|
In the seventh and eighth centuries a movement arose in South India, which stressed
devotion to the supreme Vishnu. So devout were the major proponents of this doctrine
that they were called Alwars, which meant one who dives into the divine, is immersed
in God-bliss. Their creed has become famous as Srivaishnavism, because they had
an important role assigned to Sri or Laxmi, wife of Vishnu. The Alwars are twelve
in number and belong to all castes. Their teachings were called Ubaya Vedanta, as
it was believed that they had managed to translate ancient concepts into the language
of devotion and also provided a bridge between the Tamil and Sanskrit languages.
The hymns of the Alwars were collected into a great work called the Divya Prabandham
and comprise four thousand stanzas. Within the Dravida Prabandham the third thousand
and part of the fourth thousand stanzas were composed by an extraordinary spiritual
genius called Nammalwar. His verses are called the Tiruvaimozhi and it has
even been called the Dravidiopnishad. More commentaries have been written on the
Tiruvaimozhi than any other work of the southern saints.
Very little is actually known about a man who was such a towering presence in the
great Srivaishnava tradition. He was born in the modern Tirunelveli district to
a ruling chieftain named Kariyar and his mother was called Udaya Nangai. What is
undeniable is that his spiritual power seemed to radiate outwards from early childhood.
India is the best country in the world for such matters to be taken seriously, and
the serious demeanor of the child, who was sometimes mistaken to be dumb because
of his habit of not speaking for its own sake, led him to be named Maran, 'different
from the ordinary.' He also had the disconcerting habit of hardly ever opening his
eyes, so rapt was he with his internal visions. So great is his spiritual detachment
that a legend grew up that he was free of the 'Sata', the veil of ignorance that
falls over the child at the moment of birth, for Maran alone had an unobstructed
vision of the truth even before birth by renting the veil. Hence his name Satakopa
- destroyer of the veil.
The boy saint spent most of his time sitting under the tamarind tree outside the
local Vishnu temple at Tirunagari. He might have achieved merely a local fame were
it not for a Brahmin called Madhura Kavi, who was born in a village close to our
saint's birthplace. He was ignorant of his existence however and was away on pilgrimage
to Ayodhya, birthplace of the God Rama when he got an insistent vision that he should
go to Tirunagari. Madhura Kavi was a great scholar and poet and he was somewhat skeptical
of this silent sitting saint but he obeyed his inner voice and went to meet him.
Tamil literature and poetry would never be the same.
When he met the young saint the poet asked him the classic question of Vedanta,
" If what is subtle is born in the world of mortals, on what will it subsist and
how will it live here?" The answer completely floored him. "It will be hidden in
the world, subsisting on what chance brings." This answer contains many subtle layers
of inference and insight within it and has been parsed to death by commentators.
It is worth noting that a votary of devotion was not at a loss to answer a complex
philosophic query - unlike today when intellectual enquiry about the divine
is regarded in far too many devout circles as being worse than atheism. The poet
instantly declared the sitting saint to be his guru and it is owing to his diligence
that we have the record of the utterances of the saint known as the Tiruvaimozhi.
That is more or less what Nammalwar did in life, he sat under the tree and contemplated
God. Madhura Kavi however has left us proof that such a life can be tremendously
impactful on a society and people. Leaving aside the complexities of the philosophy
what Nammalwar taught was called Arthapanchakam or the meaningful five principles.
These are the nature of the soul, the glory of Vishnu, the goal of life, (liberation
by the grace of Vishnu) the means of attaining that and the obstacles to be overcome
along the way. He had an interesting interpretation of the nature of the Absolute
or Paramatman, holding that it is at once Transcendent as well as immanent in all
beings in their Inner Selves and, fresh perspective, easily accessible to all through
the incarnations of Vishnu. In many ways this was pioneering theology, but in no
way did it contradict the extant texts so he won through.
The great Nammalwar died when he was only thirty-five years old.
- Rohit Arya
Archive
|