Page:The Tamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago.djvu/226

Rh alone she said would save them in the future. As a specimen of the pure principles and practical philosophy she preached, I give below a translation of the first eight lines of the Attichudi or the Golden Alphabet :—


 * 1) Desire to do charity.
 * 2) Anger should be controlled.
 * 3) Fail not to render what help lies in your power.
 * 4) Prevent not the giving of alms.
 * 5) Reveal not what you possess.
 * 6) Slacken not exertion.
 * 7) Neglect not numbers and letters.
 * 8) Begging is shameful.

In the Vinôda-rasa-manjari, which is a collection of amusing stories and anecdotes, composed by the late Virasami Chettiar, Tamil Pandit of the Presidency College, Madras, Auvvaiyar is frequently mentioned as a contemporary of the Chola king Kulôttunga, who lived in the ninth or tenth century A.D., and was the patron of the famous poets Oddaik-Kûttar, Kambar and Pukalenti. In other recent works of Tamil Pandits, she is spoken of as having lived during The time of Sundarar the devotee of Siva, and of his friend and patron Cheraman Perumal, the last of the Chera kings. These stories appear to be of every recent origin and are not supported by any authority in classical works, or in the old commentaries: and should therefore be rejected as entirely groundless. It is clear from her poems which are preserved in the Purananuru and Akanamuru that she flourished during the reign of the Pandyan king Ugrap-peruvaluti in the beginning of the second century A.D. and could not have therefore been a contemporary of the mediœval kings Kulothunga Chola or Cheraman Perumal. But Tamil Pandits, who love the marvellous, assert with a show of wisdom, that Auvvaiyar lived to the extraordinary age of six or seven hundred years, and that in her youth she was a contemporary of Ugra-Pandya, and in her old age of Kulothunga-Chola, whose reign commenced seven centuries later! Two poems entitled Panthanantati and Asatikkovai are attributed to Auvvaiyar; but their