by Nammalwar
8. Ramanujan and Cutler, ‘From Classicism to Bhakti’, p. 232.
9. Narayanan, The Way and the Goal, p. 10.
10. Ramanujan, ‘Men, Women, and Saints’, p. 285.
11. Translated by Clooney and Venkatesan, Tiruvāymoli.
12. Vasudha Narayanan discusses four unique Rāmāyaṇa stories that are found in the poems of the ālvār in The Way and the Goal, pp. 26–29. Another obvious example of myths associated almost exclusively with the Tamil-speaking south is that of Kṛṣṇa’s cowherd consort Nappinnai or Pinnai.
13. As A.K. Ramanujan and Norman Cutler point out in their essay ‘From Classicism to Bhakti’, the influence of akam themes and poetic sensibility on Tamil bhakti poetry has received almost disproportionate interest. Their essay and Cutler’s explication in Songs of Experience are important correctives in this trend. Norman Cutler traces the relationships between puram poetry and Tamil bhakti poetry in Songs of Experience, pp. 61–70. The akam themes are seen as so dominant that Friedhelm Hardy regarded loss and separation as the definitive expression of ālvār bhakti (Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti). Vasudha Narayanan offers a balanced approach in The Way and the Goal, charting not only the Tamil influences but those of the various Sanskrit sources as well: pp. 13–14.
14. Narayanan, The Way and the Goal, p. 4.
15. For a further discussion of the origin and significance of the word Pāñcarātra see van Buitenen, ‘Pañcarātra’, pp. 291–99, and Raghavan, ‘The Name Pāñcarātra’, pp. 73–79.
16. I discuss the motif of revelation and possession in the section ‘One Voice among Many: Revelation in the Tiruviruttam’ in the accompanying analysis ‘The Measure of Time’.
17. Translated by Carman and Narayanan in The Tamil Veda, p. 7.
On Reading Nammālvār’s Tiruviruttam
1. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.
2. By the thirteenth century, viṇṇappam comes to encompass a wide range of ritual performative activity associated with the recitation of the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham, which is referred to as viṇṇappam cey and the reciters are known by the title viṇṇappam ceyvār (those who make the viṇṇappam). It appears from the inscriptional record that the term viṇṇappam ceyvār refers to the hereditary performers more commonly known as Araiyars (Leslie Orr, personal communication, 5 May 2009). In Alvar Tirunagari a family of hereditary performers known as Kavi (tracing their lineage to Maturakavi) perform a genre of songs known as Kavi Pāṭṭu as viṇṇappam, which are rendered as part of the daily nitya pūjā and on the occasion of utsavas (festivals). The two sets of Maṇipravāḷa kavis (unique to Alvar Tirunagari) employ śleṣa (simultaneous narration), and are composed in praise of Viṣṇu and Nammālvār.
3. I refer to the poet as Nammālvār rather than as Śaṭhakōpan, which is the name he uses most often in his poetry. I have made this choice as it is the name by which the poet is most commonly known.
4. Friedhelm Hardy analyses the various hagiographies of Nammālvār, paying particular attention to the question of caste. Of primary concern to Hardy is how a Tamil work authored by a low-caste man (Māran Śaṭhakōpan) was accepted as Veda by Maturakavi, his Brahmin student and subsequent Brahmin ācāryas (Hardy, ‘The Tamil Veda of a Śūdra Saint’, pp. 29–87). While Nammālvār was not a Brahmin, there is nothing in his poetry that allows us to determine his caste status definitively. Given the erudition of his works, and names such as Māran that he assumed, it is likely that he was born into a family of some consequence.
5. The riddle refers to the relationship of the soul to the body. Maturakavi’s question can be translated as: how does the embodied soul subsist? Nammālvār’s response is interpreted variously to mean: in an earthly body, it will subsist on food. Alternatively, it can read as: abiding in god, it (the ātman) will subsist on god (Carman and Narayanan, The Tamil Veda, p. 18).
6. This story has been adapted from the earliest recorded version in the Maṇipravāḷa Guruparamparaprabhāvam 6000 (c. thirteenth century). By the time the Sanskrit Divyasūricaritam is composed by Garuḍavāhana Paṇḍita some two centuries later, Nammālvār’s consequence has grown enormously. In this latter text, Nammālvār plays a crucial role in Āṇṭāḷ’s wedding to Viṣṇu, organizing and conducting the ceremony at Alvar Tirunagari. For further discussion of Āṇṭāḷ’s story in the Divyasūricaritam and Nammālvār’s place in it, see Venkatesan, ‘A Different Kind of Āṇṭāḷ Story’.
7. Nammālvar’s return is enacted at the Annual Festival of Recitation in December at the Viṣṇu temple in Srirangam. A representative of the Śrīvaiṣṇava community recites Rāmānuja’s Śaraṇāgati Gadya and requests the return of Nammālvār to earth. Viṣṇu accedes to the request (Narayanan, Vernacular Veda, pp. 128–29).
Nammālvār’s return to serve on earth echoes the Buddhist concept of the Boddhisattva, who defers his own enlightenment until all sentient beings achieve that same exalted state. Nammālvār’s hagiography itself has clear Buddhistic elements: Nammālvār crawling to the tree right after birth resonates with the Buddha’s first seven steps after birth, as does his meditation under the tamarind tree, which is itself evocative of the Bodhi tree. Nammālvār’s hagiography also is suggestive of the strengthening alliance between Brahmins and agricultural castes, and one crucial to establishing the ecstatic temple-based theistic traditions of Viṣṇu and Śiva in south India.
8. The story of Nāthamuni’s rediscovery of the Tiruvāymoli is recorded in the Maṇipravāḷa Guruparamparaprabhāvam 6000. It is Nāthamuni who is said to have first referred to this text as the Tamil Veda in a short praise poem that he composed in its honour (Carman and Narayanan, The Tamil Veda, pp. 3–6).
9. In Kaṇṇinun Ciru Tāmpu, Maturakavi praises Śaṭhakōpan as Kurukūr nampi (Kurukūr’s lord) in verses 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10 and 11, as en nampi (my lord) in verses 4 and 9, as deva-pirān (divine master) in verse 3 and as Kārimārappirān (Master who is Kārimāran) in 7 and as em-pirān (my master) in 6.
10. The underlying assumption within traditional Śrīvaiṣṇava discourse is that the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is among the earliest of the Purāṇas, and predates the lives of the ālvārs by centuries. The so-called prophecy recorded in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is as follows: ‘In the beginning of Kaliyuga persons exclusively devoted to Nārāyaṇa and endowed with spiritual knowledge will be born here and there but in large numbers in the land of the Drāviḍas where flow the rivers Tāmpraparṇī, Kṛtamālā (Vaigai), Payasvinī (Pālār), the holy Kāverī and the Mahānadī (Periyār) which runs westwards.’ Bhāgavata Purāṇa XI.5, 38–40, translated by Chari, in Philosophy and Theistic Mysticism, pp. 11–12.
11. Govindacharya, Holy Lives of the Azhvars, p. 198.
12. Śrīvaiṣṇava hagiography tells us that Nāthamuni collected and compiled the ālvār poems, which were lost and then recovered through his devotion to Nammālvār. While elements of the narrative are clearly exaggerated, there is no reason to question the veracity of the narrative’s major contours. In that story, Nāthamuni encounters a wandering band of musicians singing a small portion of the Tiruvāymoli. Moved by the beauty of the text, he asks them to sing more only to be disappointed by their lack of knowledge. He then travels to another Vaiṣṇava sthala, where he is told by Parāṅkuśa Dāsan, Maturakavi’s disciple, to appeal to Nammālvār by reciting Maturakavi’s text. Eventually, Nammālvār appears before him, and reveals not only the Tiruvāymoli but the entire corpus of the Divya Prabandham. It is quite likely that the ālvār songs were, if not lost, at least not in active circulation. Given the stress on performance in the poems themselves, it is equally possible that the poems were transmitted by bands of wandering musicians. As N. Jagadeesan points out, the Śrīvaiṣṇava saṁpradāyas seem to have been concerned with establishing neat lines of succession, which the above story takes great pains to demonstrate. Nāthamuni is enfolded into the direct line of lineal descent through Parāṅkuśa Dāsan who was Maturakavi’s stud
ent. But the hagiography also tells us that Nāthamuni is a direct disciple of Nammālvār as he receives the text(s) directly from the ālvār (Jagadeesan, History of Sri Vaishnavism in the Tamil Country, p. 41). See the discussion of aṁśa theory in relation to Āṇṭāḷ in Venkatesan, Āṇṭāḷ and Her Magic Mirror. The process of canonization, particularly that of the Tiruvāymoli as Drāviḍa Veda, was no doubt an important step in canonizing the ālvārs as a whole. This process went hand in hand with the careful production of commentaries beginning with Nammālvār’s magnum opus. For a succinct discussion of the Tiruvāymoli as the Tamil Veda see Carman and Narayanan, The Tamil Veda, pp. 4–7.
13. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, pp. 267–68. Vedānta Deśika provides a list in his Prabandhasāram, which differs from the one in the Rāmānuja Nūrrantāti. Krishnaswami Aiyankar points out that the order of Vedānta Deśika’s list of ālvārs must replicate contemporary chronology, one that is reflected in the Guruparamparaprābhavams (the major Śrīvaiṣṇava hagiographies) that were already in circulation (Aiyangar, Early History of Vaishnavism, pp. 37–41).
14. The Rāmānuja Nūrrantāti 7 provides the list, which is as follows: Poykai, Pūtam, Pēy, Tiruppaṇālvār, Tirumalicai, Toṇṭaraṭippoṭi, Kulaśekara, Periyālvār, Āṇṭāḷ, Tirumaṅkai.
15. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, p. 153.
16. Hardy offers a typically comprehensive survey of the question of dating Nammālvār (Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, pp. 261–69).
17. Rao, Sir Subrahmanya Ayyar Lectures, p. 18. Gopinatha Rao describes finding the two stone inscriptions—one in Tamil and the other in Sanskrit—at Anamalai in 1906.
18. Ibid., pp. 18–21. Rao also uses the astronomical data of the Guruparamparaprabhāvams to yield a date of 798 CE for Nammālvār’s birth.
19. Sastri, A History of South India, p. 172.
20. Pillai, History of Tamil Language, pp. 129–31.
21. Ibid., p. 132.
22. Aiyangar, Early History of Vaishnavism, pp. 53–55.
23. Ibid., p. 84, fn. 1. Here, Aiyangar produces Tiruviruttam 94 as evidence in support of this claim.
24. Ramanujam, History of Vaishnavism, pp. 239–41.
25. Ibid., p. 242.
26. Nagaswamy, ‘A New Pandya Record and the Dates of Nayanmars and Alvars’.
27. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, pp. 308–09.
28. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, p. 161.
29. Some editions of the Nālāyira Divya Prabandham list the Iyarpā as constituting the third thousand of the text, with the 1100 verses of the Tiruvāymoli as the final book. In other editions, the order is switched, and the Tiruvāymoli makes up the third thousand, while the Iyarpā acts as the collection’s conclusion. Regardless of where the Iyarpā is placed, the Tiruviruttam always follows the four compositions of the first four ālvār, and precedes Nammālvār’s remaining two compositions, the Tiruvaciriyam (seven verses) and Periya Tiruvantāti (eighty-seven verses).
30. Hardy divides the Divya Prabandham into three kinds of poetic material. The first group is constituted of antātis in veṇpā metre, the second is the Tirumoli, which contains emotional material, and the third division is made up of experimental poems. Although the Tiruviruttam replaces the veṇpā with the viruttam metre, he still regards it a conventional work experimenting with akattiṇai themes (Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, pp. 270–71).
31. Appar also composes a poem called the Tiruviruttam (Appar Tēvāram, 4.80–4.113), named on account of its use of the viruttam metre. In the Tēvāram it is also referred to as kattaḷaikkalitturai. Many of the verses from Appar’s Tiruviruttam have been lost. The Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva Tiruviruttams have little in common in terms of content. Appar’s poem is not a love poem. But as bhakti poems, both works share an ethos of rich imagery, thick descriptions (4.80 is an extravagant foot-to-head description of a dancing Śiva) and desperate longing for divine grace. For a detailed discussion of the use of viruttam in the Tēvāram see Peterson, Poems to Śiva, pp. 61–67.
32. Peterson, Poems to Śiva, pp. 64–67.
33. One can map the entire Tiruviruttam in this fashion, noting the ways in which the antāti indexes shifts in ideas, tones or themes.
34. Nammālvār uses the word mey (truth, reality, soul) to describe Viṣṇu’s form. But the use of mey in the phrase mey ninru kēṭṭu-aruḷāy is ambiguous. In my translation, I have read it allusively. Partly I have done this to connect the first verse to the penultimate one (99) in which the poet claims to have ‘seen’ the truth. Commentarial tradition suggests two possible ways to read mey ninru … The first suggests taking it as applying to Viṣṇuas meymaiyōṭu ninru (standing truthfully or in his natural state). The second reads mey with viṇṇappam, as in atiyēn ceyyum mey viṇṇappam (the truthful petition/plea made by a servant). Given the stress the Tiruviruttam places on seeing and enjoying god in an embodied form—the poem is full of lush, extravagant descriptions of Viṣṇu’s eyes, the colour of his form and his many attributes—it is not so farfetched that a desire for a vision of an embodied divinity is reflected in the poem’s opening lines.
35. Carman and Narayanan ask us to take seriously the claims Nammālvār makes about physical union with Viṣṇu. A careful and sustained reading of the metaphor of swallowing in the Tiruvāymoli leads them to conclude that ‘God’s inclusion and pervasion of the universe and the poet is then the fundamental and final reality; and this union is experienced by Nammālvar in the flesh, with full-blooded passion’ (Carman and Narayanan, The Tamil Veda, p. 179).
36. A paraphrase of Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s commentary for Tiruviruttam 20 can be found in Part III.
37. Clooney and Venkatesan (trans.), Tiruvāymoli.
38. Piḷḷai, Tiruviruttam Vyākhyānam, p. 21.
39. Ibid., pp. 53–56.
40. Takahashi, Poetry and Poetics, pp. 71–72.
41. Piḷḷai, Tiruviruttam Vyākhyānam, pp. 53–56.
42. Ibid., p. 56.
43. Songs of Experience (Norman Cutler), and the seminal, jointly authored paper by A.K. Ramanujan and Norman Cutler, ‘From Classicism to Bhakti’, map the specific transformations between the two poetic traditions. Indira Peterson’s Poems to Śiva analyses the Śaiva Tēvāram poets’ debt to the antecedent literary tradition, while Friedhelm Hardy does the same for the ālvār poets in Viraha-Bhakti.
44. See Tiruvāymoli X.3.5 for an excellent example of Nammālvār’s handling of Caṭkam themes, or even Tiruviruttam 68 for a deft reworking of a famous Caṅkam poem. The latter example has been discussed by A.K. Ramanujan in his essay ‘Where Mirrors Are Windows’.
45. Parthasarathy (trans.), The Tale of an Anklet. p. 111.
46. Takahashi, Poetry and Poetics, p. 63. Martha Selby discusses the significance of the middle placement of pālai in the usual listing of the aintiṇai (five landscapes). See Selby, ‘Dialogues of Space, Desire, and Gender’, p. 26.
47. For a discussion of how the commentator Periyavāccān Piḷḷai handles this verse, see Venkatesan, ‘Double the Pleasure’.
48. Selby, Tamil Love Poetry, p. 13.
49. For example, you may have a patikam on Tillai in Appar Tēvāram V.1 or a tirumoli on the salvific potential of the sacred name Nārāyaṇa (Periya Tirumoli I.1) by Tirumaṅkai.
50. Selby, Tamil Love Poetry, p. 13. One could map the Tiruviruttam in a similar fashion, beginning with the verses of lament and distress that end in the comforting promise of perpetual union with Viṣṇu.
51. Takahashi points out that the consensus of modern scholars is that ‘the schematic treatment of solitary situations as a narrative sequence’ originated in Iraiyanār Akapporuḷ and reached completion in the kōvais (Takahashi, Poetry and Poetics, p. 256).
52. Ibid., p. 38.
53. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, pp. 324–25. Hardy suggests that the Tiruviruttam was the inspiration for the Tirukkōvaiyār because of the similar manner in which Śiva and Viṣṇu function in the two poems. That is, in the way the Tiruviruttam’s entire emotional conten
t refers to Viṣṇu (as the karu), the Tirukkōvaiyār is moulded such that its emotional referent is Śiva.
54. Vaiyapuri Pillai points to linguistic similarities between the Tiruvācakam and Tiruvāymoli, particularly in regard to the titles of the respective texts. He also sees the Tiruviruttam and Tirukkōvaiyār as a pair (Pillai, History of Tamil Language, p. 132).
55. Cutler, ‘Four Spatial Realms in Tirukkōvaiyār’, p. 55. Depending on whether you date Nammālvār to the late eighth or early to mid ninth century, the two poets were separated by around fifty to seventy-five years.
56. Takahashi, Poetry and Poetics, pp. 39–40.
57. Venugopal charts and identifies ten kiḷavi verses for the Tiruviruttam (Venugopal, Tiruvirttamum Tirukkōvaiyārum, pp. 62–64).
58. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, p. 320.
59. Verses 25, 54 and 80 refer to Viṣṇu as king (kon). She refers to him as master in verse 1 (talaivā, leader), 50 (nāyakan, hero), 53 (talaimakan, head), 59 (nāṭan, lord of the place, nāṭu), 61 (nāyakan), 77 (pirān, lord), 79 (nātan). It is worth noting that the poet deliberately uses words that invoke both a heroic and poetic/dramatic persona: talaivā, nāyakan, talaimakan and nāṭan is the case in point.
60. Verses 5, 25 and 33 refer to the bending of the Viṣṇu’s sceptre on account of his injustice towards the girl.
61. A word like ‘master’ is often used in both akam and puram contexts. In both cases it evokes the protective, sheltering quality shared by the anonymous hero of the akam poems and the king of the puram world. Martha Selby illustrates the complementarity of akam and puram as it coalesces around a figure like the akam hero or the puram king. See Selby, ‘Dialogues of Space, Desire, and Gender’, pp. 21–24.
62. In Viraha-Bhakti, Friedhelm Hardy provides a close reading of the symbolic system of the Tiruviruttam through the lens of Caṭkam poetry. Even as he says that the ‘emotional relationship between the (poetic) man and woman … is made the content of the Ālvār’s “communication”’ (p. 320), he is quick to assert that the hero and heroine do not refer to either Viṣṇu or the ālvār. To do so would destroy the poem’s poetic structure (p. 324). I would argue that the poem functions by encouraging the reader to oscillate between the two poles of persona and poet, that the poem’s many meanings are produced through the dialectical relationships engendered by bringing its multiple, concentric layers into dialogue.