Iniyavai Narpathu
Encyclopedia
Iniyavai Narpathu is a Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

 poetic work of didactic nature belonging to the Pathinenkilkanakku
Pathinenkilkanakku
Pathinenkilkanakku is a collection of eighteen poetic works created during the 'post Sangam period' . The poems of this collection differ from the earlier works under the Pathinenmaelkanakku collection , which are the oldest surviving Tamil Poetry. The poems are written in the Venpa meter and are...

anthology of Tamil literature
Tamil literature
Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution...

. This belongs to the 'post Sangam period corresponding to between 100 – 500 CE. Iniyavai Narpathu is a collection of 40 poems written by the poet Putham Sernthanar describing the most desirable things in life. The poems of Iniyavai Narpathu are written in the Venpa
Venpa
Venpa is a form of classical Tamil poetry. Classical Tamil poetry has been classified based upon the rules of metric prosody. Such rules form a context-free grammar. Every Venpa consists of between two to twelve lines....

 meter.

This collection is very similar to Inna Narpathu
Inna Narpathu
Inna Narpathu is a Tamil poetic work of didactic nature belonging to the Pathinenkilkanakku anthology of Tamil literature. This belongs to the 'post Sangam period corresponding to between 100 – 500 CE...

, which deals with the forty things one should avoid. Inna Narpathu includes four categories of things one should seek in life: learning even at the expense of begging, the advice of learned persons, healthy children, strength to not covet other's spouse.

Iniyavai Narpathu, together with Inna Narpathu spells out in simple and succinct terms moral codes essential for daily life of the individual and for the society. They both emphasise the importance of education and individual responsibility in society.
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