Bhūthathāzhvār

Bhūthathāzhvār: the lamp of love

At Thirukkadalmallai, on the shore where the sea comes up to the rock, a mādhavi creeper opened a blossom, and a child lay in it. He was born of no woman, one day after another child had come up out of a golden lotus in a tank at Kāñcī. On a night of storm, years later, he stood in the rain at a shut door and talked his way in with one sentence, and inside, in the dark, he lit the second lamp of the Tamil songs of Viṣṇu. He made it out of love.

Born of a flower on the shore

He was born in the Dvāpara age, in the month of Aippasi, under the star Aviṭṭam, on a Wednesday. The flower he came from was a mādhavi, the fragrant creeper the Tamil country calls kurukkaththi. He was an embodiment of Kaumōdakī, the mace the Lord carries, its weight and strength come down to earth as a man. His name in Sanskrit is Bhūta-yōgi.

On the day before his birth, Poigai Āzhvār had come up out of a golden lotus in the temple tank at Thiruvekkā in Kāñcī. On the day after it, Pēy Āzhvār appeared in a red lotus in the well of the temple at Mayilai. Three births on three days, all of them from flowers. The three are called the first Āzhvārs, and their stories are always told together.

A life with no needs

He was made, like the other two, of the purest stuff of nature, so that nothing in his body clouded the soul within it. He knew God, he loved God, and nothing else in the world held him. He needed neither food nor water, because God was his food, and every sense he had was filled with God.

People of the world found such a man hard to understand, and he found their company hard to bear. So he wandered from place to place on his own, staying a night here, an hour there, as long as a place could make use of him. He did not know that two others were walking the roads in the same way.

The Lord, who had been watching over each of the three on his separate road, wanted them together. He turned their feet, each without the others' knowing, towards Thirukkōvalūr, where he stands as Trivikrama, the Lord who measured the three worlds.

The door in the storm

Night fell before Bhūthathāzhvār reached the town, and a storm came with it, wind and driving rain in the pitch dark. Near the road he found a narrow recess in a wall, shut by a small door. He knocked. "Is anyone in? Open, please."

A voice answered from inside: "There is room here for one only."

Bhūthathāzhvār did not turn away. "If there is room for one to lie down," he said, "there is room for two to sit. Open, please."

The man inside, who was Poigai Āzhvār, thought: whoever says that is no ordinary man. He opened the door at once, and Bhūthathāzhvār came in out of the rain, and the two of them sat together in the dark.

They had hardly settled when there was another knock. This time Bhūthathāzhvār was on the inside, and the two of them said what had been said to him: "There is no room for a third. We have just enough to sit."

"If two can sit," the newcomer answered, "three can stand."

"This is someone out of the common too," they said to each other. "Let us have him in." It was Pēy Āzhvār. The three stood up shoulder to shoulder in a space made for one, and spoke together of God, and found themselves of one mind.

When one asked the others who they were, Poigai Āzhvār said that he was other than the body and belonged to God alone. Bhūthathāzhvār said, "I belong to Vāsudeva and to no one else." Pēy Āzhvār said that he was the servant of the king of Kōsala.

The Lord was glad. He spoke with Śrī of how long he had chased each of these three, and how at last he had them together in one place. And in that dark recess each of the three began to feel a fourth body pressing in between them, though no door had opened. It pushed closer and closer until there was no breath of space left.

The second lamp

Poigai Āzhvār said he would light a lamp and see who it was. With no lamp to hand he made one out of the world: the earth for its bowl, the sea for its oil, the sun for its flame.

Then Bhūthathāzhvār spoke, joyfully. "Let me add my light too." His lamp was made of nothing in the world outside. It was made of what was in him:

aṉbē thagaḷiyā ārvamē neyyāga

iṉburugu sindhai iḍu thiriyā, naṉburugi

ñāṉach sudar viḷakku ēṟṟiṉēṉ nāraṇaṟku

ñāṉat thamizh purindha nāṉ

"With love for the lamp's bowl, longing for its oil, and my mind melting with joy for the wick, I, who have given myself to the Tamil of wisdom, have lit the bright lamp of knowledge for Nārāyaṇa."

So there were two lamps burning in that place, one of the world and one of the heart. Pēy Āzhvār, who said that his love had made him mad and that he could light nothing, looked into the light of the two and cried that he saw: Śrī, the golden form, its sun-bright colour, the discus and the conch, in the Lord the colour of the sea.

The one who had been pressing among them stood in the light. It was Nārāyaṇa, with Śrī beside him, come to the three who loved him because he cannot bear to be away from such as they are. They were dazzled, and drenched in his glory, and they sang.

The hundred verses

Each of the three sang a hundred verses in the andhādhi form, in which every verse opens with the word that closed the one before, and the last closes on the first. Bhūthathāzhvār's hundred, the second Thiruvandhādhi, begins with the lamp of love, and it begins by calling God by his name, Nārāyaṇa. Poigai Āzhvār's first hundred had begun with God as he is shown in the world he made, and Pēy Āzhvār's third hundred would begin with Śrī and Nārāyaṇa together.

In each of the three works, knowledge and love and sight of God are all present, and in each a different one is strongest. In Bhūthathāzhvār's it is love: the knowledge of God that has grown warm and become longing, the heart melted into a wick. These three, the tradition says, are the three that the Lord names in the Gītā, where he tells Arjuna that only by undivided love can he be known, and seen, and entered. They are known in full only in heaven. By grace the three first Āzhvārs knew them on earth.

The four together

The three went on together after that night, wandering as before. Once, from a long way off, they saw a light shining out of one spot, and they followed it until they came to a cave where a yogi sat absorbed, unaware of anything around him. Looking within, they knew him for the son of the sage Bhārgava: Thirumazhisai Āzhvār.

"Holy one, are you well?" they asked.

From the cave the answer came: "Holy three, born of the lotus in the tank, born of the mādhavi, born of the flower in the well, are you well?"

So he knew Bhūthathāzhvār by the flower he had come from. They greeted one another and wept for joy and held each other and talked of God and his glory until the four of them were lost in him, mingled like milk with milk and honey with honey. Then the three went on to Mayilai, where Pēy Āzhvār had been born, and lingered long beside the holy well there. They came back to the sage once more, and once more set out on their endless road.

What is kept of him is his birth on the shore at Thirukkadalmallai, his sentence at the door in the rain, and his lamp: love for its bowl, longing for its oil, a melting heart for its wick, lit in the dark for Nārāyaṇa.