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Re: chitranchiru kaale!!

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Lakshmi Narasimhan Venkatapathy • September 25, 2002 


Srimathe Ramanujaya Namaha
Dear Sri Vaishnavas,
Looks like the comments on the chitranchiru kaale paasuram has gone through a lot of reviews:) With my limited knowledge of Tamil, I would like to add few cents worth and learned scholars please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
I would like to take up two points:  
a) Why "Chittram sriu kaale vandhunnai sevitthu" cannot refer to Perumal's lotus feet -  
Let us read the first two lines of the pasuram in its entirty. First line says "Chittram sirukaale vandhunnai sevitthu". If we assume Sri Aandal addresses Perumal's lotus feet then let us read the next line, "Un potramaraye potrum porul kelai" - this would mean she is telling the perumal's thiruvadi that she has come to seek it's thiruvadi? Thiruvadi's thiruvadi? How could it be? We cannot interpret pasurams word by word or line by line right? We should interpret them based on the entirty. If I am addressing a person unless I complete the conversation I cannot address someone else in between. Andal wouldn't say "hey lotus feet I came and worshipped you" and then immediately say "hey lord! all that I need is your lotus feet". In the whole of the pasuram she is addressing only the lord and hence even through our creativity we CANNOT say "Chitram siru kale" means perumal's lotus feet. In some pasurams(nacchiyar thirumozhi) Sri Andal addresses manmathan, the clouds and her friends, and if you look into the pasur

b) "Why then suddenly a third person is introduced and that too in masculine gender, rather than feminine in the line 'IRRaip paRai koLvaan'"?
It is a deceptive third person i.e it is the first person in disguise - grammatically. I could explain this in tamil very well but I will try my best to explain it in english(I will use tamil and english in a combined fashion, I hope I wouldn't confuse anyone). Let me take an example - in tamil, we sometimes talk this way - assume we are talking to a baby named krishnan and we are requesting him to eat quickly - we say "krishnan samatthu paiyan da. seekkiram saappiduvane":) But the whole of the statement will be addressed to the krishnan only. In english it is some thing equivalent to telling the baby to himself "hey I heard that krishnan is a very good baby. Wouldn't you eat fast"? I know the english translation sounds funny but I have no better way of telling it. It is a LITERAL translation of its Tamil counterpart. Tamilians can understand this pretty easily I guess. So, there is no third person, "Irrai parai kolvan andru kaan Govindha" is addressed to Govinda himself.

Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan,
Lakshmi Narasimhan


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