Nammalvar's Poetry
• October 1, 1974
< Nammalvar's Philosophy | Index
When does a seeker of the Real who apprehends Reality through faith and intuition, a mystic such as Nammalvar was, become a poet? To answer this question one might be led into the vast and labyrinthine world of speculation on poetry, its levels and kinds and return drenched perhaps with the dew of Parnassus but with the mists of critical canons and definitions hanging about one. I am therefore avoiding that general discussion. My immediate concern is to examine the nature of Nammalvar's poetry with a few illustrations.
It was Rabindranath Tagore who said that to approach poetry through translation is like making love to a woman through an attorney. Writing in English on Nammalvar, I find myself in the awkward predicament of having to rely on translation (and translation of poetry is always inadequate and Sri Aurobindo points out that to translate Nammalvar in English is almost impossible) to give an idea of the qualities of Nammalvar as a poet. The theological and intellectual analysis of Nammalvar's works that started with the great manipravala commentators and has continued till today had to some extent dimmed the importance of Nammalvar as a poet. The question is not which is greater, theology or poetry, nor is it whether Nammalvar is greater as a poet than as a saint, as the fore-runner of the Ramanuja school of Vaishnavam. Such a discussion is likely to be endless and perhaps will lead us nowhere. I wish merely to point out that whatever else Nammalvar was and however great therein, he was also a poet and has made a rich contribution to Tamil letters.
Philosophy and theology may take on the complexion of poetry as when Plato brings in his charioteer and the image of the cave, or as when Shankara handles the analogy of the snake and the rope to define the illusory nature of the physical world. But by themselves, theological affirmations and philosophic speculation cannot be poetry. Abstract ideas have first to be transmuted to experience and that in its turn has to be related through words and rhythm to emotion and to the world of eye and ear' to gain entry into the fairy land that we call poetry. In Nammalvar's hands, this miracle happens.
Nammalvar, however, claims only rarely to be a poet; and when he does it, he declares that all his poetry flows from God:
As the life of my life, one with it, He makes poetry with my words. No. They are His words, And it is He who sings His own praise. 1
The Alvar is equally certain that all his poetry flows towards Him, the Lord of the Discus. 2 He calls on poets to give up singing of man. Of what use is it, he asks, to sing of man who fondly imagines he is eternal, preens himself in self-importance and mistakes riches for wealth? 3 ‘Come, poets’, he cries, ‘If you want to live, labour with your hands and earn your bread with the sweat of your brow. Why sing a rich man's praises? And who is really rich on this earth? I see no one. Sing of your gods. All your songs will reach Him who wears the crown of red lightning, the Lord of Sri.’ 4 ‘I for my part’ he continues, ‘will never sing, how can I, of man the illusion.’ 5 It is the age-old cry:
'Each man that stands on the earth is a puff of wind, every man that walks only a shadow.' 7
But only man is capable of this cry for only he recognises transience and the dichotomy between consciousness and the perishing body to which it is chained. And anything human, even if it be a deep dissatisfaction with man's life here, can be matter for poetry, as it is in some parts of Nammalvar. To him, 8 man is as 'unstable and momentary as a flash of lightning', and all earthly life is vanity, 'a bubble that springs and vanishes in the rain.'
He dwells on the pathos and futility of old age and penury when one, who in the plenitude of youth and wealth ate and drank his fill, plying soft-voiced women with delicacies, stretches forth lean shrunken hands for a morsel of rice. 9 The loud drum in the king's court is stilled.
Now wander in the night Their legs bitten by black mongrels of the street. With broken pots in their hands Begging for food Before all the world.' 10
These ideas (and they are realized as will be seen in images) which are the starting point of the Alvar's search for the ultimate seen to be a rejection of the earth. To this extent, Nammalvar appears to have moved away from the earlier poets of the Sangam age 11 who were occupied with nature and man, the stage and the actor, as the vivid drama of life unrolled itself before their observing and minutely recording eye. Herein, Nammalvar is at one with the mystical and religious poets of his time. To seek for an abiding significance in temporal was the characteristic of the age and Nammalvar was among the greatest of the seekers.
Again, even the rejection of the earth, or its negation, 'the darkness that covers one from pole to pole' may well become poetry if the imagination of the poet relates it to the world of the concrete. That is what happens in Nammalvar time and again. For instance, the valuelessness of sense-enjoyment is brought out here through details that eschew the abstract:
In the sweet embrace Of bejewelled women, soft-haired,
They wander broken, forsaken, Jeered at by the common herd.' 12
The idea that human relationships are unsatisfying takes shape as
Our children, kith and kin, We meet and we part, There is an end of it, Where is love? Nowhere!' 13
Divine grace comes before us as 'a cool, soft, stretching flower bed'. 14 Relatives and others gather round as though in support when wealth comes to us, but they are leeches that savour one's blood.' 15 'This world is a thicket, it is an endless maze' 16 and 'the five senses are a web of deceipt, a mill grinding one ruthlessly with five irremediable diseases as blades.' 17
Rejection of the earth? So it seems. But it is woven with images culled from the very earth from which the Alvar turns away. The world is at first an insubstantial mirage to the Alvar but he pictures it even while declaring it to be one; and disillusionment takes shape as the concrete.
As the Alvar moves towards the Real, the passion of seeking that holds him appears to him to spread out and cover everything around him in the natural world as in the following:
Standing where the long waves roll Ceaseless, tireless in their quest. My mother sleeps; So do even the sleepless devas in Heaven ; But you do not. Are you like me, Pale, tormented with love? Have you too lost your heart to Him?
Sharp and piercing are your notes And plaintive, Sounding through all the watches of the night, Have you too lost your heart to Him And do you yearn For the crushed, fragrant tulasi that He wears ? How strange, restless sea, That you should cry day and night! Have you too lost Him And seek and suffer like me, Thirsting for the refuge of His feet, He who put Lanka to fire and sword? Wandering wind, You go all through the bright day And the star-lit night Seeking, groping blindly, Over sea and hill and sky, Are you too sick, distracted like me Age after age With love for the Lord of the flaming discus? Bless you, O sky, Dissolving like us in tears. Are you too caught in love's coils, Love of Him, the unattainable? You have wasted, poor moon, Lost your lustre, And you stand unavailing In the darkness that covers the black sky. Have you too, like us, Believed in His words, His words which indeed are 'true', What else? Have you too put faith in Him And are pining for the Lord of the flaming discus? May you live long, Dark and vengeful night! You come unasked
And are crying helpless. You add your cruelty to His. May you live long!' 18
The Alvar is not alone, it seems. It is as though all cosmos is yearning with him to touch its Creator.
This piece is cast in the form of a love poem and it is the woman in love who speaks, to be more precise, the women in love. Not the love between man and woman alone, but all human relationships are turned by Nammalvar into so many leads to God, though initially he was overcome by their brief duration and unreliability. 'Tiruviruttam' speaks of God as 'the Mother, the Father, the Lord of Sri' who fructifies the long penance of the Alvar to get hold of anything that would liberate him from 'the endless cycle that began with the beginning of time, of being wedged and unwedged endlessly in a succession of bodies.' 19 'Tiruvoimozhi' refers to the incomparable Mystery as the Life of all life and yet as the Mother who gave the Alvar birth and as his Father and the Lord who made him realize the unknowable'. 20 God is king in the following:
Who rule for a day and pass away, The sun has gone And darkness has set in. Whatever are we to do, great King, Who measured the worlds, King of Heaven, The one and only King? Lend us Thy grace But Thou, alas, hast forsaken and failed us, And only darkness has come.' 21
Again, 'God is the King who wields an eternal, unparalleled sceptre over the seven worlds, the Lord who has infinite, unfading power'. 22 God is also the 'All-knowing one who clears and
lights for the wide world confused by its own intellect, all the ways leading to Him'. 23 Giving enlightenment as a teacher, God is a friend too, an unfailing one. 24 Above all, God is the Lover whom the Alvar seeks and pines for. Human love, the primordial urge that has drawn man and woman together, becomes in the Alvar's hands a symbol too, the most poignant of the symbols used by him to express his passion for God. Both in Tiruviruttam and Tiruvoimozhi there are a number of places where the Alvar expresses himself through this symbol. Whenever he does it, he presents human love with an intensity so great and compelling that by its own volition, it carries us, though it starts from the earth, to the Beyond. The Alvar moves unconsciously in two planes at the same time. He expresses earthly love with a vividness that saves it from being merely an artificial theological allegory and gains for it the moving force of what is human. While doing it, he manages to maintain the symbol as one continually filled with his sense of the divine, thereby rescuing it from being merely another poem of the earth.
But the details and the verve of earthly love are there and it is these that make for the poetry. Like any woman in love, the Alvar tries to send a message to his Lover. The messengers are chosen from the natural world around him, the birds, the clouds, the bees and the wind, and the Alvar's eye is on every one of them:
Innocent, tender-hearted one, May you and your fair mate Cry pity on me And go as my messengers to Him.' 25
He takes umbrage at what seems to him the indifference of a bird:
I know it: You have failed me. I asked you to carry to Him my suffering, You have not done it.
My bright colouring and beauty. Now then, go away. Find some one else Who will bring sweet morsels To your crop every day.' 26
He turns to the koels :
It is not like you to be silent. What will you lose if you go to Him with my message? After all, what is it that I want of You? To go to Him and tell Him, Here I am Unable because of my past karma To serve under His feet, And going away, away from Him, Bearing my fate. 27
Then to the mahanrils: 28
Will you or will you not Grant me this boon, Carry my message to Him? But what can I say to Him, The dark one, cloud-hued, my Lord, He who knowing my plight Still pities me not And does not say "This suffering shall not be." 29
He continues bewildered: 'Who will carry my message, is there no one?' A bee is buzzing near by. The Alvar speaks to it:
Go, and if you meet Him, The Lord of the gracious discus, Be good enough to tell Him:
Come, grant Thy Grace before her life dries up. Come on Thy bird With wings wide as the sea, Come to this little street, where she stands." 30
The wandering wind touches the Alvar. Why, the wind could carry his message, it can go anywhere. Here it comes but the message he has to send through it sticks in the Alvar's throat. He thinks that perhaps the wind brings him the unhappy tidings that the Lord who in His infinite Grace should be as anxious to save a soul as the soul is to reach 'the unfading lotuses that are His feet' is now indifferent, and untrue to His nature, has forsaken the Alvar. 'If that were so', he cries, 'cleave this body, O wind blowing cold, let me die.' 31
This passion runs through and gives life to the bridal symbol whenever Nammalvar touches it. In the following piece, the pining woman blames herself for having fallen in love with Him:
And all the world is steeped in the dark midnight. All time is gathered Into this long, long night. If He does not come, Who is there who can save me, Sinner that I am? Will the red sun never come Riding in the chariot of the east? Will this night never die But go on and on, dying like me, Little by little, Particle by particle?... The world sleeps, indifferent, cold. But I am awake. O heart, my foolish heart, Why did you love Him, Why?' 32
Here is another in the same strain:
The rich Kurinjippan 33 comes floating on the evening. The twilight tinged red Intoxicates me. The clouds aflame in the west Tear me to pieces. He the Lord of Mystery... Are his eyes like the blue lily, Are they lotuses? He has kissed these shoulders, these breasts. And we know not Where to turn for refuge?' I am the flower That the Divine Bee has sucked and torn. How is one to bear it? Even my heart is not mine, It is of no help to me And I know not Where to turn for refuge. 34
The woman who speaks in these poems (sometimes, it is not one woman but a number of them) is seen addressing God or herself or the objects and living things around her. Sometimes, the woman speaks to her mother or the mothers of the village, sometimes it is her friend who does it, sometimes it is the mother who speaks, bewildered, pained by her daughter's plight. Thus a series of dramatic lyrics springs into being, the words are put in the mouths of different characters but all of them tell the same story, the Alvar's passionate yearning for God.
The woman in love calls and calls to the Lover but there is no answer:
All the time with my hands on my head, Calling, calling loud. But Thou does not come For my eyes to behold Thy beauty, Nor dost Thou answer my call'...
"Come before my eyes. Come, bright as red gold, Lotus eyes dancing." I cry, shameless that I am. What is the good of my raving here? He is beyond the ken Even of the immortal devas'. 35
Here is the woman (nayaki as she is called) speaking to the elders of the village who are unable to understand her and are nettled by her strange infatuation:
The moment I saw Him, Lord of Tirukkurungudi, 36 Our Lord with his conch and discus, Lotus-eyed and his lips like a red fruit, My heart went with Him. How could I help it? Come, look through my heart And behold that He stands before me everywhere. Do not chide me, mothers. I stand bewildered, worn out. Before my eye and in my heart He stands ever, With his triumphant bow, And club and sword, discus and conch'. 37
This is a piece addressed to her friends by the love-lorn woman:
Can you tell me? When will I, Sinner that I am, Worn out with love of Him,
Where the luscious palms sweep the sky And the honeyed jasmine smells sweet, When will I become one with Him? Why, friends. There is no use chiding me, He who stands here in Tiruvallavazh Where the South-wind Embraces the golden punnai And the mahizh and the fresh madhavi creeper, And comes laden with fragrance, When will I wear on my head The dust of His feet?' 39
Here is another addressed to her companion :
They only serve To fertilise the field of my heart. My mother's angry words water it. The living paddy seed of love That He sowed there Has sprouted and grown Vast as the Sea. Yea, He, the cloud-hued one Is passing cruel, my friend, 40
The woman in love feigns anger and disapproval of her Lover; she speaks as though she is a little girl. Her Lover has deceived her and her playmates. He has done something worse. He has been indifferent to all that they do, to the little houses of sand that they have built in play, the mock-food that they have cooked. 'No, no' the Alvar cries, 'I will have nothing to do with Thy love. Enough of that,' a cry that echoes from many a human heart wondering in pain how God could be so indifferent to what men do, the toy-castles in the air that they build :
It was you who burnt
I know Thy wiles. You cannot deceive us any more. Give us back our plaything... And go, leave us... Do not speak your lies, Lord. Earth and Heaven know them well. Thou of the destroying discus, I shall tell you this : Do not, Oh do not play and tamper With our prattling parrot and poovai Making us, Poor honey-tongued little girls pine and fade. 41
A friend of the nayaki is speaking to the women of the village.
Leave her alone. She stands with her blue-lily eyes Flooded with tears, Speaking of His pure white conch, Of his discus and his lotus eyes. She worships the place where He is, Tolaivillimangalam 42 With its broad gem-like terraces... Leave her alone. You have forsaken her, mothers, Let her be. She has gone there, To Tolaivillimangalam, And speaks ever sweet and low, With tears welling in her eyes, Of His reclining on the wave-tossed sea, Of His having taken the kine To the pastures. Let her be, mothers, let her go her way. 43
He who is dark like the rain-cloud, The Lover who measured the worlds, To Him, the lotus-eyed, My daughter with her soft fragrant hair Has lost her conch bangles... To Him who wears on his crown The tulasi, cool and fragrant, She has lost her bright colouring... To Him dark-hued, Who swallowed the vast worlds, To that red-mouthed, wily little thief With the whirling discus, My daughter of the flashing curls Has lost her beauty... And her virginity. 44
Here the nayaki is addressing her companion :
The scorn of the village ? What will it do to me Who has yearned for Him, For my Lord, And lost my heart and reason? He has carried away with Him My shyness, my maidhood And my heart, And sits high in Heaven As Lord of the devas. Yea, I swear I shall go about Scattering the news of this infamy And do what a woman should not do, Ride shameless on a palmyrah horse And announce his perfidy to the world. 45
A friend speaks to the mothers of the village warning them against treating the nayaki as possessed:
And how, To cure this unthinking, bright-faced maid Of this disease? She stands bewildered, Seeking Him, The mysterious charioteer Who prepared the Pandavas for war And led them to victory. Look, mothers, Do not listen to the words Of this kattuvichi And scatter toddy and mutton around. Praise ye The feet of the Lord of Mystery Who wears the honeyed tulasi. That, only that Will be the sovereign cure For her disease. Do not, mothers, do not Try to exercise the spirits That you think possess her. The more you try, The more her distemper grows. There is only one remedy. Smear on her the dust from the feet Of those who love The Lord of Mystery, the emerald-hued.' 46
The mother of the nayaki speaks :
Caresses it saying "This is my Vamana's 47 earth." She looks up at the sky worshipping And points a finger at it
With tears welling in her eyes She stands and cries "Oh, Sea-hued one!" Tell me, bangled ones, Whatever am I to do To Him who has cast this spell On her, my daughter? She points to the moon And cries " He is there, the emerald-hued!" She looks at the hill in front And calls to it, "Come, my Lord." When she sees the dark clouds showering rain, She cries, "My Lord has come.' I know not what may follow This strange play In which He leads The daughter that I have borne, Sinner that I am.' 48
The passages from Nammalvar given above (in translation) resemble the love-poems of the Sangam age. 49 Details like the moaning of the sea, the loneliness and the seemingly endless length of a dark night, the south-wind burning one with its touch, the voice of the love-bird calling throughout the watches of the night, the unbearable caress of moonlight, the rainy season adding to the agony of love, to mention only a few, form part of the stock imagery of Sangam love poetry and have continued till today. The woman in love becoming pale and thin, losing the brightness of her complexion, speaking of having lost her bangles to her lover-these too are echoes (even if unconscious) of the Sangam poet's handling of the love-theme. The situations created for the woman in love-pining, blaming the lover, confiding in a friend, protesting to a mother or to village elders who fail to understand her, vowing to ride in public on a palmyrah leaf horse, the surmise that the nayaki is possessed-all these are in the Sangam tradition. 50
The characters that play a part in the lyric sequences of this love drama-the mother, the foster mother and the friend of the woman in love, the lover himself and his friend, the kattuvichi brought in to exercise the devil that is supposed to have possessed the nayaki-these again are the idealised stock characters that one meets in the Sangam poems on love. It is true that all these details, situations and characters are transformed by Nammalvar into flood - gates through which his passion for God flows tumultuously to us. Nevertheless, the similarity between poems where Nammalvar uses human love as a symbol and the Sangam love-poems is there. How Nammalvar absorbed many of the features of the poetry of an earlier age cannot be clearly explained in the light of what is accepted now as the account of his life. But the fact is there, though it may interest only students of the history of Tamil poetry.
Nammalvar uses also the method of indirect suggestion that the Sangam poets employ. To quote one example :
And the kine are wriggling in content, For, the bulls, bells jingling, Have mated with them. The cruel flutes are prating. Within the bright, bright jasmine buds, And the blue lily The bee is fluttering and dancing. The sea breaks open, Reaching the sky, cries and cries. What is it that I can say? How can I escape and save myself, Here, without Him? 51
The details chosen by the poet from the evening landscape are significant. Together they build up a suggestion that cannot be missed. The kine and the flowers and the sea are experiencing either the ecstasy of love's commingling or the wordless peace that comes the moment after. Their presence heightens by contrast the agony in the heart of the love-lorn soul; that is the theme of the poem. Suggestiveness of this kind through nature description is not to be confused with pathetic fallacy. It is subtler and through it, like the poets before him, Nammalvar weaves through implied similarity and contrast, rich and delicate overtones.
Nammalvar had in addition to the natural world the rich concreteness of the world of the puranas, chronicling the doing of God in His various avataras on the earth. His faith in the avataras opened for the Alvar numberless opportunities to identify himself with a character in the puranic accounts or to imagine himself in the situations described in them. Thus he could become a gopi (and he does it) chiding Lord Krishna for having deserted her and gone away after the kine. He dwells lovingly on whatever happened during the avataras-God coming as the little Vamana and begging for three feet of earth of King Bali; His sudden shooting into infinitude and in two steps as Trivikrama measuring all earth and sky; God moving on foot as Sri Rama in the jungle, crossing the sea and putting Lanka to fire and sword, His return to Ayodhya and as its king making it possible for all living things, even a tiny blade of grass to realize Him, the Lord as a boar lifting up the earth from the waters and saving it, and as a friend playing the part of a charioteer to Arjuna and a messenger from him and his brothers. Apart from giving to his poetry the colour and vividness of the concrete, the human conditions and relationships that God took on Himself in the avataras were sanctified thereby to the Alvar. They were to him not merely symbols but parts of the Real and so in his hands, symbolism has all the glow and assurance of the direct and the concrete. By a constant interplay of his own moods or those of the puranic characters with the accounts of the Lord's doings, the Alvar is able to portray varied shades of experience. Here for instance, is the mother of the woman smitten with love of God, complaining of what to her is God's cruelty :
Is dancing mad With her heart aflame, melting, Singing, Singing "Narasinga!" And fading.' 52
Narasinga is the terrible lion-faced form that God took to slay Hiranya. How could my poor daughter, asks the mother, call to that terrible one? In the succeeding stanzas, reference is made to the Lord as the slayer of the thousand-armed Bana, as the destroyer of Lanka, as the wily killer of Kamsa and as the wielder of the sharp-toothed flaming discus, suggesting what to the mother's bewildered mind is God's heartlessness. Even while speaking as the mother and picturing his own condition through her pained and wondering eyes, the Alvar slips into his love of God and speaks of Him as wearing the cool tulasi as the all-deserving, as his much-beloved lord and as ambrosia to his spirit. 53 Drama and lyric are mingled thus into something that transcends the distinctions of literary form and become the heart-throb of the bhakta. In a number of stanzas of a different kind, purely lyrical, Nammalvar refers constantly to the avataras. Some of them are pure description though the details take us to the poet's moods. In the following rendering, 54 I am attempting to give an idea, however feeble, of the imaginative sweep with which the Alvar does it. I confess that I am unable to reproduce in English the rousing rhythm and energy of the original and the clang and urgency of the rhetorical repetitions. The poem speaks of Creation and the End and also of certain avataras:
The conch and the bow, All space echoed "Praise be Thine." The universe was cloven And the waters rose in pralaya 55 When the Lord took in all the worlds And the new age came. The tumult of the rivers Turning away from the sea to the hills, The loud chafing of the snake Encircling the mountain churn And the roar of the whirling sea, In thunderous crash, Joined the paean of the devas As the Lord skimmed Amrita From the deep. 56
The seven hills shook not And the seven seas rose not As the Lord lifted high the earth With his tusks. 57 The stars shook, And the earth and the waters. The planets and the sky and its flames Fire and air and mountains, Were shaken and shattered. As the Lord took in all the seven worlds In pralaya. The noise Of the fattened wrestlers battling, The clash of the warriors, Of the armies of kings And the cries in the heavens Of the wondering devas, All these joined When the Lord brought about the Bharata war. 58 The west flamed blood-red, All the quarters of space rose In a flood incarnadine, As the Lord Like a lion cleaving a mountain Broke the asura Inflicting deep woe on him. 59 Heaped were the dead as hills And the sea ran blood. The arrows sped Filling far and near When the Lord Burnt Lanka to ashes. 60
The day of Creation, In a moment they came into being, Earth, fire, wind and sky The twin flames--sun and moon, The mountains and the clouds And rain, all life And the Immortals. On that day it was, The day of the making of the worlds By the Lord. All the kine took shelter under it. The wild animals rolled down. The tarns filled And the waters rushed in a flood Trumpeting down. All the village found sanctuary under it, The hill that the Lord lifted up As a shield against the destroying rain. 61
Besides, to Nammalvar, as I have pointed out elsewhere God is not a mere abstraction. It is true that Nammalvar defines the indefinable in abstract terims. But in the main, he thinks of a personal God of infinite beauty and grace. He grows ecstatic again and again over His conch and discus, his golden crown, his eyes like the lotus or the blue water-lily and his body a glory emerald-hued, dark as the sea or the rain-cloud :
Is it the glory of Thy face That has flowered into Thy golden crown? Has the effulgence of Thy feet Blossomed into the lotus on which Thou standest? Did the light of Thy body, gold rich, Become Thy golden robe And the bright jewels Thou wearest?" 62
This vision of Infinite Beauty lights all the travail of the Alvar's seeking. It covers the earth around him and he lingers on its beauty in the various shrines in which God dwells for Him :
Not the shrines alone but all the world is a shrine to Nammalvar and the beauty of the natural world an unfailing intimation of infinite Beauty. Wherever he turns, he sees it. The lotuses, the blue water-lilies, the sea and the sky, hills and the rain and every other object in the world remind him of God. He sees the five primordial elements, cosmic space, air, fire, water and earth as but the Lord's forms. A seeker of Reality, Nammalvar found in the phenomenal the beauty of the Eternal and this makes for poetry. This is certainly not incompatible with being a saint or prophet. On the contrary, Acharya Hridayam (‘The Heart of the Acharya’) realises this and concludes that when we call the Alvar as a poet, all is said, for we recognise and leave unsaid that he is a rishi and a muni, a seer and a realised soul.
It is not as though Nammalvar does not speak directly in his own person without symbolism. He does. Many decads of Tiruvoimozhi bear this out. Their range is wide; Pleading with God, piling questions to Him, frustration, disappointment with himself, the struggle of seeking, and ecstatic realization. In a few of the decads of 'Tiruvoimozhi' and in a part of Tiruvasiriyam, the Alvar expresses abstract truths about God and the world with facility and precision. The poetry of these pieces springs from concentration and austere economy of expression. But even here, the poet's inclination to present an idea through illustrative details and imagery has its way. For instance, 'That God is everywhere' is the idea that the Alvar exprersses but as he does it, we see the poet's eye travelling from object to object, figuring the idea:
Of the cold vast sea, On earth and sky In every bit of space In the Universe and beyond And in every object within it He is, unseen, hidden, He who has all these within Him.' 67
And fire and air, Earth and water And in the innumerable things That spread from them, As life in a body, He is everywhere, unseen, hidden, He who is in the light of the Vedas, The one in whom all things end.' 68
Like imagery, emotion often breaks into philosophic definition: The Alvar elaborates and so poetises in the following the idea that God is a mystery:
Whose reason is unclouded And whose knowledge is sure, Into confusion. The illusions he can raise Are vaster than the sky.' 69
Here thought is presented as a poet would. Immediately after, emotion comes in:
I shall never forget His flowery feet that measured the worlds, I shall speak ever, no, babble of them. I shall gather them to my heart, Worship them.' 70
To speak of Nammalvar's style to those who cannot read him in the original will be pointless. I shall content myself therefore with stating that his Tamil is a vigorous and refreshing admixture of central Tamil and the dialect of southern Tamil Nadu, that makes for sincerity, directness and emotional reach. It is not uniformly smooth (why should it be?) though there are passages that are a joy to the car. The roughness, however, is that of living rock, or the wave-tossed sea, reflecting strength and depth. Besides, Nammalvar has attempted various types of viruttam and has given as exquisite venbas and kattalai kaliturais and one fine example of asiriyam; it is true they show nothing of the finical care of the conscious artist; but they do have the compelling force that only a poet can command.
Yes, Nammalvar was a poet too, not perhaps through choice or intention (so much the better) but through the urge of his wide mystical experience to express itself in words and as that experience felt along the blood, the heart and the spirit flowed through aphorism, symbol, image and the thousand and one details of nature and human life, a new dimension opened for Tamil in which heaven and earth are interfused and human life becomes at once a seeking and a sacrement.
< Nammalvar's Philosophy | Index
1 Tiruvoimozhi: 7.9.2. (↑)
2 ibid. 3.9. (↑)
3 ibid. 3.9.2. (↑)
4 Tiruvoimozhi: 3.9.6. The Lord of Sri (the Lord of Lakshmi) is Sriman Narayana. (↑)
5 ibid. 3.9.8. (↑)
6 The Book of Job: 7.6. (↑)
7 The Bible: Psalms: 39.5, 6. (↑)
8 See the opening paragraphs of the chapter on 'The Journey to the Real.' (↑)
9 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.1.7. (↑)
10 ibid. 4,1.1. (↑)
11 There are exceptions, 'Tirumurukatruppadai' and some of the poems of 'Paripadal' are on God but they have not much of the agonised yearning and personal involvement that we find in the Alvars and the Nayanmars. (↑)
12 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.1.5. (↑)
13 ibid. 9.1.1. (↑)
14 ibid. 4.1.5. (↑)
15 ibid. 9.1.2. (↑)
16 ibid. 3.2.9. (↑)
17 ibid. 7.1. (↑)
18 Tiruvoimozhi: 2.1 (↑)
19 Tiruviruttam: 95 (↑)
20 Tiruvoimozhi: 2.3.2. (↑)
21 Tiruviruttam: 80 (↑)
22 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.5.1. (↑)
23 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.8.6. (↑)
24 ibid. 7.5.9. (↑)
25 ibid. 1.4.1. (↑)
26 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.4.8. (↑)
27 ibid. 1.4.2. (↑)
28 Mahanril is a kind of bird. (↑)
29 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.4.4. (↑)
30 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.4.6. (↑)
31 ibid. 1.4.9. (↑)
32 ibid. 5.4. (↑)
33 An old Tamil melody. (↑)
34 Tiruvoimozhi: 9.9.1, 4. (↑)
35 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.7.1, 4. (↑)
36 A village in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, (↑)
37 Tiruvoimozhi: 5.5. (↑)
38 Town in Kerala. (↑)
39 Tiruvoimozhi: 5.9 (↑)
40 ibid. 5.3.4. (↑)
41 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.2 (↑)
42 A village near Alvartirunagari in the Tirunelveli district. (↑)
43 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.5. (↑)
44 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.6. (↑)
45 ibid: 5. 3. Sitting on the image of a horse made of palmyrah leaf in a public place is a conventional way of announcing that a lover is disappointed in his love. The convention restricts this symbolic declaration to men. Nammalvar extends it to the women in love. Tirumangai Alvar does the same. (↑)
46 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.6. (↑)
47 Vamana is one of the avataras of God. (↑)
48 Tiruvoimozhi: 4.4. (↑)
49 See chapter on Nammalvar's Works: Tiruviruttam. (↑)
50 The Alvar departs from tradition when he makes a woman vow that she would ride on a palmyrah leaf horse. Convention allows it only to men. Tirumangai Alvar follows Nammalvar. (↑)
51 Tiruvoimozhi: 9.9.10. (↑)
52 Tiruvoimozhi: 2.4.1. (↑)
53 Tiruvoimozhi: 2.4.6. (↑)
54 ibid. 7.4. (↑)
55 The end of the worlds. (↑)
56 The reference is to the churning of the Ocean by the devas for amrita (Elixir of immortality). (↑)
57 The reference is to Varah avatara in which as a boar, God lifts and saves the earth. (↑)
58 In Krishna avatara where the Lord brings about the Bharata war. (↑)
59 In Narasinga avatara in which God as a lion-faced man puts the asura, Hiranya, to death (↑)
60 In Rama avatara. (↑)
61 In Krishna avatara. The hill lifted up by the Lord against the vengeful fury of Indra, god of thunder, is Govardhana Giri. The village is Gokulam where Lord Krishna was brought up. (↑)
62 Tiruvoimozhi: 3.1.1. (↑)
63 Tiruvoimozhi: 5.8. 1,2. (↑)
64 ibid. 5.9.9. (↑)
65 ibid. 6.10.2. (↑)
66 ibid. 9.2. 9,5. (↑)
67 Tiruvoimozhi: 1. 1. 10 (↑)
68 ibid: 1.1.7. (↑)
69 ibid. 1.3.10. (↑)
70 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.3.10 (↑)