Āṇḍāḷ

Āṇḍāḷ: the girl who wore the Lord's garland

In a tulasi garden at Śrīvilliputtūr, a gardener digging the soil found a baby girl lying in the earth, as King Janaka once found Sītā in the furrow. He raised her as his own. She grew up wearing, in secret, the garlands he made for the Lord, and the Lord said he wanted no others. She would marry no man, only Raṅganātha of Śrīraṅgam, and in the end she was taken to him in a bridal palanquin, walked up to where he lay, and was seen no more. She is Āṇḍāḷ, the only woman among the twelve Āzhvārs.

Found in the earth

She came from the goddess herself. The Lord has three consorts, Śrī, Bhū and Nīḷā, and Āṇḍāḷ came down from Bhū, the Earth. The temple at Śrīvilliputtūr tells how it happened. Bhū said to the Lord of the sea of milk: you have sent Garuḍa down to be born on earth as Viṣṇucittaṉ, to do your work there by his teaching and his life; let me be born there too, as his daughter, and share in the work. The Lord smiled and agreed. While you are there, he said, we shall gladly wear the flowers made fragrant by your wearing them. You shall teach the world the saving truths of the Vedas in Tamil verse, and sing a song for us. You shall live as my bride even in a mortal body, and come to me at last.

Viṣṇucittaṉ, whom the world calls Periyāzhvār, lived at Śrīvilliputtūr in the Pāṇḍya country and kept a garden where he grew tulasi and fragrant flowers. Every day he wove them into garlands for the Lord of the town, Vaṭapatraśāyī, who lies on the banyan leaf. One day, in the month of Āḍi, under the star Pūram, he was digging in his garden when he found, covered with soil, a beautiful baby girl.

He became her father as Janaka became Sītā's. He named her Kōtai, the girl of the lovely curls, and she was lovely from the start: slender, with sweet curls, bright eyes and a face that seemed to shine. He took her up as a child of God and brought her up with all the care of a fond parent.

The garlands she wore

The child grew into a girl and the girl into a young woman, playing as she pleased. Her old father loved her with something close to reverence and never once checked her. When he was away at the temple, she would meddle with his things, and among them were the garlands he had woven for the Lord. She would take them, put them in her hair, stand before a mirror and admire herself. "How do I look with these flowers on, with my bright necklace and my bangles? Look at me all adorned. Am I not a match for him?" She was always at it, putting the garlands on and taking them off again and rolling them up and putting them back.

One day Viṣṇucittaṉ caught her at it. He scolded her hard for trifling with the Lord's flowers, set the garlands aside as unfit to be offered, and did not take them to the temple. That day the Lord went without his flowers.

That night Vaṭapatraśāyī came to him in a dream and asked why he had brought no garland. Viṣṇucittaṉ explained: the garlands had been spoiled, because his daughter had worn them in her hair, and so he had kept them back as unworthy of the Lord. "Spoiled?" said the Lord, frowning. "Say rather made holy. Your garlands are sweeter to us for her having worn them. We like them. We will have no others."

Viṣṇucittaṉ woke in amazement, and wondered more than ever at his wonderful daughter. Might she be Śrī herself, or Bhū, or Nīḷā, in disguise? From that day he not only revered his daughter as the Lord's own bride, but made a point of taking to the temple only the garlands she had worn first. God alone knows the sweetness a thing takes on when one of his own has used it first. From that day she has been called Sūḍikkoḍutta Nācchiyār, the lady who wore the garland and then gave it.

A girl in love

Her father watched her grow, and he saw her love for the Lord grow with her: love that would not be hidden, love past bearing. She could not live without him. Like the cowherd girls of Vṛndāvana, who once, when Kṛṣṇa had left them, played at being Kṛṣṇa to ease their pain, she pictured all his deeds as if they were happening again before her, and she played them out.

To bear the nights of separation she took up the vows a girl keeps to win her beloved: the dawn bathing, the prayers, the plea to Kāma, god of love, to bring her to her Lord. How such a vow is kept she sang in thirty verses, the Thiruppāvai, the sacred vow. In it she becomes a cowherd girl of Kṛṣṇa's village in the month of Mārgazhi, and it opens on the night of the full moon of that month:

mārgazhith thiṅgaḷ madhi niṟaindha naṉṉāḷāl

"It is Mārgazhi, and the moon is full: a good day."

She goes through the sleeping village before dawn calling her friends to come and bathe, and wakes them one by one, and leads them to Kṛṣṇa's door to ask for what the vow is really for: to belong to him and serve him, in this life and in every life. Her pleas to Kāma and all the other longings of her heart she poured into a second work of a hundred and forty-three verses, the Nācchiyār Thirumozhi, the sacred words of the lady.

"No mortal man"

Her father grew anxious. She was in the full bloom of her youth, and more and more lovesick for her divine bridegroom. Like Janaka before him, when he saw the years go by and knew the time for her marriage had come, he was tossed on a sea of trouble, as Janaka was, knowing no mortal man could be a match for a daughter who was no mortal woman's child.

"Which of mortal men would you marry, my darling?" he asked her.

At the very word mortal she flared with grief and anger, and answered him with words that stand in her Nācchiyār Thirumozhi:

māṉiḍavarkku eṉṟu pēchchup paḍil vāzhagillēṉ

"If anyone so much as says that I am meant for a man, I will not live."

"Forgive me, proud one," her father said. "Of course you shall wed a god. But which of the hundred and eight Lords of the holy shrines?"

She asked him to name them and describe each one. He began with the Lords of the Pāṇḍya country, then the Lords of the western hills, the Lords of the north, the Lords of the Toṇḍai land; he spoke of Vaṭapatraśāyī of Śrīvilliputtūr and of Azhagar, the beautiful Lord of the hill of Thirumāliruñjōlai, and ended with Raṅganātha of Śrīraṅgam. As she listened, her heart melted, her eyes filled and her body trembled, and she sang of the beauty of her Raṅga: his curls, his face, his lips red as fruit.

So she showed that her heart was captive to Raṅganātha alone, and that she would marry no one else. She grew more and more lovesick, thinking and dreaming and singing of nothing but Raṅga: will he come, or will he not? I am wasting away so that my bangles slip from my wrists.

The Lord sends for his bride

Viṣṇucittaṉ did not know what to do. How could a human being marry God? In his perplexity he fell asleep, and in his sleep Raṅganātha himself came to him and settled it: the Lord would send for her himself. Viṣṇucittaṉ woke as if a great weight had been lifted from him, and blessed himself for being chosen as the instrument of such a wonder.

At Śrīraṅgam, the spirit of the Lord came upon the priest serving in the temple, and he spoke: "Go, all you servants, with all our insignia, the umbrellas, the fans, the whisks, the maces, to Śrīvilliputtūr, to the one promised to us, and bring her here with every royal honour." The Lord's retinue set out at once, came to Śrīvilliputtūr, and gave the Āzhvār the Lord's message about his daughter.

Viṣṇucittaṉ was astonished at how it had all come together. He went to his own Lord, Vaṭapatraśāyī, told him everything, and waited for his word. The Lord told him to do as Raṅganātha said. Overjoyed, he went home. "Holy girl," he said to her, "it is all as you dreamed. Here is good news from your bridegroom. See his messengers and his insignia waiting for you. Get ready, and we will go." Trembling with joy and fear, he made ready a jewelled palanquin fit for a goddess and screened her from every eye, because no one might look now on the bride of God.

Into the Lord

They made a triumphant entry into Śrīraṅgam with trumpets and music, the crowds crying out: "Here comes our Āṇḍāḷ! She who wore the garland and gave it! She of the fragrant hair! She who sang the Thiruppāvai! Here comes the queen of Araṅgam!" The palanquin was carried in procession into the inner sanctum, and there the screens were taken away.

The halls and corridors and courtyards of the great temple were packed with the faithful, waiting breathless for what would happen. Vallabhadēva, the Pāṇḍya king of Madurai, Viṣṇucittaṉ's own devoted disciple, stood among them in awe. There was a stir. The bride stepped softly down from the palanquin, and the sight of her dazzled everyone: her silk rustling as she moved, the scent of red water lilies about her, the mark of musk on a brow like the moon, eyes like a deer's reaching to her ears, her bangles chiming and her anklets ringing, moving like a swan. For a moment she was seen between the palanquin and the shrine, a vision, a dream. Then she stood before the Lord, drinking him in with eyes full of love. She went to his lotus feet, and so she is called Kēśava Nambiyaik Kāl Piḍippāḷ, she who holds the feet of Kēśava. She went up onto the soft serpent bed of the Lord, pressed close to his side, and she was gone. She had passed into him. No one could see her any longer as a person apart.

Everyone stood struck dumb, and Viṣṇucittaṉ most of all. He had cherished and loved his divine child, and he could not hold back his feelings. He burst into tears.

A voice came from within the shrine, telling them to bring Viṣṇucittaṉ forward. They did. "You too have been raised to be our father-in-law," said the voice, "as the Lord of the sea of milk gave us his Śrī. Let us honour you." The priests garlanded him and gave him the holy water and every honour, and he was told to go back to Śrīvilliputtūr, serve the Lord there in his usual way, and wait for his own time to go to heaven.

So the girl from the tulasi garden, who had worn the Lord's garlands before he did, went to him in the end as his bride. Her thirty verses of the vow, in which a cowherd girl wakes her friends before dawn in Mārgazhi to go to Kṛṣṇa's door, are the garland she gave him in words. The tradition says that with that garland of songs she woke Kṛṣṇa from his sleep on Nīḷā's breast, and bound him fast.