When personal devotion to the extent of imagining the god to be a lover or husband is thought of the first name to come to the modern mind is Mira, poetess, princess and devotee of Krishna. There is, I fear, an element of snobbishness in this pre-eminence she enjoys, apart from the very understandable fact of the greater spread of Hindi. For the prototypes for this kind of devotion were created in the South of India with Mahadeviyakka and Andal, and they both lived almost a thousand years before Mira. While the former had Shiva as her focus of love, Andal was devoted to a form of Vishnu called Sri Ranganatha. As is usual when we are talking about events that took place in the seventh century, and even that is a very broad guess, we have no hard data about the saint's life. Miraculous accounts, never at a loss to explain saints, abound. In such versions the baby Andal was found under a Tulasi plant (sacred to Vishnu) by a poet and scholar called Periyalwar. The emergence from the ground of course links her with Sita, wife of Vishnu's avatar Rama, who had a similar genesis. Her first name was thus Goda or 'gift of the Earth'. Such myths are almost certainly manufactured later by the devout to explain away what would otherwise be dazzling chutzpah; to want to marry Vishnu when he already had Laxmi could not be reconciled with devotion unless she was indeed Laxmi, separated from Vishnu by India's favorite deux ex machina, a sage's curse. Periyalwar was not very learned by the formidable standards of the day, but he could expound Bhakti or the cult of devotion superbly. This won him royal honors and the happy poet composed a decade of verses in praise of his God Vishnu in which he, instead of asking for protection from the god, prays fervently that his beloved Vishnu will be protected from the evil of the world that loves him not! This is a rare form of bhakti in which the devotee assumes a parental role towards the god and frets for his welfare. Given an unusual parent like this Andal's behavior in the future was not unexpected or surprising. Andal had decided early on that she was going to marry Sri Ranganatha. All her spiritual striving was directed towards this quixotic goal. Her great spiritual attainments and beautiful poetry were a direct outcome of this ceaseless striving. She had ample opportunity to indulge herself in this belief, for her father was responsible for offering garlands to Vishnu in the local temple at Srivilliputhur. The young girl used to secretly try them on first and then admire herself in the mirror, seeking to find in the reflection a confirmation of her desire to be worthy of being the bride of Vishnu. Her shocked father once caught her out and substituted fresh garlands for worship. Whereupon Vishnu appeared in his dream and rebuked the poor man, for Andal's garlands were infused with the fragrance of devotion and he valued that more than fresh garlands. The intensity of her devotion increasing by the day, Andal began to live in a world of her own reality. Out of this trance of devotion emerged thirty great poems called the Tirruppavai, allegorical interpretations of the mystic longing for union with the divine though they are pretty good as ordinary love poetry too. One of the greatest intellects produced by the south, Sri Ramanuja was however completely taken up by the deeper meanings of the Tirruppavai and did much to establish its spiritual stature. Andal was rejecting all proposals of marriage and acting stranger by the day when the priests in Srirangam had the strangest dreams any temple establishment ever had. For the priests had Vishnu commanding them to go to Srivilliputhur where his bride was waiting for him! The baffled priests set out to bring this unusual bride to the temple and found her serenely awaiting their arrival. The strange bridal procession followed the saint to the sanctum where she rushed in and disappeared right before their eyes. Centuries later, Mira's life would have a similar conclusion. The elated and puzzled Periyalwar returned to his village and to a life of high status for he was the father in law of the Lord! As a consequence of Andal's life, and her many imitators, the notion of god as a literal spouse, which seems bizarre to non-Hindu sensibilities has become part of the cultural norms of the country. Every now and then some girl decides she is the bride of some god and persuades her parents to marry her off in an actual ceremony. There is much amusement and lots of media coverage but everybody takes it in stride and the girl lives out her life in peace as a married woman. India accepts anything if it is seen as a path to God, but Andal was surely the pioneer of this particular path of devotion. - Rohit Arya Archive