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 In
the ninth century there lived in South India an extraordinary female poet saint
of surpassing wisdom. We know her only as Avvaiyar, which is no help for that means
' respected old woman' or 'Grandmother'. Yet this curiously anonymous person is
also one of the most famous poets of the Tamil language, a language that has a fair
claim to being the oldest in the world. What is more, children being learning the
Tamil alphabet with one of her poems written expressly for the purpose. Yet it is
not as a linguist that her claim to wisdom rests though that is considerable. She
was a bonafide saint, a genuine wonder to those who could not stay so casually at
such rarefied heights of the spirit.
As is common with a figure of surpassing greatness, she was all things to all people
and all communities contended to claim her as one of their own. One consequence
of this struggle was the strange story connected with her birth. For she was supposed
to be born of the marriage between a Brahman called Bhagavan and his untouchable
wife called Adi. This is as close to impossible as it is humanly possible to be,
the caste barriers of South India being impregnable until recently. The very fact
that the story exists is proof of Avvaiyar's extraordinary impact on people.
To make matters worse the husband was on a spiritual quest and he made his wife
promise that she would not encumber him with the care of children. To make good
on this vow the newborn child was instantly abandoned. The similarities between
this origin tale and that of Sai Baba of Shirdi are astonishing considering that
they are separated by over 1000 years.
A poet who happened to be passing by with the coincidental benevolence so dear to
Indian narrative rescued the newborn child. This was fortunate as the girl was a
precocious composer of verses. When only four years of age she managed to complete
a knotty verse that had defied the creative efforts of the best in the land. "If
you do a good deed, when will it give its results?" an appropriate conclusion
to this vast question was beyond the elders but the little girl easily added,
"Don't doubt that results will come
Exactly as water poured at the foot of the coconut tree gives the result through
its head."
This was an elegant riff on the theory of karma as well as a gentle rebuke to doing
good for results sake.
The child had a very endearing method of praying to her favorite god, Ganesha the
elephant headed son of Shiva. She used to always offer him four cups in her daily
worship, filled with milk, honey, rice pudding and nuts. Innocently she would plead
with the god that she was giving him four things every day and in return what she
wanted was only three, the gifts of poetry, music and drama, so surely the kind
Ganesha could see he was the gainer in this? This bargaining with god was the best
a little child could do but it touched Ganesha in its dazzling sincerity and he
gave her the gifts she asked for. Her natural talent now grew to formidable heights
and she developed the true poet's ferocity when it came to speaking the truth.
This talent did not make her life easier, it just made her a more desirable trophy
bride and she was much pestered with proposals of marriage.
In despair she turned to her Ganesha and requested him to remove this beauty that
had become such a burden and a distraction from her spiritual life. The god responded
by aging her into a crone overnight. Exhilarated beyond measure at this miracle
she burst into a great paean of Praise for Ganesha that is considered to be the
equivalent of the Veda, direct revelation of the divine. Faced with this evidence
of spiritual power everybody accepted that they had encountered somebody meant for
higher things in life and she left her family forever to live the life of wandering
so beloved of the Indian holy man.
Her wanderings were a source of great education and inspiration for her and she
had a social consciousness in her poetry long before such things were understood.
She saw the lives of simple people and their suffering at close quarters and she
did not see any reason why it must be so. Her love for the common man and their
simple affection and respect, her disdain for the pretensions of the rich and miserly,
her indignation at the injustice of the caste system, they are so simple and direct
that they have not lost a whit of their relevance even today. Reformers in the twentieth
century found that this ninth century poet was their best intellectual weapon, stating
matters with the elegant efficiency of a shark bite.
"There are only two castes.
The highborn are the good who help those in distress
The lowborn are those who never help."
One of her greatest poems however had a Koan-like brevity. She was walking, she
always and only walked, to a great gathering of poets in a neighboring kingdom and
she could see the havoc wrought by the prevailing drought. The other poets, being
royal guests and traveling in closed palanquins or carriages were pleasantly insulated
from the misery all around. They indulged in the typical hyperbole about the greatness
of the king and the land but Avvaiyar was not participating in the contest as she
usually did. Finally she rose and said she had a brand new poem.
"Varappuyara."
Then she sat down to the consternation of the assemblage. What was this? One word!
The more intelligent realized that she had played on Varappu Uyara - 'Let bunds
be raised' but the king alone realized that she had gently rebuked him for failing
in his duties to keep his irrigation network in order. If the Bunds and dams had
been in a proper condition of repair then there would have been enough water in
storage and this disaster could have been avoided. Carried away in an exaltation
of piety the king promised to raise more bunds. The next day however he began to
have doubts, it would be such a drain on his treasury. Realizing his state of mind,
Avvaiyar sang,
"It is only by taking away that the sculptor creates a work of art
those actions which seem to take away add to mankind's real wealth."
She also had an episode with priestly prejudice, which is then repeated in the life
stories of the saints Namadeva and Guru Nanak. Either there has been some borrowing
or this is a very deep archetype. Sitting in a Shiva temple to rest her feet she
was found with her feet pointing to towards the Shiva lingam by a priest. He was
outraged and told her that being a great poet did not mean she could take such liberties.
"No doubt," said the irrepressible Avvaiyar, " so oh learned priest please
tell me the direction where Shiva is not and I shall stretch my feet there."
The embarrassed man left before she could compose some more verses upon him.
Soon after this Avvaiyar had her famous encounter with Skanda, brother of Ganesha,
and a major Deity in the south of India. Tired after a long walk she was resting
under a tree, which happened to bear the Jambu fruit so beloved of her Ganesha.
She was too tired to get up and shake some down, but she noticed that a boy-cowherd
who was grazing his buffalos was resting upon the branches. This little imp called
out to her, "Oh grandmother, do you want hot fruits or cold fruits?" Playing along
at what she understood to be the mischief of a young boy, since fruit were not hot
or cold, she asked for hot fruit. The boy knocked the fruit off the branches and
they fell into the dust below. Picking them up she blew on them and he laughed uproariously,
asking if the fruit was too hot for her. This is an untranslatable pun, involving
wordplay as well as the fact that blowing on something could mean it needs cooling.
A young lad had outsmarted Avvaiyar, the master of words,, and she burst in to song
"I, an old axe who could withstand the hardest ebony
must acknowledge defeat before this watery young plantain stem!"
Then she realized that it was not normal for a young cowherd to be so linguistically
adept and she realized that it was Skanda, pulling her erudite leg. Please with
her sporting attitude the young god decided to reward her by asking her questions
that when answered would add to her stature. He asked four great questions. What
is hard? What is sweet? What is big? What is rare? Avvaiyar answered,
"Poverty is hard, poverty in youth is harder, harder still is incurable disease.
Exceedingly hard is the faithless lover and hardest of all is to take food from
one who does not love you."
"Sweet is solitude. Sweeter is the worship of the Lord. Sweeter still is the company
of the guru but the sweetest is to constantly be constantly moving around with him."
"Big is the world. Brahma created it so he is bigger, but he comes out of Vishnu's
navel who sleeps on the ocean, which was drunk up by Sage Agastya who was born of
a pot. Pots are made of clay which comes form the earth which rests upon the head
of Shesha, the cosmic serpent which is a ring for Parvati's finger but she is only
a part of Shiva. Shiva lives in the heart of the devotee so that alone is truly
big."
"Rare is human birth, rarer without deformity. Rarer still is a human birth when
one is interested in wisdom. Rarest of all human births is one possessing charity
and penance."
Avvaiyar's last public service was to prevent a war between the Kings Adiyaman and
Thondiaman. The latter was very proud of his armory and demonstrated it with pride
to the saint hoping she would report its readiness to her friend Adiyaman. Avvaiyar,
with her impish humor, praised him soundly. "Oh Thondiaman how different indeed
are your clean and shiny weapons from those of Adiyaman, always stained with blood
and under repair." The young king was no fool and understood she had just warned
him he was going to take on a battle-hardened veteran with only his inexperience
and battle lust. War was off. The happy saint sang, "War is like plunging into a
river with a grinding stone to help you float. The very rains pour for the sake
of the man who prevents women from losing husbands and sons in senseless war."
So great was Avvaiyar's stature in the common mind that it was believed she did
not die a normal death but was transported bodily to Kailasha, Shiva's heaven, by
her beloved Ganpati. Her poetry and reputation endure.
- Rohit Arya
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