Biographical Sketches of Dekkan Poets/Avayar
AVAYAR.
This poetess was the daughter of a bramin named Bhagavan, by a woman named Adi, of a low tribe; according to some legends she and her brother and sisters (namely, three males and four females), were the issues, of Brahma and Saraswati, when they were making a tour through different countries, and left by those deites at the doors of various individuals, who brought them up, and in whose tribes or cast they were admitted. Avayar excelled all her brothers and sisters in leaning, although she was brought up by a Panakar (or servile cast) songster. She was contemporary with Kamban the author of the Tamul Romayana, and she employed her elegant pen on various subjects, such as astronomy, medicine, and geography; her works of the latter description are much admired. The following is a fragment of one of them:—
" The whole expanse of this wide-spreading, earth,
"May be compared to a large tract of land;
"The divers countries in the world, each-mark'd
"By its own boundaries, resemble fields.
"Great Ton-dei-val-a nadu is a peering
"Sugar-cane in one of these fair field,
"Its chief towns are the crude juice of this cane;
"Fair Kanchipuram is a lucious cake
"Of unrefined sugar, got hj boiling;
"While a concretion of refined sugar,
"Does preseat th' interiors of bright Kanchi,
"Where the Great God, who mounts the bull, resides."
Avayar remained a virgin all her life and died, much admired for her talents in poetry, and arts and sciences.