Thirukkural — Wealth Won Without Wrong
The Tamil sage Thiruvalluvar taught in the Thirukkural that wealth earned without injustice and used with compassion is the only prosperity worth having.
The Thirukkural, composed by the Tamil poet-sage Thiruvalluvar around two millennia ago, devotes an entire section to wealth (porul), treating its righteous acquisition and wise use as central to a good life. Thiruvalluvar declares that wealth gathered without fraud or cruelty grows and yields both virtue and joy, while riches won by wrongdoing should be cast away though they appear pleasant. He praises industry, planning, and the avoidance of debt and idleness, and insists that the purpose of wealth is to relieve suffering and support the worthy. The Kural's genius is to bind prosperity inseparably to ethics, so that gain and goodness rise together. This synthesis anticipates modern stakeholder theories of business which argue that enterprises built on trust and fair dealing prove more durable and profitable over time than those built on exploitation.
The wealth that is gathered without doing harm to others and without falsehood will bring both virtue and joy.
The Kural's binding of wealth to ethics anticipates modern stakeholder and trust-based theories of business, which find that fair dealing yields more durable profitability than exploitation.
Thirukkural
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- What the prosperity traditions say about truth and lying
Thiruvalluvar says wealth gathered without harm and without falsehood yields both virtue and joy, and that riches won by wrongdoing should be cast away though they appear pleasant. The second half is the costly one: it asks you to give up money you already hold.