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JULY 5, 1872.]
POPULAR TAMIL POETRY.
199
AUVEIYAR is chiefly noted as a poetess for her unrivalled collection of brief moral aphorisms. Whilst the genuineness of several of her reputed works is open to the gravest question, the authorship of the Attisûdi has never been doubted. This remarkable poem, possessed of a sublime simplicity, contains the same number of lines as there are letters in the Tamil alphabet ordinarily in use. Each line begins with a letter of this alphabet. Thus the first line communces with an Ana," the next with an Avana, and so on, the proper sequence of letters in the Tamil alphabet being strictly adhered to. It is quite a unique poem, and has been styled by the learned Beschi as “worthy of Seneca himself." The following are the opening lines :
Aram seya virumbu. Aruvatu sinam. Iyalvatu Karavel. Ivatu villakel. Udeiyatu viļambel.
Ukkamatu keividel. Eņņeluttigalel. Erpat' igaļcchi. Eiyamitt' un. Oppura voľugu. Otuvatoļiyel.
Avviyam pêsêl. Desire to do thy duty. Cool thy heat Of wrath. What thou can'st give, do not secrete. Hinder not alms. Of wealth make not a show. Of perseverance never let thou go. Numbers and letters scorn not. "Tis not meet To go a begging. First give alms, then eat. According to established custom walk, From learning cease not. Without envy talk,
All Tamil poems, popular or otherwise, begin with a formal invocation of some deity. One of the most famous of such invocations is that prefixed to the Nalvali of AUVEIYAR. The following is a translation of this invocation and of two subsequent stanzas of the poem :
Palum, telitenum pagum parappum,-ivei Nalum kalant' unakku nan turuvên.
Kolam sey Tungak kari mugattu, tu maniye, ni yenakku Sanga Tamil mundrum tå!
Milk and clean honey, sugar and pulse,-these blent, To thee, O Holy Gem, will I present, Thou elephant-visaged, graceful, eminent ;
So in return do thou vouchsafe to me Of sanctioned Tamil the varieties three.*
Attrup perukkattradi sudumannálumavvâ When the dried rivers sands you hap to tread Lattrup perukkâlulagattu.
Your feet are scorched; yet, ev'n then, in its bed Mettravarkku
Lurk springs, hy which the neighbourhood is fed. Nalla gudipprantâr nalkurntâr anâlum
Thus men, of good stock born, will never say, Illei' yena márttár, iseintu.
Ev'n when impoverish'd, to a beggar-Nay' Attrang kareiyin maramum arasariya
Trees, growing by rivers, fall; and fall, too, they Vittrirunta válvum vilumandre.
Who in some monarch's favour flourish gay. | Yettram
Have ye not seen the truth of what I say? Ulutundu vâlvatark' oppillei, kandir,
All else is faulty :-naught compared can be Palutundu vêrôr panikku.
With Agricultural Prosperity. There is a pretty little legend connected with ! manded, so KAMBAN took the money, dashed off the one of AUVELYAR's most popular verses. The following incomplete stanza, and went away ipontess visited the town of Ambel. It happen
Tannirum Kavêri ed that a dancing-girl named Chilambi lived in
1 árvendarit Sôļan this town. On a former occasion the great
Mannavatum Sola KAMBAN hnd visited Chilambi's house, and the
Mandalamê, maiden had given the author of the Ramayana a
Pennával - very large suun of money to write a stanza in her praise. The snin which the unfortunate girl offer- Of streams, the stately Kaveried the miserly poet was only half of the sum he de
Of kings, is Cholan, best;
Tamil sanctioned by the conclave of learned + This alludes to the well-known native custom of dirTamilians who used to hold their assemblies in the templeging small temporary wells in the sandy bed of rivers for at M ura. We speak of Queen's English":"Sanya wuter, after the rivers have been dried up in the hot Tamil" is a similar expression,
season.
