The Avvai of the Sangam Anthologies

By M. S. H. THOMPSON

T HERE is perhaps no writer held in greater esteem in the Tamil country

than the poetess Avvai or Auvai, as her name is given in the old commentaries and in a poem of the Sangam age.' The editor of a selection of poems from those traditionally ascribed to Avvai says that the poetess was an incarnation of the goddess of learning, while the writer of the foreword to his book says the joy of her presence is with us in the world to-day. An editor and annotator of a philosophical work ascribed to her writes in much the same strain, remarking that the work in question is the fruit of the penance of the whole Tamil country. This is the Avvai of Tamil legend, as Anavarata Vinayakam Pillai shows in his able monograph on the poetess, and it is the Avvai to whom the early writers on Tamil literature refer. For example, Henry Bower, who wrote: " She sang as sweetly as Sappho; yet not of love, but of virtue." Also Simon Casie Chitty in his Indian Plutarch, though he says his facts were " carefully collected and scrupulously detached from fictitious and ornamental additions ". The following observations of Taylor on the Adichadi Vej.ba may show an acquaintance with Sangam religion, but there can be little doubt that the poet he had in mind was the legendary Avvai:"The work, it is said, was entitled Niti Chol by the author = a word on morals, a discourse on rectitude; but some later writer prefixed stanzas of invocation addressed to Siva or Ganesa, using the words ddi chudi at the beginning of his panegyric, whence the book has improperly acquired its popular title." The poet whom the younger Caldwell translated so skilfully was again the legendary Avvai. Scholars are now generally agreed that the only Avvai about whom anything at all reliable is known is the Avvai of the Sangam Anthologies, fifty-nine of whose poems appear in four of the earliest of the anthologies, nearly half of them dealing with love. The discovery of this Avvai has been made possible by the printing of the Sangam Anthologies, which until some fifty years ago were known only in extract, as Dr. Saminatha Iyer tells us in his University lectures delivered in Madras in 1927. The best edited of the anthologies is Purandnaru, in which there are thirty-three poems said to have been composed by Avvai. Twenty-four of them appear with an old commentary, and the editor has provided cross references and illustrative parallel passages from other
1 Cirupan&rruppadai, line 101. In stanza 214 of Tirukkovaiyar we have auvai and in stanza 396 avvai. Chudanamzi Neganidugives eight other synonyms for " mother " besides avvai. The name Avvai was titular, the real name of the poetess not being known.

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classics that are very helpful. It is from this work that most citations occur in essays on Avvai and recent works on Tamil literature, like Duraisami Pillai's account of Tamil literature of the Sangam Age. Citations rarely, if ever, occur from the Agandnuiru,in which there is a commentary consisting of brief but valuable notes on but ninety of the four hundred poems included in the anthology. The remaining two anthologies, Narrinai and Kuruntogai, have been edited with modern commentaries, of which that by Narayanasami Iyer on Narrinai is the abler of the two, though not free from faults, as Venkatarajulu Reddiyar has shown in his monograph on Kapilar. In his long introduction to Kuzruntogai the editor has described the difficulties he was confronted with, and his laborious work recalls Caldwell's remark regarding Tamil pandits : " Native pandits have never been surpassed in patient labour or in an accurate knowledge of details." In the editing of Sangam works Dr. Saminatha Iyer provided as accurate a text as possible with such commentary as was available; he added little of his own by way of explanation. In his introduction to Ainkurunuru he tells us with characteristic modesty that the skill of the unknown commentator put him off giving any explanations of his own, so that whenever he provided glossaries they mostly reproduced what had already appeared in the commentary. This is surely to be deplored, because he was better able than anyone else to give the kind of help one needs in reading the Sangam works, in which " many verbal and grammatical enigmas have been most faithfully preserved and handed down by successive generations of scholars with little or no attempt at their elucidation ", as Sivaraja Pillai says. The Tamil Lexicon issued by the Madras University was meant to help with the study of the Tamil classics; but anyone who turns to it in his perplexities while grappling with the text of a Sangam work is more than likely to be disappointed. The systematic editing of the earlier Tamil classics has already been urged, and it is in Madras where such work could be best carried out, preferably by the University.
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"Prosper, O land ", sings our poetess. " Where good men dwell, there the land is good, whether countryside or forest, valley or plateau." She was a great traveller, and seems to have travelled on foot all over South India. One of the glimpses we obtain from her poems is of her coming down a mountain path with her companions bearing their goods and chattels suspended from poles borne on their shoulders, as travellers on foot do at the present day. She was sure of a welcome wherever she went. " The prattle of his little son is music in the ears of his father, and so, with all its imperfections, is my song in your ears ", she tells her patron. A dancer and singer by profession, she made the most of her opportunities. In a poem addressed to a doorkeeper she refers to her class as "we who sow an illuminating word in the ear of the generous and by sheer strength of will draw forth a gift befitting our status ", adding: "An empty world would this be were the cultured and the famous to pass

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out of it." The sons of the wood-workers find all they need in the forest. " So we too ", she concludes, " find rice wherever we go." Most of her poems in PuranJnitru are in praise of the chieftain Nedumananji, whose lands are thought to have been in Mysore round about Kolar. How trusted a friend she was is shown by the fact that she undertook an embassy on his behalf to Thondaiman. As recorded in one of her poems, she subtly praised her patron by seeming to belittle his achievements. Here is the outline of a poem in fiercer vein :" Seeing your elephant charge with short, blunted tusks, as the doors of the fort flew to pieces, seeing your charger gallop with hoofs bespattered with blood from trampling on the fallen foe, they returned their blood-stained arrows to their sheaths, as they saw your warriors advancing sword in hand." In much the same strain is the following poem, though it ends on a tender note :" In his hand the spear, on his legs anklets, the sweat standing on his brow, the wound on his neck unhealed, his garland the garland of palmyra interwoven with vetchi and vengai, his black hair coiled in a shiny mass, strong as an elephant that has fought and slain the striped tiger, none of his enemies have survived of those who provoked him to anger. The eyes that once glared in fury have not turned red as they have looked on the little son." The love lyrics strike a different note. Here we meet the love-lorn maiden and the anxious suitor, and the scene shifts from the plains to the hills. Now the sun is sinking behind a range of hills aglow with the rays of the setting sun, and the shadows lengthen in the grove where, with bowed head, a maiden hears the sound of bells grow fainter as her lord speeds away in his chariot. Now maidens bedecked with flowers crowd round the lord of the land, and all is noise and confusion, while a few paces away the otter sleeps in the pond. We hear the beat of drums and the blare of conches. Then away we go to the hills. Here night has descended, and with it the rain. The speckled hood of the snake quivers in the storm. Then day dawns, and trees resplendent with flowers shine like the neck of the peacock, while mountain torrents tear at the roots of the trees growing on their banks. Like a beam of light a maiden steals through the overhanging branches, as the mists rise up from the valley below. Up the steep path mounts the chariot of her lord and master, who is afraid that the herdsman's horn, loud as the roll of thunder, has struck terror into her heart. Lastly, the lament over the dead chieftain, whom Avvai delighted in praising. " Let the flames leap high into the heavens ", she sings; "never will fade the fame of him as bright as the sun, with white umbrella as bright as the moon." Henceforth it will seem to her as though there were neither morning nor evening.

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THE AVVAI OF THE SANGAM ANTHOLOGIES BIBLIOGRAPHY

Auvai Arumtamil. By A. Subramanya Bharathi. Madras, 1921. Auvaikkural. By E. Sundaramanicka Yogishvarar. Madras, 1926. Avvaiyar. By S. Anavarata Vinayakam Pillai. Madras, 1919. Calcutta Review, xxv, 1855, pp. 158-196. Art. vii: The Tamil Language and Literature. (By Henry Bower, as Murdoch states; also R. S. Swinton in An Indian Tale or Two, Blackheath, 1898.) 5. The Tamil Plutarch. A Summary Account of the Lives of Southern India and Ceylon from the Earliest to the Present Times, with Select Specimens of Their Compositions. By Simon Casie Chitty. Jaffna, 1859. 6. A Catalogue Raisonnee of Oriental iMauscripts in the Library of the (Late) College, Fort Saint George.[Now in charge of the Board of Examiners. By the Rev. William Taylor. Vol. I, 1857. Vol. II, 1860. Vol. III, 1862. 7. Sangam Tamil and Latter-day Tamil. Lectures delivered by Dr. Saminatha Iyer under the auspices of the Madras University between 7th November and 21st December, 1927. Madras, 1929. 8. The Text and Commentary of Purananuru, One of the Eight Anthologies. Edited by V. Saminatha Iyer. 3rd ed. Madras, 1935. 9. Tamil Literature: the Sangam Age. By G. C. Duraisami Pillai. Association Press, Calcutta, 1923. 10. Agandanru, One of the Eight Anthologies. The Text and the Old Commentary. Edited by Raghava Iyengar. Madras, 1918. 11. Narrinai, One of the Eight Anthologies. Edited with Commentary by A. Narayanasami Iyer. Madras, 1914. 12. Kuruntogai, One of the Eight Anthologies. Edited with New Commentary by T. T. Chowri Perumala Rangan. 1915. 13. Kapilar. (Madras University Tamil Series, No. 5.) By Vidvan V. Venkatarajulu Reddiyar. 1936. 14. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages. By R. Caldwell. 3rd ed. Revised by Wyatt and Ramakrishna Pillai. London, 1913. 15. Aingkurunuru. Edited with the Old Commentary by V. Saminatha Iyer. Madras, 1903. 16. The Chronologyof the Early Tamils. By K. N. Sivaraja Pillai. University of Madras, Madras, 1932. 17. Tamil Lexicon, completed in 1936. 18. Indian Antiquary, i, pp. 197-201. (R. C. Caldwell's articles on Tamil popular poetry.) 19. Indian Antiquary, lix, p. 189. (C. S. Srinivasachari's review of the Tamil Lexicon.) 20. Indian Antiquary, Ix, p. 140. (F. J. Richards' review of Studies in Tamil Literature and History, by Ramachandra Dikshitar.) 21. Ancient Famous Tamil Poets, pp. 136-174. By A. Karmega Kone. Madura, 1925. 22. The History of Auvaiyar. (Wealth of Learning Series, No. 11. General Editor: V. G. Suryanarayana Sastri.) By C. Subramanyachariar. Madras, 1902. 23. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xvii (New Series), 1885. Art. viii, by G. U. Pope, pp. 179-81.

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