Avantisundari - Princess of Intellect

Avantisundari

Princess of intellect - rhetorician and poet

Avantisundari - Her life and her times

Avantisundari was an exceptionally accomplished woman who lived in the 9th and 10th century CE in the kingdom of the Gurjara-Pratihara, a dynasty which ruled over an extensive area in North India extending upto the Narmada in Central India. Her husband Rajasekhara, court poet and grammarian, writes of her as ‘a jewel of a Chahamana or Chauhan family’ which means she was a princess, in the opinion of Sanskrit scholar and musicologist V Raghavan. The couple entered into anuloma, an intercaste marriage. The practice was accepted by society at the time. 

Rajasekhara the mentor

Rajasekhara was an unusual individual in that he not only encouraged the talented Avantisundari in her literary pursuits but also wrote of other talented poetesses in his own verses. Even today when this open-hearted attitude towards female accomplishments is not all-pervasive, what Rajasekhara did more than ten centuries back was unusual. The references he makes have in turn come down to us today. For example, verses attributed to Rajasekhara in Jalhana’s Suktimuktavali (1258 CE) mention the poetesses Shilabhattarika, Vikatanitamba, Vijayanka among others. Rajasekhara firmly says that poetic ability is not based on gender but is a part of the inner soul. He writes "Women also can become poets like men. Culture is really an element of the soul. It does not make a distinction between male and female. We have heard of and even seen princesses, daughters of great officers of the state, courtesans and the wives of cultured people who had all the refinements of learning and were poets too."

Avantisundari and her work

Such were Avantisundari’s abilities that Rajasekhara freely acknowledged her poetic talent and quoted her in his work Karpura Manjari written in Prakrit. He acknowledges that he produced and staged this work at her encouragement and request.

Avantisundari had opinions on three aspects of literary criticism that Rajasekhara mentions in his Kavyamimamsa. These were -
what is meant by maturity of expression
what exactly is the poetic idea
the broader aspect of poetic borrowing, which at a base level becomes plagarism.

These are issues that creative artists are grappling with even today, more than ten centuries later!

Avantisundari wrote in Sanskrit and Prakrit. Apart from that, Avantisundari’s work as a rhetorician led to her stanzas being quoted by Hemachandra in the 11th century CE in his Deshi Namamala to illustrate the meanings of Prakrit expressions. 

Nothing much else is known about this interesting literary luminary who chose to specialise in an esoteric aspect of rhetoric and poetry. Today we only know of Avantisundari thanks to references to her works in others’ anthologies. Unfortunately none of her works has been discovered so far.

Relevance of the Avantisundari-Rajasekhara partnership today

Reading about Avantisundari and Rajasekhara’s mindsets at the period from the end of the 9th century CE to the beginning of the 10th century CE brings one thought to mind. Trends and thought processes in society seem to go around in circles. What goes around comes around. It’s fascinating how the issues we face today on gender parity, encouragement to female education and intercaste marriages are nothing new at all. We really don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we only need to take a look at how Avantisundari and Rajasekhara twelve centuries back negotiated their way with finesse and an openmindedness we would do well to emulate. 

Do you agree with me? Do write in. 

Reference:

Prekshanakatrayi - V Raghavan

Great Women of India - Editors: Swami Madhavananda and Ramesh Chandra Majumdar