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Re: Murugan and thirumangai aazhvaar

From the Bhakti List Archives

Badrinarayanan Seshadri • December 28, 1995 


K. Srinivasan (srini@ireq.ca) wrote:

* Badri quotes:
* Elsewhere, (in the book "The smile of Murugan - On Tamil
* literature of South India by K.Zvelebil, pp 229) I saw the
* following footnote:
* 
*      A strange story (in Kuruparampara pirapavam, ed.
*      K.Kirusnamacariyar, 1909) maintains that Civavakkiyar the
*      siddha converted to Vaisnavism and became one of the
*      greatest Vaisnava poets under the name Tirumalicai
*      Alvar.
* 
* Here is some more food for thought.

I am not sure if KS is making fun of me or K.Zvelebil or
K.Kirusnamacariyar or the person(s) who wrote the Guruparampara
Prabhavam:-)

But, in any case, it is easy to disprove the following claim!

'kali yuga varadhan' is not a name given to Murugan (especially
the 'varadhan' part. In any case, kaliyan & kali yuga varadhan
have nothing in common meaningwise. Who is the celestial person
who married Thirumangai? 

====

The Guruparampara Prabhavam mentions that thiru mazhisai
aazhvaar was born about 30,000 years (??) before, sometimes in
the Dvapara Yuga.

Claims like this do not stand rigorous tests as the language
style employed in the verses proves things otherwise.

There is a general tendency among Indians to make things old
and hoary so as to make it "more respectable"! What is
important is the message itself and not when it was written
down or in what language it was written down.

Scholars like PT Srinivasa Aiyengar (who is a Tamilologist)
believe that the 12 aazhvaars had a continuous tradition going
down all the way up to Sriman Naadhamuni. PTS believes that
Nammaazhvaar directly taught Naadhamuni and Nammaazhvaar
himself was a student of Thiru Mangai aazhvaar.

Naadhamuni might have learnt about Nammazhvaar through the
paasuram he heard in thirukkudandhai and went in search of him,
found him in kurukoor and learnt from him all the paasurams (or
what was extant at that time) directly.

Guruparampara Prabhavam (which is quite sectarian as can be
witnessed from the two versions, one each for VK & TK) contain
a little real history and rest all nonsensical myths and should
be taken with pounds of salt.

--badri

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S.Badrinarayanan 
Graduate Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University
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