Word Classification

     For purposes of generating the Concordance, the words in the text of the volumes were grouped in a particular manner. This grouping is somewhat arbitrary but has some context defining information for a group.Quite likely, a person looking for a section of interest will think of relating the word under search to a concept.

      Word Types

     The seven volumes feature a massive collection of essays dealing with so many different concepts, historical details, names of places etc. These are the likely concepts relating to the word of interest. Words dealing with these concepts tend to be long and it was felt that words longer than 6 aksharas would qualify for this group. Tamil text as written for general communication may not have too many long words. typically 3-5 aksharas may be what one is likely to see in printed text.

Words shorter than 3 aksharas are not likely to be significant for search unless they happen to be special. Often such special words would be identified in text by highlighting them or putting them under quotes. This observation was reasonably corraborated with short words of interest seen in the volumes.

      Words in English

     Maha Periyava had used English words and short phrases to enhance the understanding of a concept explained in Tamil. For the current generation, the word in English will immediately relate to what is said in Tamil. Interestingly, Maha Periyava also shows how references in Tamil have their parallels in the English language. The "Foot" as used in poetry gets related to its equivalent in Sanskrit (pAdam) or adi in Tamil.

More interesting to read will be those sections where the etymology of many words in English is explained with respect to their origin in Sanskrit!

      Quoted words and Phrases

     The volumes of Deivathin Kural include hundreds of quoted words and phrases. Quoted information serves to emphasize something in a sentence. Thus quoted words bring out a context within a sentence. It was therefore decided to list them as a separate group. Quoted phrases are often used in highlighting a known principle, a proverb, or a quotation from history etc.

In this exercise of Concordance generation, quoted information is listed out only for single words or phrases having less than 20 words. This choise is again arbitrary but was necessitated while writng programs to identify the quotation mark itself. Errors in data entry also made it difficult to track long stretches of text where matching quotes were not typed in.

      Slokas and Poetry

     Maha Periyava had always referred to authoritative texts from our scriptures, Vedas and Puranas and the sections of Deivathin Kural include Slokas, Poems and Quotations in Sanskrit as well as Tamil. The original texts (as known for centuries) have been reproduced verbatim in the volumes.

The concordance generation process has only processed the words in the Slokas or Poems. It may be possible to identify a Sloka or Poem by examining the physical format of their appearance (through the marks represending the end of a line or a stanza for Sanskrit). This has not been done in this exercise.

      Foot notes

     For a person using the volumes of Deivathi Kural for reference, the footnotes added by Ra. Ganapathy are an invaluable source of information. The footnaotes provide accurate and authentic references (often including text) to sources mentioned in the text of the essay. We have found that many footnotes provide clues to obscure information that would otherwise be almost impossible to gather. Ra. Ganapathy had done this for us through his painstaking efforts.

Words in the footnotes have been included in the concordance. However, only a minimal clue is offered to identify a word as part of a footnote. Each footnote (in the electronic version) is prefixed by a star and a number. The number will help identify the footnote in the pages of Deivathin Kural at the Kamakoti site.

Analysis of words in the volumes of Deivathin Kural

The volumes of Deivathin Kural were compiled and written during the fourth quarter of the 20th century.

The writing style was suited to reaching out to the common public using very simple language but the style also helped in creating an awareness among the public about our scriptures.

Consequently, the text is a mixture of words: simple and used in common parlance to derived words from History, Scriptures, Art etc. This page gives an idea of what was required in respect of generating the concordance.