arts, ideas & society·Wikipediac. 5th century CE · Tamil Nadu, India
The Tirukkural packs an ethics guide into 1,330 couplets and has been translated into dozens of languages
the gist
The Tirukkural, or Kural, is a classic Tamil text on everyday morality made of 1,330 short couplets of seven words each. It is divided into three books on virtue, wealth and love, and it covers honesty, self-restraint, gratitude, hospitality, duty, justice and the conduct of kings and ministers. It also argues for non-violence and vegetarianism as personal virtues. Tradition credits it to the poet Valluvar, and its date is debated, with linguistic evidence suggesting it was composed around 450 to 500 CE rather than in the older Sangam era. The text is widely admired for ethics that are not tied to any one religion, and it has been translated into at least 57 languages.
so what
The Kural is one of the most translated ancient works in the world, and it has shaped Tamil identity and public morality for centuries. Its non-sectarian ethics explain why it is read by people across many faiths and political traditions in India.
fun fact
Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi were among the writers and leaders who engaged with the Kural.
In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.
how it works
To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.
so what
A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.
the bigger pattern
Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.
fun fact
In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.
more on this
background
A Corner in Wheat is a 1909 American short silent film which tells of a greedy tycoon who tries to corner the market in wheat, destroying the lives of the people who can no longer afford to buy bread. It was directed by D. W. Griffith and adapted by Griffith and Frank E. Woods from a novel and a short story by Frank Norris, titled The Pit and "A Deal in Wheat". Griffith may have had a real-life inspiration: six months earlier, James A. Patten had actually cornered the market in wheat, and in some cities, the price of bread doubled from five cents to ten, just as in the movie.
In 1994, A Corner in Wheat was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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