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Re: Andal's greatness - Smt Vathsala Srinivasan's Question

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TCA Venkatesan • November 22, 2002 


Sri:
Srimathe Ramanujaya Nama:

Dear BhAgavatas,

There is not one or two things that can be said to show
Andal's greatness. One can talk about it for a long time
and still will not be done.

AdiyEn will take up just a couple of things to show it.

Manavala Mamunigal shows why Andal is so great in another
pasuram of Upadesaraththinamalai itself. In it Swami
says "kunRAtha vAzhvAna vaikuntha vAn bOganthannai
igazhnthu, emakkAkavanRO ingu ANdAl avathariththAL".
She descended from Sri Vaikunta leaving Him and the
bhOgyam of being with Him for our sake. It is not
amazing that He would occasionally descend and walk
amongst us to save us. Greater than that is that She
would leave Him and be born in this world and live as
one of us and show us the path to reach Him.

Coming to the question of directly comparing to Azhvars,
our acharyas have done this for us. Amongst the Azhvars
Nammazhvar and Thirumangai Azhvar are very unique and
great. They both take on Nayika bhAvam as Parangusa
Nayaki and Parakala Nayaki in many of their pasurams
and express their yearning for the Lord. While they
had to take on nAyika bhAvam, Andal did not have to
do any such thing. Nayika bhAvam came naturally to her.

She could have stopped at just that. But her greatness
lies in the fact that she took on an even greater bhAvam 
- that of the gOpikas. The greatness of the gOpikas has
been established by our acharyas in many places, so
adiyEn will not go into that in this post. AdiyEn will
simply point that the fact that Andal took on this role 
alone is sufficient proof of their greatness.

By the way, it is the way of acharyas to say that this
Azhvar or Acharya or avatar of the Lord is the greatest 
and so on. This does not mean that the other 
azhvars/acharyas/avatars are lower. Because the same 
acharya would turn around and praise the greatness of 
another azhvar/acharya/avatar and so on. One has to take 
the nahi nindA nyAya in these cases.

adiyEn madhurakavi dAsan
TCA Venkatesan

--- Vathsala Srinivasan 
wrote:
> Pranams to all,
> 
> I was going thru the Recent Messages and found an
> interesting discussion for thirupavai pasuram(chirram
> chirukale). In one of the postings, one Mr Nanmaaran has
> referred about manavala mamuni's verse about andal as
> "azhwarkaL than cheyalai vinji nirkum thanmaiyinaal"..Can
> anyone explain about how andal excelled over other alwars
> as referred by manavala mamuni? 
> 
> With Regards,
> 
> Vathsala.
> 

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