A Hundred Measures of Time

by Nammalwar

  63. Cutler, Songs of Experience, p. 93. The dual ‘allegorical’ meaning is similar to the Śrīvaiṣṇava interpretation of the text along the lines of anyāpadeśa and svāpadeśa.

  64. The legend of the composition of the Tirukkōvaiyār places Śiva in the role of both patron and audience. The story is recorded in the Tiruvātuvūr Purāṇam, a fifteenth-century Tamil hagiography about Māṇikkavācakar. Śiva appears before Māṇikkavācakar and asks him to compose a kōvai. The poet does so and the god writes it down. Then Śiva disappears, only to reappear and sing the kōvai to his gathered devotees. David Shulman provides a detailed analysis of this narrative in ‘Tirukkovaiyār: Downstream into God’, pp. 135–39.

  65. Cutler, Songs of Experience, p. 153.

  66. Shulman, ‘Tirukkovaiyār: Downstream into God’, p. 139.

  67. Ibid., pp. 139–41.

  68. Vasu Renganathan provides a comprehensive survey of similes used in Caṭkam poetry in an unpublished paper, ‘The Element of Beauty and the Use of Similes in Tamil Poetics’. I wish to thank him for sharing his work with me. A.K. Ramanujan’s essay ‘Towards an Anthology of City Images’ also provides a useful typological model on the descriptions of cities in Sanskrit and Tamil literary texts.

  69. Cutler, Songs of Experience, p. 158.

  70. Cutler, ‘Four Spatial Realms in Tirukkōvaiyār’, p. 49.

  71. Trawick, ‘Ambiguity in the Oral Exegesis of a Sacred Text’, p. 316.

  72. See Venkatesan, The Secret Garland for a detailed discussion of space in the Tiruppāvai and Nācciyār Tirumoli.

  73. Damodaran, Ācārya Hṛdayam: A Critical Study, pp. 1–2.

  74. He is equally concerned with the poems’ symbolism drawing elaborate concordances for flowers, bees, birds, insects and characters. Some of these symbolic associations are familiar—the haṁsa bird’s ability to separate milk from water—while others may be more specific to the Śrīvaiṣṇava traditions—the peacocks’ call as the sound of Viṣṇu’s name. See G. Damodaran’s careful explication and charts for the various concordances (Ācārya Hṛdayam: A Critical Study, pp. 58–82).

  75. See Nāyanār, Ācārya Hṛdayam, pp. 93–95. Also see Damodaran, Ācārya Hṛdayam: A Critical Study for a detailed discussion of the text. Chapter 5 (pp. 58–82) provides an exhaustive discussion of the Ācārya Hṛdayam’s explication of Nammālvār’s female characters.

  76. Hopkins, ‘“I Walk Weeping in Pangs of a Mother’s Torment for Her Children”’, p. 53.

  77. Pandian, Crooked Stalks, p. 216.

  78. Both Isabelle Clark-Decès and Anand Pandian in their analyses of oppu point out the significance of the comparative element in Tamil lament songs, although they differ in their interpretation of what such comparisons are meant to achieve.

  79. Tamil laments generally fall under the broad category of folk songs performed by women of the lower castes during funerals. They are part of a large complex of Tamil mortuary rituals, during which women gather to vent and lament together. Isabelle Clark-Decès’s superb anthropological study of Tamil crying songs finds the concept of kurai, or lack/inadequacy, the fundamental building block of the oppu. That is, women lament not for the dead or their kin, but for themselves: using the particular instance of death to speak of the ideal, of the general. This is kurai, a lack, a gap, the sense of being left behind. The greater the kurai, the more plaintive is the lament. And greater the sense of disquiet, the more affective is the lament. Both lack and disquiet—kurai and aṅkalāyppu—are predicated on comparison and evaluation. But despite all these rhetorical gestures towards sympathy, Clark-Decès sees women’s laments primarily as an individual expression, although these voices may dissolve into a ‘de-centered collage of voices’ (Clark-Decès, No One Cries for the Dead, p. 9). Anand Pandian, in contrast, sees the oppu as living up to its name. For him, it is not so much kurai or aṅkalāyppu that makes for an effective lament. It is the nature of the self itself, what he terms the ‘aqueous self’. Thus, within the framework of the aqueous self, of the iramāna manam, the lament obliterates the ‘boundaries between self and other; between self and landscape, and ultimately between past and present’ (Pandian, Crooked Stalks, p. 208).

  80. Hopkins, ‘“I Walk Weeping in Pangs of a Mother’s Torment for Her Children”’, p. 75.

  81. The exact phrase in this verse is en colli pulampuvanē, which in a literal translation would read as ‘what can I say and lament?’.

  82. In the Tiruviruttam, the hero too offers up some laments. Two striking verses that invoke water imagery and unbound emotion are Tiruviruttam 50 and 57. In both of these verses, particularly in 57, the hero is subject to those unruly, un-dammed emotions that one often attributes to the heroine. As he says in a rare kind of confessional, ‘I am like the ocean with its crashing waves / giving up its nectar / when Kaṇṇan churned it with his mountain.’ In many of the hero verses, it is the heroine who is described as brimming with an overflow of emotion: her eyes darting like fish, her tears spilling from eyes like pearls. It is this overflow of emotion that slays him and attracts him (Tiruviruttam 9). This is the wealth that he treasures (Tiruviruttam 11).

  83. Patton and Hawley, introduction to Holy Tears, p. 1.

  84. This aqueous manam, in Tamil, the īramānā manam (literally, moist/wet heart-mind) is always set in opposition to the stone-hearted one (kal-manacu). One heart is fluid, malleable, unbound, while the other is rigid, bound and incapable of transformation. It is this properly aqueous self that can cultivate sympathy as a virtue (Pandian, Crooked Stalks, pp. 181–83).

  85. Shulman, ‘Embracing the Subject’, p. 83.

  86. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, p. 317.

  87. Clooney, ‘“I Created Land and Sea”’, p. 244.

  88. Ibid., pp. 239–41.

  89. Ibid., pp. 242–44.

  90. Ibid., p. 247.

  91. Clooney and Venkatesan (trans.), Tiruvāymoli.

  92. This phrase en colli nirpan (what can I say?) is the antāti that links VII.9.1 and VII.9.2, drawing attention to its significance. The content of intermingling speech and speakers in VII.9.2 is set between these two speech acts: the poet’s apparent speechlessness (en colli nirpan) and god’s speech (en mun collum—he who speaks before me).

  In Piḷḷai’s interpretation of this decad (VII.9), the verses are born from the joy the poet experiences from his union with Viṣṇu, during which he speaks through him. In the commentary for this verse, Piḷḷai tells us that Viṣṇu makes Nammālvār his instrument to sing the Tiruvāymoli in the same way that he is the soul of the other deities through whom he manages the creation and destruction of the world. John Carman and Vasudha Narayanan provide the commentary for all eleven verses in this decad (The Tamil Veda, pp. 234–38).

  93. Shulman, ‘Embracing the Subject’, pp. 86–87.

  94. Clooney, ‘“I Created Land and Sea”’, pp. 239–40.

  95. Nabokov, Religion against the Self, pp. 31–32.

  96. Carman and Narayanan, The Tamil Veda, pp. 165–75.

  97. For example, Tiruviruttam 20 refers to the swallowing of the worlds, 21 to butter eating (both of which are the first instances that the particular myth is alluded to in the poem). In the verses of the 50s set of the Tiruviruttam, all three myths appear in approximate closeness. Verses 51 and 52 allude to the churning of the ocean, 54 to the stealing of butter and 56 to the swallowing of the worlds. There is only one time when two of these myths occur together. This is in Tiruviruttam 91 where the pralaya myth and butter eating are juxtaposed. See Appendix 3 for the Index of Myths in the Tiruviruttam.

  98. This is an apt phrase that Frank Clooney uses to describe the god-consciousness experienced by the girl in Tiruvāymoli V.6 (Clooney, ‘“I Created Land and Sea”’, pp. 239–40).

  99. Clooney, Seeing through Texts.

  100. Friedhelm Hardy and A.K. Ramanujan are the best representatives of this position, seeing commentarial interventions as technical and scholastic. Francis Clooney provides a nuanced c
orrective to this position through a careful and considered reading of decads from the Tiruvāymoli. See Clooney, ‘“I Created Land and Sea”’ and ‘Nammālvār’s Glorious Tiruvallavāl’ for two important case studies. My readings and approach to Śrīvaiṣṇava commentary owe much to Frank Clooney’s early work.

  101. Frank Clooney analyses the use of Sanskrit scriptural sources in the commentaries on the Tiruvāymoli in ‘Nammālvār’s Glorious Tiruvallavāl’. My concern is primarily with the commentators’ use of Tamil ālvār sources.

  102. The Ācārya Hṛdayam is mainly concerned with Nammālvār (Tiruvāymoli), although the works of the other ālvār are also quoted. This creates the impression that the ālvār speak with one voice, but that voice(s) is subsumed into that of Nammālvār’s. In a traditional metaphor, Nammālvār is seen as the body (Vedas) and the works of the other ālvār are the limbs (Vedāṅgas). See Damodaran, Ācārya Hṛdayam: A Critical Study, p. 1.

  103. Ramanujan, ‘Afterword’, Hymns for the Drowning, p. 151.

  104. Shulman, ‘Tirukkovaiyār: Downstream into God’, p. 133.

  105. Their very names evoke notions of fluidity and disembodiment. Poykai’s name means pond, Pēy means ghost, and Pūtam is a ghoul.

  106. Vasudha Narayanan uses the meeting of the first three ālvār and their resulting poems as a metaphor for the spreading of bhakti in Tamil country (Narayanan, ‘“With the Earth as a Lamp and the Sun as the Flame”: Lighting Devotion in South India’).

  107. Cutler, Songs of Experience, p. 125.

  108. Ibid., p. 127.

  109. Ibid., p. 130.

  110. For a discussion of the Śrīvaiṣṇava concept of anubhava see Hopkins, Singing the Body of God and ‘Extravagant Beholding’, and Venkatesan, The Secret Garland, pp. 31–33.

  111. This is the succinct situational summation presented by Piḷḷai for Tiruviruttam 68.

  112. The division of the commentarial section is adapted from Venkatesan, ‘Double the Pleasure’. Francis Clooney also provides a step-by-step anatomy of a commentary in his ‘Nammālvār’s Glorious Tiruvallavāl’.

  113. Piḷḷai, Tiruviruttam Vyākhyānam, pp. 160–61.

  114. I offer paraphrases of Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s commentary to six verses from the Tiruviruttam. These can be found in Part III.

  115. A.K. Ramanujan discusses Tiruviruttam 68 and its Caṭkam parallel to Kuruntokai 66 in his article ‘Where Mirrors Are Windows’.

  116. Piḷḷai, Tiruviruttam Vyākhyānam, pp. 357–59.

  117. Selby, Tamil Love Poetry, p. 14.

  118. Ibid., p. 13.

  119. J.S.M. Hooper graduated from Oxford University (Corpus Christi College) with an MA. In his preface to Bible Translation in India, Pakistan and Ceylon (1938) he indicates that he arrived in India in 1905. He served as the principal of Wesley College of Madras, a fact he notes in the title page of Hymns of the Ālvārs. He was active in Christian missionary societies, appointed to the General Committee of the Indian Literature Fund founded in 1920. Hooper was involved in other ways as well, serving as the general secretary in India of the British and Foreign Bible Society (Proceedings of the 5th Meeting of the National Christian Council, Nagpur, 31 December 1932–4 January 1933, p. 31). By 1946, he was well known for having established the Bible Society of India and Ceylon, an achievement noted in the Proceedings of the 10th Annual Meeting of the National Christian Council, Nagpur, p. 41. He was also instrumental in steering the Church Union Movement along with Dr J.J. Banninga (1875–1963) from 1920 until 1947 through a series of negotiations that eventually led to the formation of the Church of South India (Newbigin, The Reunion of the Church, p. 1). Towards this end, Hooper also worked closely with Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) in his capacity as the British Methodist Secretary of the Joint Committee of the Church union in south India (Wainwright, Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life, p. 85). Between 1934 and 1947, J.S.M. Hooper served as the editor of a quarterly, Church Union News and Views, which was founded in 1930. This quarterly was an important vehicle that published articles by Indian Christians and British missionaries on the move towards Church union. In addition, Hooper and his co-editor J.J. Banninga (editor, 1930–33) published several editorials on the history of the negotiations towards Church union (Sundkler, Church of South India, p. 201). Furthermore, Hooper worked closely with Newbigin and Bishop V.S. Azariah (1874–1945), two important figures in the move towards Church union, in drafting the Service of Inauguration that would take place on 27 September 1947 at St George’s Cathedral, Madras (Wainwright, op. cit., p. 272). Given his crucial role as ‘pilot of South Indian Union’ as Sundkler characterized it (op. cit., p. 339), it is no surprise that this Convener of the Joint Committee of the union was honoured for his role in the unification by being invited to deliver the inaugural sermon at St George’s Cathedral in Madras on 27 September 1947, an event attended by close to 3000 people (Graham, ‘The Inauguration of the Church of South India’, pp. 50–51). Even after ecclesiastical union was achieved in 1947, Hooper continued to wield considerable power in his capacity as the Convener of the Continuation Committee as the Church of South India moved towards administrative union (Sundkler, op. cit., p. 344). Hooper was the author of several works, including what appears to be his first work, The Approach to the Gospel (SCM Press, 1910). This was followed by Hymns of the Ālvārs and The Bible in India with a Chapter on Ceylon.

  120. The Heritage of India Series began in 1915. The first publication was K.J. Saunders’s The Heart of Buddhism. Between 1915 and 1923, the year of Farquhar’s departure from India, sixteen books on a wide range of topics were published under its banner. These included works on Indian painting (1918), the songs of the Maratha poets (1920), verses from the Ṛg Veda (1922), on Indian coins (1922), poems by Indian women (1923) and on classical Sanskrit literature (1923). See Sharpe, Not to Destroy But to Fulfil, p. 380.

  121. J.N. Farquhar, quoted in Sharpe, Not to Destroy but to Fulfil, p. 308.

  122. ‘Editorial Preface’ to Kingsbury and Phillips, Hymns of the Tamil Śaivite Saints. No page number.

  123. Ibid.

  124. Sharpe, Not to Destroy but to Fulfil, p. 380.

  125. Sundkler, Church of South India, p. 134.

  126. J.N. Farquhar quoted in Sharpe, Not to Destroy but to Fulfil, p. 305.

  127. Ibid.

  128. Proceedings of the 5th Meeting of the National Christian Council, Nagpur, p. vii.

  129. Sharpe, Not to Destroy but to Fulfil, pp. 304–05. F. Kingsbury, who was also involved in the Church Union Movement, was suspended from the ministry in 1926 for making statements that were seen as contrary to Church orthodoxy. It took several years before he was reinstated (Sundkler, Church of South India, p. 173).

  130. Hooper, preface to Hymns of the Ālvārs. Farquhar died on 17 July 1929. Hymns of the Ālvārs must have been published in early 1929 for Hooper does not mention Dr Farquhar’s passing in his preface or introduction. His acknowledgement of Farquhar’s contribution in the preface gives every impression that Farquhar was still alive at the time of publication. By 1921 Hooper had certainly already been commissioned to undertake the translation of the ālvār poets, and the title is listed as a forthcoming/proposed work under the category of ‘Vernacular Literature’ in Kingsbury and Phillips, Hymns of the Tamil Śaivite Saints, p. ii.

  131. Richards, review of The Heritage of India Series: Hymns of the Ālvārs by J.S.M. Hooper, p. 591.

  132. Hooper appears to rely mainly on Farquhar’s dating. See, for instance, his discussion of the dating of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa in introduction to Hymns of the Ālvārs, pp. 18–19.

  133. Hooper, Hymns of the Ālvārs, pp. 19–20. In all of this, Hooper’s translation follows the pattern of Kingsbury and Phillips’s Hymns of the Tamil Śaivite Saints. Here too the two translators provide bronze images of the four saints translated (Appar, Campantar, Cuntarar and Māṇikkavācakar), while cautioning the reader that the images are not portraits but imaginative renderings for worship. Ho
oper’s offering does pale in comparison to the work produced by Kingsbury and Phillips. Although their introduction is brief and their translation not that much better than Hooper’s, they are attentive to issues of iconography and the symbolism of the major Śaiva myths. The difference in quality may well have to do with the already established tradition of scholarship on Tamil Śaivism, reaching a zenith in G.U. Pope’s English translation of Māṇikkavācakar’s Tiruvācakam (1900). Tamil Vaiṣṇavism in comparison had suffered. Hooper’s English translation of selections from the Divya Prabandham may well have been the first such effort.

  134. Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, p. 318.

  135. See Clooney, Seeing through Texts, and Carman and Narayanan, The Tamil Veda, for theoretically interesting ways of reclaiming the Śrīvaiṣṇava commentarial traditions.

  136. Hooper, Hymns of the Ālvārs, p. 60.

  137. Hooper, preface to Hymns of the Ālvārs, p. i.

  138. Hardy suggests that Hooper simply avoids those verses that are overtly erotic. A careful survey of the translation does not support this conclusion (Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti, pp. 318–19).

  139. Hooper, Hymns of the Ālvārs, p. 58.

  140. Ibid., p. 59.

  141. Ibid., p. 61.

  142. Nandakumar, Nammālvār’s ‘Tiruviruttam’, p. 32.

  143. Ibid., p. 17.

  144. Ramanujan, introduction to Hymns for the Drowning, p. xv.

  145. Ramanujan, ‘Where Mirrors Are Windows’. Also see Ramanujan, ‘Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?’ for further discussion on similar issues.

  146. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning, p. 63.