Tiruvāymoḻi
• October 1, 1974
'Tiruvoimozhi' is the longest and most important work of Nammāḻvār. The story goes that it would have been lost to the world as also the other works of the Āḻvār but for the efforts of the great Vaiṣṇava ācārya of the ninth century, Śrī Nāthamuni of Vīranārāyaṇapuram.1 It is said that he heard eleven stanzas2 of 'Tiruvoimozhi' recited in his native village by two persons from the south and was so captivated by them that he desired to get at the whole work. He went to Kuruhūr3 and was able to secure nothing more at first than the eleven stanzas of a poem in praise of Nammāḻvār.4 He went on reciting it till all the works of Nammāḻvār along with those of the other Alvars were 'revealed' to him. He set them to music and arranged to have them sung in Viṣṇu temples. The tradition continues today though the verses are only chanted, not sung.
From the time of Śrī Nāthamuni, Tiruvoimozhi has been accorded the highest place among Nammāḻvār's works and also among the works of all the other Alvars taken together. Śrī Nāthamuni hailed it as a Tamil Vedic sea containing within it all the Upaniṣads with their thousand branches. Śrī Rāmānuja's indebtedness to it in his interpretation of the Vedas and the Gītā has been widely acknowledged. Śrī Piḷḷailokācārya5 refers reverently to Nammāḻvār in his 'Śrī Vacana Bhūṣaṇam'.6 Śrī Vedānta Deśika7 calls 'Tiruvoimozhi' a Tamil Upaniṣad and has written two Sanskrit works on it.8 In one of them9 he claims that specially because it is in Tamil, Tiruvoimozhi is very valuable, for unlike the Vedas, it is accessible to all. The same idea is expressed by Śrī Aḷagiya-Maṇavāḷa-Perumāḷ Nāyanār in his 'Ācārya Hṛdayam'10 (The Heart of the Preceptor):
It is not a mud-pot but a vessel of gold.
What is meant is that unlike a mud-pot which once used for a specific purpose cannot be used again for another as it becomes sullied (that was the belief of the time), Tiruvoimozhi can be handled by any one irrespective of caste and will remain bright and immaculate as ever. Śrī Maṇavāḷa Māmuṉi, another great Vaiṣṇava ācārya, has shown his reverence for the work by summing it up in a hundred remarkable stanzas, one stanza for each decad of Tiruvoimozhi. The many learned commentaries on the work reveal the respect in which it has been held by the world of Vaiṣṇava theological scholarship. One of these commentaries was written under the instruction of Śrī Rāmānuja by a contemporary of his, Tirukkurukai-pirān piḷḷān. Among the other commentaries, the most elaborate is that of Nampiḷḷai.11 This commentary is known as 'Bhagavat Viṣayam' (Matter concerning God) as though 'Tiruvoimozhi speaks of Bhagavān (God) alone. These instances will serve to indicate the high place given to Tiruvoimozhi by Vaiṣṇavas of the South.
Let us now turn to the work. It consists of 1102 four-lined stanzas in various kinds of viruttam verse. The stanzas called pāsurams occur in groups of eleven, one group having thirteen stanzas being the only exception. Each group is known as tiruvoimozhi and ten such groups together are called a pattu (ten). Thus 'Tiruvoimozhi' has ten pattus, a hundred tiruvoimozhis and 1102 pāsurams.
Parts of Tiruvoimozhi appear in translation elsewhere in this book, in the chapters, 'Journey to the Real', 'Nammāḻvār's Poetry' and 'Nammāḻvār's Philosophy'. A few others receive mention here.
Tiruvoimozhi has a hundred of what may be called signature stanzas, each one of them being the last stanza of a12 tiruvoimozhi. These stanzas mention the name of the Āḻvār as the author of the work and also speak of the benefits that will accrue to those who study it. Appending a signature stanza seems to have been the usage of some of the religious and devotional poets of the time and Nammāḻvār might have adopted it.
It may be asked whether all the signature stanzas agree with the general tone and the spirit of the work. Some of them do as, for instance, the stanzas where the Āḻvār speaks of himself as 'the servant of the servants of the servants of the Lord'13; some do not. The only explanation possible is that each tiruvoimozhi, in fact each one of the stanzas in the poem, is the immediate and almost involuntary expression of a different state of being; we do not even know whether each tiruvoimozhi was composed at one sitting; they range from the despair attendent on the darkness of the spirit to an exultation dissolving into the ecstasy of realization, and they follow one another with a suddenness and apparent lack of connection that startle and elude common reason.
A few of the tiruvoimozhis are objective and didactic. Their purpose seems to be to wean people from worldliness and direct them to a sense of the Real. They emphasise the old, old but still generally unrealized common-places, the transitoriness of earthly life, the hold of the phenomenal world on the senses, the inability of the earth to satisfy the spirit and the imperative need to turn to the eternal beauty, goodness and grace of God.
Here are a few instances:
'The living bodies of men
Are more unstable than a flash of lightning.'14
'Give up, give up everything,
And having renounced all,
Give up your soul
To Him who is the Lord of liberation.'15
'Destroy root and branch
You and yours.
And turn to the Lord.
There is no greater fulfilment for the soul.'16
'Those who know the Word,
Who think of the good He does,
And attain to clear vision,
Will they agree to resign
And give themselves up
To any but to Him, the Mystery,
He who removes
Birth, disease, age and death,
Uproots all suffering,
And gathers us to His feet? '
'What a World!
To die, to go down,
With those who are kith and kin
Gathering round, lamenting, disillusioned,
Oh, what a world!'17
This recognition slips into a cry to God from the Āḻvār to release him from this life:
'I know not the way out
O Lord who reclinest on the serpent,
Hasten, Lord, to me,
And call me to Thee.'18
The pleasures of the senses are limited and small. 'I have left them' says the Āḻvār 'for the supreme joy of beholding the infinite beauty of God,'
'The little pleasures, seemingly endless,
Of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and eating,
I have left them all.
I have seen Thee and Thy consort,
Bright and lovely,
And have reached Thy feet.'19
It will be seen that some times, beginning to advise others, the Āḻvār turns as in the lines above to his own predicament and objectivity changes to lyricism.
Tiruvoimozhi may be considered as a collection of many such lyrics, each one dealing with one aspect or one movement of the Āḻvār's passion for God. The various sweeps of this passion have been dealt with in the chapter, 'Journey to the Real'. Its expression takes two forms, direct and symbolic. The following illustrate the direct form of the Āḻvār's expression:
'What dost Thou gain, Lord,
By sending these five ones, the senses,
Crashing against me and torturing me
And preventing me from reaching Thy feet?'20
'He who took in the seven worlds
Has come of his own accord, rejoicing,
Is within me and will never leave me
What is it that I cannot achieve?'21
'I say that He is the Lord of the Immortals,
But how is that a measure
Of the Lord of Tiruvenkaṭam?
I am the lowest of the low,
A creature of no merit
And yet He, the transcendent glory,
Has chosen to turn to me with love.'22
'He, the Lord beyond compare,
My mind will not give up dwelling on Him.
My tongue will ever sing His praise,
And possessed by Him
My body will dance.'23
Thou camest and mingled deep with my heart.
I have given myself up to Thee,
And there is no retrieving me.
That is the only return I can make.
But what is my life? What am I?
Thou art the life of my life,
Thou gavest and Thou hast taken it back
To mould it.'24
'He who weaves mysteries
Deep as the sky and vaster
And confuses even the vision of the gods,
He, dark as a rain-cloud,
Never will I forget
His lotus feet that reach beyond the worlds.
I shall rave of them, untiring,
I shall cling to them,
Worship them, ceaselessly yearning.'25
'My heart is the fragrant paste
That He wears.
My words are His garland
And the rich silk that He wears.
My folded hands are His bright jewels.'26
'I do not bring to Thee
A garland of cool flowers,
And worship Thee.
Still, my lord, still,
The chaplet of flowers on Thy crown
Is my life.'27
Instead of speaking directly in his own person as in the above, the Āḻvār attempts to express himself through symbols in many tiruvoimozhis. The value that these symbols get from Nammāḻvār's philosophy and the manner in which he handles them have been pointed out elsewhere in this book. Attention may be invited here to one aspect of symbolism in Tiruvoimozhi. The chief symbol is that of God as Lover and the individual soul as pining for His love. From the Itihāsas and Purāṇas, the Āḻvār gets instances of women who loved Him in His avatāras or descents to the earth. He identifies himself with them, as for instance, with the gopīs, the women of the cowherds of Gokula, who are the archetype of supreme love for God. In the following, Nammāḻvār speaks as one the gopīs of the agony of separation from the Lord:
My shoulders which were like the bamboo
Have gone lean and limp.
The mating koels have begun calling in the grove,
Indifferent to my wasting
And my loneliness and everything.
And the peacocks and the peahens are dancing
In the joy of being together.
Whatever am 1 to do ?
Thou art leaving me, going away to tend the herds,
And the day will lengthen to an age.
Why didst thou cleave my heart
With Thy eyes, lovely as the lotus?
Going after cattle indeed!
It is unworthy of Thee, most unworthy.'28
'Thou art with me.
The flood of ecstasy at Thy touch
Overflows the sky,
And I am drowned, sense and all.
Ah, but it is a dream, only a dream.
Thou art going
And the passion of yearning flares up again
And eats deep, deep into me.
No, no, life cannot bear it.
Thy going after the kine,
May that die!'29
Towards the end of the next stanza, the gopī speaks not for herself alone but for all the gopīs who have lost their hearts to the Lord:
'If Thou goest to graze the cattle,
I shall die.
My spirit is burning.
Ah, but it is a tough one, I live still.
I am alone and helpless
And see not Thy dark form moving before me.
Tears not to be stemmed fill the eyes,
Restless like glancing fish.
When you are away, the day drags on and on.
It will not end.
This separation is death to us.
To us miserable creatures
Born alas, as women among the lowly cowherds.'30
The gopī thinks of the words of love that her Lover has spoken during the night and the memory is agony. She feels that evening has already come like an elephant in rut to crush her and the wind is scattering the fiery scent of jasmine. 'How can I bear it', she cries. She feels that many like her may love Him, (Why not? He is the lover of all souls) and are perhaps waiting for Him where He goes. 'Let them be' she says 'but here we are in tears and our hearts a-tremble, go not, go not to the pastures for that would mean our lives melting away like wax.' Then a doubt assails her. She who till now has been thinking of her suffering alone is now afraid that in the jungle, evil asuras may gather to harm her Lover. 'Oh, no, He should not go', the gopī cries. 'Let Him remain even if he turns away from me, with his lotus eyes and lips and hands, to other slender-waisted women. That does not matter, if only He remains near.'
This appears strange coming from a woman for she who is so madly in love would surely have her lover all to herself.
This tiruvaimozhi shows not merely that Nammāḻvār speaks as the gopī but also that the gopī becomes Nammāḻvār. The heart that throbs in the chaotic words of this decad is Nammāḻvār's.
Apart from being the woman in love, directly or through a purāṇic character, Nammāḻvār is in turn, as in 'Tiruviruttam', the woman's mother, her friend and maid and a Kaṭṭuvichi. But as each symbol is employed in a separate tiruvoimozhi which has the force of a self-contained poem, there is no blurring of any symbol because of another, in as much as all the symbols do not occur together as one continuous allegory.
Here is a tiruvoimozhi in which the Āḻvār speaks as a woman in love addressing her friends:
'My good friends, gazelle-eyed,
Day by day, laden with karma that I am.
J am wasting.
While He keeps His kingly state
In the honey-filled groves of Tiruvallavāḻ,31
Where the lush palms sweep the sky
And the scent of the jasmine rises sweet.
When will I, His slave, reach His feet?'32
Here is another where the woman in love (a woman of the cowherds) is put out because the lover has delayed His coming:
'Go, Master, leave us,
We have earned only this merit
Through our penance
To be harrowed by Thy smile,
Thy red mouth and lotus eyes.
Go, there are countless women
Lovely as peacocks,
Wearing Thy grace, waiting for Thee.
Go, go to them and leaving Thy kine to stray,
Play loud on Thy flute
That they may hear thrilled.'33
In this tiruvoimozhi, the woman who speaks has yet to reach maturity. She seems to be a little girl playing with her mates at building toy houses of sand and at house-keeping therein. Her complaint is that the Lord has not come and stood near them with a bright smile lighting up His face, approving the small houses of sand they have built and the make-believe rice they have cooked34, symbolic of the petty endeavours for which men solicit His blessing and which He sweeps aside so that they may turn to Him.
The woman in love is grown up and mature in the following, where her mother speaks:
'To Him, who measured the Worlds,
He who is dark blue like a rain-cloud
And has lovely lotus eyes,
My daughter with fragrant hair
Has lost her conch bangles,'35
The mother goes on to bewail her daughter's loss of her bright complexion, of the firm build of her body and of her36 virginity. To those not accustomed to the ways of bridal mysticism, this and the following where again the mother speaks may appear a little extravagant:
''Rice that is eaten
Water that is drunk and betel that is chewed
And everything else, -
Are my Lord Kaṇṇan"
So she cries, the young gazelle,
And with eyes brimming with tears
She goes seeking
Asking where on this earth
He and His fame dwell rich,
And the place she selects,
And enters is Tirukkolūr.'37
'Tell me, little birds,
Prattling His name and of his garlands,
The village, the land and all the world doing likewise,
Has she, this cruel one's daughter,
Fragile as a creeper,
Gone to Tirukkolur
Girl by the fertile fields ?'38
She, lovely as a carven image,
Calling the poovais,39 the parrots,
Her ball, her boxes, and her playthings
By the divine names of Tirumal,40
Has risen and gone
Her fruit lips trembling,
Her dark eyes raining.
What will she do, poor one,
In the dark fields of Tirukkolur? ' 41
In what follows, the mother addresses God and asks in bewilderment and pain what He has done and what he intends to do to her daughter:42
'She sleeps not by day or night.
She is ever scattering with her hands
The tears in her eyes.
Naming Thy discus and Thy conch
She folds her palms in worship.
"Eyes like the lotus" she says and melts.
"How can I bear to be away from Thee?"
She cries and stretches out her hands
Fingering the earth as though seeking Thee.
Lord of Tiruvarangam,
Where the red fish leap in the waters,
What are Thou doing to this woman?'43
'Stark and motionless she lies,
Rises, walks and faints,
Folds her hands,
Cries out "To love is an agony,
Lord, dark-hued as the sea,
Behold, Thou art cruel,"...
Calls to Him and cries
"Come", again and again,
And falls down in a swoon.
O grand one, Lord of Tiruvarangam,
What dost Thou think of doing to this woman?'44
There are four lovely tiruvoimozhis where Nammāḻvār tries to send his message to God through birds and bees. The first of these opens with an appeal to a heron:
'Lovely-winged heron,
Tender-hearted one,
May you and your fair mate
Cry pity on me,
And go as my messengers
To Him who raises high
The sign of the strong-winged bird!'45
Think you He will throw you
Into prison dire.
Well, what if it happens?'46
The suggestion is, as Nampiḷḷai points out, that there will be no greater blessing than to be imprisoned by Him, for the prison will be His heart.
The Āḻvār then turns to the koels, the swans soft-gaited, and then to the blue mahanrils,.47
'To Him who should see
And pity me
Who should say "This must not be"
But does not.
My Lord, dark as a rain-cloud,
How can I frame a message to Him?
Where are the words?
Blue mahanrils,
Will you or will you not
Grant me this boon,
To tell Him that no longer
Will what is righteous stay with Him.'"48
The Āḻvār then addresses the little gulls and then the striped bumble-bees, the young parrots, the poovais49 and the cool wind wandering here and there and finally his own troubled heart. The appeals appear to be fruitless and there is a sudden burst of anger against one chosen messenger:
'Little bird, you are the one,
I know it.
I asked you to carry to Him
The news of my suffering.
You have not done it,
And I have lost
My bright colouring and beauty,
Now then, go away,
Find some one else
Who will bring sweet morsels
To your crop every day.'"50
The appeal to the wind is poignant:
'Through my cruel fate,
The end of my merit,
He plays at giving me up
And stays away.
O, chill, wandering wind,
I should have died before.
Come, pierce me now, end me.'51
The wind is not chosen here as the birds are, as a messenger to God, it is called upon to bring about the end of yearning and of life.
The same birds and the bees are invoked in another Tiruvoimozhi52 to carry the Āḻvār's message to the Lord who is now very near at Tiruvanvandūr.53 The tone is now more hopeful and the wind is not called in to 'spear' the Āḻvār. In another tiruvoimozhi, the woman in love with God asks the bees not merely to carry a message to Him but to blow on the bright flowers in her hair with mouths fragrant with His tulasī.54 The parrots she has brought up are asked to seek God wherever He may be and tell Him of her plight.55 Another tiruvoimozhi56 brings in the same birds and bees to be sent to the Lord at Tirumoozhikkalam.57 Here, the woman in love assures the birds (they are 'good' birds) that if only they carry her message to the cloud-hued Lord, Creator of the three worlds, they will rule over the golden world of the gods, yea, over all the worlds.
But before the messengers could return (will they ever do it ?) the restless woman in a passion of love moves towards the shrine at Tirumavoi58 crying
'When, when can I near Him?'
This of course is the burden of the song of seeking and finding that 'Tiruvoimozhi' is, and countless variations are rung on it. The greatness of the poem lies in its philosophic reach, in its revelation of the inner life of Nammāḻvār and in its expression of mystical experiences bewildering in their variety and depth.
1 Near Chidambaram, South Arcot District. Sri Nadhamuni is revered as an illustrious predecessor of Śrī Rāmānuja. (↑)
2 Tiruvoimozhi: 5.8. (↑)
3 Now known as Āḻvār-tirunagari, Tirunelveli district. (↑)
4 The poem, 'Kaṇṇi Nuṇ Cirutāmbu', is by Madhurakavi Āḻvār. Śrī Nāthamuni got it from one Parāṅkuśadāsar. (↑)
5 Vaiṣṇava preceptor of the 13th Century. A.D. (↑)
6 Śrīvacana Bhūṣaṇam: 45-50 (↑)
7 Vaiṣṇava preceptor of the second half of the 13th and the first half of the 14th Century A. D. (↑)
8 'Drāmiḍopaniṣad Sāram' and 'Drāmiḍopaniṣad Tātparya Ratnāvalī'. (↑)
9 'Tātparya Ratnāvalī' : Śloka 4 (↑)
10 Ācārya Hṛdayam: 1.73 (↑)
11 Early thirteenth century ācārya. His commentary is known as Īḍu, the thirty-six thousand'. (↑)
12 Tiruvāimozhi: 2.7 (↑)
13 Only two of Nammāḻvār's works, however, have these signature stanzas, 'Tiruvoimozhi' and 'Tiruviruttam'. The other two works, 'Tiruvāciriyam' and 'Periya Tiruvanṭādi' do not have them. (↑)
14 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.9.11, 7.1.11 and 8.9.11. (↑)
15 ibid. 1.2.2 (↑)
16 ibid. 1.2.1 (↑)
17 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.2.3 (↑)
18 ibid. 4. 9. 2 (↑)
19 ibid. 4. 9. 10 (↑)
20 Tiruvaimozhi: 7.1.3. (↑)
21 ibid. 2. 6. 7. (↑)
22 ibid. 3. 3. 4. (↑)
23 ibid. 1. 6. 3. (↑)
24 ibid. 2. 3. 4. (↑)
25 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.3.10, (↑)
26 ibid. 4. 3. 2. (↑)
27 ibid. 4. 3. 4. (↑)
28 Tiruvaimozhi: 10. 3. 1. Lord Kṛṣṇa lived among the cowherds of Gokula and like them, led the cattle to the pastures and tended them. (↑)
29 ibid. 10. 3. 2. (↑)
30 Tiruvoimozhi: 10.3.3. (↑)
31 ibid. 10.3 (↑)
32 Tiruvalla in Kerala. (↑)
33 Tiruvoimozhi: 5.9.1. (↑)
34 ibid. 6.2.2 (↑)
35 ibid. 6.2.9. (↑)
36 ibid. 6.f.1. 'To lose conch bangles' is poetic convention for 'falling in love's 'losing one's heart'. (↑)
37 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.f. 2,5,10. (↑)
38 ibid. 6.7.1. Tirukkolur is a village near Nammāḻvār's birthplace. (↑)
39 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.7.2. (↑)
40 A kind of bird. (↑)
41 Śrīman Nārāyaṇa, God. (↑)
42 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.7.3. (↑)
43 Tiruvaimozhi: 7.2.1. (↑)
44 ibid. 7.2.4. (↑)
45 The sign on Viṣṇu's flag is the bird, Garuḍa. (↑)
46 Tiruvaimozhi: 1.4.1. (↑)
47 A kind of bird. (↑)
48 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.4.4. (↑)
49 Poovai is a kind of bird. (↑)
50 Tiruvaimozhi: 1.4.8. (↑)
51 Tiruvoimozhi: 1.4.9. (↑)
52 ibid. 6.1. (↑)
53 35 miles from Kottarakkara, Kerala State. (↑)
54 Tiruvoimozhi: 6.8.3. (↑)
55 ibid. 6.8.5. (↑)
56 ibid. 9.7. (↑)
57 A Shrine near Angamali in Kerala. (↑)
58 Tiruvoimozhi: 9. 8. Tirumavoi is a shrine in Kerala. (↑)