sprung Rhythm’ style of Hopkins. It comprises 3 Parts with 12 sections in each. There are 356 episodes that relate to births, deaths, journeys, wars, celebrations, happenings in the Netherworld, Hell, Heaven, etc. It contains philosophical and theological discussions on God, idolatry, rebirth, Fate, virtue, asceticism, etc.
Thoroughly immersed in Tamil literature and culture, Beschi integrates several literary devices employed by classics such as Kamba Ramayanam and Manimekalai . This is evident in his description of landscapes.
Prof. Alexander Beecroft of the University of South Carolina regards Thembavani as one of the five World Classics that are yet to be translated into English from their native languages. He places Thembavani as the third on the list. [7]
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, or simply Rumi, was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran.
Asceticism is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their practices or continue to be part of their society, but typically adopt a frugal lifestyle, characterised by the renunciation of material possessions and physical pleasures, and also spend time fasting while concentrating on the practice of religion or reflection upon spiritual matters, which is thought by some to allow the practitioner's core of consciousness to expand and connect with the infinite universal consciousness. Some individuals have also attempted an ascetic lifestyle to free themselves from addictions to things such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, entertainment, sex, food, etc.
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī, commonly known as Omar Khayyam, was a Persian polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire. He lived during the rule of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade.
In Islam, Jesus is believed to be the penultimate prophet and messenger of God and the Messiah sent to guide the Children of Israel with a book called the Injīl.
Tamil literature includes a collection of literary works that have come from a tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution. Contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from Tamil people from south India, including the land now comprising Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Eelam Tamils from Sri Lanka, as well as the Tamil diaspora.
Vaikuntha, also called Vishnuloka, and Tirunatu (Tirunāṭu) in Tamil, is the abode of Vishnu, the supreme deity in the Vaishnava tradition of Hinduism, and his consort, Lakshmi, the supreme goddess.
Thiruvalluvar, commonly known as Valluvar, was an Indian poet and philosopher. He is best known as the author of the Tirukkuṟaḷ, a collection of couplets on ethics, political and economic matters, and love. The text is considered an exceptional and widely cherished work of Tamil literature.
Civaka Cintamani, also spelled as Jivaka Chintamani, is one of the five great Tamil epics. Authored by a Madurai-based Jain ascetic Tiruttakkatēvar in the early 10th century, the epic is a story of a prince who is the perfect master of all arts, perfect warrior and perfect lover with numerous wives. The Civaka Cintamani is also called the Mana Nool. The epic is organized into 13 cantos and contains 3,145 quatrains in viruttam poetic meter. Its Jain author is credited with 2,700 of these quatrains, the rest by his guru and another anonymous author.
The flight into Egypt is a story recounted in the Gospel of Matthew and in New Testament apocrypha. Soon after the visit by the Magi, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him to flee to Egypt with Mary and the infant Jesus since King Herod would seek the child to kill him. The episode is frequently shown in art, as the final episode of the Nativity of Jesus in art, and was a common component in cycles of the Life of the Virgin as well as the Life of Christ. Within the narrative tradition, iconic representation of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" developed after the 14th century.
Luke 2 is the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament, traditionally attributed to Luke the Evangelist, a companion of Paul the Apostle on his missionary journeys. It contains an account of Jesus's birth in Bethlehem, "its announcement and celebration", his presentation in the Temple in Jerusalem, and an incident from his childhood. Verses 1–14 are often read during services of worship on Christmas Day.
Appar also referred to as Tirunavukkaracar or Navukkarasar, was a seventh-century Tamil Shaiva poet-saint. Born in a peasant Shaiva family, raised as an orphan by his sister, he lived about 80 years and is generally placed sometime between 570 and 650 CE. Appar composed 4,900 devotional hymns to the god Shiva, out of which 313 have survived and are now canonized as the 4th to 6th volumes of Tirumurai. One of the most prominent of the sixty-three revered Nayanars, he was an older contemporary of Sambandar.
The Madurai Mission, or Madura Mission, (1606-1773/1937-1952) was a Jesuit Mission founded in 1606 encompassing the south-eastern portion of the Indian peninsula around the Coromandel coast stretching from its tip to areas slightly north of the Vellar River although it would later lose parts of its jurisdiction to the Carnatic Mission in 1776. It was taken over by the previously mentioned mission following the dissolution of the Jesuits and was only reconstituted as a Jesuit mission again in 1929 before finally being made an independent Jesuit province in its own right in 1952. These two missions are known as the Old Madurai Mission (1606-1773) and the New Madurai Mission (1937-1952). The mission is distinguished from earlier Christian presence by being those related to and following in the steps of Roberto de Nobili in the city of Madurai itself and spreading out across the south east of the peninsula from that point.
The Tevaram, also spelled Thevaram, denotes the first seven volumes of the twelve-volume collection Tirumurai, a Shaiva narrative of epic and Puranic heroes, as well as a hagiographic account of early Shaiva saints set in devotional poetry. The Tevaram volumes contain the works of the three most prominent Shaiva Tamil saints of the 7th and 8th centuries: Sambandar, Appar, and Sundarar. The three saints were not only involved in portraying their personal devotion to Shiva, but also engaged a community of believers through their songs. Their work is an important source for understanding the Shaiva Bhakti movement in the early medieval South India.
Constantine Joseph Beschi, also known under his Tamil name of Vīramāmunivar, was an Italian Jesuit priest, missionary in South India, and Tamil language littérateur.
Antonio Ruiz de Montoya was a Jesuit priest and missionary in the Paraguayan Reductions.
The Tirukkuṟaḷ, or shortly theKural, is a classic Tamil language text consisting of 1,330 short couplets, or kurals, of seven words each. The text is divided into three books with aphoristic teachings on virtue (aram), wealth (porul) and love (inbam), respectively. It is widely acknowledged for its universality and secular nature. Its authorship is traditionally attributed to Valluvar, also known in full as Thiruvalluvar. The text has been dated variously from 300 BCE to 5th century CE. The traditional accounts describe it as the last work of the third Sangam, but linguistic analysis suggests a later date of 450 to 500 CE and that it was composed after the Sangam period.
Roger Joseph Boscovich was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit priest, and a polymath from the Republic of Ragusa. He studied and lived in Italy and France where he also published many of his works.
Latin is the first foreign language into which the Tirukkuṟaḷ was translated. There are three known translations of the Kural text available in Latin.
Al Bashir was a Catholic magazine published in Beirut, Lebanon, by Jesuit. It was published triweekly from 1870 and 1947 and supported the Catholic religious cause in the region.
Jean Ferdinand Caius was a French Jesuit priest in India who taught botany and conducted pharmacological studies on medicinal and toxic plants as well as on snake and scorpion venoms in India. He also served on the Indian Drugs Enquiry Committee (1930-31).
