Āḷavandār

On the bank of the Yamunā, in the far north, there is a village called Śrī Govardhanapuram, and the Lord who stands there is called Yamuṉaittuṟaivaṉ, the lord of the Yamunā ghat. Nāthamuni once served him there with his father Īśvarabhaṭṭāzhvār and his son Īśvaramuni, and the three of them meant to stay for good, until Maṉṉaṉār of Vīranārāyaṇapuram called Nāthamuni home in a dream. Yamuṉaittuṟaivaṉ gave them leave through his archaka, with tīrtha and prasāda, and they came south.

Long after that, in the last days of his life, Nāthamuni looked at his son Īśvaramuni and said, "A son is going to be born to you. Give him the holy name Yamunaitturaivar."

The account does not say why he chose that name. It is the name of the Lord he had served on the Yamunā.

Then Nāthamuni turned to two of his disciples, Uyyakkoṇḍār and Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ, and laid a charge on them together. "Teach Yamunaitturaivar the purport of the darśana," he said, meaning the whole teaching of the line, "and the special meanings of the secret of yoga that we have told you." Then he sat in yoga as before.

So the child had a name, and two teachers, before he was born.

He is the one the account will come to call Āḷavandār, and whom the Sanskrit tradition calls Yāmunācārya. The Sanskrit verses of the account call him Yāmuna and Yāmuneya, and the account itself calls him Yamunaitturaivar until the day a queen gave him another name.

Uyyakkoṇḍār did not live to keep the charge. When his own end came, his disciple Maṇakkāl Nambi asked him who would carry the darśana now. Uyyakkoṇḍār told him to carry it himself, with the mudalis, the leading disciples, gathered round him. Then he passed on what Nāthamuni had laid on him. A grandson of Nāthamuni would be born to Īśvaramuni of the Coṭṭai family; Nambi was to have him named Yamunaitturaivar and teach him all the secret meanings, so that he would be the one to carry the darśana. Uyyakkoṇḍār had been given that service at the end and had not been able to do it. "You teach him," he said, "even if you have to go and wait upon him to do it."

Some time passed, with Maṇakkāl Nambi carrying the darśana among the mudalis. Then, in the month of Āḍi, under the star Uttirāṭam, a son was born to Īśvaramuni.

Nambi heard of it and was overjoyed, and he came.

The old Sanskrit rules say what is to be done for such a child. At the birth rite, or failing that at the first tonsure or the sacred thread or the beginning of study, he is to bear the discus of Viṣṇu. He is to be sprinkled with the Vaiṣṇava hymns. Into his right ear the eight-syllable mantra and the dvaya are to be whispered, and with a hand on his head the twelve-syllable; and after that he is to be given a Vaiṣṇava name, a name that destroys sin.

Nambi had Īśvaramuni perform the birth rite. Then, on the twelfth day, when the ten days had passed, he did as Śrīman Nāthamuni had instructed. First the sacred seal, the mark of the Lord's discus. Then the name.

"Yamunaitturaivar."

And Nambi was pleased.

Īśvaramuni performed for the boy each rite at its proper time: the first feeding, the tonsure, the sacred thread and the rest. Then he set him to study.

The boy was very quick. In the lessons, when the teacher had the students recite a passage a second time, he would look at the others and say, "You are reciting the very place that has already been recited," and keep away from it. In that way, being so quick, he learned the Veda with its limbs and its subsidiary sciences, in the word-by-word recitation and the linked recitation. And he was married.

Then Īśvaramuni died and went to the sacred land, which the Tamil calls tirunāḍu, the Lord's own world. His son performed the brahmamedha for him, the full rite for one who has known Brahman. He laid him in the ground and did every rite that had to be done.

The account does not say how old he was then, or where the family lived, or whether Maṇakkāl Nambi saw him again in those years. It goes straight on to his next teacher.

After his father's death Yamunaitturaivar studied the śāstras with a teacher named Mahābhāṣya Bhaṭṭar.

In that kingdom there was a great scholar called Ākkiyāzhvāṉ, who was the king's own purohita, his household priest. Every scholar in the land paid him a levy called the daśabandha. A written demand for it came to Mahābhāṣya Bhaṭṭar too.

Mahābhāṣya Bhaṭṭar saw it and lay there dejected.

"Why do you lie there like this?" Yamunaitturaivar asked him.

His teacher told him.

Yamunaitturaivar took the demand that had come and tore it up.

Ākkiyāzhvāṉ heard of it and sent to ask what kind of man this was. "Is he only a poet? Or is he a master of the śāstras?"

Yamunaitturaivar answered in a Sanskrit verse, and sent it to him written down:

நவயம்கவயஸ்துகேவலம் நவயம்கேவலதந்த்ர

பாரகா: - அபிதுப்ரதிவாதிவாரணப்ரகடாடோபவிபாடநக்ஷமா:

navayamkavayastukēvalam navayamkēvalatantra

pārakāḥ - apituprativātivāraṇaprakaṭāṭōpavipāṭanakṣamāḥ

We are not poets only, nor are we masters of the śāstras only. We are the ones who can tear apart the open, swollen pride of the elephants that come against us in debate.

Ākkiyāzhvāṉ read it and was amazed. "Is there such a scholar?" he said, and he told the king.

The king sent his own royal order: Yamunaitturaivar was to come at once.

Yamunaitturaivar tore that up too.

The king heard of it. "If so," he said, "he is no ordinary man." And he sent him a palanquin, with men to carry it.

Yamunaitturaivar set out for the king's court in that golden palanquin, and on the way he sent a second verse ahead of him, written down:

ஆஶைலா தத்ரிகந்யாசரணகிஸலய ந்யாஸதந்யோபகண்டா தாரக்ஷோ

நீதஸீதாமுககமலஸமுல்லாஸஹேதோஶ்சஸேதோ:-ஆசப்ராச்யப்ரதீச்யக்ஷிதி

தரயுகளாதர்க்கசந்த்ராவதம்ஸாந் மீமாம்ஸாஶாஸ்த்ரயுக்ம ‡ஶ்ரமவிமலமநாம்

ருக்யதாம்மாத்ருஶோஉந்ய:

āśailā tatrikanyācaraṇakisalaya nyāsatanyōpakaṇṭā tārakṣō

nītasītāmukakamalasamullāsahētōścasētōḥ-ācaprācyapratīcyakṣiti

tarayukaḷātarkkacantrāvatamsān mīmāmsāśāstrayukma ‡śramavimalamanām

rukyatāmmātruśōunyaḥ

From the mountain whose slopes are blessed where the mountain's daughter set down her tender feet, to the causeway that made Sītā's lotus face bloom again when the demon had carried her off; and between the eastern and the western ranges that wear the sun and the moon for their crowns: let them search for another like me, whose mind the labour of both Mīmāṃsās has made clear.

Ākkiyāzhvāṉ saw it and was very angry. "I will debate with this man," he said.

The king looked at Yamunaitturaivar. "Debate with him," he said.

Yamunaitturaivar spoke to the king. "If he and I debate, you will not know who has won and who has lost. Neither of us will ever say, 'I am defeated.' So that victory and defeat may be known, impartial scholars must be called."

"So be it," said the king. He had the scholars summoned, and he took his seat in the hall of learning with his queen beside him.

The queen pointed to Yamunaitturaivar and said to the king, "He will not lose." If he did lose, she said, she would pay a forfeit of her own; the account gives it in a Tamil phrase whose sense it does not explain.

The king answered his queen. "If Ākkiyāzhvāṉ loses, I will give this man half my kingdom."

Meanwhile Ākkiyāzhvāṉ looked at Yamunaitturaivar and set the terms. "In worldly matters, whatever you say is not so, I will say is so; and whatever you say is so, I will say is not so. And the one who wins shall strike the head of the one who loses."

Yamunaitturaivar looked at him and said three things about the world.

"Your mother is not barren. The king is a sovereign over all the earth. The king's wife is faithful to her husband."

Ākkiyāzhvāṉ had no answer.

After that they went into the śāstras, and there too Ākkiyāzhvāṉ lost, and lost completely. The account tells how it went, though some copies leave this out. Yamunaitturaivar declared that debate is of three kinds, the best, the middling and the lowest, and that if Ākkiyāzhvāṉ could win in three statements, or in five, or in seven, the victory was his; and Ākkiyāzhvāṉ lost in three, in five and in seven.

Then there was the matter of the head.

"You are the royal purohita," Yamunaitturaivar said to him, "and old in years. I will not do it."

All the scholars who had heard him were glad, and they carried him in procession.

The queen took Yamunaitturaivar up in her arms. "Have you come to rule me?" she cried: āḷa vandīrō. And she went into the jewelled palace with her husband.

The king gave him half his kingdom, and had his wife brought to him. From here on the account calls him Āḷavandār, the one who came to rule. It does not say more about the name than that. He lived there with his wife in royal state, and he was happy in it.

Maṇakkāl Nambi heard what had happened, and danced, and came with a great longing to see Āḷavandār. He could not get in. It was a king's place now, with guards and a watch on it. So what came to Āḷavandār, at first, was only a dish of greens, and Nambi's own life tells it at length.

For six months an old brahmin brought tūtuḷai, the green Āḷavandār liked, to his kitchen, and no one asked about it. Then for four days there was none, and at his meal Āḷavandār asked why. When he heard of the old man he said, "When he comes again, let us know," and when Nambi came back with the greens Āḷavandār rose to meet him, saluted him, and gave him a seat.

"Why have you been bringing us this tūtuḷai all these days?" he asked. "Do you want money? Do you want land?"

"We want none of these," Nambi said. "There is wealth your forefathers gathered, and I know the place where that treasure lies. Until you take it into your hands, give the order that I am not to be stopped at the gate."

Āḷavandār gave the order.

From that day Nambi came and taught him all eighteen chapters of the Gītā, until its true sense lay clear, and day by day a longing grew in Āḷavandār.

"Is there no means," he asked Nambi, "by which that Being can be seen face to face?"

There was a means, Nambi said; and alone with him, he gave him the meaning of the carama-śloka, the last word of the Gītā. Śaraṇāgati, the giving of oneself into the Lord's keeping, sank deeper and deeper into Āḷavandār's heart, and a distaste for this whole round of birth and death rose in him.

Nambi saw it, and took him to Tiruvaraṅgam, the holy town of Śrīraṅgam, and had him worship at the feet of Periya Perumāḷ, the Great Lord who lies there on his serpent. "This is the great treasure your forefathers sought out and laid by," he said.

Āḷavandār looked at that beautiful dark-blue form that has no end, and cried out for the days he had lost, and took in the Lord of Araṅgam with his eyes full of tears. Then he gave everything up. He let every attachment go, took up the āśrama of one who has given up everything, and stayed at Śrīraṅgam serving Periya Perumāḷ, his mind on the Lord and turned away from all that was not the Lord.

Another account, kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple there, tells the same turning in its own way. Uyyakkoṇḍār and Maṇakkāl Nambi, it says, had been carrying on both the darśana and the running of the temple, in a bad time: the Lord of Śrīraṅgam had gone away for a year before an invader from the Oṭṭiya country, some of the temple's own people had turned against him, and men of six other faiths had built houses in the town and lived there as they pleased. In that time Maṇakkāl Nambi set Āḷavandār right and brought him to worship Periya Perumāḷ; and by Periya Perumāḷ's own gracious glance Āḷavandār turned wholly from the world, gave up his wealth, took the āśrama, and entered Periya Perumāḷ's kingdom. That account says he took on the running of the temple. While he ran it he wrote the Āgamaprāmāṇya, answered the men of the other faiths and cleared their dwellings out of Tiruvaraṅgam, and carried the darśana on through many works.

While Āḷavandār lived at Śrīraṅgam serving Periya Perumāḷ, twenty mudalis came and took refuge at his feet. The account names them all. Mahāpūrṇa, whom the Tamil calls Periya Nambi. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Nambi. Śrīśailapūrṇa, Periya Tirumalai Nambi. Māṟaṉēri Nambi. Kāñcīpūrṇa, Tirukkacci Nambi. Āḷavandār Āzhvāṉ. Mālādhara, Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ. Vāṉamāmalai Āṇḍāṉ. Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ. Īcaṉ Āṇḍāṉ. Cīyāṇḍāṉ. Tirukkurukūr Appaṉ. Tirumōkūr Appaṉ. Tirumōkūr Niṉṟāṉ. Teyvapperumāḷ. Vakuḷābharaṇa Sōmayājiyār. Tirukkurukūr Dāsar. Tirumāliruñcōlai Dāsar. Vaḍamaduraippiṟandāṉ. And Āṭkoṇḍi Ammaṅgi.

All of them were learned men, and all of them carried the darśana.

Then Maṇakkāl Nambi told Āḷavandār there was one more special secret, and that it was with Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ. It had not come down to Nambi, he said, because Uyyakkoṇḍār had once put it off with his answer about the corpse in the house and the wedding.

"Then we shall hear it there," said Āḷavandār.

And he stayed at Kōyil, as the Tamil calls Śrīraṅgam, and carried the darśana.

When Nambi's last days came he looked at Āḷavandār and told him three things.

"You are bound to Nāthamuni in both ways. Hold it as certain that his feet alone are, for you, both the goal and the way to it. Raise up someone like yourself to carry the darśana. And do not leave Kōyil."

Then, with his mind on Uyyakkoṇḍār's feet, he went to the sacred land, and Āḷavandār performed the brahmamedha for his teacher and every rite that had to be done.

After Maṇakkāl Nambi was gone, Āḷavandār and the mudalis went to Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ.

They found him seated in yoga. "We must not break his samādhi," they said, and they stood behind a wall where he could not see them. They did not sneeze. They did not cough. They made no sound with their feet.

Appaṉ, sitting in yoga, turned round and looked back. "Has anyone of the Coṭṭai family come here?"

Āḷavandār rose and came forward. "Your servant Yamunaitturaivaṉ is here," he said, and he prostrated at Appaṉ's feet. Then he asked him, "We stood behind the wall, where you could not see us. How did Your Honour know to say that?"

Appaṉ told him.

"He and I were enjoying each other. Periya Pirāṭṭiyār, the Lady herself, may press Him close and hold Him to her breast, and the Lord of all will not so much as look at her face. But He pressed down on my shoulders and peered out over the wall, three or four times. When He looked like that, I thought someone of the Coṭṭai family must have come."

Āḷavandār heard it and was struck with wonder. "Teach this secret of yoga to your servant," he said, and he fell at Appaṉ's feet and lay there.

Appaṉ was pleased. "We will do so," he said, and he took him by the head and lifted him up. "We will tell it at the end of our body. In the coming month of Puṣya, at the conjunction of Guru and Puṣya, in the muhūrta called Abhijit, our body will come to its end. You must come before that."

He wrote it down in a letter and gave it to him, and Āḷavandār took the letter and went back to Kōyil.

Then came the festival of the holy recitation for Namperumāḷ, Our Lord, as the Lord of Śrīraṅgam is called. Namperumāḷ sat listening to the recitation, and Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar was singing the decad of Tiruvāymozhi that begins Keṭumiṭar, acting it with gestures as he sang. As he sang he looked at Āḷavandār's face, and he sang one line over and over:

"Walk on, all you who are our own; we have told you, so that you may know."

Āḷavandār heard it. "If one is counted among the Āzhvār's own," he said, "one must go to Tiruvanantapuram and worship."

He rose from the assembly then and there. He prostrated before Periya Perumāḷ, took his leave, and set out. He set Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ to guard the maṭha while he was gone.

He went to Tiruvanantapuram and worshipped the Lord of Anantapuram, who lies on the hooded serpent, through the three doors.

While he was staying there he said to the men who served at the shrine, "Bring the letter Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ wrote and gave us."

They brought it and put it in his hands. He read it. The month and the day it named were that very day.

"We had no Puṣpaka vimāna, no chariot of the air!" he cried, and he turned back in great grief.

At Kōyil, meanwhile, Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ could not bear to be parted from Āḷavandār, and his body wasted away. The mudalis there called physician after physician to look at him.

"With him it is longing for some object," the physicians said. "That is what has brought him to this."

"What is the object you long for?" the mudalis asked him.

"For your servant," he said, "is there any object but Āḷavandār?"

"Then take him there," said the physicians.

So the mudalis carried him, on something the account calls a kaṭaṭaṇam, which may have been a litter. Day by day the wasting left his body, until he could walk.

Āḷavandār, on his way back, had stopped on the bank of the Karaimaṉai river, half a kātam out of Tiruvanantapuram.

Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ came. He saw Āḷavandār, prostrated at his feet, and lay there and did not get up.

Āḷavandār saw that he lay there without rising. "Because Perumāḷ was his own master and a hero," he said, speaking of Rāma, "Śrī Bharata stayed where he had been put. It is because I am neither my own master nor a hero, is it not, that you did not stay where you were put, but came?"

Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ heard it. "By coming I have lost what I am!" he said, and lay there more undone than before.

Seeing he still did not rise, Āḷavandār said, "Are you lying there saying you will not get up until you have made me my own master and a hero?"

Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ heard it. "Like the loss of what I am in coming," he said, "this too is a loss of what I am!" And he scrambled up in haste and stood.

The disciples said, "The state of Iḷaiya Perumāḷ has come upon him," meaning Lakṣmaṇa: "like two fish lifted out of water."

"What a man this is to be fit for such a thing!" said Āḷavandār, and he was very glad. "You have grown so thin," he said, and his heart melted with tenderness, and he stroked his back. "The tower of Tiruvanantapuram is in sight, there. Go there and worship the Lord who lies on Ananta of the thousand fresh heads, and come back."

Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ pointed at Āḷavandār, his own ācārya. "My Tiruvanantapuram has come to meet me," he said.

The account sets beside it what the old texts say of a teacher, in a Sanskrit verse and a Tamil verse:

யேநைவகுருணாயஸ்ய ந்யாஸவித்யாப்ரதீ

யதே-தஸ்யவைகுண்டதுக்தாப்தி த்வாரகாஸ்ஸர்வஏவஸ:

yēnaivakuruṇāyasya nyāsavityāpratī

yatē-tasyavaikuṇṭatuktāpti tvārakāssarvaēvasaḥ

The one by whom, as guru, the knowledge of surrender is given to a disciple: for that disciple he alone is Vaikuṇṭha and the ocean of milk and Dvārakā, all of them.

வில்லார்

மணிகொழிக்கும்வேங்கடப்பொற்குன்றமுதல், செல்லார்பொழில்சூழ்திருப்

பதிக - ளெல்லாம், மருளாமிருளோடமத்தகத்துத்தந்தா, ளருளாலேவைத்த

வவர்

villār

maṇikozhikkumvēṅkaṭappoṟkuṉṟamutal, cellārpozhilcūzhtirup

patika - ḷellām, maruḷāmiruḷōṭamattakattuttantā, ḷaruḷālēvaitta

vavar

Bright Vēṅkaṭam, the golden hill where gems are washed down, first, and the holy places ringed with groves where the clouds gather, all of them: the one who, that the darkness of delusion might flee, by his grace set his feet upon my head, they are he.

And the verse that begins "the abiding generous fame" and ends "your pair of flower feet; that is mine too."

So, as those verses say, Āḷavandār took Deyvavāri Āṇḍāṉ with him, a disciple fit for that rare thing, and went back to Kōyil and worshipped Periya Perumāḷ.

The account does not say what became of the secret of yoga. Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ's day had come and gone while Āḷavandār was in Tiruvanantapuram, and the account says no more of it.

He stayed at Kōyil among his disciples and carried the darśana. And a concern rose in him. Who, after this, would carry it on?

He could see no one. It wore on him, and he sat turning it over.

In those days two Śrīvaiṣṇavas came to Kōyil from the shrine of Pēraruḷāḷar at Kāñcī, the Lord whose name means the great giver of grace. They worshipped the feet of Namperumāḷ and came and stood serving Āḷavandār.

Āḷavandār asked them for the news of Perumāḷkōyil, as the Tamil calls Kāñcī, and in passing they told him a story.

"There is a sannyāsin of the single staff called Yādavaprakāśa, and one Iḷaiyāzhvār of Śrīperumbudūr is studying Vedānta with him. When the text came up, 'Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinite,' Yādavaprakāśa gave it a meaning that made Brahman only the exclusion of everything else. Iḷaiyāzhvār said that when the words can be read as Brahman possessing those qualities, it does not fit to speak of mere exclusion. Yādavaprakāśa only grunted.

"Another day Iḷaiyāzhvār was rubbing oil into his teacher's body, and he heard him give an unworthy meaning to the words 'His two eyes are like a lotus,' and it grieved him. His tears fell on Yādavaprakāśa's thigh, and they burned it as if a spark of fire had fallen there. Yādavaprakāśa started, looked into his face and asked what grieved him. Iḷaiyāzhvār said: 'The sense is that the eyes of the Supreme Person are like a lotus that has just opened at the sight of the sun. When I heard a wrong meaning, it grieved me.'"

They told it all to him at length.

Āḷavandār heard them out, and he said a Sanskrit verse:

அஸந்தஏவாத்ரஹி

ஸம்பவந்தி ஹஸந்திகாயாமிவஹவ்யவாஹ: - அத்ரைவஸந்தோயதிஸம்ப

வந்தி தத்ரைவலாபஸ்ஸரஸீருஹாணாம்

asantaēvātrahi

sampavanti hasantikāyāmivahavyavāhaḥ - atraivasantōyatisampa

vanti tatraivalāpassarasīruhāṇām

Here it is the wicked who spring up, like fire in a brazier. If the good spring up here too, that is lotuses growing in the brazier.

And he said, "Like a lotus flowering in a brazier, even such a great soul has come to be in this world!"

He was full of joy. At once, with a great longing to see the young man, he set out with the chief disciples. He told Namperumāḷ, took his leave, and went.

He travelled by stages by way of Tirukkōvalūr, where he worshipped Āzhvārgaḷ Nāyaṉār, and came on to Kāñcī, the city the verse calls "best of all cities, taking away sin, the city where merit grows."

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas of the place came out to meet him with great ceremony, and with them Varantarum Perumāḷ Araiyar and the Śrīśaṭhakōpaṉ, bearing tīrtha and prasāda. The account adds, though some copies leave it out, that Kāñcīpūrṇa, Tirukkacci Nambi, heard that his own ācārya Āḷavandār had come and went out to receive him with great joy. Āḷavandār was very glad. He prostrated with his whole body on the ground and received the tīrtha and prasāda.

Kāñcīpūrṇa fell at his feet in a heap and served him.

Āḷavandār took him by the head and lifted him up, full of affection. "Śrī Gajendradāsa," he said, "the fan you wave for Pēraruḷāḷar, the service so close to him: does it go on without a break?"

Kāñcīpūrṇa covered his mouth with his hand. "By Your Honour's grace," he said, "Pēraruḷāḷar accepts it."

Then Āḷavandār took Kāñcīpūrṇa with him and went in to worship Pēraruḷāḷar, the one the Tamil verse calls "the Lord of Attiyūr with the discus, whom the world praises," who has bound himself to give each petitioner what he asks. First he worshipped at the feet of Perundēviyār, the Lord's consort. Then, going round, he worshipped Tiruvanantāzhvāṉ, the serpent, beside the holy anthill, and east of it Kariyamāṇikkattāzhvār.

While Āḷavandār and his disciples were standing there, Yādavaprakāśa and his crowd of students, who had worshipped Pēraruḷāḷar, came round on their circuit.

"Which of these is Iḷaiyāzhvār?" Āḷavandār asked Kāñcīpūrṇa.

"The one coming in the middle," Kāñcīpūrṇa said. "Ruddy, tall and strong, with arms that reach to his knees, long and well rounded, as the verse says."

Āḷavandār looked at him again and again, out of joy, with clear, sweet, deep eyes streaked with red.

"Āmudalvaṉ ivaṉ," he said. This one is indeed the first.

And he gave him his special glance.

Then he turned toward the Lord and made his request. There is a verse:

யஸ்யப்ரஸாதகலயாபதிரஶ்ஶ்ருணோதி பங்

கு:ப்ரதாவதிஜவேநசவக்திமூக: - அந்த:ப்ரபஶ்யதிஸுதம்லபதேசவந்த்யா

தந்தேவமேவவரதம்ஶரணங்கதோஉஸ்மி

yasyaprasātakalayāpatiraśśruṇōti paṅ

kuḥpratāvatijavēnacavaktimūkaḥ - antaḥprapaśyatisutamlapatēcavantyā

tantēvamēvavaratamśaraṇaṅkatōusmi

By a particle of whose grace the deaf hear, the lame run swiftly, the dumb speak, the blind see, and the barren woman bears a son: to that god, Varada, I have gone for refuge.

And there is a Tamil verse that says He quickly shows them the very thing they long for.

"You give each one what he desires," Āḷavandār said. "So your servant too has taken refuge in Your Honour, that you should give your special glance, so that this great soul called Iḷaiyāzhvār may become the one who carries our darśana."

Then he went up Hastigiri, the hill of the shrine, and worshipped Pēraruḷāḷar there too, and received tīrtha and prasāda. He left Kāñcīpūrṇa standing there.

He found no moment then to speak a good word to Iḷaiyāzhvār. So he turned back, and went home to Kōyil with his disciples.

Elsewhere the account remembers two sayings of his about the young man. "Oh, if only this great soul would enter this darśana!" And, "This one will be the first." And it says that he commanded his own disciples: "Tell Iḷaiyāzhvār the supreme secret that we tell you."

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells the visit more briefly. Āḷavandār had run the temple a long time, it says, and was wondering who would carry on its twofold service after him. He heard that Iḷaiyāzhvār, born at Śrīperumbudūr, was studying under Yādavaprakāśa at Kāñcī. He went there, looked on him with grace, and blessed him, saying he must become the one to carry the twofold service. He prayed at the shrine of Pēraruḷāḷar, and went back.

Some time after this, one day at Kōyil, when Āḷavandār was expounding, the Tamil verse that begins Iliṅgattiṭṭa purāṇattīrum came up.

The old care came back on him. "We have not been able to find anyone to carry this darśana after us!" His mind went to Iḷaiyāzhvār. "Now is there some way to cut Iḷaiyāzhvār's tie with Yādavaprakāśa and bring him to us?"

And he prayed earnestly to Pēraruḷāḷar: "Make our prapatti bear fruit." Prapatti is the act of taking refuge, and it was the refuge he had taken before the Lord at Kāñcī for the young man's sake.

A shorter account of the line tells his prayers a little differently. In that account he made his prapatti to Pēraruḷāḷar in the words of that same verse, "to that god, Varada, I have gone for refuge"; and later, when he heard that Iḷaiyāzhvār had left Yādavaprakāśa, he made prapatti again, this time to Periya Perumāḷ at Śrīraṅgam, that Iḷaiyāzhvār might become the one to uphold the teaching.

While Āḷavandār lay ill, two of his chief disciples, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa, came to him with Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar to speak for them. They prostrated at his feet and asked him one thing.

"Give your servants a meaning that will be our refuge."

Āḷavandār thought of the two of them. "The meaning that is your refuge is this," he said. "Kōyilāzhvār, the sanctum itself, is the place where your life is held. Think of it as your refuge, and go on so." And: "There is the form of Tiruppāṇāzhvār, standing in service with his vīṇā in his hand beneath Periya Perumāḷ's feet. Worship it from the feet to the head, and go on so."

The three of them, the Araiyar and the two, took it to heart.

Then Āḷavandār showed them where his proof lay. There was Kuṟumbaṟutta Nambi, who knew where the life of Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ, the Lord of the hill, was held. There was Kāñcīpūrṇa, who knew where the life of Pēraruḷāḷar was held. There was Tiruppāṇāzhvār, who knew where Periya Perumāḷ's life was held. And there was the Araiyar himself, who knew where Tiruppāṇāzhvār's life was held.

He looked at the Araiyar. "The form you serve, knowing where Periya Perumāḷ's life is held," he said, "that form alone I hold to be my means and my goal." The words are upāya and upeya: the way, and the thing the way leads to.

The Araiyar prostrated at his feet. "Has Your Honour resolved," he asked, "to go to the eternal realm, to serve the Lord of the highest heaven, and stay there with eyes that never close?"

"Rejoice at another's good fortune," Āḷavandār told him, "and hold firm."

Then he spoke again to the three of them.

"If a man who has taken refuge thinks he has any part in the journey of the self, which is in the Lord's hands, or in the journey of the body, which is in the hands of karma, his surrender of himself is spoiled and he has become an unbeliever. So in neither journey has he any part, by thought or word or deed."

He spoke of the Lord's generosity, that to those who do not even say namaḥ, "I bow," for what they would gain from him, he says, "You may see the land of the gods as well"; and of how the souls should rest free of all burden, as the verse says, "Nārāyaṇa himself will give us the drum." Then he named three ways a man ruins what he is.

"To hurry after one's own gain is the ruin of what one is. To think, 'the Lord is the one who protects me,' is the ruin of what one is. To think, 'the Lord is the one I must protect,' is the ruin of what one is. If a man is like that, it does not fit with belonging to Him and no other, nor with the bond of owner and owned."

They prostrated at his feet again. "Then what is the means for us to hold to?"

"For you to hold me as your means and goal," Āḷavandār said, "would be the ruin of what I am. Hold as your means and goal what the verse says: 'Those who worship the feet of the Lord are always in my mind.'"

The disciples were downcast.

Āḷavandār saw it. "Do not be downcast," he said. "For you, the meaning of the tirumantra, the eight-syllable mantra, is the Hall of Enjoyment. The meaning of the carama-śloka is the Hall of Flowers. The meaning of the jewel among mantras, the dvaya, is the Hall of Giving. And the ones who know it are Tiruppāṇāzhvār and the rest."

The Araiyar took all this to heart, and he said:

"When Your Honour's incarnation gives its tīrtha and departs, if some destruction comes to worms and insects and such, it is no loss."

Āḷavandār heard it, looked away, and gave no answer.

Two of the chief disciples took that word to heart. The account does not name them here, but the two it goes on to put into the Araiyar's hands are Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa. "When Āḷavandār is parted from us," they resolved, "we will give up our lives."

It reached the court of Periya Perumāḷ.

Periya Perumāḷ called for the Araiyar and Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and the others. "If you commit any such folly when Āḷavandār is parted from you," he commanded, "it is against our order." And he put the two of them into the Araiyar's hands.

The Araiyar took the two disciples by the hand, brought them to Āḷavandār's feet, and told him.

"Those who cannot bear our attaining," Āḷavandār said, "are those who cannot bear Periya Perumāḷ receiving his worship between the two rivers." And he gave them his own command. "If you commit any such folly when we are parted, you will have set aside the will of the mudalis whom Periya Perumāḷ loved, Uyyakkoṇḍār and Maṇakkāl Nambi and the rest."

They were grieving in their hearts. While they grieved he taught them about tīrtha, the holy water that has washed the feet of the Lord or of a teacher.

"Two things are acceptable to both, the one who gives and the one who takes. The first: a man makes no difference between the Lord and the Lord's devotees, but sees the Lord in the devotees; and as he washes the Lord's feet, with the line of teachers before him, so with the devotees, setting himself aside, he keeps the form of his ācārya in mind and receives the tīrtha. The second: when the givers give it, they are not ruled by wealth or desire; they look straight to the ācārya and give it, reciting the dvaya with the line of teachers before it. But where a man of greater knowledge comes, and comes with a gathering, and both of them are ruled by wealth and desire, and look to the body made of matter, and slight the mudalis who came with the gathering, and it does not come from the heart, then that tīrtha is not to be taken by them, even if it is the ācārya's."

The mudalis took that word to heart.

Then Āḷavandār looked at them and gave them the last meaning, the caramārtha.

"For you the last meaning is two things. To make one jasmine bud burst open at the feet of Periya Perumāḷ. And, with your ācārya, to hold the first state and the middle state as though they were already the last. That is the conviction that saves."

He prostrated to the Araiyar, and he put Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa into the Araiyar's hands.

The Araiyar received them. "If you commit any such folly when you are parted from your ācārya," he told them, "you will have no place of your own; you will not even get into the throng of the eternal ones; you will be lost."

Āḷavandār heard it and was glad in his heart. "Hold it in your minds," he said to the two of them, "that for you the form of Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar is both the means and the goal."

And they held it so.

The illness left him. He grew well, and bathed.

It was a festival for Periya Perumāḷ too. The Lord had received the great sacred bath, had been dressed and crowned and adorned with his ornaments, and had taken his meal while the Vedic brahmins of Śrīraṅgam worshipped. The holy curtain was drawn back.

Āḷavandār went up into the Lord's presence and stood worshipping with his palms joined.

Periya Perumāḷ knew what was in his mind, and called the Araiyar.

The Araiyar left the usual order of the singing aside and sang Sūzhvisumbaṇimugil.

"What is this?" said the whole assembly, and they marvelled.

As they marvelled, the garland on Periya Perumāḷ's forehead slipped and fell. Nambiyār, the priest at the shrine, was thinking, "We will take it up and give it." But the Araiyar was quicker. He took it up and gave it to Āḷavandār.

Āḷavandār stood there, glad in his heart.

"Your thought has come true!" the Araiyar said.

Perumāḷ gave him tīrtha and prasāda and the Śrīśaṭhakōpaṉ, and gave him leave to go.

Āḷavandār went to the maṭha. He had all the mudalis, the Araiyar and Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa and the rest, take tīrtha and sit down to eat. Then he prostrated before them.

"Bear with all my offences," he said, and he stayed down on the ground and did not rise.

The Araiyar took him by the head and lifted him. "Have you any offence?"

He got up. Then he ate, and went on speaking good words to them as before.

In those days two Śrīvaiṣṇavas heard that Āḷavandār was ill, and came to Kōyil from the shrine of Pēraruḷāḷar and served at his feet. Āḷavandār asked them the news of Kāñcī.

"What is Iḷaiyāzhvār doing?"

"Iḷaiyāzhvār has grown angry with Yādavaprakāśa," they said. "He has left him, and he gives himself to Pēraruḷāḷar now."

Āḷavandār heard it and was glad. "Pēraruḷāḷar has made our prapatti bear fruit," he said.

With great joy, as one who could speak the greatness of Pēraruḷāḷar, he made a hymn of praise, a stotra. He put it into the hands of Mahāpūrṇa, who was one of his own, and looked at him.

"We hear that Iḷaiyāzhvār no longer keeps to Yādavaprakāśa, but has left him and gives himself to Dēvapperumāḷ," he said, using another name of the Lord of Kāñcī. "Go there now, and join him to us."

Mahāpūrṇa set out at once, and went to Kāñcī.

After that the illness came back. Āḷavandār grew very weak and lay down. The mudalis beside him said to one another, "What is Periya Perumāḷ's will?"

Then came the last day of Pēraruḷāḷar's festival in Vaikāsi, the day of the closing bath, the avabhṛtha. On that day Āḷavandār bathed and went to worship at Periya Perumāḷ's feet. When the Lord's meal had been offered and the curtain drawn back, he prostrated and worshipped Periya Perumāḷ, from the feet to the head and from the head to the feet. He took in Tiruppāṇāzhvār too, below the holy feet. Nambiyār gave him the Śrīśaṭhakōpaṉ, tīrtha and prasāda. The servants of the shrine gave him the prasāda of the Lord's own plate, and gave him leave.

He went back to the maṭha with his disciples. He had the mudalis take tīrtha and eat. And he fixed the hour: the sixth day of the month of Vaikāsi, under the star Śravaṇa, in the Abhijit muhūrta.

He took of what the mudalis had left on their plates. He took refuge with the Āzhvārs. And he had everyone called to him, the ācāryas, the mudalis, the men who served the temple, and the rest, and he asked their forgiveness.

"Only if Periya Perumāḷ had some offence," they said, "could you have one."

He put the Araiyar and the other mudalis into the hands of the mudalis there. He looked at the men who served the temple and gave them their charge. "Keep up Periya Perumāḷ's worship and the offering of flowers with the tirumantra, each at its proper time. Keep taking in the ācāryas and the mudalis and those who come from other lands, and all the rest."

"It will be so," they said.

They all took their leave and went, saying, "This is something new!"

Then he turned his mind to Maṇakkāl Nambi, and sat in yoga in the lotus posture. He pressed his teacher's feet to his heart, to his eyes and to his head, and set them before him.

The mudalis recited the Brahmavalli and the Bhṛguvalli of the Upaniṣad, the Puruṣasūkta, the Arcirādi and Sūzhvisumbaṇimugil. The sacred conch sounded and every instrument roared.

And Āḷavandār went to the sacred land by the Brahma-mantra.

The Araiyar and all the rest cried out and fell, like trees with their roots cut, and lay senseless. The others there brought them round. Then they spoke to Āḷavandār's son, Piḷḷaikkaracu Nambi. "Now you must see to what comes next."

The women who served the temple came. They swept the doorway, sprinkled it, made the place clean, and raised a pavilion, and dressed it with garlands of darbha grass and red water lilies, and silks and white chowries. At its four doors they set plantain trees, young areca palms and sugarcane, and hung fruits, and flags, and painted leaves, and arches of four sacred trees, one for each quarter. Inside they spread paddy, set a full pot in the middle and full pots in the corners, and set up twelve pots for the twelve names of the Lord beginning with Keśava, with sacred grasses and flowers in them, and worshipped them, reciting the dvaya with the line of teachers before it. They bathed Āḷavandār in the five nectars, and then with the water of the pots, reciting the Puruṣasūkta. The mudalis took tīrtha, made ready the betel, and went round in reverence.

They pounded the sacred powder. The pestle was bathed and wrapped in new cloth, and the women of the temple, Vaiṣṇava women in clean cloths and white garlands with the discus on them, went round the Trivikrama street, bowed to the Śrīvaiṣṇavas gathered at the door, took their leave, and pounded. The Araiyar and the others drew the figure of the earth on the platform and set pots in the eight directions, filled with oil and powder, unguent and garland, parched grain, milk, curd and pure water. On the east they set new parched grain in a new winnow; on the west a pot of tīrtha that had washed the feet of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas; on the north a bundle of gifts for the Śrīvaiṣṇavas; and on the south, on a golden plate, the garland and the cloth that Periya Perumāḷ had worn and taken off and sent.

They prostrated to Āḷavandār and stored up his last form in their hearts and their eyes, and sat round him. The Araiyar sang Tiruppallāṇḍu, and Kaṇṇinuṇciṟuttāmbu, and Sūzhvisumbaṇimugil. They went round the holy street reciting the Tiruviruttam, with dance and song and instruments, and ended at the door of the maṭha. They anointed him with oil and powder and bathed him, and dressed him in the unguent and the garland and the yellow cloth that Perumāḷ had worn and sent.

The oil and the powder that had been on his body were his prasāda now, and the Araiyar and all the rest received them. They fell at his feet and set his feet on their eyes, their chests and their heads. Remembering the refuge he had given them, their throats choked, their bodies sagged, their tears fell like pearls, their breath came hot; they could not bear to be parted from their teacher, and they grieved. The other mudalis came and wiped their eyes and comforted them.

Then, slowly and gently, they set him on a litter and carried him out, with recitation and the conch and music sounding everywhere, the Veda chanted and the Tamil hymns recited, a cloth spread on the road before him, sugarcane and pots carried, parched grain and flowers scattered, the married women of the town going in front with lamps, chowries waving on both sides, the white parasol held up, and the long horn crying, "In this darśana, Āḷavandār has gone to the sacred land!"

They took him round every holy street and bore him to Tirukkarambaṉtuṟai. They made the ground clean with what was left in the pots, did every step the rules lay down for an ascetic's rites, dug the place, and were about to lay him in it.

Mahāpūrṇa, meanwhile, had come to Kāñcī with the stotra. He recited it before Pēraruḷāḷar, and then again on the path by the Sālai well, where Iḷaiyāzhvār came for the water for the Lord's bath.

Iḷaiyāzhvār heard one verse of it:

ப்ரஹ்மாஶிவஶ்ஶதமகஃபரமஸ்வராடித் யேதேபியஸ்யமஹிமார்ணவவி

ப்ருஷஸ்தே

prahmāśivaśśatamakaḵparamasvarāṭit yētēpiyasyamahimārṇavavi

pruṣastē

Brahmā, Śiva, Indra of the hundred sacrifices, the sovereign of the highest heaven: these too, of whose ocean of greatness, are only drops of spray.

He asked who had made it, and when he heard it was the holy word of Āḷavandār, he wanted to see him and serve him, and he set out with Mahāpūrṇa for Kōyil. How the two of them went, and how the news met them on the road, Mahāpūrṇa's own story tells.

They came to the crowd at Tirukkarambaṉtuṟai, and Āḷavandār was gone. Iḷaiyāzhvār stood there with his tears running. Mahāpūrṇa put his own grief aside, took him by the hand, and brought him to see Āḷavandār's spotless body.

Iḷaiyāzhvār prostrated before him. "What a thing to be given," he said in wonder, "what could not be had!"

He looked at the body from the feet to the crown. Three of the fingers were folded.

"Was he like this before?" he asked the mudalis.

"Not before," they said. "We see it only now."

Iḷaiyāzhvār thought: there must be something in his mind. He looked at the mudalis. "Were any of you there, in the hours of teaching, to hear the things he loved to talk of?"

All the disciples together answered. "We know of nothing else. But many times we heard him speak of three things. His remembrance of what Vyāsa and Parāśara gave us. His great love for Nammāzhvār. And his wish for a commentary on the sūtras of Vyāsa in the sense of Viśiṣṭādvaita, the teaching of the one Lord with all that lives and does not live as his body."

Iḷaiyāzhvār understood what had been in his mind.

"If this body holds firm," he said, "and if this ācārya's grace is full in me, and if the Lord of all brings about what I intend, I will make good these three losses."

At once the fingers straightened.

Everyone saw it and marvelled, and they all called down blessings on him. "This ācārya's grace is on you. His divine power will come into you as well. You yourself will be the one who carries this darśana."

Iḷaiyāzhvār gazed at that form, as the verse says, "He does not leave my eyes; he does not leave my heart," and stored it in his eyes and his heart. "What Namperumāḷ has done to us!" he said, and grieved bitterly. He took the closing bath and prostrated to Mahāpūrṇa. Then, resenting him, without worshipping even at Namperumāḷ's feet, he turned back and went home to Kāñcī.

After that they laid Āḷavandār in the place they had dug, and did every rite that had to be done.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells this more briefly. It names the place Tirukkarambaṉūr. Iḷaiyāzhvār asked what the commotion was and heard that Āḷavandār was being laid to rest; he grieved, worshipped the body with Mahāpūrṇa, came to know what was in Āḷavandār's heart, and made a vow. That account does not say what the vow was, or speak of the fingers. Since the journey had come to nothing, it says, he went back to Kāñcī without worshipping the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, and took up the water for Dēvapperumāḷ again.

At Kāñcī it was Kāñcīpūrṇa who heard him out and comforted him, as Kāñcīpūrṇa's own story tells. And afterwards, the account says, the observance of the sacred powder was kept for Āḷavandār and the holy recitation held for him on a great scale.

Āḷavandār's birth star is Uttirāṭam, in the month of Āḍi.

His taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, reads:

శ్రీరామమిశ్రసచ్ఛిష్యం వన్దేతత్వార్థకోవిదం| వాదాదవా ప్తరాజ్యాద్యో విరక్తోయా

మునోఽభవత్ ॥ యత్పదాంభోరుహధ్యాన విధ్వస్తాశేషకల్మషః | వస్తుతాముపయాతోఽహం

యామునేయంనమామితం.

śrīrāmamiśrasacchiṣyaṃ vandētatvārthakōvidaṃ| vādādavā ptarājyādyō viraktōyā

munō'bhavat ॥ yatpadāṃbhōruhadhyāna vidhvastāśēṣakalmaṣaḥ | vastutāmupayātō'haṃ

yāmunēyaṃnamāmitaṃ.

I bow to the true disciple of Śrī Rāma Miśra, who knew the meaning of what is real, he who won a kingdom by debate and grew free of desire, Yāmuna. By meditating on his lotus feet all my sins were destroyed; I came to be something real: to that Yāmuneya I bow.

Some copies read the words about the kingdom otherwise: who turned from the kingdom and became a sage. The second verse ends, and a further verse follows:

ஸிம்ஹாநநாம்ஶபவமீஶ்வரயோகிஸிந்து முக்தாமணிம்

மஹிதநாதமுநீந்த்ரபௌத்ரம் - ப்ரஜ்ஞாவிஶேஷஜலதிம்ப்ரதிவாதிதூல ஜஞ்

ஜாநிலம்ஹ்ருதயசிந்தயயாமுநார்யம்.

simhānanāmśapavamīśvarayōkisintu muktāmaṇim

mahitanātamunīntrapautram - prajñāviśēṣajalatimprativātitūla jañ

jānilamhrutayacintayayāmunāryam.

Born of a portion of the Lion-faced One, a pearl from the ocean that was Īśvaramuni, grandson of Nāthamuni the great sage, an ocean of wisdom, to the cotton of his opponents a storm-wind: hold Yāmunārya in your heart.

Āḷavandār and Iḷaiyāzhvār never spoke. The rest of the account is full of him all the same.

When the disciples at Śrīraṅgam asked Mahāpūrṇa who was to carry the darśana now, he reminded them of the special glance Āḷavandār had given at Kāñcī and of the fingers that had straightened. "Āḷavandār's regard can never prove false," he said, and they sent him to Kāñcī to bring Iḷaiyāzhvār. When the two of them met at Madhurāntakam and Mahāpūrṇa wanted to wait and give the teaching before Pēraruḷāḷar, Iḷaiyāzhvār would not wait. "For proof that time must not be lost," he said, "is what was seen with Āḷavandār not enough?" And when Mahāpūrṇa gave him the dvaya there, Mahāpūrṇa told him, "As Perumāḷ set his sandals on Bharata's head for the kingdom's sake and went to the forest, so consider that Āḷavandār, for your sake, set his lotus feet on my head and went to the sacred land." The account adds that Mahāpūrṇa was only Āḷavandār's instrument, and that Iḷaiyāzhvār's ācārya, directly, was Yamunaitturaivar.

When Rāmānuja, as he was called by then, first came to live at Śrīraṅgam and stood before Periya Perumāḷ, he sang Tiruppallāṇḍu and then two verses of Āḷavandār's, the second of them ending: "Having nothing, with no other way, O Refuge, I take refuge at the root of your feet." He went to Mahāpūrṇa's house and said, "So that the loss of never having served at Āḷavandār's feet might be made good, I have taken refuge at Your Honour's feet." The account explains why so many teachers taught him afterwards. A king who leaves treasures with several ministers, to be given to his son when the son comes of age: so Āḷavandār had placed a special meaning with each of his disciples, and told them, "Tell Iḷaiyāzhvār the supreme secret that we tell you."

So Rāmānuja went from one to another of them. When he heard the Tiruvāymozhi from Mālādhara and gave a meaning Mālādhara had never heard from Āḷavandār, Mālādhara stopped the teaching, until Goṣṭhīpūrṇa came and said that he himself had heard that very meaning from Āḷavandār. Later Rāmānuja said of another meaning, "Āḷavandār would not explain it so."

"You never even saw Āḷavandār with your eyes," Mālādhara said. "What ground have you for saying that?"

"Am I not an Ekalavya to Āḷavandār?" said Rāmānuja.

Mālādhara prostrated to him. "All the meanings we never heard from Āḷavandār," he said, "we have heard here."

In the long debate with Yajñamūrti, when Rāmānuja was beaten on the seventeenth day, he cried to Pēraruḷāḷar that this darśana, handed down from the Āzhvār to Āḷavandār, was to be lost through him, and he lay down without eating. In his dream the Lord told him to use the refutation of Māyāvāda that his teacher's teacher Āḷavandār had made. In the shorter account the Lord asks him only, "Have you forgotten Āḷavandār's sayings?"

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, when Rāmānuja climbed to the room where he sat in meditation and asked what his meditation was and what his mantra, said: "His back, as it rose out of the Vaḍavāṟu when he bathed, like a cauldron a strong man has turned over. That is my meditation. And this, 'Yamunaitturaivar': that is the mantra."

When Rāmānuja came back to Kāñcī and went round the temple there, he stopped in the courtyard of Yamunaitturaivar, who had once given him his special glance, and said, "Obeisance, obeisance to Yāmuna; to Yāmuna, obeisance, obeisance." On the hill at Tirumalai he worshipped at the flower pavilion that bears Yamunaitturaivar's name. When Śrīśailapūrṇa set out to win back Govinda, the future Embār, from Kāḷahasti, the verse he had dropped in Govinda's path was Āḷavandār's. And when Rāmānuja was in the western country and the teachers there wondered at the rule he laid down, he told them he had spoken on the strength of his teacher's teacher Āḷavandār's words. "Had I been able to serve even one day in Āḷavandār's assembly," he said, "would I not have tied a rolling ladder between the highest heaven and here?"

His own words were kept. He had shown in his own practice, the account says, that the ācārya is the refuge. Following what Maṇakkāl Nambi and Uyyakkoṇḍār delighted in, he said in his verses, "Look upon my grandfather Nāthamuni, and be gracious," and bowed "to Nātha, to Nāthamuni, here and hereafter, always"; and he said, "Here and there, the feet of the ācārya alone are the refuge. Gratitude to the ācārya lasts as long as the self." He had bowed to Parāśara as "the generous one who set out clearly, in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, the truths of what is conscious, what is not, and the Lord." The Araiyar, teaching, called one saying about faith in the ācārya "the good word our Āḷavandār spoke." One day his meaning in the decad of Tiruvāymozhi that begins Ozhivil kālam ellām was expounded, and Anantāzhvāṉ said, "I will carry out that service," and made a flower garden on Tirumalai for the Lord of the hill. And at Śrīraṅgam, among the texts recited before the Lord in their fixed order, Āḷavandār's Stotra has its place.

The three losses were made good. The account says that when Rāmānuja had written the Śrī Bhāṣya and his other works, Āḷavandār's first loss was removed; that when he named Kūreśa's son Parāśara Bhaṭṭar, after the sage Parāśara, the second was removed; and that when a son was born to Embār's younger brother and Rāmānuja named him Parāṅkuśa Nambi, after Nammāzhvār, crying, "Āḷavandār's labour has borne fruit!", the third was removed. The shorter account agrees on the first two, but tells the third differently: it was made good when Rāmānuja took Piḷḷāṉ as his son in knowledge and named him Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ, after the Āzhvār, and had him write the Six Thousand on the Tiruvāymozhi.

Āḷavandār's disciples went to their ends with his name. Mahāpūrṇa, blinded by the Cōzha and put out of his city, died at the head of a field with his mind on Āḷavandār. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa died with his mind on Āḷavandār. His own line, Coṭṭai Nambi, Eṉṉāccāṉ and Piḷḷaiyappaṉ, stand first in the list of the seventy-four teachers who took refuge at Rāmānuja's feet.

When Rāmānuja's own time came, and the mudalis meant to die with him, he forbade it swearing by the feet of Mahāpūrṇa and Āḷavandār. The shorter account says that before he went he drank the water from Āḷavandār's sandals and gave it to the mudalis. With his mind on Āḷavandār's form he sat in the lotus posture, and went. And they performed the brahmamedha for him as it had been done for Āḷavandār.