Abiraami Andhaathi
                      ==================

Sri:

        The accompanying file contains the poems composed by Abiraami 
Battar. The 100 poems praise the Goddess Abiraami. 

        To my knowledge, the story goes like this:
        
        Abirami Battar was enjoying with his immersed thoughts about the 
praise of the Goddess Abirami. Someone approached him and asked him what
the day it was. Without realising the actual day as a New Moon Day, Abirami
Battar mentioned to others that the day was a Full Moon Day. Every one 
laughed at him. He was brought before the King. When King repeated the 
question, he still replied the same answer as Full Moon day. The King went
angry and ordered to burn him alive if his words (i.e., Full Moon Day) 
fail. He was put to test from a hanging platform with lots of fire 
underneath. Abirami Battar realised his statement and put the blame on
Goddess. He said to her that I made this mistake only because of you as
I was immersed in your thoughts. He started singing about the Goddess 
Abiraami in 100 slokas, so beutifully sung. The songs come under a class 
of Tamil poetry called "Andhaathi". This means, the next poem should start 
with the ending from the previous one. One should be able to appreciate the 
talents and God's grace in Abiraami Battar to sing all the 100 songs in
one night. The end of the story goes like this:

Goddess Abirami pleased and appeared (kaakshi) before him and thrown her 
ear-ring (kundalam) in to the sky which enlightened the whole sky like a
full bright moon (I am not sure, but I think, this event happened
when he was singing songs around 65-70). Everyone worshiped the Goddess 
and her majestic powers. The king requested his apologies to Abiraami 
Battar.

===========================================================
All the 100 songs are now typed in Roman Text (ADAMI format).
To view this document, you can use 
    ADAMI (Tamil transliteration) by Dr. K. Srinivasan 
                                     (srini@ireq.hydro.quebec.ca) 
or  TAMILVU.EXE from Dr. K. Srinivasan. 


For your purpose, the TAMILVU.EXE is also included with the 
compressed file. The compressed file contains:

READEME.TXT     This file
ABIRAMI.TXT     All 100 songs in Romanaized Text form
TAMILVU.EXE     Tamil viewing software developed by Dr. Srinivasan.

I was diligent in correcting the mistakes as much as possible. 
However, if the users find any lingering typographical errors
kindly inform me at my husband's email address 
pmallik@cfsqe.griffin.peachnet.edu. 

Thanks for using this collection. 

Vijayalakshmi Mallikarjunan 
(pmallik@cfsqe.griffin.peachnet.edu - my husband's email address)