Anantāzhvāṉ

Anantāzhvāṉ, whom the Sanskrit verses call Anantārya, came to Uḍaiyavar at Śrīraṅgam with three companions: Eccāṉ, Toṇḍaṉūr Nambi and Marudūr Nambi.

The account does not say where he came from, or what his life had been before.

It says only what he heard. In those days Uḍaiyavar was keeping Kūreśa (Kūrattāzhvāṉ), Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār about him, and the house had become an assembly of the learned. Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār was the former Yajñamūrti, who had come to argue with Uḍaiyavar, had lost, and had been taken in and given that name. Word went out that the ācāryas, the teachers, had all come and taken refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet. Anantāzhvāṉ and the other three heard it, and they came wanting to take refuge at those same feet.

Uḍaiyavar did not take them himself. He had them take refuge at the feet of Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār.

That made their new teacher afraid. He turned to the four of them and said, "Uḍaiyavar has done what a man does who ties a palmyra fruit to a sparrow's neck. You must hold that Emperumāṉār's feet alone are your refuge."

The account tells this twice, and the second time it calls it his teaching to them, the good counsel he gave to the four who had come to his feet. Many copies have a round stone in place of the palmyra fruit.

So Anantāzhvāṉ belonged to Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, and through him to Emperumāṉār. The verses of praise kept for him hold both: they call him the one vessel of Dayāpāla's mercy, which is Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ's name in Sanskrit, and the bee at the lotus feet of the king of ascetics.

Some time after that, Uḍaiyavar was expounding the Tiruvāymozhi, the thousand of abiding sweetness, and sitting among his disciples as a holy assembly. They came to the decad that begins "Ozhivil kālamellām uḍaṉāy maṉṉi," "through all time without a break, staying close." In it is a phrase about Vēṅkaṭam: "cindu pū magizhum Tiruvēṅkaṭam," Tiruvēṅkaṭam where the scattered flowers rejoice. As he was explaining that phrase he looked round at the mudalis, the first disciples, and asked:

"Periya Tirumalai is a pavilion of flowers. Is there anyone who would make a flower garden there, to please Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ, and tie garlands and offer them to him?"

At that, Anantāzhvāṉ stood up.

"I, your servant, take leave to go," he said.

He prostrated himself and went to Tirumalai.

There he worshipped Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ at his feet, the Lord who owns the hill of Vēṅkaṭam. He made a flower garden. He gave the garden a name, and the name was Irāmānucaṉ. He tied garlands and offered them to Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ, and he stayed there doing it.

Uḍaiyavar heard of it and was glad, and he carried his exposition of the Tiruvāymozhi on with fresh force, all the way to the end.

The other account tells it more shortly. One day, it says, the meaning Āḷavandār had seen in that same decad, "Ozhivil kālamellām," was being expounded; it does not say by whom. Anantāzhvāṉ said, "I will carry out that service." He made a flower garden on Tirumalai and went on doing the service of flowers for Tirumalaiyappaṉ, the Father of the hill. In that telling, the wish behind the garden was Āḷavandār's.

Later Uḍaiyavar came to Tirumalai himself, and Anantāzhvāṉ was on the hill to meet him.

Uḍaiyavar came by way of Kāñcī, and lost his way on the road, and was set right by a man drawing water at a water-lift. At the foot of the hill he worshipped the hill itself, Tirumalaiyāzhvār, and the ten Āzhvārs who stay at Tiruttāzhvarai below it, and he made his stay at Tiruppati. He made Viḍaladēvaṉ his disciple there and settled thirty of his own people in the town.

Anantāzhvāṉ and the other Śrīvaiṣṇavas of the hill heard that he had come. They came down from Tirumalai, worshipped Emperumāṉār, and said, "Your Lordship must come up and worship the Father."

Uḍaiyavar would not.

"The Āzhvārs did not tread on the holy hill," he said. "So we will not climb it either. We have worshipped the Āzhvārs who stay here at the foot."

Anantāzhvāṉ answered him.

"If Your Lordship does not climb, then we your servants will not climb either. And no one else will climb."

"Then we shall do it," said Uḍaiyavar.

He made himself clean for it and set out. At the foot of the tamarind they call Aḍippuḷiyāzhvār he worshipped the hill once more. He thought of himself as a freed soul who climbs onto the Lord's footstool at the Lord's bidding, and he went up because Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ had called him. As he neared Tirupparivaṭṭappāṟai, Śrīśailapūrṇa (Periya Tirumalai Nambi) came out to meet him with the Lord's tīrtha and prasāda, the holy water and the food of his worship, and when Uḍaiyavar asked whether there had been no one lesser to send, Nambi said he had searched the four streets and found no one lesser than himself.

Near Kalvēli the whole hill came out to receive them: the jīyars, the ascetic heads; the ekāṅgis, those given to the temple's service alone; the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, the temple's office-holders and the bearers of the Lord's feet, every group of them. Uḍaiyavar went on with his disciples. He prostrated at Vaikuntaṉ's gate, bathed in Tirukkōṉēri, put on the twelve marks, and went round the four streets.

Then he went to the garden called Irāmānucaṉ.

It was his own service. He looked at it and was pleased. Then he looked at Anantāzhvāṉ, and took him in his arms.

"I have reaped the fruit of rearing you," he said, in the words of the hymns, and he showed him great grace.

He saw and heard all of it and took delight in all of it. The account names what he saw in the words the hymns use for that hill: the dense groves, the groves dripping honey, the cool groves where honey from the combs runs down. The campaka, cerunti, magizh, pāḍalam, curapuṉṉai and puṉṉāgam trees in flower. The creepers, sevvanti and picci and iruvāṭci, the jasmines mallikai and mullai. The red lotuses in the muddy pools, loud with bees drunk on them. The herons and cranes and water birds that live in Kōṉēri. The cuckoos calling from the branches. The peacocks spreading their tails and dancing when the clouds thundered. And the swarms of bees singing teṉṉā teṉā.

Then he went on to worship Ñāṉappirāṉ and the rest of the temple.

The other account tells the climb without any refusal. In it Uḍaiyavar came at Śrīśailapūrṇa's own bidding; thirty took refuge with him at the foot of the hill; and Anantāzhvāṉ came down from Tirumalai and brought Uḍaiyavar up. Nambi sent a Śrīvaiṣṇava ahead with the Lord's prasāda, and came out himself in front of the temple, and Uḍaiyavar fell at his feet there. That account says nothing of the garden on that day.

When the account later counts the seventy-four ācāryas who held the seats of teaching under Emperumāṉār at Śrīraṅgam, Anantāzhvāṉ's name stands among the Āzhvāṉs. One roll sets him fifteenth and the other tenth. It is the same name in both.

The account sets down a handful of stories of Anantāzhvāṉ on the hill. It gives them one after another, without saying when each one happened.

He was building a tank, the one called Irāmānusap-puttēri, the Rāmānuja tank, and he was carrying the earth for it himself. One of the young men there came up and tried to take the basket from him.

"If I let go of it, I lose," Anantāzhvāṉ said. "If you touch it, you lose."

"There is no losing in it," said the young man, and reached for the basket again.

"Then must you take away the very thing I live by? If you want it, can't you take another basket and carry that?"

Another day he had his wife carrying earth for the tank. She was with child. Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ saw it. He came towards her as a boy, took the basket from her, and went off with it.

Anantāzhvāṉ saw his wife coming back quickly.

"What is this?" he said. "You are back quickly."

"A boy came towards me," she said. "He took the basket and he is carrying it away."

He went at once and found the boy.

"Obstructer of service!" he said. "Do not touch the basket!"

He took up his digging tool and went to strike him. And Tiruvēṅkaṭac-celvaṉ, the treasure of Vēṅkaṭam, ran, and went into the temple. So they say.

Once, while he was gathering flowers for the Lord in the garden, he was bitten on the hand. He went and bathed afterwards and went on with his service. The people who cared for him said, "Shouldn't we see to curing the poison?"

"No need," he said, and he stopped them.

Later, when he went up to the temple, Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ spoke to him. "What did you have in mind when you said there was no need to cure the poison?"

Anantāzhvāṉ told him. "If the snake that was bitten is the stronger, I would bathe in the Tirukkōṉēri and worship Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ. If the snake that bit is the stronger, I would bathe in the Virajā and worship the Lord of Śrīvaikuṇṭha. That is what I had in mind."

The Virajā is the river at the edge of the Lord's own world, which the freed soul crosses. Either way, he would be bathing and going in to worship.

Once he set out for the Kōsala country. The account does not say why. He had packed cooked food in a leaf wrapper and taken it along, and when he sat down to eat, he found the whole wrapper covered in small ants.

He saw it and started. He looked at the companions he had with him and said:

"These must be some of those who say, 'May I be anything at all on Emperumāṉ's golden mountain.' Take them just as they are, put them back on Tirumalai, and come."

Once he was stringing garlands in the flower pavilion called Yamunaitturaivar, and Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ called for him.

He said nothing. He finished the garland. Then he went in.

"We called you, Anantāzhvāṉ," said Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ. "Why did you not come?"

"The jasmine buds were bursting open," he said. "What business did I have with Your Lordship then?"

"If that is so," said Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ, "and we told you to go away from here, what would you do?"

Anantāzhvāṉ answered him with a line of the Tamil hymns, "Tiruvēṅkaṭam, which the Supreme came to and joined."

"As it says, is it not Your Lordship who are the newcomer here? Does this place not belong to those who have taken refuge with Your Lordship? Your Lordship came a week before me, that is all. Did we not both of us take refuge with Tirumalai Āzhvār, the hill?"

When the account speaks of the disciples who would have one pair of feet and no other for their refuge, it names him among them. Vaḍuga Nambi said Emperumāṉār's feet were the refuge. Bhaṭṭar said Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ's. Anantāzhvāṉ said Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ's feet were the refuge. Kāñcīpūrṇa (Tirukkacci Nambi) said Pēraruḷāḷar's. And Emperumāṉār himself said Selvappiḷḷai's. Such a resolve, the account says, does not fit everyone.

The verses of praise kept for him say the same in Sanskrit, in the line that calls him the one whose heart is held between the two feet of Śrī Veṅkaṭeśa.

When Emperumāṉār was preparing to leave the world, he put his disciples by name into the hands of their teachers, group by group. Anantāzhvāṉ was given, with Eccāṉ, Toṇḍaṉūr Nambi, Marudūr Nambi and others, into the hands of Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, the teacher he had been given to at the beginning. The account does not say whether Anantāzhvāṉ was at Śrīraṅgam that day.

After Emperumāṉār had gone, Anantāzhvāṉ came from the Tiruvēṅkaṭam country with Śrī Guhadāsar and other disciples, to learn the truth of how the life of the one who was a portion of Ananta had closed. Near the Kāvēri he saw the signs of it spread about, and knew that Uḍaiyavar had departed. He was overcome with grief.

Then he saw Bhaṭṭar, Kūreśa's son, and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, and was consoled, and went straight back to his own town.

Not every copy of the account carries this passage.

The last stories of him are with that same Bhaṭṭar, Parāśara Bhaṭṭar.

Emperumāṉār had charged Bhaṭṭar to go to the western country, where there was a great scholar called Vedānti, and win him over to the darśana, the school's way of seeing. Namperumāḷ gave Bhaṭṭar leave, and sent him off with all the retinue and splendour that were his. He came to the western country and halted near Siṟupputtūr on the bank of the Kāvēri.

Anantāzhvāṉ heard that Āzhvāṉ's son Bhaṭṭar had come, and set out at once. He found Bhaṭṭar on the bank of the Kāvēri and bowed to him. The account does not say where Anantāzhvāṉ was living then.

"Alas!" he said. "You who are so delicate, was it right for you to come all this way, across forest and hill?"

Bhaṭṭar fell at his feet.

"Uḍaiyavar commanded me," he said, "to go to the western country, reform Vedānti, and make him one who carries our darśana forward. And Namperumāḷ too gave me leave and sent me."

"King of our clan!" said Anantāzhvāṉ. "Come."

He lifted Bhaṭṭar up, embraced him, and took him along.

He led Bhaṭṭar up to Yadugiri, the hill of Tirunārāyaṇapuram, where Bhaṭṭar worshipped at the shrine of Uḍaiyavar first and then at the Lord's, and from there they set out together for Vedānti's village. Near it they learned that no one who came in state would be let in to see Vedānti. So Bhaṭṭar left his retinue far outside, and he and Anantāzhvāṉ went in together dressed as paupers, among the brahmins who came to be fed at Vedānti's feeding hall. Bhaṭṭar asked Vedānti for the alms of debate, and won him, and gave him the pañcasaṃskāra, the five sacraments of the school. Bhaṭṭar's own life tells that debate. On the way back Anantāzhvāṉ led him again through Tirunārāyaṇapuram and down the hill, and at Siṟupputtūr Bhaṭṭar left him and hurried on to Śrīraṅgam.

Some time after, when his two wives had sent two hungry Śrīvaiṣṇavas away from his door with nothing, Vedānti divided his wealth, gave two shares to the wives and set the third aside for his ācārya, took sannyāsa, the vow of the renouncer, and set out for Śrīraṅgam.

At Siṟupputtūr, on the bank of the Kāvēri, he saw Anantāzhvāṉ, and stood worshipping him.

"Come, Vedāntigaḷ!" Anantāzhvāṉ said. "Should a delicate man like you do such a thing? If you had bathed when you sweated, and eaten when you were hungry, and stayed holding Bhaṭṭar's feet alone as your refuge, is there anyone who would have pushed you out of Paramapada, the highest abode? Well, what of it now! Born in the Tirumantra and grown up in Dvaya, you will be one who stands in Dvaya alone."

He blessed him so, and let him go. "Go," he said.

The account opens the blessing. The Tirumantra, the eight-syllable mantra, speaks of what the self is; to be born in it is to be born into the knowledge that one belongs wholly to the Lord. Dvaya, the mantra of two clauses, begins with Śrī, the great Lady who speaks for us to the Lord. To grow up in Dvaya is to live in its first clause, through her mediation, and to hold to what the second clause says; and so to be given over wholly to kaiṅkarya, service.

Vedānti went on to Śrīraṅgam and laid his wealth at Bhaṭṭar's feet. Bhaṭṭar embraced him and called him "our jīyar," and he was Nañjīyar after that.

Anantāzhvāṉ's star is Cittirai, in the month of Cittirai. The verses of praise kept for him are short. One says:

அகிலாத்மகுணாவாஸம்அஜ்ஞாநதிமிராபஹம்-ஆஶ்

ரிதாநாம்ஸுஶரணம் வந்தேஉநந்தார்யதேஶிகம்

akilātmakuṇāvāsamajñānatimirāpaham-āś

ritānāmsuśaraṇam vantēunantāryatēśikam

Home of every virtue of the self, who drives away the dark of not-knowing: the sure refuge of those who come to him, I bow to Anantārya the teacher.

Another:

ஸ்ரீமத்ராமாநுஜாசார்ய

ஸ்ரீபாதாம்போருஹத்வயம்-ஸதுத்தமாங்கஸந்தார்யம்†அநந்தார்யகுரும்பஜே

srīmatrāmānujācārya

srīpātāmpōruhatvayam-satuttamāṅkasantāryam†anantāryakurumpajē

Of Śrī Rāmānujācārya the two lotus feet, borne upon his good head: I worship Anantārya my guru.

And the last bows to him without end:

யதீந்த்ரபாதாம்புஜசஞ்சரீகம் ஸ்ரீமத்தயாபாலதயைகபாத்ரம் - ஸ்ரீவேங்

கடேஶாங்க்ரியுகாந்தரங்கம் நமாம்யநந்தார்யமநந்தக்ருத்வஃ.

yatīntrapātāmpujacañcarīkam srīmattayāpālatayaikapātram - srīvēṅ

kaṭēśāṅkriyukāntaraṅkam namāmyanantāryamanantakrutvaḵ.

The bee at the lotus feet of the king of ascetics, the one vessel of Śrī Dayāpāla's mercy; whose heart is given to the two feet of Śrī Veṅkaṭeśa: to Anantārya I bow, endlessly, again and again.