French has the second maximum number of translations of the Tirukkural among European languages, next only to English.
The first translation of the Kural text into French was made by an unknown author, which was titled Kural de Tiruvalluvar and found a place in the Bibliothèque nationale de France of France in 1767.
[1][2] However, it is E. S. Ariel who is generally credited with bringing the Kural text to the French world.
Ariel, who considered the Kural as one of the highest and purest expressions of human thought,[3] translated fragments of the first two divisions of the work, viz.
Since then several translations appeared in French, chief among which are those by Pierre-Eugène Lamairesse (1867), G. Fontaineu de Barrigue (1889), Dumast, Louis Jacolliot, and Alain Daniélou (1942).