﻿344 A SUMMARY ACCOUXT OF THE 



Others take her to be one of the seven wise or 

 moral philosophers, in whom the Tamuls glory as 

 well as the antier.t Greeks, and M'ith more reason, as 

 they have four ladies in the number, and only three 

 men. Their wonderful birth is related in the Kan- 

 dapranam, of which I will give only a short extract. 



The female philosophers are Avyar, Uppay, 

 Vallif. and Uruvay ; and the male, the famous 

 Tiruvalluwer (whose writings c-ntain good and 

 elegant moral verses) Adig A:\iAy and Kavviler. 



All tliese seven wise persons belonged to the same 

 family, were of the same parents, but were educated 

 by different charitable guardians. One in the royal 

 palace by a king, the other in the hut of a basket- 

 maker, another by a Bramin, another even by an 

 outcast, and so forth, but at last they all turned out 

 Sages ; their birth was not less wonderful. Their fa- 



therwas Perali, and their grandfather Veda~m6li, 

 both great saints and philosophers. The latter saw, 

 once in the night, a bright star falling down, in a 

 village inhabited by outcasts, upon a house wherein 

 a girl was just born. B}^ his prophetic power, he 

 discovered that this girl would be one day married 

 to his son Perali, who was then a boy of twelve 

 years of age, which made, him very uneasy. 



He communicated his sorrow to his fellow Bra- 

 mins, but in general terms oni}' ; he told them, that 

 the girl born last night in the village of outcasts, 

 under such wonderful circumstances, would entail 

 numberless misfortunes on the Bramin cast in gene- 

 ral ; but he carefully concealed whatever had rela- 

 tion to his ou'n son, since its disclosure would have 

 excluded him from the cast. 



They vscre all struck with terror at this sad pro- 

 phecy, and they deliberated as to the disposal of the 

 infant. The father was called, and informed of the 

 unlucky destiny interwoven with his child, and he 

 was asked which ought to suffer? his child, or the 

 2 revered 



