Avvaiyar (Sangam poet)

Biography

Avvaiyar is considered to be contemporary to poets Paranar, Kabilar and Thiruvalluvar. She is attributed as the author of 7 verses in Naṟṟiṇai, 15 in Kuṟuntokai, 4 in Akanaṉūṟu and 33 in Puṟanāṉūṟu. Legend states that she was a court poet of the rulers of the Tamil country. She travelled from one part of the country to another and from one village to another, sharing the gruel of the poor farmers and composing songs for their enjoyment. Most of her songs were about a small-time chieftain Vallal Athiyamaan Nedumaan Anji and his family. The chieftain had also used her as his ambassador to avert war with another neighbouring chieftain Thondaiman. The rest of her songs related to the various aspects of state governance. Although traditions claim that she was a sister of Kabilar, Thiruvalluvar and Athiyamaan, V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar refutes this claim based on his studies that all four of them were most likely of different walks of life, thus from different caste backgrounds and hence impossible to be siblings.

View on Valluvar and the Kural

It is said that Avvaiyar was one of the several scholars who were present at the time when Valluvar submitted his masterpiece of the Tirukkural at the Madurai College. Soon after the presentation and the subsequent acceptance by the scholars and the Pandiyan King, Idaikkadar praised Valluvar and the Kural text thus:

The Cural contains much in a little compass. Such is the ingenuity of its author, that he has compressed within its narrow limits all the branches of knowledge, as if he had hollowed a mustard seed, and enclosed all the waters of the seven seas in it. [Emphasis in original]

On hearing this, Avvaiyar remarked to him that it would be more appropriate to liken the Kural text to an atom, which is even smaller than a mustard seed. Both Idaikaadar and Avvaiyar's remarks appear as the last two verses of the Tiruvalluva Maalai.