A Hundred Measures of Time

by Nammalwar

  taiyal nallārkaḷ kulāṅkaḷ kuliya kuluvinullām

  aiya nallārkaḷ kuliya vilavinum aṅku aṅku ellām

  kaiya pon ālive caṅkōṭum kāṇpān avāvuvan nān

  maiya vaṇṇā maṇiyē muttamē entan māṇikkamē

  In English, in this very early draft:

  Amidst a throng of lovely women or

  in a crowd of virtuous priests

  in some festival, or in places here and there

  with the golden disc and white conch in your hands

  I desire to see you

  O dark one, precious gem, pearl

  my dear glittering ruby.

  In early versions of my translation, the verse appeared as above, aligned with the page’s left margin. But any translation of the Tiruviruttam has to be sensitive to the poem’s dual architecture, to its mansion of many apartments. One way to demonstrate the implied relationship between the outer and the inner, between akam and puram, between anyāpadeśa and svāpadeśa, is to demarcate the inner space of the poem through the verbal and visual markers that identify each verse’s speaker. In the final version the same verse looks like this on the page:

  She Said:

  Amidst a throng of lovely women

  or surrounded by crowds of virtuous priests

  in some festival or in places like that

  I long to see you

  holding in your hands golden disc and white conch

  O one dark as kohl my precious gem

  pearl of mine my glittering ruby.

  I draw attention to the akapporuḷ frame by identifying the verse’s speaker (She Said) in an indented header. This indented header also acts as a visual reminder that the poem’s speakers act within a frame. The body of the translated verse is then further indented to suggest its own interiority—the svāpadeśa within the anyāpadeśa. In those instances where the frame is ruptured (Tiruviruttam 1, 21, 99, 100), the translation follows the poem’s lead. No speakers are identified and the translated verse remains un-indented and flush with the left margin, evoking visually the inner heart of the poem making itself known and visible. The poem’s last ten verses presented a problem as one might regard this final section as the poem’s masterfully orchestrated dénouement, in which the interior and exterior planes come together. I have reflected this coming together by identifying the speaker of the verse as the heroine (so staying true to the akam context) and instead of indenting the translation as in all the previous akam verses, the verse aligns with this identifying header, and they both appear flush with the left margin.

  The two possession/revelation verses, Tiruviruttam 48 and 94, by their very curious character stick out in the poem. They are, in a way, inversions of the poem’s very pretext. In these two verses, the poem is no longer a viṇṇappam, but god’s own words. The poet and deity through their shared words and shared anubhava are mirrors to the other, at least momentarily. To invoke all of this, I have aligned Tiruviruttam 48 and 94 with the right margin to draw the eye to the dramatic manner in which the verses break the frame, and to displace the reader’s acceptance of the poem’s pretext.

  To enhance these cues that make visible the Tiruviruttam’s structure and play, the translated verses run together. However, I have not allowed a translated verse to be divided on account of a page break. Leaving a single verse on a page (in the manner of A.K. Ramanujan’s Hymns for the Drowning) was tempting. Individual verses are enigmatic enough to invite sustained thinking. Several of the verses (or lines) from the Tiruviruttam are cited individually in commentaries and in ritual performances, so such an approach would not really violate how the poem is used and experienced by Śrīvaiṣṇavas. Nonetheless, having sacrificed the antāti, I felt it was important to preserve the integrity of the Tiruviruttam in other ways. Eventually I decided that the reading experience of the poem and visual impact of the translation would be more effective if the verses run together as opposed to standing alone. The only exceptions are verses 1 and 100, which are placed on a single page each. There are two reasons for this decision. The first is to draw attention to their framing function. But, more importantly, I wanted to find a way to set these two verses, which are both the poem’s beginning and its end, bound as they are by their antāti, into fruitful conversation. Hence, not only are these two verses on individual pages, but they also do not adhere to the two-part structure that I have applied to the rest of the verses.

  Nammālvār’s poetic style is one that favours brevity and tightness. It makes for verses that glow as though lit from the inside like a flawless gem of concentrated colour. Like many great Tamil poets, he achieves this effect with a breathless cascade of striking images, metaphors and sounds that in the Tamil script quite literally run into each other. This is a key feature of the experience of reciting the Tiruviruttam. It evokes breath-taking, not just on account of its sumptuous use of language, but because as you read or recite the poem, you are often left trying to seize your breath. In Tamil, the poem recreates the heady sense of mystical experience, and its use of language draws attention to your breath, your uyir, the oscillations of breathing in and out mimicking the filling and emptying that characterizes the peculiar relish of such an experience. This is perhaps one of the most stunning features of the poem and one I felt was integral to Nammālvār’s poetic vision, as significant as the antāti. Thus I have kept punctuation to an absolute minimum, and have avoided placing commas between strings of epithets or adjectives. This violation of the rules of English grammar is meant to recreate the rush of feeling that the Tamil torrent of words produces in the hearer and listener. You are supposed to be left breathless and slightly dazed after each verse, overcome by the sheer lushness of sounds and images, for that is the affect that Nammālvār’s original ingeniously produces.

  There are several words in Tamil that are so richly polyvalent that no single English word can accurately capture its range. The words vinai (deed, action, the result of accumulated karma, by extension, fate) and aruḷ (grace, mercy, compassion, favour, benevolence) occur frequently in the poem in various grammatical forms. Gesturing to its import, aruḷ occurs in the very first verse (aruḷāy: be gracious) of the Tiruviruttam. In the case of vinai, it often occurs as a participle noun—like valvinaiyēn (I who have terrible deeds)—that describes the wretchedness of the first-person speaker. It is also meant to convey the sense of being caught in the web of deeds that has a determinative effect on one’s present condition. I toyed with offering context-sensitive translations of vinai and its variants, but in the end felt this failed to do justice to the power that builds around the word with Nammālvār’s deliberate and effective use. Although not a direct or literal translation, and in many ways an inadequate one, I ultimately chose to render vinai as fate. This is partly because phrases like valvinaiyēn (I who have terrible deeds) become terribly clunky in English, not to mention somewhat incomprehensible. More importantly, these translated phrases simply fail to convey the speaker’s profound helplessness and deep horror that the word vinai evokes in him. Fate conveys a similar sense with its connotation of an inexorable hold over the direction of one’s life, and I ultimately chose it for the power it produces with its one short hard-hitting syllable. I have consistently translated vinai as fate throughout the poem, and the reader will be able to index its occurrences against its entire complex range of meanings.

  Aruḷ (grace, benevolence, mercy, compassion, favour) posed equally difficult problems. Aside from the Christian overtones that the word grace elicits, aruḷ is a kind of dynamic connection that moves between god and devotee. In these bhakti poems, aruḷ is often described in aqueous terms, as cooling, liquid, unbounded, flowing. No word in English can convey all of this. So although I began with the opposite approach to vinai, rendering the word aruḷ differently each time depending on the context to convey its full breadth of meanings, in the end I found it to be a self-defeating proposition. Rather than bringing out the range of possibilities of the word aruḷ, the tran
slation began to fragment around this very important concept—mercy warring with compassion warring with grace. After several iterations, I settled on an imperfect choice—grace—as it has the widest possible semantic net of the other possible choices. There was another more compelling reason for choosing this word above others. The Tiruviruttam draws one’s attention repeatedly to Viṣṇu’s eyes, to his gaze and glance.149 The heroine rejoices in the beauty of his eyes, the poet begs for his glance, revels in the cool caress of his gaze. In the world of the Tiruviruttam (and indeed the world of Tamil bhakti), to be bathed in the gaze of god is to receive aruḷ. Grace, with its visual and aural closeness to gaze/glance, successfully evokes this expressive, dynamic, intimate and sensory quality of aruḷ as mediated through the eye (I). Again, I have used the word grace consistently throughout the Tiruviruttam as a translation for aruḷ and its grammatical variants.

  I have left Tamil- or Sanskrit-derived words for flora and fauna untranslated, except when they have a well-known English equivalent, lotus being one such exception. Wherever a more familiar Indic equivalent exists (tulasī for tulāy), I have used it. I rejected using basil for tulāy although it belongs to the same family of plants, as it tends to evoke for most American and European English speakers the large-leafed, sweet-smelling basil used in Italian and Thai cooking, rather than the small-leaved, slightly sharp-tasting strain that one finds in south India. After much oscillation, I have chosen not to italicize untranslated Tamil and Sanskrit words, like tulasī. Rather than draw attention to their foreignness, this choice naturalizes their occurrence within the poem, avoiding an unnecessary visual disruption. In many cases, the verse will clarify the untranslated word, such as in verse 2, where it becomes clear that kayal refers to a native freshwater fish:

  Her eyes with their fine red lines

  dart like kayal in a full pond

  O let her live

  that woman with dense curly hair

  her love adorns the feet

  of Kaṇṇan dark as heavy rain clouds

  worshipped by the ancient ones

  who live in the sky.

  I have also left all Viṣṇu’s names untranslated and in their Tamil forms, thus Madhusūdanan as opposed to the ‘killer of Madhu’ or Madhusūdana. For Sanskrit-derived names, I have retained a transliteration that reflects the Sanskrit rather than the Tamil as it is more familiar and easier to read (so Mādhavan instead of Mātavan). An index of Viṣṇu’s names used in the Tiruviruttam can be found in Appendix 3. I have also provided a glossary of Indic words that appear in the introduction and in the poem itself.

  Over six years, as I sat with this difficult, vexing, profound poem, trying to make it resonate in English, the Tiruviruttam gradually lost its opacity. Still, as I doggedly journeyed through the arid, dreadful pālai of misinterpretation, like Kaṇṇan’s glorious Veḥkā with its rich, verdant, honey-filled groves, the paradise of the perfect translation danced like a mirage, ever out of reach. The Tiruviruttam posed unique challenges and ones that went beyond the (almost) insurmountable ones of language and aesthetic sensibilities that separate Tamil devotional poetry and contemporary English. But, ultimately, in the crossover from Tamil into English, in trying to go beyond inelegant verbal equivalences, the poem’s moving parts revealed themselves. As I forced myself to dissect this living, breathing, chimerical poem, to atomize it if you will, it bared itself (even as it hid so much): its minutiae of syntax, its sinews of metaphors, its muscles of the mythic. Then, it became something else, the translation alive with its own new grammar, animated by its own tensile connective tissues, a text of breath, feeling and emotion. In the end, although I endeavoured to be accurate, to stay as close to Nammālvār’s original, this translation owes as much to my long engagement with ālvār poetry as it does to the long list of great translators of Indic poetry—George Hart, Steven Hopkins, A.K. Ramanujan, Martha Selby, David Shulman loom large here—who first drew me into the luminous world of Tamil poetry. And to John Keats, my companion soul-poet whose poetry never fails to silence me like stout Cortez upon a peak in Darien.

  Part III

  PERIYAVĀCCĀN PIḶḶAI’S COMMENTARY ON THE TIRUVIRUTTAM

  What follow are brief summaries of Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s commentary for six verses from the Tiruviruttam. I have chosen one representative verse for each of the main characters in the poem (heroine, hero, heroine’s friend and the mother), the first purely svāapadeśa verse of the poem (21), and the important commentary for the Tiruviruttam’s penultimate verse (99).

  These paraphrases follow the lead of John Carman and Vasudha Narayanan’s The Tamil Veda: Piḷḷān’s Interpretation of the Tiruvāymoli. The fourth section of their book provides translations of selected verses from the Tiruvāymoli accompanied by a brief synopsis of the commentator’s main interpretive points.

  My aim is to provide a taste of Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s imaginative and creative engagements with the Tiruviruttam. I have not attempted to chart a detailed theological reading of the Tiruviruttam, or to offer a translation of Piḷḷai’s commentaries for these selected verses. In this spirit, I have kept my interjections to the bare minimum, and my observations (when they occur) are marked by a direct reference to Piḷḷai or to the commentary in general. My comments are generally placed to provide continuity or context. However, the majority of the text below reflects Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s interpretation.

  There are several sources in Tamil and English that undertake a more exhaustive philosophical interpretation of the poem at hand. Recent publications in English that offer a traditional commentary on the text include K.R. Krishnaswami, Iyarpa: 4000 Divya Prabandam Series, Vol. 8 (Bangalore: A&K Prakashana, 2010), and the e-book by Oppiliappan Koil Sri Varadachari Sathakopan, Thiruviruttham and Rg Vedam, http://www.sadagopan.org/index.php/categories/doc_details/241-ss083-thiruvirutham-synopsis.

  Tiruviruttam 21

  Celestials in the sky

  offer you pure perfect garlands anoint you with cool water

  worship you with beautiful incense

  you vanish by a trick

  to scoop up and eat butter

  to dance between the two sharp horns

  of the humped bull

  for the lovely woman of the strong cowherd clan.

  In the previous verse (Tiruviruttam 20), the heroine had swooned, but her friend awakened her in time to interrupt the Vēlan’s misguided activities. There, she recommends a more efficacious medicine, namely, the chanting of Viṣṇu’s names and the offering of the garland. The ālvār upon hearing these words (uttered in the previous verse—the lord who swallowed the seven worlds) is brought back to himself and utters these lines.

  This verse is also concerned with the twin attributes of Viṣṇu—his transcendence (paratvam) and his accessibility (saulabhyam). The first two lines are set in Vaikuṇṭha, where Viṣṇu is happily enjoying the services of his eternal devotees, the nityasūris. But suddenly, overwhelmed by the desire to taste the butter churned by his devotees, he manifests on earth (līlā vibhūti) in his vibhāva avatāra as Kṛṣṇa.

  If one wonders why Nammālvār chose to celebrate the Kṛṣṇa avatāra instead of the Rāma avatāra, Periyavāccān Piḷḷai suggests that Nammālvār is naturally attracted to the former. This is why when he awakens from the swoon, he immediately calls Kṛṣṇa to mind.

  Nammālvār demonstrates Viṣṇu’s compassion for his devotee with two illustrative episodes. The first is the stealing of the butter and the second is Kṛṣṇa’s marriage to Nappinnai.

  Piḷḷai’s commentary begins with a reference to the first verse of the Tiruvāymoli (I.1.1), where god is shown in his transcendent, abstract form. This is how Tiruviruttam 21 also begins. In Tiruvāymoli I.2.1, Nammālvār establishes the means (upāya) to achieve mokṣa. Finally, in I.3.1, he demonstrates god’s accessibility through the Kṛṣṇa avatāra. In this manner, Piḷḷai suggests that Tiruviruttam 21 can be seen to condense the ideas developed i
n the first three decads of the Tiruvāymoli, which move the reader from a meditation on god’s transcendence to a contemplation of his immanent presence.

  Tiruviruttam 37

  The Mother Said:

  For many years I worshipped

  Kaṇṇan’s glorious feet adorned with flowers.

  I was blessed

  with this tender fawn-like girl whose waist is slender.

  I am ill-fated.

  She’s taken the wide forest path

  where hunters with curved bows

  cattle rustlers murderous bandits

  and fleet-footed youth beat drums

  like the gossip of village women.

  In the anyāpadeśa interpretation, this verse is spoken by the girl’s mother (tāy), who discovers that her daughter has left home unexpectedly. She is unsure whether the girl has eloped with the hero or she has simply followed him out of her desperate longing. Piḷḷai likens the mother in this verse to her persona in Tiruvāymoli VI.7, but with a key difference. In VI.7 the mother knows where the girl has gone—Tirukkolur—while here she is left unaware.

  The descriptions of the various dangers of the wasteland afford Piḷḷai the opportunity to explore the nature of god. He says, while these cattle rustlers steal cattle and cause harm, Viṣṇu (as the cowherd) only protects them. These strange men kill neither for money nor for enmity, but simply for pleasure. However, Viṣṇu kills only out of necessity, and even when he does so, the offender attains mokṣa.