Embār

Periya Tirumalai Nambi, whom the Sanskrit calls Śrīśailapūrṇa, had two sisters. The elder, Śrī Bhūmippirāṭṭiyār, was married at Śrīperumbudūr to Āsūri Kēśavapperumāḷ, and she became the mother of Iḷaiyāzhvār. The younger, Periya Pirāṭṭiyār, was married at Mazhalaimaṅgalam to Kamalanayana Bhaṭṭar of the Vaṭṭamaṇi family.

To Kamalanayana Bhaṭṭar and Periya Pirāṭṭiyār a son was born. It was the year Krōdhana, the month of Tai, under the star Punarpūsam, on a day when the full moon fell on a Monday.

After the birth rite, the jātakarma, Tirumalai Nambi came. He met the father and honoured him, and he looked at his sister's child with his lotus eyes. He rejoiced in his heart. This one, he said to himself, would have the true qualities of the self, would master every branch of learning, would stand on the side of the Veda. And he had Kamalanayana Bhaṭṭar give the child the name Govindaṉ.

This is Embār, whose name in Sanskrit is Govinda. Before the account is done it will call him by many names: Govinda Bhaṭṭar, the Nāyaṉār who brought it in his palm, Govindapperumāḷ, and at the last Embār, the name his ācārya gave him.

The boy received the saṃskāras in their time, the tonsure and the sacred thread and the rest. He became a householder and studied all the śāstras. Then he heard that his cousin Iḷaiyāzhvār was studying under Yādavaprakāśa at Tiruppuṭkuzhi, near Perumāḷ Kōyil, the Lord's town of Kāñcī, and with great longing he went there and began to study Vedānta too.

Yādavaprakāśa was a sannyāsin of the single staff, of the school that holds the world an illusion. Iḷaiyāzhvār would not take his meanings, and at last the teacher told him to listen as he said or leave, and Iḷaiyāzhvār kept away. Then Yādavaprakāśa told the disciples of his own mind, in private, that through that one man their way would dwindle, and they plotted in secret that Iḷaiyāzhvār should die at Maṇikarṇikā, on the Gaṅgā. They called him back with kind words. Yādavaprakāśa's own life tells all that at length.

So the party set out on pilgrimage to the Gaṅgā. All along the road, at every halting place, they saw to it that Iḷaiyāzhvār and Govinda Bhaṭṭar were never together.

In the Vindhya country the two of them came to the bank of a pool to touch water for their rites, and for once they stood side by side. Govinda Bhaṭṭar saw that there was no one about. He let Iḷaiyāzhvār understand what this pilgrimage to the Gaṅgā was for. He told him to go away. And he went on alone.

The account does not say how Govinda had come to know it.

What became of Iḷaiyāzhvār belongs to his own life: how he left the road and stood lost under a tree in that waterless forest, how the Lord and his consort came to him as a bowman and his wife and led him through the night, and how at dawn he found the vimāna of Puṇyakoṭi standing before him at Kāñcī.

Yādavaprakāśa and his company stood waiting for the two to come up. Govinda Bhaṭṭar came.

"Have you come?" Yādavaprakāśa asked. "Where is Iḷaiyāzhvār?"

"I have not seen him," Govinda said.

Yādavaprakāśa sent the men near him to look. They searched and could not find him. "Alas!" they all said. "What harm has come to him in the forest!" Stricken, they went on ahead by their stages and came to the bank of the Gaṅgā, and they were bathing in the river in the month of Māgha.

One day, while Govinda Bhaṭṭar was taking the aghamarṣaṇa bath, the bath with the hymn that wipes away sin, a liṅga came into his hand.

He was astonished. He showed it to Yādavaprakāśa and asked him what it was.

Yādavaprakāśa was greatly pleased. "You know the divine," he said. "As the fruit of bathing in the Gaṅgā has come into your hand, so Gaṅgādhara himself, the one who bears the Gaṅgā, has come into your hand."

From then on Yādavaprakāśa held him in special regard. Everyone took the liṅga that had come into his hand as the mark of the man, and they began to call him Uḷḷaṅkaikoṇarnda Nāyaṉār, the master who brought it in his palm.

Yādavaprakāśa bathed in the Gaṅgā and turned for home by way of Jagannātha and Ahobilam. On the way the Nāyaṉār said, "I will install this liṅga in some fitting place, and then I will come." "Do so," said Yādavaprakāśa, and he let him go there in the middle of the road and went on to Perumāḷ Kōyil, where he found Iḷaiyāzhvār alive and took him back into his class.

The Nāyaṉār went to Mazhalaimaṅgalam, where he was born. He gathered all the learned men of the place, installed there the liṅga that had come into his hand, and stayed on devoted to it.

Then the Lord of Kāḷahasti wanted him for his own. He showed the Nāyaṉār a dream: "You must come and be with us." And in a dream he urged the people of his temple too: "Bring Uḷḷaṅkaikoṇarnda Nāyaṉār." So men from every group of the Kāḷahasti temple came to Mazhalaimaṅgalam. They honoured him in many ways and took him away with them. They gave him the signet ring that the running of the temple needed and made him their chief.

And he stayed there, devoted to that god.

Iḷaiyāzhvār went into the presence of Pēraruḷāḷar at Kāñcī, asked him for the triple staff and the ochre robe, and was given them, and with them the name Irāmānuja Muni.

After that Rāmānuja kept the duties of his new āśrama without a fault, and he turned something over in his mind. As befits the glance Āḷavandār gave us, he said to himself, the obstacles have gone and what is favourable is gathering. For Āḷavandār's intention to be fulfilled, we need a helper.

He thought of Govinda Bhaṭṭar.

"He is one who wishes me well," he said. "He is detached from every object. He has skill in the śāstras. It would be good if someone could join him to us again. Now he is devoted to another god. Who is clever enough to show him the fragrance of the One whom the Upaniṣad calls all scents and all tastes, and win him back?"

And as he thought it, he settled it. It must be Periya Tirumalai Nambi: a man of the true qualities of the self, first among those who know the Veda and Vedānta, whose heart was gladdened by the buds of Nammāzhvār's songs, who thought without ceasing on the Lord of Tiruvēṅkaṭam and served him without ever leaving him. He was the foremost of teachers.

So Rāmānuja sent a well-disposed Śrīvaiṣṇava to him, with this message.

"Your Honour's nephew, Vaṭṭamaṇi Govinda Bhaṭṭaṉ, who studied beside this servant and was well-disposed to me, has through an excess of evil impressions turned to another god, and he is standing in the harsh forest called Kāḷahasti. For my sake, show him your grace that asks for no cause, and take him into service at Your Honour's feet."

The account turns to other things for a time. Kūrattāzhvāṉ, whom the Sanskrit calls Kūreśa, and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ came to Rāmānuja for refuge. Yādavaprakāśa himself, his old teacher, took the triple staff from Rāmānuja's hand and was named Govinda Jīyar; but that is another man and his own story. Rāmānuja went to Śrīraṅgam, and Periya Perumāḷ gave him charge of the temple and, some copies say, the name Uḍaiyavar.

Then the account opens a new heading: how Embār was reformed.

The Śrīvaiṣṇava who had been sent to Tirumalai Nambi came back in great joy and worshipped at Uḍaiyavar's feet. Rāmānuja saw the brightness of his face, and he was sure the thing was done.

"Tell it to me in detail," he said, and he was glad.

The Śrīvaiṣṇava told it.

"When Your Honour gave me leave, I went to Tirumalai, worshipped Tirumalai Nambi, and gave him the message as Your Honour told me. Nambi heard it. 'This is something we ought to do ourselves,' he said, 'and now our Rāmānujaṉ too has taken it to heart like nectar that is sweet!' He was glad at Your Honour's concern for it. That very moment he took me along with the disciples of his following and went to Kāḷahasti, and sat under a tree on the bank of the temple tank.

"The Nāyaṉār came by, carrying a pot for Rudra's abhiṣeka, crying out songs to Rudra as he came. Nambi said a verse:

கொன்றைச்

சடையானைக் குளிரநீராட்டினா, லென்னுனக் குண்டாம் பயன்

koṉṟaic

caṭaiyāṉaik kuḷiranīrāṭṭiṉā, leṉṉuṉak kuṇṭām payaṉ

“The one with koṉṟai blossoms in his matted hair, to bathe him cool: what gain is there in it for you?”

"The Nāyaṉār heard it. He looked up at Nambi with a smiling face and went on his way. And Nambi, thinking on the good the Lord would do, and clear in his mind, went back to Tirumalai and stayed there expounding.

"Another day he sat on the bank of the same tank, in the shade of a banyan. He saw the Nāyaṉār coming with his pot to fetch water for the abhiṣeka, and a thought came to him. He said, 'The one who comes and circles my mind, who keeps his yoga as if asleep, who rode out so that I might wake: is he asleep?'

"Then he had a verse of his own ācārya, Āḷavandār, written on a palm leaf: the verse that speaks of the Lord whose sovereignty is his by nature, without bound and beyond all excelling. And he had it dropped on the path the Nāyaṉār would take.

"The Nāyaṉār came along that path. He saw the leaf, picked it up, read it, and threw it to one side. He fetched his water and started back. Then he set the water down. He searched out the leaf he had thrown away and picked it up again, and took up his pot, and came on. When he saw us he came close, pondering the meaning of the verse as Vālmīki pondered when he said, 'Grief has become verse,' and he stood there and spoke."

What passed between them then the Śrīvaiṣṇava gave word for word. Every word of it had two edges, and the account does not open them.

"Is this the thing that slipped from your hands?" the Nāyaṉār said. The Tamil word is poruḷ, which is a thing, and wealth, and meaning.

"Other people's poruḷ may slip," said Nambi. "Ours is not the kind that slips."

"Leave that. Why do all of you walk in one place?"

"Because the path is free of confusion."

"Are there paths for the kēvalas?"

"Is not this what befits one who goes with poruḷ in hand?"

"Have you come now to leave your kin and your town?"

"Not that. We have come to take the milch cows."

"For those who keep the rites, is not the dust from the cattle's feet a purifying thing?"

"It is good, if one meets it knowing the place."

"Crosswise or lengthwise, what is the difference?"

"When one can go straight, going crosswise is itself the difference."

"Are these new ways of binding words?"

"The old ways of binding words are like this too."

"Is no inquiry needed first, in this?"

"The inquiry lies in supremacy, see," said Nambi.

The Nāyaṉār had no answer. He kept looking up at Nambi, and as he went back to his own place he went shaking his head, so that anyone could see how unsettled he was.

Nambi saw it. "'My mind has become clear,'" he said, in the words of the old verse. "His heart is melting! Whose will he be from now on but theirs!" He counted him among those who were to be won, and he went back to Tirumalai talking with his disciples.

When the Śrīvaiṣṇava had told this much, Uḍaiyavar was overjoyed. He looked at Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and the disciples who were there.

"Did you hear?" he said. "Āḷavandār's divine words went into Govindaṉ's heart. In reply he put up nothing but the show of a man who argues for the sake of arguing. Nambi met the show with the show and relished the good answers with all his skill of speech. And Govindaṉ, being learned in the śāstras, was caught by the order and the mastery of Nambi's words, and was left without a reply!"

Then, the account says, he set out how it was, matching scripture to song: the Sanskrit that calls the unchanging one the imperishable beside the Tamil that calls him the first of the hosts of the immortals; the embodied one who keeps others on the good path beside the one who himself became the gateway of the way; the line on the ūrdhvapuṇḍra, the upright mark on the brow, beside the Tamil line that bids men put on the white ash. And at the end he set the words of the Upaniṣad: "From Nārāyaṇa Brahmā is born; from Nārāyaṇa Rudra is born." All the meanings of that kind that the śruti and the smṛti, the itihāsas and the purāṇas set out, Uḍaiyavar said, Govinda's mind had plunged into in that one moment, and so he went away with no answer and his heart swinging to and fro.

"What skill ran between those two!" said Uḍaiyavar, and he marvelled. He made much of the Śrīvaiṣṇava, and asked him, "And then?"

The Śrīvaiṣṇava answered with a verse.

யம்யம்ஸ்ப்ருஶதிபாணிப்யாம் யம்யம்பஶ்யதிசக்ஷூஷா -

ஸ்தாவராண்யபிமுச்யந்தே கிம்புநர்ப்பாந்தவாஜநா:

yamyamspruśatipāṇipyām yamyampaśyaticakṣūṣā -

stāvarāṇyapimucyantē kimpunarppāntavājanāḥ

“Whomever he touches with his hands, whomever he looks on with his eyes, even things that cannot move are set free; what then of his kin?”

"So the verse says," he went on. "Could Your Honour's double bond with him go for nothing? Hear what came of it."

And he told it.

"Tirumalai Nambi worshipped the Lord on Tirumalai, the wish-granting jewel, and set out again. He stayed in a grove on the border of Kāḷahasti and was expounding the commentary on Tiruvāymozhi to his disciples. The Nāyaṉār had climbed a pāṭiri tree and was gathering flowers.

"Nambi was giving the meaning of the decad that begins 'Tiṇṇaṉ vīḍu'. The Nāyaṉār stopped picking flowers and listened, for about three verses. Then came the fourth: 'Are flowers and worship fit for anyone but Emperumāṉ?'

"The Nāyaṉār jumped down from that tree with a start. He whirled the flower basket in his hand and flung it away. He pulled off the rudrākṣa beads he wore so that the string broke, and threw them down. 'Unfit! Unfit!' he cried, and he fell at Nambi's feet in a heap and lay there.

"He told what he had been, in the words of the verse, 'ignorant, without right conduct, impure, sunk in the ocean of sorrow,' and of the Tamil, 'I am low, with no good in me at all.' He was utterly cast down. And he lamented.

"'While the one crowned to rule both worlds was here, I loved the beggar with the tangled hair!

"'While the Lotus-eyed one in his fresh beauty was here, I worshipped the one whose eye throws sparks!'"

Some copies say, the one whose eye is smoke.

"'While the one whose throat swallowed the sea and the earth was here, I longed for the one with the stained throat!

"'While the wishing-tree who lifted a hill and kept off the rain of stones was here, I bowed to the one with the skull in his hand!

"'While the one with Śrī on his breast was here, I worshipped the god who has no Śrī!

"'While the Lord in the yellow garment was here, I went after the one dressed in a tiger's skin!

"'While the one from whose feet the Gaṅgā flows was here, I walked round the keeper of the burning ground!

"'While the great forest of tuḷasī, the great flower, was here, I lifted a pot in my big hand and poured water on a bitter gourd!'

"So he cried out, in many ways. 'You must save this soul,' he said, and he lay prostrate and would not get up.

"Nambi looked at his disciples' faces. 'There is nothing lacking,' he said, 'in the way Āḷavandār gives his grace.' He took him by the head and lifted him up, and stroked him, and comforted him in many ways. He looked at him as if drinking him in with both eyes, and spoke with him alone.

"Then the people of the Kāḷahasti temple heard of it and came. 'How is it right,' they said to Nambi, 'to put the Lord's powder on this man? He is the one responsible for our temple.'

"'Ask the man himself,' said Nambi. 'It is the powder that has taken him. Our way is of another kind. We are not people who come by a neighbour's path.'

"They took the Nāyaṉār by the hand. 'Come,' they said.

"He shook off their hands. 'Can you take our hand?' he said. He threw down the key of the treasury, and the seal ring, and the rest. He clapped his hands. 'From now on,' he said, 'there is no service between you and us.' And he stood with his face turned away from them.

"They lost all hope of him. Then they said to Nambi, 'We heard all this yesterday. We had made up our minds that if our lord went over to your way, we would stand and fight you. But the Lord of Kāḷahasti spoke to us in a dream. The Veda was being stolen, he said, by those outside the Veda. Of old Viṣṇu bearing the triple staff guarded the three Vedas. Now, to put down those who deny, Śeṣāśana, and Ananta, and Vainateya the eagle have come as Yamunaitturaivar, Iḷaiyāzhvār and Govinda Bhaṭṭar. With them the portions of the conch and the discus have come as Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Kūrattāzhvāṉ, and the Lord's other attendants have been born in the same way. Because Govinda Bhaṭṭar once wished to live at Kāśī, and this is dear to us, we ourselves made the thing he brought in his palm a pretext to turn him from that thought, and called him here and kept him. Nothing more than that. Now they are free to go as they please.'

"Having said it, they went back.

"Nambi took him and went up the hill to Tirumalai. There and then he had him given the sacred thread, the upanayana, and the rites that go with it."

Some copies say, the shaving of the head.

"On the bank of the Svāmipuṣkariṇī, the Lord's own pool, he gave him the pañcasaṃskāra, the five sacraments by which a man becomes the Lord's. He taught him the Āzhvārs' sacred songs, from the Tiruppallāṇḍu on, and gave him knowledge of the arthapañcaka, the five things a soul must know, and showed him great grace. And now he knows no other god. He holds to his ācārya's feet alone. Like the one who said, 'I will do everything,' he does every kind of service at Nambi's feet, in thought and word and deed, at every hour without a break. Today I served there with him, and took my leave."

So the Śrīvaiṣṇava ended, and Uḍaiyavar showed him great favour.

Uḍaiyavar went up to Tirumalai himself, worshipped the Lord of the hill, and came down with Periya Tirumalai Nambi to his house at Tiruppati. He stayed there a year, hearing from Nambi the meaning of the Śrī Rāmāyaṇa.

Here the account begins the greatness of Embār.

Uḍaiyavar was pleased to see how Govindapperumāḷ did every kind of service in Nambi's house.

One day Govindapperumāḷ made up Nambi's bed, and then lay down on it himself first, to try it. Emperumāṉār saw it. He went and told Periya Tirumalai Nambi. "What wickedness is this?"

Nambi called him.

"Govindapperumāḷ! We hear you lay down on the bed you made for us. May one do that? What is the fruit of it?"

"Hell itself is the fruit, for us," said Govindapperumāḷ.

"Knowing that, why do you do it?"

"If Your Honour can sleep without anything pricking your holy body, or crawling on it, or biting it," he said, "then hell is enough for me."

Uḍaiyavar heard it, and he was pleased. "What a devotion this is!"

Another day Uḍaiyavar was going toward Nambi's flower garden. At one spot he saw Govindapperumāḷ put his hand into a snake's mouth, and then bathe again, and go off to his service.

"Govindapperumāḷ!" Uḍaiyavar said. "What did you do?"

"I saw the snake suffering with its tongue hanging out," he said, "and I took out a thorn that was stuck in its tongue."

Uḍaiyavar was pleased. "What compassion for living things!"

When the Rāmāyaṇa was finished, Emperumāṉār prostrated at Periya Tirumalai Nambi's feet. "This servant takes leave," he said, "for the great city of Tiruvaraṅgam."

"You came all this way," said Nambi, "and we have not been able to give you anything."

"If you are minded to give," said Uḍaiyavar, "you who, as the song says, cut away the strong deeds that clung to me and cut the bond of illusion and turned my mind to him; you who cut off my evil impressions, so that the false knowledge, the crooked ways and the filthy body of this present state are things we shall not come to again; you who brought to fulfilment the wish of one who waited, saying, When will it be that I come to him: give me this Govindapperumāḷ."

Periya Tirumalai Nambi called him. "Come, Govindapperumāḷ. Serve Emperumāṉār as you would see us." And he gave him, pouring water into Uḍaiyavar's hand as a gift is given.

The account counts that among the ways in which Tirumalai Nambi made Uḍaiyavar's greatness known: that he gave him Embār with the pouring of water.

Uḍaiyavar took Govindapperumāḷ with him, prostrated to Nambi, and set out. He went to Kaḍikai, climbed the hill and worshipped the Lord there. From there he came to Tiruppuṭkuzhi, where the two of them had once sat under Yādavaprakāśa, bathed in the Gṛdhra-puṣkariṇī, and worshipped the Lord in that place in the Āzhvārs' words and in a Sanskrit hymn. Then he worshipped at Tiruveḵkā and the holy places round it, and came back to Kāñcī, to Tirukkacci Nambi, Kāñcīpūrṇa.

There Govindapperumāḷ's body lost its colour and his face wasted away, as in the line, "parted from him, unable to keep life."

Uḍaiyavar saw it, and knew what was in him. "Govindapperumāḷ," he said, "go and see Nambi and come back." He sent him with two Śrīvaiṣṇavas, and he himself stayed with Tirukkacci Nambi, worshipping Pēraruḷāḷar.

Govindapperumāḷ came to Tiruppati and lay prostrate at the gate of Nambi's house. Nambi would not have him in. He did not turn his face toward him, and he sent him away; what Nambi said that day, and what his wife said, Periya Tirumalai Nambi's own story tells.

Govindapperumāḷ had no hope left there. He prostrated at the gate and went back with the Śrīvaiṣṇavas to Perumāḷ Kōyil, and stood worshipping Uḍaiyavar.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas told what had happened. Uḍaiyavar heard it and praised Nambi, who saw everything. And he bound Govindapperumāḷ to himself so deeply by his own nearness and gentleness, by his saulabhya and his sauśīlya and the rest, that he never looked back again.

The shorter account tells it otherwise in its order. There Emperumāṉār asks Nambi, "Give me Govindapperumāḷ too," and receives him with the pouring of water, and sets out for Perumāḷ Kōyil on his way to Kōyil, as Śrīraṅgam is called. On the road he sees the pallor in Govindapperumāḷ's face and tells him to go and pay his respects to Nambi and come back. He goes; Nambi stays without turning his face to him; and he comes back with no longing left in him and his mind clear, and stands at Uḍaiyavar's feet, and they go on together to Kōyil.

Uḍaiyavar took leave of Tirukkacci Nambi and set out for Tiruvaraṅgam. All the disciples came out to meet him, and Namperumāḷ asked him, "Have you been to our northern hill and come back?"

From then on Govindapperumāḷ's whole time was Emperumāṉār's gathering: the sight of his form, his talk, the service at his feet. It went on day after day, without sleep and without sloth.

One day, when Uḍaiyavar and the disciples sat in a great assembly, they all began to speak of Govindapperumāḷ: of his knowledge, his devotion, his detachment, and how he stood fast on his own ācārya's feet alone. They nodded their heads and praised him.

"That is so," said Govindapperumāḷ. "That is so." And he praised himself even more than they had.

Uḍaiyavar saw it. "When everyone praises you," he said, "you ought to be thinking of your own lowliness. Instead you are praising yourself. Does that befit what you are?"

Govindapperumāḷ looked at Uḍaiyavar. "Alas!" he said. "If the disciples praise this servant, what are they praising but that state at Kāḷahasti, where I stood debased, with my hand and my pot and a string of jujube seeds round my neck? That is all there is of me. But the song says, 'The Lord in the yellow garment came as the teacher of Brahman.' When I think of the long chain of labour Your Honour took on, coming into the world only to lift up this one soul, then I, who lay lower than any of the disciples, lower than the souls who are bound for ever, have a right to praise myself for as long as time lasts. 'Who on the wide earth is my equal?' 'Who now is equal in the broad heaven?' 'My heart, you are good, good!' So if all of us praise the good that has come to this soul through Your Honour, what is that but praising Your Honour?"

Emperumāṉār was very glad. "You are good, you are good," he said. "Embrace us with that fine heart of yours, so that your qualities may come to us too." And he gathered him up and held him.

One day Govindapperumāḷ was found standing at the door of a woman called Emperumāṉaḍiyāḷ, and he had let the hour of his rites go by. A Śrīvaiṣṇava saw it and told it in Uḍaiyavar's assembly.

"Govindapperumāḷ," said Uḍaiyavar, "why did you stand there?"

"There was a lullaby being sung on Your Honour," he said. "It was sweet, it was set to melody, the words were good to the ear, and the delight of Your Honour's qualities bound my feet. I could not move from the place."

"It is true," said the Śrīvaiṣṇava. "A lullaby was going on."

Uḍaiyavar was pleased. "What love he has!"

After that there was no darkness for him and no solitude. The glory of Rāmānuja and the delight of his qualities filled every hour he had.

His mother came to him. "Govindapperumāḷ," she said, "your wife has come of age."

"Then, mother," he said, "watch for a time when it is dark and there is no one about, and send her to me."

She watched for many days. On no day did she find such a time. So she told Uḍaiyavar.

Uḍaiyavar called him. "Govindapperumāḷ, this is our command. In her season, you are to go to her." And he sent him.

Govindapperumāḷ spent the whole night making his wife know the Lord who dwells within, the antaryāmin, and praising his qualities and his deeds. Then he sent her away.

At daybreak his mother came. "May one behave like this?"

"While the Indweller is shining forth," he said, "how can anything unseemly happen?"

Those who were near told Emperumāṉār. When Govindapperumāḷ came and stood worshipping at his feet, Emperumāṉār smiled gently and asked, "What did you do the whole night?"

"Because the Indweller was shining forth," he said, "this servant found no privacy."

"Come, Govindapperumāḷ," said Uḍaiyavar. "If you have this much distaste for every other object, do you not know the word of the śāstra, 'One should not remain without an āśrama'?"

"Then let this servant be given the āśrama of saṃnyāsa."

Uḍaiyavar gave him the triple staff and the ochre robe and the rest, and gave him his own holy name.

He lay prostrate at Uḍaiyavar's feet. "Please give me a name," he said, "that fits one who has come into the shade of your feet."

Uḍaiyavar took back his own name. He gave him the name Embār. He took him by the head, lifted him up, and blessed him.

The shorter account says only that Emperumāṉār, seeing at length how far he had turned from the things of the senses, had him enter the fourth āśrama, and made the name Embār for him by taking the first and the last of his own holy name.

That account names Embār among the disciples Emperumāṉār took with him when he resolved to write his commentary on the Brahma Sūtras, with Kūrattāzhvāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ. It tells too how, when Uḍaiyavar had made Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ his son by knowledge and set him over both Vedāntas, the elder disciples who had come to him first, Kūrattāzhvāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, Embār and the rest, held Piḷḷāṉ above them and did their services under him, as sons adopted early defer to a true son born later; and Uḍaiyavar saw it and was greatly pleased. Where it names the seventy-four who held the seats of the teaching, and then the jīyars, Embār's name stands first among the jīyars.

Both accounts keep his name in the rolls of those who took refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet at Śrīraṅgam, and the longer account counts him among the seventy-four. And the temple's own chronicle, setting out who was to recite what before Periya Perumāḷ when the services were ordered, gives the Itihāsa to Govindapperumāḷ, beside Āzhvāṉ, Āccāṉ, Amudaṉār and Piḷḷāṉ. It does not say whether that is Embār or his younger brother of the same name.

A son was born to Kūrattāzhvāṉ, and Āzhvāṉ left the naming and all the child's lifting up to Uḍaiyavar. When the days of birth impurity were over, Emperumāṉār came to Āzhvāṉ's house and told Embār to bring the child.

Embār went in to Āṇḍāḷ and took the child to his breast, and as he came he said the dvaya over him, the two-line prayer of refuge, so that no evil eye should come near him.

"Embār!" said Uḍaiyavar, with the child in his hands. "The dvaya is fragrant here. What did you do?"

"To protect the child," said Embār, "I said the dvaya, and took him up, and brought him."

"You have gone ahead of the part that was mine to do!" said Uḍaiyavar, pleased. "You yourself shall have charge of his lifting up as well."

At the naming he had the holy seal put on the child by Embār's hand, and named him Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar, and so took away the second of Āḷavandār's griefs. Bhaṭṭar's own life tells that day in full. Uttama Nambi's Lakṣmīkāvya, telling it in a Sanskrit verse, calls the child "the disciple of Govinda."

The shorter account tells it in a line: Emperumāṉār had Embār give the elder of Āzhvāṉ's two sons the name Parāśara Bhaṭṭar.

After that a son was born to Embār's younger brother, Siṟiya Govindapperumāḷ. Uḍaiyavar heard of it and rejoiced. "Āḷavandār's labour has borne fruit!" He went to the house, looked on that child too, and named him Śrī Parāṅkuśa Nambi, after Nammāzhvār, and so took away Āḷavandār's third grief. So the longer account counts it. The shorter account counts the third grief made good otherwise, when Uḍaiyavar named Piḷḷāṉ Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ, after the same Āzhvār; Piḷḷāṉ's life tells it.

Bhaṭṭar grew. Once, when he was small and playing in the dust of the street, a man came by blowing a horn and proclaiming himself the all-knowing scholar, and the child would not have it. "Who is this," he said, "blowing that title in the place where Uḍaiyavar, Āzhvāṉ, Āṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, Embār and the rest of the great ones live?" How he put the man to silence with a fistful of dust, Bhaṭṭar's own life tells.

Āzhvāṉ and Embār taught him. They gave him the meanings and the knowledge of what is real. The shorter account says that Bhaṭṭar received the tirumantra and the rest in Embār's presence.

When Āzhvāṉ died, Uḍaiyavar took Bhaṭṭar by the hand to Periya Perumāḷ, who took him again as his own son. Then Uḍaiyavar brought him back to his maṭha, the house where he lived with his ascetics, looked at Embār, and gave him into his hands. "Train him in the śāstras," he said, "so that he becomes one who carries our darśana."

Embār once told the whole line of teachers as one water. The account sets it beside a saying of Nāthamuni's, that water standing in a puddle is drunk by a sparrow and gone, while water standing in the lake of Vīranārāyaṇapuram makes the land bear. Embār said:

"The dark rain cloud that is the Āzhvār plunged into the great ocean that is Periya Perumāḷ and drank the flood of nectar of his good qualities. It came and rained on the great Meru that is Nāthamuni. It came down by the falls that are Uyyakkoṇḍār and Maṇakkāl Nambi, and joined the great river that is Āḷavandār. It came and stood gathered in the great lake that is Emperumāṉār. It went out through the sluices that are our ācāryas, and it flows out into the field that is this world."

Some copies add that it ran on through the channel that is Periya Nambi, Mahāpūrṇa; many do not have it.

And there was one thing he told Bhaṭṭar that the account keeps as the first of a line of such sayings, handed from teacher to disciple:

"Do not be puffed up thinking, Namperumāḷ took us as his son, we are Āzhvāṉ's son, we have mastered every śāstra. Hold Emperumāṉār's feet alone as your refuge."

Bhaṭṭar said the like to Nañjīyar after him, and Nañjīyar to Nampiḷḷai. The account asks why Āzhvāṉ, Āṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, Embār, Bhaṭṭar and the others all told their disciples this, and answers, among other reasons: out of love for their own ācārya, and because Emperumāṉār is the one saved by bowing at the feet of Nammāzhvār, and because Nammāzhvār himself foretold his coming.

When Uḍaiyavar's own last days came, he charged his disciples by oath to do nothing rash at his going, and gave each group of them into the keeping of one of the elders. To Embār he gave Bhaṭṭar, Kaṇiyaṉūr Ciṟiyāccāṉ, Caṭṭampaḷḷi Cīyar, Periyāṇḍāṉ, Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ and others.

When Uḍaiyavar was about to leave for the sacred land, Embār took hold of his feet.

"Lord!" he said. "I was like a man who takes mother-of-pearl for silver. I took what is not the Supreme Self for the Supreme Self, and I stood in perverse knowledge in the harsh forest called Kāḷahasti. Periya Tirumalai Nambi called me, 'Come along.' He came into my mind and corrected me, so that love for him grew. He cut away the false attachment. He destroyed my evil impressions. He made me, who was nothing, into something, and took me into his service. As the verse says, 'mother, father, children, and everything else,' he showed me that Your Holiness's feet are every kind of kin to me, and every good, the seen and the unseen.

"Your Holiness too stood as the kin who lifts me up in every way, so that all I had lost in being parted from Nambi's feet was taken away. I have settled it that Your Holiness's feet alone are my goal and my means. As the verse says:

நசஸீதாத்வயாஹீநா நசாஹமபிராகவ - முஹூர்த்தமபி

ஜீவாவோ ஜலாந்மத்ஸ்யாவிவோத்த்ருதௌ

nacasītātvayāhīnā nacāhamapirākava - muhūrttamapi

jīvāvō jalānmatsyāvivōttrutau

“Neither Sītā nor I, O Rāghava, parted from you, even for a moment could live, like two fish drawn out of the water.”

"I cannot bear one moment away from Your Holiness's feet, which are the stay of my life. If the one who lives in the body goes, does the body stay? 'We have become the shadow and the footprint.' How shall I bear it, who have become the shadow of your feet?"

He said it, and fell at Uḍaiyavar's feet in great anguish, and lay there and did not get up.

Uḍaiyavar looked on him with grace. "We received you from Nambi's hand with the pouring of water," he said. "Can there be any parting between us and you? Our Lord of Vaikuṇṭha does just the same. Do not be troubled."

He lifted Embār up and held him. He set his feet, those beautiful golden flowers, on Embār's head.

In the longer account Uḍaiyavar's last hour is told like this. After his last bath and his daily rites, he recited the three mysteries with the line of teachers before them, prostrated toward Periya Perumāḷ, took leave of the disciples, and sat in the lotus posture with his mind on Āḷavandār's form. Then he closed his eyes and lay down with his head in Embār's lap and his feet in Vaḍuga Nambi's lap, and so he went.

The shorter account tells it otherwise. There Uḍaiyavar lies facing the temple with his head in Piḷḷāṉ's lap and his feet in Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ's, while the disciples and jīyars led by Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Embār and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ recite the Upaniṣads and Tiruvāymozhi, and so he goes.

Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, Embār, Vaḍuga Nambi and all the disciples cried out and fell like trees cut at the root. They lay writhing, helpless, their throats choked, the tears running in streams.

When the body was borne through the streets of Śrīraṅgam, Amudaṉār and others went reciting the Nūṟṟantādi on Uḍaiyavar. Embār and Piḷḷāṉ and others went reciting the stotras and the gadyas, the hymns and the prose prayers.

After Uḍaiyavar was gone, Embār was like a suckling child parted from its mother. His heart had gone slack within him, and he was in great anguish. And he went on expounding to the disciples, Bhaṭṭar first among them, the special meanings Uḍaiyavar had taught.

One day the thought of Uḍaiyavar's feet came over him. He was melting, dissolving within, like a calf longing for its mother, asking when he would see them. The urgency rose in him. As the line says, "parted from him, unable to keep life," he could not bear the parting from his ācārya any longer, and it broke its banks.

He went into the presence of Periya Perumāḷ. "Lord," he said, "I mean to go to Uḍaiyavar's feet. Your Holiness must give me leave."

"Do so," said Perumāḷ, and with compassion he gave Embār tīrtha and prasāda and the Śrī Śaṭhakōpaṉ.

Embār received it as the song says, "You have set your beautiful red feet on my head." He took in Perumāḷ from his feet to his crown, as the song Amalaṉādipirāṉ does. "The eyes that have seen my nectar will not see anything else," that song says, and he filled his eyes and his heart with the Lord of Araṅgam among his groves, so that he would not leave them. Then he set out.

He went to Uḍaiyavar's maṭha and recited the verse that begins "yo nityam" through to its close: "I take refuge in the feet of Rāmānuja." And he prostrated.

At the maṭha he washed the feet of Araṅganagarappaṉ, the image he himself worshipped. Then he called Bhaṭṭar.

"Come, Bhaṭṭar," he said. "Do not grow proud, thinking, we are Āzhvāṉ's son, we have studied every śāstra, Namperumāḷ took us as his son. By our oath! Hold Emperumāṉār's feet as the means and as the goal."

Then he said, "To Kaṇiyaṉūr Ciṟiyāccāṉ, Caṭṭampaḷḷi Cīyar, Īccampāḍi Cīyar and the rest, and to the other disciples too, you must teach the special meanings Uḍaiyavar taught, and carry on the darśana, and live long." So he blessed him, and gave them all into Bhaṭṭar's hand.

"You must forgive all my offences," he said, and he prostrated. And he had Bhaṭṭar and the disciples take tīrtha, and fed them.

Then, thinking of the sweet companion who dwells at the ford of Araṅgam as the companion of his road, he went to the sacred land.

Bhaṭṭar could not bear the parting from his ācārya. He was overcome with grief. The disciples near him comforted him. "Come, Bhaṭṭar," they said. "May Your Honour grieve like this?"

While he was gathering himself, men from every group of the temple came, bringing the garland and the cloth and the other things Perumāḷ had worn and laid aside. The brahmamedha, the rite for one who has known Brahman, was done in full by the hand of Siṟiya Govindapperumāḷ, his younger brother. They set Embār's pure last body on its bier and carried it away. They consecrated it by the rule laid down for an ascetic, and laid it to rest, and kept the closing bath, the avabhṛta, and had the recitation of the sacred songs carried out in full.

The account says these things were his alone: to hold service to his ācārya as the highest goal and take no thought for himself; to be his ācārya's to buy and to sell, with no doing of his own; to depend on him as a shadow depends; and not to be able to live apart from him.

His birth-star is Punarpūsam, in the month of Tai.

His taṉiyaṉs, the verses by which the tradition salutes him, say what he was.

ராமா நுஜபதச்சாயா கோவிந்தா ஹ்வாஉநபாயிநீ -

ததாயத்தஸ்வரூபாஸா ஜீயாந்மத்விஶ்ரமஸ்தலீ

rāmā nujapataccāyā kōvintā hvāunapāyinī -

tatāyattasvarūpāsā jīyānmatviśramastalī

“The shade of Rāmānuja's feet that never leaves them, whose name is Govinda, whose very being rests on him: may she prevail, my place of rest.”

"Though women's eyes came near him like arrows, though they loosed their fragrant flower shafts, they did him no harm; he said himself that there was never a private hour for him with a woman. Those who say, Embār's feet are our refuge: their feet are the refuge for us."

பட்டார்யாயப்ரபத்திம்வ்யபதிஶததுலந் த்ரா

விடாம்நாயமௌலே ர்த்தம்ஸ்ரீபாஷ்யமந்யாநபிசயதிவராதேஶதோஉந்யாத்

ரஹஸ்யாந்-யஸ்சோக்தோ தேஶிகேந்த்ரோயதிபதிசரணச்சாயநாமார்யவர்யஸ்

தங்கோவிந்தார்யமஸ்மத்குலகுருமமிதஜ்ஞாநவைராக்யமீடே

paṭṭāryāyaprapattimvyapatiśatatulan trā

viṭāmnāyamaulē rttamsrīpāṣyamanyānapicayativarātēśatōunyāt

rahasyān-yascōktō tēśikēntrōyatipaticaraṇaccāyanāmāryavaryas

taṅkōvintāryamasmatkulakurumamitajñānavairākyamīṭē

“He who taught Bhaṭṭārya the matchless prapatti, and the meaning of the crown of the Tamil Veda, the Śrī Bhāṣya, and others besides, at Yativara's command, other secrets too; who was called the lord of teachers, named the shade of the feet of the lord of ascetics, best of the noble: him I praise, Govindārya, teacher of our family, of knowledge and detachment beyond measure.”

ஹ்ருதி

நாராயணம்பஶ்யந் நாப்யமச்சத்ரஹஸ்ஸதா - யஸ்ஸ்வதாரரதௌசாபி மோவிந்

தந்தமுபாஸ்மஹே

hruti

nārāyaṇampaśyan nāpyamaccatrahassatā - yassvatārarataucāpi mōvin

tantamupāsmahē

“In his heart seeing Nārāyaṇa always, he never went into privacy, not even for joy with his own wife: that Govinda we worship.”

Embār's name came once more from Bhaṭṭar's own mouth. On a Kaiśika Dvādaśī, when Perumāḷ was so pleased with his reading that he gave Bhaṭṭar his own garland and ornaments and his lion throne and told him, "We have given you the higher abode," Bhaṭṭar prostrated and said what had brought him to it. It was the bond Uḍaiyavar had made for him at the Lord's feet, and the blood he shared with Āzhvāṉ, and Embār's grace.