Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ

Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, whom the Sanskrit calls Praṇatārtihara, comes into the story on the hill of Tirumalai, in the house of Periya Tirumalai Nambi, Śrīśailapūrṇa.

Nambi's wife was his father's sister. Āccāṉ went up to Tirumalai to see her, and he stayed some days in Nambi's house, at his own studies. While he was there Nambi's sons were born, and Āccāṉ watched the younger, Piḷḷāṉ, grow and learn his letters and love the sacred songs, and he was glad inside himself. "What is this?" he said. Piḷḷāṉ's own life tells that childhood.

Then Śrīvaiṣṇavas came up from Kōyil, as the Tamil calls Śrīraṅgam, and told Nambi at length of the glory of Emperumāṉār, as they called Iḷaiyāzhvār now. By then Āccāṉ was eager to take refuge at Emperumāṉār's feet. The account gives his longing in an old line: "When shall we see Rāma?"

Nambi had Piḷḷāṉ married, and sent him down the hill with Āccāṉ, with word that Emperumāṉār too should come and worship the feet of Tirumalaiyappaṉ, the Lord of the hill. The walk down and how Emperumāṉār looked on the boy belong to Piḷḷāṉ's story.

Āccāṉ came with the boy first to Perumāḷ Kōyil, which is Kāñcī, and worshipped the feet of Pēraruḷāḷar, the Lord of grace who stands there, and he told all these things to his mother. Then he went on to Kōyil and worshipped Periya Perumāḷ, the great Lord of Śrīraṅgam. He came before Emperumāṉār, prostrated at his feet, and lay there.

"What is this?" said Emperumāṉār.

Āccāṉ told him everything that had happened in Periya Tirumalai Nambi's presence. Emperumāṉār heard of the gladness in Nambi's heart and was glad inside himself. He took Āccāṉ by the head and lifted him up, full of joy. And to Āccāṉ he gave all the special meanings of the teaching.

From then on Āccāṉ was the one who cared for Emperumāṉār's holy body, in a way no one else did. The Tamil word is tirumēṉippari, love and care for the holy form.

Afterwards the care was put to the test.

Uḍaiyavar, as Emperumāṉār is called in the longer account, had made the three prose hymns of surrender and the order of daily worship, and he had settled that the highest Brahman is Śrīman Nārāyaṇa alone, and he was spreading the darśana, the teaching of the line. Each day he went for his alms, his madhukara, to seven houses. And he was pressing hard on the men who held the temple's offices. One of them arranged for poisoned food to be given him at his alms, and pressed his own wife to serve it. She said, "This must not be." He forced her. She brought the food out and offered it, and she prostrated and went away.

Uḍaiyavar was startled. "What is this!" he said, and he understood what she meant. He dissolved the food in the Kāvēri, the river that runs to the sea, and he fasted.

Here the two accounts part.

The longer one says that Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Nambi, heard of it and came to Kōyil. It was midday when he came to the Kāvēri. Uḍaiyavar came out with his leading disciples, the mudalis, and prostrated at Nambi's feet and lay there. Nambi did not tell him to rise.

Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ spoke.

"What kind of order between disciple and teacher is this? Does anyone throw a garland of karumugai jasmine down in the sun?"

And out of love for him he lifted Uḍaiyavar up.

Then Nambi spoke to him. "It is you we have been looking for. You are the one who cares for his holy body. From today, cook for him, and serve it to him as his only alms."

Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ did exactly that, and he went on serving him so.

The shorter account tells it with one more teacher, and with tears. In it Mahāpūrṇa, Periya Nambi, was staying with Goṣṭhīpūrṇa when the news came: at Kōyil a man had mixed poison into Emperumāṉār's alms out of an evil mind, and Emperumāṉār was fasting. Mahāpūrṇa set out in haste and took Goṣṭhīpūrṇa with him, and they reached the Kāvēri at midday. Emperumāṉār came out with the mudalis to meet them and prostrated to Mahāpūrṇa, who lifted him up and looked on him with a cooling glance. Then he lay prostrate before Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, and Goṣṭhīpūrṇa did not say, "Enough, get up."

Then Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ spoke. "Is this the order between ācārya and disciple? Is it fitting to test him until his life runs out?" He gathered Emperumāṉār up in his arms and stood there with the tears running down.

"Is it not you we have been seeking?" said Goṣṭhīpūrṇa. "You care for his holy body. You yourself are to see to his alms and have him eat."

Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ did so. He kept bringing the food, and Emperumāṉār consented, and stayed.

From that day the kitchen was Āccāṉ's.

When the longer account sets down the daily service each disciple did at Uḍaiyavar's feet at Kōyil, it gives the kitchen, the tirumaḍaippaḷḷi, to Kiḍāmbi Perumāḷ and Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ together. Kiḍāmbi Perumāḷ is another man, with his own place in the lists. The account does not say how the two were related.

Āccāṉ's name stands in the roll of those who took refuge at the feet of Śrī Bhāṣyakārar while he lived at Kōyil; it is the first of the Āccāṉs there. It stands again among the seventy-four ācāryas who served him, seated each on his lion-throne, his siṃhāsana. The shorter account counts the seventy-four its own way, and of them it names four as holders of the throne of the Śrī Bhāṣya: Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ.

That account remembers something else of those years. Uḍaiyavar took the boy Āccāṉ had brought down from the hill as his son in knowledge, his jñāna-putra, and made him head of both Vedāntas, the Sanskrit and the Tamil. Then the mudalis who had taken refuge before Piḷḷāṉ and were older than he, Kūreśa, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, Embār and the rest, held Piḷḷāṉ as above them, as sons adopted earlier look up to the true son born later, and they did their services as men placed under him. Uḍaiyavar saw it, and was very glad.

Once, when Uḍaiyavar was going to Tirumalai, a woman who sold curds came to him. Her name was Tumbaiyūr Koṇḍi. She stood worshipping Uḍaiyavar and the mudalis, for the sake of the price of her curds.

Uḍaiyavar told Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ to give her the prasāda of the food that had been offered, and Āccāṉ did so.

Through the water of the holy feet and the food he gave her, true knowledge rose in her. "Your servant need not be paid for the curds," she prayed. "You must give me mokṣa."

"For that," said Uḍaiyavar, "Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ is answerable."

"Then Your Grace must give me a little note for it."

Uḍaiyavar was glad, and he gave it. She took it and climbed the hill of Tirumalai. Tiruvēṅkaṭavar saw her coming in haste and went out to meet her, took the little note, read it, and gave her the eternal land, tirunāḍu.

The longer account tells this among the ways the Lords of the holy places made Uḍaiyavar's glory known. Among those ways it tells one more in which Āccāṉ had a part.

Azhagar, the Lord of Tirumāliruñcōlai, once called out in his assembly, "Let the servants of our Irāmānucaṉ come forward!" All the ācāryas answered "Nāyantē!", "Lord!", and came and stood worshipping at his feet. But some of Periya Nambi's line stayed back. Azhagar asked why. They said that Irāmānucaṉ was their disciple, so when the Lord called for Irāmānucaṉ's servants, they had kept away. And Azhagar told them that their holding Irāmānucaṉ as a disciple was like Daśaratha and Vasudeva holding the Lord as their son.

Afterwards, one day, Azhagar called Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ by name.

"Say something," he said.

Āccāṉ began with the words "a vessel of a thousand offences," and came to the word agatim, "without recourse."

And Azhagar said, "Having our Irāmānucaṉ, may you say 'without recourse'?"

Then Uḍaiyavar grew ill.

The shorter account tells it so. While there was sickness in his holy body, Uḍaiyavar saw the distress of Piḷḷāṉ, Āzhvāṉ, Āccāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ, and he said to them, "Is what we have told you before not enough?"

Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ said, "Seeing this holy body in pain, how are your servants to live?"

Piḷḷāṉ asked that he command holy images of himself to be set up, as had been done for the Āzhvārs, and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ said that without this the teaching would decline. So Emperumāṉār had three images of himself made. He embraced them, and commanded that they be set up at Kōyil, at Śrīperumbudūr and at Tirunārāyaṇapuram, where he had already left an image in stone. He gave them to the three, to Āccāṉ, to Piḷḷāṉ and to Āṇḍāṉ.

Before the end he called two men to him, Piḷḷāṉ and Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, and told them certain special meanings. The shorter account sets beside it the verse in which Sugrīva speaks of the task to Hanumān above all others, sure that the best of the monkeys would carry it through; as Rāma gave Hanumān the ring and told him special meanings, so Uḍaiyavar did now, so that this teaching should run on unhindered for as long as time lasts. He set his holy feet on their heads.

"Periya Perumāḷ has resolved that this teaching shall stand firm through you," he said. "Go on handing it to those who are fit for it."

Then, facing Kōyil, he lay down, the shorter account says, with his holy head in Piḷḷāṉ's lap and his holy feet in Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ's lap. Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Embār, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and the other mudalis and ascetics recited the Upaniṣads from the Brahmavalli and the Tiruvāymozhi from "Cūzhvicumpaṇimukil", and the conch sounded with every instrument, and while he meditated on the feet of Periya Nambi, the crown of his head opened and he went to the sacred land.

The longer account remembers that hour otherwise. In it his head lay in Embār's lap and his feet in Vaḍuga Nambi's lap. What it keeps of Āccāṉ is the charge Uḍaiyavar gave in his last days, when he put each group of disciples into the hands of an ācārya. Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Perumāḷ, Eṅgaḷāzhvāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ and others he gave into the hands of Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ, the boy Āccāṉ had once walked down the hill with.

Uḍaiyavar had given him an image to set up, and Āccāṉ set it up.

With Nallāṉ and some of the other mudalis he went to Tirunārāyaṇapuram. There, as Uḍaiyavar had commanded, he had the Āzhvārs, the ācāryas and Āṇḍāḷ installed. He installed the holy image of Uḍaiyavar that had been given into his hands together with the image already standing there, and he had the festival of the holy recitation, the tiruvadhyayana, and the other rites carried out.

At Kōyil, the longer account says, though some copies lack the passage, Bhaṭṭar and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ kept Uḍaiyavar's festival of Tiruvātirai in Cittirai, and his star each month, and spoke of his glory, which is beyond speech; and they lived on consoling one another together with Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ and the others.

Then Āccāṉ taught.

While Piḷḷāṉ was expounding the teaching as Uḍaiyavar had commanded, the shorter account says, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ too was expounding the Śrī Bhāṣya and the other works, as Uḍaiyavar had commanded him. It gives him two titles here: foremost of the believers, and Yatirāja's kitchen-servant.

A son was born to him in those years. He gave the child the holy name Rāmānuja Piḷḷāṉ. He taught him all the meanings Uḍaiyavar had given him, and made him one who would carry the darśana forward. Then he went to the sacred land.

Eṅgaḷāzhvāṉ and the others had all his last rites done through his son, Rāmānuja Piḷḷāṉ.

Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ's birth-star was Hasta, in the month of Cittirai.

His taṉiyaṉs, the verses by which the tradition salutes him, keep both halves of his life together. One says:

“ராமாநுஜபதாம்போஜ யுகளீயஸ்ய

தீமதஃ - ப்ராப்யஞ்சப்ராபகம்வந்தே ப்ரணதார்த்திஹரங்குரும்,”

“rāmānujapatāmpōja yukaḷīyasya

tīmataḵ - prāpyañcaprāpakamvantē praṇatārttiharaṅkurum,”

“That wise one for whom the two lotus feet of Rāmānuja were the goal, and the way to the goal: I bow to him, Praṇatārtihara the teacher.”

Another:

“ஆஸ்தி

காக்ரேஸரம்வந்தே பரிவ்ராட்குருபாசகம் - யாசிதங்குருகேஶேந ப்ரணதார்

த்திஹரங்குரும்”

“āsti

kākrēsaramvantē parivrāṭkurupācakam - yācitaṅkurukēśēna praṇatār

ttiharaṅkurum”

“Foremost of believers, I bow to him, cook to the teacher of ascetics, the one Kurukeśa asked for, Praṇatār-tihara the teacher.”

A third verse stands under his name, and it seems to speak of the Śrī Bhāṣya shown to Śāradā, of a bow at the feet of the Lord of Veṅkaṭa, of the highest abode given to a cowherd woman, and of a name the Bhāṣyakāra gave; but its words do not settle into a sure sense, and it is left as it stands.

His line went on as he had begun it.

Rāmānuja Piḷḷāṉ expounded the Bhāṣya and the other works in his turn. A son was born to him, and he named him Śrīraṅgarājar, and he gave him all the meanings Āccāṉ had given him, and went to the sacred land. His birth-star was Pūrāḍam, in Aippaci.

Then, while Śrīraṅgarājar was teaching all that Rāmānuja Piḷḷāṉ had taught him, a son was born to him at Kāñcī, in Cittirai under the star Tiruvātirai. Śrīraṅgarājar gave him the name of his own ācārya, Rāmānuja Piḷḷāṉ. The boy was quick from childhood and crossed to the far shore of every learning, and the elders who saw it said, "Is this that Piḷḷāṉ?", appiḷḷāṉ, and from that day he was called Appiḷḷār. A daughter was born after him, and she was named Tōtārammaṉ. Śrīraṅgarājar taught Appiḷḷār the meaning of the tirumantra, the eight-syllabled mantra, and went to the sacred land. His birth-star was Rōhiṇi, in Paṅguṉi.

Kiḍāmbi Appiḷḷār studied every śāstra, grammar and logic and Mīmāṃsā and the rest. Then he stood waiting, wanting a bond with the Vedānta.

Where he found it belongs to the other man of this life, and is told with him.