Management in Thirukkural

Abstract

Christopher Columbus setout on sail to find the sea route to India attracted by her popular wealth and resources. History speaks that he landed in a place and thought that that was India. It came to be known as the United States of America later. Thus America was just an accidental discovery in the quest to reach India. History also speaks that many countries were attracted by the riches of India and later resulted in colonization of India and used her wealth and resources. Thus it is very obvious that it is the wealth, prosperity and resources of India that attracted people from far away lands. It is also clear that wealth and prosperity are not automatic but are a function of 'management' knowledge and skill. India was wealthy and prosperous which attracted many foreign raiders. Therefore India must have had its own knowledge and skill in 'management' given the fact that management as a field of specialization came into being in the West only in 19th century. However the great epic Mahabharata stands tall as a management teacher through a composite and complicated case with case-lets galore in it. Also the Panchatantra stand out as an excellent piece of work on management using case-method even 5000 years ago, before the case-method of teaching management was discovered in the West! Moreover it is generally acknowledged that economic ideas originated from two sources namely Hebrew and Hindus. Management is a sub-set of the Economics study-set. Thus it can be said that management ideas originated from India also. The Indian wisdom on management has long remained ignored. The aim of this paper is to rediscover one of the India's ideas on management namely the definition of management based on one of the Indian works namely Thirukkural that is only 2000 years old and popular for its presentation of wisdom using only seven words.