Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāḷ

The account names him in a single sentence. He was Kūrattāzhvāṉ, whom the Sanskrit verses call Kūreśa, the lord of Kūra. He was the ornament of the Hārīta clan, and he bore the holy name Tirumaṟumārpaṉ, the one whose chest carries the holy mark. His taṉiyaṉs, the verses by which the tradition salutes him, call him Śrīvatsacihna Miśra and Śrīvatsāṅka, the one marked with that same sign. After that first sentence the account mostly calls him simply Āzhvāṉ.

It says nothing of where he came from, or of his house, or of what he had before he came. It begins with news.

Iḷaiyāzhvār had taken the ascetic order at Perumāḷ Kōyil, the town of Pēraruḷāḷar at Kāñcī. Kandāḍai Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ heard of it, and Kūrattāzhvāṉ heard of it, and the two of them came to Perumāḷ Kōyil in great joy. They served Rāmānuja and made their request.

"Please graciously give us the pañcasaṃskāra and the rest."

The pañcasaṃskāra is the fivefold rite that makes a man a Śrīvaiṣṇava. Rāmānuja was glad at heart, and he did just as they had asked. They received it and were fulfilled.

There is a Sanskrit verse the account sets beside them:

‘‘அதீத்யமந்த்ரமாசார்யம் பூஜயேச்சக்திதோத்விஜ: - ஆசார்

யாதீனவ்ருத்திஸ்து யாவஜ்ஜீவம்ஸதாஶூசி:’’

‘‘atītyamantramācāryam pūjayēccaktitōtvijaḥ - ācār

yātīṉavruttistu yāvajjīvamsatāśūciḥ’’

“Having learned the mantra, the twice-born should worship his ācārya as far as he is able; and, his conduct hanging on the ācārya, he should live pure for as long as he lives.”

So they lived. They never left Rāmānuja, their own ācārya. Serving him was their one delight.

They were with him when his old teacher came to him.

Yādavaprakāśa, who had once taught Iḷaiyāzhvār and hated him, had been told in a dream by Pēraruḷāḷar to walk once round "our Rāmānuja" and take the triple staff from his hand. He did not trust the dream until Kāñcīpūrṇa had asked the Lord and brought back the answer. Then he came to Rāmānuja, prostrated, asked for the staff, walked round him, and stood there humbly.

Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ were astonished. "How the Lord's favour and his own intention have met!" they said. They marvelled, and they put it in a line of scripture: "Caidya and the others, through hatred." Then, to Rāmānuja: "The very hatred he bore Your Honour has become the cause of his salvation." And they gave him another line: "Let him be equal to us."

Rāmānuja was greatly pleased. He had the expiation done, and the rest, and gave Yādavaprakāśa the staff and the ochre and the name Govinda Jīyar. Govinda Jīyar's own life tells that.

After this Rāmānuja set Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ to labour at the two Mīmāṃsās, the twin sciences of reading the Veda.

Then Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar came from Śrīraṅgam and sang before Pēraruḷāḷar until the Lord offered him anything he wished, and the Araiyar pointed at Rāmānuja and asked for him, and got him. Uḍaiyavar, as the account now calls him, took leave of Pēraruḷāḷar there in the temple and set out with the Araiyar at once. He did not even go back into his maṭha. He looked at Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ.

"Go to the maṭha," he said, "and bring Pēraruḷāḷar, our tiruvārādhana, and all the other belongings."

The tiruvārādhana was the image of the Lord he worshipped himself. They went and brought it, and everything else, and caught up with him on the road. Kāñcīpūrṇa saw them all off and turned back.

Another account, kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple there, tells where they went when they arrived. The Lord received Rāmānuja, gave him both his realms and named him Uḍaiyavar, the one who owns them, and had him lodged in the Cēraṉ maṭam in the northern street. Uḍaiyavar went there with Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ. From the next day he took up the running of the temple, and he appointed Āzhvāṉ as his close companion, his usāttuṇai, in carrying on the darśana, the teaching of the line. Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ he set over the inner service of the shrine.

Some time later a Śrīvaiṣṇava came from Tirumalai with news of another Govinda: Govinda Bhaṭṭar, not the new jīyar but the young man who had once studied beside Iḷaiyāzhvār under Yādavaprakāśa, the one the tradition later calls Embār. He had gone over to Śiva and kept the temple treasury at Kāḷahasti. Śrīśailapūrṇa had gone after him and argued with him, and the man described the whole argument, word by word. Uḍaiyavar was delighted. He looked at Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and the others sitting there.

"Did you hear? Āḷavandār's words went into Govinda's heart."

And he took them through it, phrase by phrase, how each of Nambi's answers had carried a verse of scripture inside it, until Govinda, who knew the śāstras, had nothing left to say.

The same man had more to tell. When Govinda threw down the key of the Kāḷahasti treasury, the people of that temple told Nambi of a dream their own god had sent them. Śeṣāśana and Ananta and Garuḍa, the Lord's own attendants, had been born on earth, the god had said, as Yamunaitturaivar and Iḷaiyāzhvār and Govinda; and to go with them, the conch and the discus of Viṣṇu had come as Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Kūrattāzhvāṉ.

Then came Tirukkōṭṭiyūr.

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Nambi, the teacher of that town, had at last sent word that Uḍaiyavar should come alone, "as staff and pavitra", the two things a sannyāsī carries in his hand. Uḍaiyavar went to him with Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, and said he had brought his staff and his pavitra: Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was the triple staff, and Kūrattāzhvāṉ the pavitra.

"If so," said Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, "do not tell this meaning to anyone but these two."

Then he gave Uḍaiyavar the meaning of the tirumantra, the eight syllables, and Uḍaiyavar taught it to everyone the next day and was called Emperumāṉār for it. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa's own life tells that day in full.

Some time after, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa gave Emperumāṉār the carama-śloka, the last word of the Gītā, the most secret of all, alone in an upper room, and told him to guard it. Emperumāṉār said he could not keep from telling it to Kūrattāzhvāṉ alone, who is given to the Lord. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa allowed it, with a condition, and his life tells how he set it: "Learn his resolve in many ways, and tell him after he has served you for one year."

Emperumāṉār came back to Kōyil free of every burden.

Then Kūrattāzhvāṉ came and fell at his feet and stood before him.

Emperumāṉār looked at him. "Āḷavandār cast his special glance on us," he said, "and made his prapatti looking to Pēraruḷāḷar. So that it should bear fruit, Nambi has made us flourish. Do you see?"

Prapatti is the giving of oneself into the Lord's keeping. Then Uḍaiyavar told Āzhvāṉ the rest.

"He has laid it on me that even in your case I am to tell it only after a year's service, when I know how great your resolve is."

Āzhvāṉ's mind was troubled. He turned it over. Will this body last a year, or will it not?

He had a longing that could not bear to be without the thing until he had it. And there is a word in the śāstra that to fast for a month at the gate of the ācārya's house is equal to a year's service.

So he did that. He fasted for a month at Uḍaiyavar's gate.

Uḍaiyavar relented, and gave it to him.

Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ asked for the same meaning, and Uḍaiyavar sent him to Goṣṭhīpūrṇa. "It was for Āzhvāṉ alone that I asked at Nambi's feet," he said. Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ stood six months at Tirukkōṭṭiyūr before the old man spoke to him, and came back humbled, and Uḍaiyavar taught him too. His own life tells it.

When it was done, Uḍaiyavar was well content.

"Now at last," he said, "our staff and our pavitra have come into our hand."

Uḍaiyavar sat as a teacher with Āzhvāṉ, Āṇḍāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār about him, an assembly of the learned, and others came to join it. Anantāzhvāṉ and Eccāṉ and two Nambis from the towns of Toṇḍaṉūr and Marudūr heard that all the ācāryas had come and taken refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet, and they came to do the same. He put them under Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār instead. Their own lives tell that.

Then Uḍaiyavar called them together: Kūrattāzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār and the other mudalis, the first men of the tradition. He meant to weed out the creeds that had taken hold of the land. He would answer those who said that knowledge from a sentence like "That thou art" is the way to release, and those who said knowledge and works together are the way, and he would show that the Vedānta teaches meditation that has ripened into bhakti, loving devotion, as the way to release. For that, he said, he must expound the Vedānta.

"Please do so," said the mudalis.

Uḍaiyavar looked at Āzhvāṉ, and laid down one rule.

"Unless the sentence of the Bhāṣya I speak agrees with your mind, you need not write it."

Āzhvāṉ wrote. While he was writing, Uḍaiyavar spoke a sentence that set out the self as a knower and said nothing of its being the Lord's śeṣa, the one who belongs to Him and exists for Him.

Āzhvāṉ stopped. For the self, a knowing that is not a belonging is no different from the old mistake of taking the body for the self. He did not write.

Uḍaiyavar did not stop to look at it. "Write," he said.

Āzhvāṉ did not write.

Uḍaiyavar was angry. "If so," he said, "compose the Bhāṣya yourself." He stopped the work. He kicked Āzhvāṉ and sent him away.

The mudalis went to Āzhvāṉ. "The ācārya was angry and pushed you away," they said. "What are you thinking now?"

"A possession is as its owner disposes of it," Āzhvāṉ said. "This servant has no part in that."

Afterwards Uḍaiyavar thought over the sentence and saw what it meant. He called Āzhvāṉ back. He was sorry he had been angry. And he spoke a sentence that set out the self's knowing joined to its being the Lord's own. Āzhvāṉ wrote it down at once.

So the Śrī Bhāṣya was made, and the Vedāntadīpa and the Vedāntasāra and the Vedārthasaṅgraha and the commentary on the Gītā, and the first of Āḷavandār's three griefs was taken away. The shorter account names Āzhvāṉ first among the mudalis with whom Emperumāṉār made that resolve and wrote those books.

In the years after, when the disciples' daily services were set down one by one, Kūrattāzhvāṉ's was this: he, with Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ and the Bhaṭṭar group, was Uḍaiyavar's companion in study for the Śrī Bhāṣya.

When Uḍaiyavar resolved to go round the land, the account kept at Śrīraṅgam says, he made Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ answerable for both his services, the temple's and the darśana's, and then took Āzhvāṉ with him as his companion on the road and left Āṇḍāṉ in charge at home. The shorter account too names Āzhvāṉ first among the mudalis who went with Emperumāṉār on a journey through the south, from Tirukkuḍandai to Azhagar's hill, Tiruppullāṇi and Tirunagari.

One day Uḍaiyavar called a mute man and took him into a room and shut the door. Alone with him, by a sign, he touched his own feet and showed them to him. The mute took it into his mind that those feet were his refuge.

Āzhvāṉ saw it through a chink in the door.

"Alas!" he said. "Born Kūrattāzhvāṉ, I learned the śāstras far and wide, and I am ruined. Had I been born a mute who knew nothing, Uḍaiyavar would have had mercy on me too!"

And he fainted.

The account says this is well known. And it sets beside it an old verse:

‘‘பாலமூகஜடாந்தாஶ்ச பங்கவோபதிராஸ்ததா - ஸதாசார்யேண

ஸந்த்ருஷ்டா× ப்ராப்துவந்திபராங்கதிம்’’

‘‘pālamūkajaṭāntāśca paṅkavōpatirāstatā - satācāryēṇa

santruṣṭā× prāptuvantiparāṅkatim’’

“The young, the mute, the dull, the blind, the lame and the deaf as well, by a true ācārya once looked on, reach the highest goal.”

So Uḍaiyavar cast his special glance on everyone, women and simple people with the rest, while he taught the Śrī Bhāṣya to Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār and the others, and lived happily.

The temple had a purōhita in those years, its priest of rites, Periya Kōyil Nambi, a learned man and the king's favourite, who did not respect Uḍaiyavar and did him wrong. Uḍaiyavar meant to send him out of Tiruvaraṅgam, until Perumāḷ came to him in a dream as an old Śrīvaiṣṇava and said, "Periya Kōyil Nambi has relied on us a long time. Do as your heart pleases."

Uḍaiyavar called Āzhvāṉ. "It seems Perumāḷ wants to keep Periya Kōyil Nambi, our enemy," he said. "We shall go to Perumāḷ Kōyil."

Āzhvāṉ read the dream the other way. "When Perumāḷ says so," he said, "it means you will win him over and bring him to your feet."

"Then you reform him," said Uḍaiyavar.

Āzhvāṉ did, little by little, and brought him to Uḍaiyavar's feet, and Uḍaiyavar named him Amudaṉ for the sweetness of his speech. He is Tiruvaraṅgattu Amudaṉār, and his own life tells the rest of his story.

When Amudaṉār's mother died, his own kin were worldly men and could not eat at the rite of the single day, and Uḍaiyavar's other mudalis were unwilling. So Uḍaiyavar sent Āzhvāṉ. "You go. Eat at the rite and complete it." Āzhvāṉ went and ate as he was told, and at the closing sip of water he had Periya Kōyil Nambi place in his hand, as a gift, the office of purōhita and the reading of the Purāṇa, and he brought the deed of gift back and laid it before the maṭha.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells the gift another way too, saying that Periya Kōyil Nambi, grown detached from the temple, gave Āzhvāṉ his priesthood, the Purāṇa reading and the Brahma-ratha, the chariot in which the Lord goes round the street. Perumāḷ had ordained that the old Kaiśika story be read before him on the Uttāna Dvādaśī and had given that chariot to the man who read it; from then on the reading of the Kaiśika Purāṇa and the ride in the Brahma-ratha went to Āzhvāṉ alone. When Uḍaiyavar made the temple's servants into ten companies, he set Āzhvāṉ among the reciters in the Lord's presence, with the Purāṇa as his part, and after the Śrī Bhāṣya came out, the honours of the Purāṇa, the Kaiśika and the chariot were kept for Āzhvāṉ alone.

In Bhaṭṭar's day Amudaṉār once said to Āzhvāṉ's son, "You were born of the pride of Āzhvāṉ's betel. Was I not born of the pride of Āzhvāṉ's knowledge?" And Bhaṭṭar answered that the words were fine, but he had said them himself.

Uḍaiyavar had made the town and the land and the world like himself, the account says, and among the mudalis who had taken refuge with him Kūrattāzhvāṉ was the one who knew all the śāstras best. He held to his ācārya's feet alone. He kept the five periods of the day: going to the Lord, gathering, worship, study and meditation. He had turned away even from the things the śāstra allows. And he had nothing put by. His body was kept going by what he gathered, day after day, at the houses of good people.

One rainy season it rained until midday. The morning hour went by, and when midday came the hour for gathering went by too. There was nothing in the house that day. So Āzhvāṉ bathed, washed the Lord's feet, offered a single fruit, and took the tīrtha, the holy water. In the evening he did the evening rite and went to worship Namperumāḷ. Then he lay down to sleep hungry, with the recitation of Tiruvāymozhi as his only food.

At that hour Namperumāḷ had eaten the great night offering, and the trumpets sounded from the temple.

Āṇḍāḷ, his wife, heard them.

"Your devotee is lying here starving," she said to the Lord, "and what is this, that you eat with such delight?"

Those words went into Periya Perumāḷ's ear. That night Perumāḷ came in a dream to Uttama Nambi, who was asleep on the veranda.

"Nambi! Āzhvāṉ has fasted today. Take our dish of akkāravaḍisil, with the umbrellas and the chowries and all the instruments, and carry it to him."

Akkāravaḍisil is rice cooked sweet in milk and sugar. Uttama Nambi came out of the dream, opened his eyes, got up in haste, and did as Perumāḷ had said. He carried the dish on his own head and came with all the instruments to the door of Āzhvāṉ's house.

Āzhvāṉ started up, bewildered. "What is this!" He went out to meet them.

"Namperumāḷ has sent you a dish of akkāravaḍisil," said Uttama Nambi. "Accept it."

Āzhvāṉ took the dish on his head as the great prasāda, the Lord's gift. "He gave this servant everything I could wish for at the very beginning," he said. "This would be a dish paid out as a price."

He took two handfuls from it, one for himself and one for Āṇḍāḷ, and sent the rest away.

Then he looked at Āṇḍāḷ. "What did you think?"

"This servant thought nothing," she said. "When Perumāḷ had eaten the offering and the trumpets sounded, I only said, 'Your devotee is starving like this, and what is this, that you eat with such delight?'"

"May you speak so?" he said, and he was displeased with her. Then he took the prasāda himself and gave it to her as well.

Those two handfuls, the account says, are the cause of the births of Bhaṭṭar and Śrīrāmappiḷḷai. The shorter account tells it more plainly: Āzhvāṉ shared the prasāda with his wife and ate, and from that time she conceived, and two sons were born.

By Namperumāḷ's grace a son was born to Āzhvāṉ in the month of Vaikāsi, under the star Anurādha.

"The naming, and all the rest of his uplift, belong to Uḍaiyavar alone," said Āzhvāṉ, and he kept himself out of it.

So it was Emperumāṉār who came to the house when the days of birth-impurity were over, and Embār who brought the child out to him from Āṇḍāḷ. The boy was named Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar, after the sage Parāśara; in one telling Uḍaiyavar gave the name, in the other he had Embār give it. Uḍaiyavar gave the child's uplift into Embār's charge, and with that naming took away the second of Āḷavandār's griefs. A Sanskrit verse remembers it so:

“புத்ரீக்ருதோரங்கதுரந்தரேணபராஶரஃகூரகுலப்ரதீபஃ-கோவிந்தஶிஷ்யஸ்

ஸதுயாமுநார்ய மநோரதம்பூரிதவாந்த்விதீயம்”

“putrīkrutōraṅkaturantarēṇaparāśaraḵkūrakulapratīpaḵ-kōvintaśiṣyas

satuyāmunārya manōratampūritavāntvitīyam”

“Parāśara, the lamp of the Kūra family, was made a son by the bearer of Raṅga's burden; and he, Govinda's disciple, fulfilled Yāmunārya's second wish.”

Bhaṭṭar's own life tells his naming and his childhood in full.

Perumāḷ himself took the boy as his son, and had him given turmeric water to drink, and Nācciyār reared him in a cradle by the pillar before the Lord.

Yet he grew up in Āzhvāṉ's house. When he was five he heard his father reciting the Tiruvāymozhi decad that begins "Neḍumāṟkaḍimai", and asked how smallness and greatness, which contradict each other, could sit in one thing, so that the Āzhvār says "small-great men". Āzhvāṉ was pleased with the question. The boy had not yet had the sacred thread, he said, so he could not be convinced from the śāstras; he would be shown with his own eyes. Men like Ciṟiyāccāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, whose bodies are small and whose knowledge is great: those are the small-great men. And the boy was convinced.

Another day a scholar who had been shamed by the boy in the holy street carried him home in his own palanquin to the gate of Āzhvāṉ's house, and Poṉṉācciyār snatched him up and took him in to Āṇḍāḷ, afraid for him.

After his thread ceremony they set him to the Veda. When he walked out of the class because the others were going over the same lesson again, Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāḷ asked him to recite what he had learned the day before, and he recited it aloud, exactly as it had been taught. They were afraid, and told each other they must not let him study for a little while yet. After that Āzhvāṉ and Embār taught him the meanings, and the truths of the darśana.

Once, when Perumāḷ had sent him out from behind the curtain and called him back, the Lord asked how he had thought of him before. "I thought of you as Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāḷ," said the boy. "By our oath," said Perumāḷ, "think of us as before."

When Bhaṭṭar was of an age to marry, Āzhvāṉ went to Uḍaiyavar. "How are we to have the boy married? Our kin are worldly people." Uḍaiyavar told him to bring a bride from the Śrīvaiṣṇava families that were Periya Nambi's own relations. Āzhvāṉ talked it over with Āṇḍāḷ, and with Uḍaiyavar going before them they asked that family for a girl; but it was a new connection, and for a time they would not consent.

One day Āṇḍāḷ looked at Āzhvāṉ.

"The children have grown up. Should we not have the thing done?"

"Are you telling me to fret over the household of Īśvara?" said Āzhvāṉ.

But when he had worshipped at Periya Perumāḷ's feet and was turning to go, he said to the Lord, "They are saying, 'The children have grown up; should we not have the thing done?'"

Perumāḷ took it to heart. "Are you the one answerable for that?" he said. "Is it not we? We will have it done fittingly. You go."

And he showed the girl's family a dream, and they came of themselves and gave Akkacci to Bhaṭṭar, as his own life tells.

The Cōzha who ruled the land in those days was a wicked Śaiva, the account says. He held the Śaiva Āgama to be a true book of the firmest authority, and he made up his mind. With his own purōhita beside him, he gathered all the learned men of his country and forced them to sign a palm leaf that said, in Sanskrit, "There is nothing higher than Śiva." Some signed for fear of him. Some signed for wealth and fields.

A man called Nālūrāṉ saw it.

"What use are these worthless men's names?" he said. "Is it not only when Irāmānucaṉ and Kūrattāzhvāṉ have signed that it counts as signed?"

The Cōzha looked round at some of his men at once. "Bring Irāmānucaṉ here," he said, and sent them to Kōyil.

The king's men came to the gate of Uḍaiyavar's maṭha.

"Where is Irāmānucaṉ?"

Kūrattāzhvāṉ was inside, drawing the water for Uḍaiyavar's bath and handing it to him. A Śrīvaiṣṇava came and told him the news secretly, in his ear.

Āzhvāṉ put on Uḍaiyavar's triple staff and ochre robe and the rest. He did not tell Uḍaiyavar. He went out to go with the king's men.

Periya Nambi heard what had happened, and he set out with Āzhvāṉ, and the king's men took them both away.

The shorter account tells that morning a little differently. Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ had gone down for the midday bath. Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Uḍaiyavar's nephew, heard the news first and came and told Kūrattāzhvāṉ, and Kūrattāzhvāṉ was overjoyed. "Are you not the beloved nephew!" he said to him. Then he put on Uḍaiyavar's staff and ochre and went with the men, and Periya Nambi went with him.

Uḍaiyavar asked for his staff and his ochre.

"Kūrattāzhvāṉ has put them on and gone with the king's men," said Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ.

"Then give me his white cloth."

He put Āzhvāṉ's white cloth on himself, the cloth of a householder, and he was in great distress. "What harm is about to come to Āzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi?" he said. The mudalis would not let him stay, and he went out of that country to the west, wearing Āzhvāṉ's cloth. His own life tells that road.

What happened at the Cōzha's court came to Uḍaiyavar afterwards, in the western country. He had been living at the feet of Tirunārāyaṇapperumāḷ, expounding the Śrī Bhāṣya, when a Śrīvaiṣṇava came from Kōyil and prostrated before him.

"How are Periya Perumāḷ and his great wealth?" Uḍaiyavar asked.

"Apart from the one want, that Your Honour is not there, there is no other want."

"And Āzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi, who went to the Cōzha: what became of them?"

This is what the Śrīvaiṣṇava told him.

The king's men took Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi from Kōyil and set them before the Cōzha. He looked at them and told them to sign the leaf: "There is nothing higher than Śiva."

Kūrattāzhvāṉ answered him from the Veda and the smṛti, the epics and the Purāṇas, in many ways. Śrīman Nārāyaṇa alone is higher than all, he said. He is the cause of the world. He alone is the one to be meditated on. He alone makes and keeps and ends the world. Brahmā and Rudra and the rest are his sons and grandsons and stand under his command.

"And not only that," he said. There is a Sanskrit verse:

“ஏக:ப்ராஸீஸ்ரத்பாதமந்ய:ப்ராக்ஷாளயந்முதா-அபரோ௨தீதரந்மூர்த்

நா கோ௨திகஸ்தேஷூமண்யதாம்”

“ēkaḥprāsīsratpātamanyaḥprākṣāḷayanmutā-aparō2tītaranmūrt

nā kō2tikastēṣūmaṇyatām”

“One stretched out his foot; another washed it with joy; another bore it on his head: which of these is to be counted the greater?”

"One stretched out his holy feet. One washed them with devotion, with the water of his water-pot. One bore that water on his head with love. Which of these is the greater? Consider it and see for yourself."

The king would not agree.

"Is it only this?" said Āzhvāṉ, and he gave him another verse:

“యచ్ఛౌచనిస్సృతసరిత్ప్రవరో

దకేన తీర్థేనమూర్ధ్నావిధృతేనశివశ్శివోఽభూత్.”

“yacchaucanissr̥tasaritpravarō

dakēna tīrthēnamūrdhnāvidhr̥tēnaśivaśśivō'bhūt.”

“By the holy water of the best of rivers, which flowed from the washing of His feet, borne on his head, Śiva became śiva, auspicious.”

"He is surely one who, by the touch of the water from Trivikrama's feet, lost his skull-bearing and became auspicious."

The Cōzha heard it and was enraged.

"You are a great scholar," he said. "You can say whatever you like. Not so. Sign the leaf as I told you: 'There is nothing higher than Śiva.'"

He put the leaf into Āzhvāṉ's hand and pressed him hard.

Kūrattāzhvāṉ signed it, as his firm resolve required. He wrote: "There is nothing higher than Śiva. Beyond that there is droṇa."

The Cōzha saw that he had signed the leaf in mockery.

From here the copies of the account differ, and the difference is the blinding itself.

In most of them, the king's mind was seized with rage, and he ordered the eyes of Āzhvāṉ and Nambi torn out. The king's men took them away and did as he had said, and sent them out of the camp-city.

Some copies tell more. In them the king called Periya Nambi and said, "You sign," and Periya Nambi too said in many ways that Śrīman Nārāyaṇa alone is supreme. The king ordered the eyes of both men torn out. Then Kūrattāzhvāṉ turned to the Cōzha.

"Since you are a great Vīraśaiva," he said, "eyes that have looked at you are no use to me."

And he tore them with his own nails, and took his eyes out, and threw them down.

The king's men seized Periya Nambi and did to him as the king had said, and put them both out of the city. And Āzhvāṉ was glad. "We have been able to give darśana to the darśana!" he said. The word means sight, and it means the teaching too. He had given his sight to the teaching. Those copies say too that Periya Nambi was old.

Periya Nambi could not bear the pain. At the head of a field there he lay down, with his head in Āzhvāṉ's lap and his feet in the lap of Attuzhāy, his daughter. He would not be carried on to Kōyil to die, and meditating on Āḷavandār's feet he went from that field to the sacred land. Periya Nambi's own life tells his last words there.

Some copies add that men who went about burning the bodies of the unclaimed dead came and began to make ready for him too. Āzhvāṉ was not shaken.

"Come, lads," he said. "When the Lord and all the Lord's world stand ready to do some service for a Vaiṣṇava, where will you find one who is a Vaiṣṇava and has no one?"

And he sent them away. Some Śrīvaiṣṇavas did Periya Nambi's rites there and laid him to rest. They put Āzhvāṉ on a litter and carried him, and came into Kōyil by night, where no one would see.

And Kūrattāzhvāṉ said, "This body of mine has not gone from me, as Periya Nambi's went from him!" He lamented greatly, in the words of an old song: "Is this right? O cloud-coloured one, lying on the serpent!"

The shorter account tells the court in a few lines. Āzhvāṉ set out many proofs and told the Cōzha his leaf had no authority. When the king insisted, he signed "beyond that there is droṇa", and the king, angered at the mockery, had the eyes of both men plucked out. Periya Nambi died of the pain on the road to Kōyil. "Kūrattāzhvāṉ is at Kōyil," the messenger ended.

That is what the Śrīvaiṣṇava told Uḍaiyavar.

Uḍaiyavar heard words that burn the ears of those who hear them. "Alas! Kaṇṇapirāṉ! Is this fair?" he cried, and fell like a tree whose root is cut, and lay there writhing. His throat choked. He shed tears like pearls and bailed them out with his hands. The mudalis sitting near him consoled him, and he came back to himself.

"At least Āzhvāṉ has been able to stay in his body!" he said.

He did the rites for Periya Nambi. And his heart was still troubled. "Āzhvāṉ's holy eyes are gone!" he said, and he sent Māruti Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ to Kōyil. "Look after Āzhvāṉ too, find out how things stand there, and come back."

Then he went on teaching as before.

Māruti Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ hurried by stages to Kōyil and stood bowing before Kūrattāzhvāṉ.

Āzhvāṉ was as glad of him as if he had seen Uḍaiyavar himself.

"How is Uḍaiyavar?" he asked.

Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ told him all the news of the west in full, and Āzhvāṉ sat rejoicing in it.

"Uḍaiyavar could not bear the parting," Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ said. "He said, 'Āzhvāṉ's holy eyes are gone!' and he was in great distress, and he sent me off. 'Look after him and come back,' he said."

Āzhvāṉ sent him back with a message.

"Tell him I am rejoicing. Tell him: 'If he who is the one life of all the worlds stays well, this calamity has been able to carry off no more than my eyes.'"

While Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ was there, word came that the Cōzha had got a sore on his neck, that it had festered with worms, and that he had died. Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ made sure of it and, with Ammaṅgiyammāḷ, carried the news west to Uḍaiyavar at the Kalyāṇi tank at Tirunārāyaṇapuram, and Uḍaiyavar gave the two of them the dvaya again for it. That errand is told in full among the seventy-four. Then he climbed the hill of Azhagiyaciṅgar, the Man-Lion, and bowed at his feet.

"As you once destroyed Hiraṇya," he said, "so now you have made this one krimikaṇṭha, worm-necked, and destroyed him: he who said no to you, and wronged Kūrattāzhvāṉ, who is like Prahlādāzhvāṉ, the one the good are measured by, and Periya Nambi!"

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam remembers the king by that name, Krimikaṇṭa Cōzhaṉ. It says only that soon after Uḍaiyavar had gone to the western country, he perished.

Uḍaiyavar came home. He bathed at the river landing, went into the temple and worshipped Periya Perumāḷ and Namperumāḷ, and went round the town. Then he went with his disciples to Āzhvāṉ's house.

Āzhvāṉ came out to meet him. He fell at Uḍaiyavar's feet, and for the fullness of his joy he lay there holding them.

Uḍaiyavar gathered him up and held him. His tears came down like rain. For a long time he could not say one word. He sobbed and choked, sunk in an ocean of grief, and when the words came his voice was shaking.

"Āzhvāṉ! You were the very eye of this darśana. And that your eyes should go like this!"

"Must I not, at least once, have thought that some Śrīvaiṣṇava's tirunāmam was crooked?" said Āzhvāṉ.

The tirunāmam is the holy mark a Śrīvaiṣṇava wears on his forehead.

Uḍaiyavar's heart was wounded. "Is that in you?" he said. "Is it not my own evil karma that has brought this on you?"

And he comforted him, and Āzhvāṉ was steadied. Uḍaiyavar went to his maṭha with the Śrīvaiṣṇavas.

The shorter account has the meeting in a line. Āzhvāṉ stood worshipping at his feet, and Uḍaiyavar grieved, "Should your sight go like this?" and then recovered himself and went to his maṭha.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas of that country came to console Uḍaiyavar. "Periya Nambi has gone to the sacred land! And Āzhvāṉ's flower eyes are gone!" they said; and then, "At least we have been able to see Your Honour." Then news came that the temple at Tirucittirakūṭam had been destroyed, and Uḍaiyavar went to set the Lord up again at Tiruppati, and worshipped at Tirumalai and at Perumāḷ Kōyil, and came back to Kōyil and settled at his maṭha.

The next day he called Āzhvāṉ.

"Pēraruḷāḷar has vowed to give whatever is asked of him. Make him a hymn, and say in it, 'You must give me eyes.'"

"This servant does not want these eyes," said Āzhvāṉ.

"Not so. You must say it."

Emperumāṉār pressed him for many days. And Āzhvāṉ, without evading it, began the Varadarājastava, the hymn to the Lord of Kāñcī. It opens:

‘‘ஸ்வஸ்திஹஸ்திகிரிமஸ்தஶேகரஸ் ஸந்த

நோதுமயிஸந்ததம்ஹரிஃ - நிஸ்ஸமாப்யதிகமப்யதத்தயந் தேவமௌபநிஷதீ

ஸரஸ்வதீ’’

‘‘svastihastikirimastaśēkaras santa

nōtumayisantatamhariḵ - nissamāpyatikamapyatattayan tēvamaupaniṣatī

sarasvatī’’

“May Hari, the crown on the head of the Elephant Hill, spread well-being over me always: the god whom, as having none equal and none above, the Upaniṣads' speech declared.”

And in one verse he asked:

‘‘நீலமேகநிபமஞ்ஜநபுஞ்ஜ ஶ்யாமகுந்தலமநந்த

ஶயந்த்வாம் - அப்ஜபாணிபதமம்புஜநேத்ரம் நேத்ரஸாத்குருகரீஶஸதாமே’’

‘‘nīlamēkanipamañjanapuñja śyāmakuntalamananta

śayantvām - apjapāṇipatamampujanētram nētrasātkurukarīśasatāmē’’

“Like a dark cloud, your curls dark as a heap of collyrium, on Ananta lying, lotus in hand and foot, lotus-eyed: Lord of the Elephant Hill, make yourself always the possession of my eyes.”

With that verse he asked for eyes that were not of matter, fit to see the Lord always. "You must grant this servant divine eyes," he said.

That very night Pēraruḷāḷar came to him in a dream.

"We have given."

Āzhvāṉ rose before dawn in great joy, did his morning rites, and finished the hymn. He went to Uḍaiyavar, prostrated, and said, "As Your Honour commanded, I have offered the Varadarājastava." And he recited the whole of it.

Uḍaiyavar heard it and was pleased.

Then Āzhvāṉ told him what he had been given. Pēraruḷāḷar is the Lord who, as the old Tamil song says, takes away disease and gives the great heaven of the immortals. Just as this servant asked, Āzhvāṉ said, he had given the eye that is not of matter, the eye that always sees the Lord of Vaikuṇṭha, of whom it is said:

“வைகுண்டேதுபரேலோகே

நித்யத்வேநவ்யவஸ்திதம்-பஶ்யந்திசஸதாதேவம் நேத்ரைர்ஜ்ஞாநேநசாமரா:”

“vaikuṇṭētuparēlōkē

nityatvēnavyavastitam-paśyanticasatātēvam nētrairjñānēnacāmarāḥ”

“In the highest world, in Vaikuṇṭha, where He abides for ever, the immortals always see the god, with their eyes and with knowledge.”

"It is not so," said Uḍaiyavar. "Let us go there. Come."

He took Āzhvāṉ by the hand and went to Perumāḷ Kōyil.

There the Varadarājastava was recited before Pēraruḷāḷar. As it was coming to its end, Uḍaiyavar was kept away by some other business.

Pēraruḷāḷar had heard the hymn and was pleased, and before Uḍaiyavar came back he asked, "Āzhvāṉ! What do you desire?"

Āzhvāṉ did not ask for what Uḍaiyavar had meant him to ask.

"The good fortune I have gained," he said, "Nālūrāṉ too must gain."

The account gives no more than the name. It is the name of the man who had told the Cōzha that no one's signature counted until Irāmānucaṉ and Kūrattāzhvāṉ had signed.

"So may he gain it," said the Lord.

At that moment Uḍaiyavar heard of it. He came running, troubled at heart, and spoke first to the Lord.

"You who know everything have not fulfilled my intention now!"

Then to Āzhvāṉ: "Āzhvāṉ! You acted on your own. You did not do what I meant. You went past it, and did this before I came!"

He scolded them both, and stood there bewildered. "What now!"

Then Pēraruḷāḷar granted a boon.

"Where he sees Us and you, he shall see with his fleshly eyes."

And Āzhvāṉ saw the Lord with his own eyes of flesh, and worshipped him. He pointed out one by one the ornaments the Lord was wearing, and the limbs of his form, saying, "This, and this." He looked on Uḍaiyavar's form too, and showed that he saw it.

Uḍaiyavar was fulfilled. He went back to Kōyil with Āzhvāṉ, and went on teaching as before.

The shorter account tells it as one scene and without Nālūrāṉ. In it Uḍaiyavar, coming home from Tiruppati, stopped at Perumāḷ Kōyil and told Kūrattāzhvāṉ there to make the Varadarājastava. Āzhvāṉ made it. Uḍaiyavar saw that in the line "Lord of the Elephant Hill, make yourself always the possession of my eyes" he had asked for the eye of knowledge, and he was displeased with him. "May one do this?" he said, and stood worshipping Pēraruḷāḷar. Then Āzhvāṉ told him, "These, and these, are the divine ornaments Pēraruḷāḷar is wearing." And Uḍaiyavar was fulfilled.

Āzhvāṉ had disciples of his own.

When Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ took refuge at his feet, Āzhvāṉ named the fee a disciple owes his ācārya. "As your dakṣiṇā," he said, "give up the faults of mind, speech and body, and live wholly for the good of the Lord's devotees."

Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ was afraid. "This cannot be given up," he said, and he lay there downcast.

Āzhvāṉ called him back, and made it smaller.

"If you strike a man, he strikes you back, and the king punishes you too. So do no wrong with the body. Then there is the verse:"

“யதீச்சஸிவஶீகர்த்தும் ஜகதேகேநகர்மணா-பராபவாதஸஸ்யேப்

யோ மாஶ்சரந்தீர்நிவாரய”

“yatīccasivaśīkarttum jakatēkēnakarmaṇā-parāpavātasasyēp

yō māścarantīrnivāraya”

“If you would win the whole world with a single act, from the crops of other men's faults keep the grazing cows away.”

"Give up just the speech that speaks ill of others. And if you think it in your mind, repent of it, so that it does not reach Emperumāṉ's heart, and hold Emperumāṉār's feet alone as your refuge."

He was one of those, the account says, with Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār and Embār and Bhaṭṭar, who told their own disciples to hold to Emperumāṉār's feet alone, for love of their own ācārya. And it keeps a word of his on Uḍaiyavar's name. The name Nārāyaṇa, as a mantra, belongs both to bondage and to release; the name Rāmānuja is the cause of release alone. To bring that out, Kūrattāzhvāṉ said in Sanskrit: "This 'Rāmānuja' is a clever word of four syllables."

Vaḍuga Nambi used to call Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ "the people of two banks". They held both together, "Emperumāṉār's feet are the refuge" and "Namperumāḷ's feet are the refuge".

The shorter account keeps a verse of Āzhvāṉ's:

“ராமாநுஜாங்க்ரி ஶரணோऽஸ்மி குலப்ரதீபஸ்

த்வாஸீத் ஸ யாமுநமுநேஸ் ஸ ச நாதவம்ஶ்ய: |

வம்ஶ்ய: பராங்குஶமுநேஸ் ஸ ச ஸோபி தேவ்யா

தாஸஸ் தவேதி வரதாஸ்மி தவேக்ஷணீய: ‖ ”

“rāmānujāṅkri śaraṇōऽsmi kulapratīpas

tvāsīt sa yāmunamunēs sa ca nātavamśyaḥ |

vamśyaḥ parāṅkuśamunēs sa ca sōpi tēvyā

tāsas tavēti varatāsmi tavēkṣaṇīyaḥ ‖ ”

“I am one whose refuge is Rāmānuja's feet. He was the lamp of the line of the sage Yāmuna; and Yāmuna was of Nātha's line; and Nātha was of the line of the sage Parāṅkuśa; and he was your Goddess's servant. So, Varada, I am one for you to look on.”

Uḍaiyavar heard that verse, and a Tamil verse of Amudaṉār's, and was pleased.

That account says something else of those years. Uḍaiyavar took Piḷḷāṉ as his son in knowledge and made him head of both Vedāntas, the Sanskrit and the Tamil. And the mudalis who had taken refuge before Piḷḷāṉ and were older than he, Kūrattāzhvāṉ first among them, with Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ and Embār, held Piḷḷāṉ as above them and did their services under him, as sons adopted earlier defer to a true son born later. Uḍaiyavar saw it and was very glad. An old verse in Piḷḷāṉ's praise calls him the one honoured by Kūranātha and the other teachers.

The end came, and Āzhvāṉ went to meet it first.

While Uḍaiyavar was living among all these disciples, Āzhvāṉ went to the shrine of Namperumāḷ without telling Emperumāṉār, and stood there worshipping.

"Āzhvāṉ!" said Perumāḷ. "You look like one who is about to say something!"

Āzhvāṉ recited a verse and expounded it. Perumāḷ was full of delight.

"We will give you whatever you wish. Ask."

"Lord! You gave this servant everything long ago."

"Not so. Ask even now. By our consorts! By our Rāmānuja! We will give."

"Release me from this body, which stands in the way of enjoying you," said Āzhvāṉ, "and give me the enjoyment of you."

"Ask for something other than that."

"As the song says, 'He quickly shows the very desire one longs for,'" said Āzhvāṉ. "Grant this servant just what he has asked."

"If so," said Perumāḷ, "we have given paramapadam, the highest place, to you and to all who are connected with you."

He gave him the holy cloth and the food prasāda and the cool tuḷasi garland and gifts from his own hand, and sent him off. Āzhvāṉ went out looking like the first ornament of the road of light. He did not go into his own house. He stayed apart, in the house of the Āzhvār.

Uḍaiyavar heard of it. He took the ochre robe he was wearing, threw it up toward the sky, and caught it.

"What is this, Jīyā?" his disciples asked.

"We have a connection with Āzhvāṉ," said Uḍaiyavar. "Can we not reach paramapadam?"

So, the account says, a bond with a good disciple is no less than a bond with a good ācārya.

Then grief took him. He gathered all his disciples and went to where Āzhvāṉ was.

"Āzhvāṉ! Is it right for you to do this?"

Āzhvāṉ said nothing.

"Āzhvāṉ! Why do you want to go before me? Why are you silent?"

"For fear of the break in order that would happen in paramapadam," said Āzhvāṉ.

"Explain it."

"It says, 'the crowned gods receiving him in due order.' Those who went before come out with the eternal ones to receive those who come after. So if this servant comes after you, the order is broken."

Uḍaiyavar heard it. "'There is no śāstra there, nor any order,'" he said. "In that realm of joy, where all order is undone, you go looking for order! What a belonging to the Lord this is!"

He was deeply moved, and shed tears like pearls. He knew what was running in Āzhvāṉ's mind. And he said the dvaya into his ear.

"Why this now?" the disciples asked.

"Don't you know? A prince's tongue goes dry when he has no camphor sweet. His tongue goes dry when he has no dvaya."

Then he took Āzhvāṉ in his arms, sobbing, his heart breaking.

"Āzhvāṉ! You are where my life is kept. How shall I bear losing you? You would not take me with you. Does it please you to leave us? That your love for the One who dwells in paramapadam should cut through your love for this Perumāḷ, who steals the eyes and minds of men, and send you on ahead! What merit did the Lord of paramapadam do, and the eternal and freed ones there? What sin did we do, and the Perumāḷ who sleeps here? But what use is it to say things that trouble your mind? Can we stand in the way of what you have gained? Go up happily to the eternal realm."

He stroked Āzhvāṉ's face, joined his hands to him, and gave him leave.

Āzhvāṉ fell at Uḍaiyavar's feet like a tree whose root is cut. Uḍaiyavar gathered him up in both hands. Āzhvāṉ rose, and pressed Uḍaiyavar's feet to his eyes and to his chest, and set them on his head as its ornament, and took the tīrtha from them. Uḍaiyavar gave him prasāda with his own hands, and he ate it, and he said over within himself the verse:

‘‘யோநித்யமச்யுதபதாம்புஜயுக்மருக்ம வ்யாமோஹதஸ்ததி

தராணித்ருணாயமேநே - அஸ்மத்குரோர்பகவதோஉஸ்யதயைகஸிந்தோ ராமா

நுஜஸ்யசரணௌஶரணம்ப்ரபத்யே’’

‘‘yōnityamacyutapatāmpujayukmarukma vyāmōhatastati

tarāṇitruṇāyamēnē - asmatkurōrpakavatōusyatayaikasintō rāmā

nujasyacaraṇauśaraṇamprapatyē’’

“He who ever, for love of the golden pair of Acyuta's lotus feet, counted everything else as straw: of our venerable teacher, the one ocean of compassion, Rāmānuja, the feet I take as my refuge.”

Then, with joined palms: "Please go back to the maṭha now."

And he followed behind Uḍaiyavar as far as the bank of the northern river.

"Āzhvāṉ! Stop here now."

Āzhvāṉ prostrated, and turned back. He sat down in the middle of the pavilion they had put up beside the Āzhvār's house, and looked at Āṇḍāḷ.

"What are you thinking?"

"Apart from following your wish," said Āṇḍāḷ, "has this servant any other thought?" And she prostrated at his feet and stood with joined palms.

Āzhvāṉ called Bhaṭṭar and Śrīrāmappiḷḷai.

"While Perumāḷ and Nācciyār are here, you will want for nothing. Do not rest on the thought that Namperumāḷ begot you and reared you. Hold that Emperumāṉār's feet alone are your refuge. Do just as Āṇḍāḷ tells you. Do no wrong to the Lord's devotees in thought, word or deed, and keep following them."

They lay fallen at his feet. He lifted them up, and wiped their tears with his own hand.

"If you grieve thinking of the bond of the body," he said, "you will have slighted your bond at Uḍaiyavar's feet. If you grieve thinking of the bond of the self, you will not have known our bond, the kinship that will not end even if you try to end it."

So he comforted them. Then, facing the temple, with his head in Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ's lap and his feet in Āṇḍāḷ's lap, meditating on Uḍaiyavar's feet, he went that very day to the sacred land.

The shorter account tells the leave-taking differently, and it changes who sought whom. In it Kūrattāzhvāṉ prayed at Periya Perumāḷ's feet, "You must bring me to your own light at once," and Periya Perumāḷ granted it and gave him the garland. Āzhvāṉ went and told Uḍaiyavar, and worshipped his feet, and asked for the water of his feet.

Uḍaiyavar was grieved. "While I am still here," he said, "may you pray like this to Periya Perumāḷ?"

"Is it not this servant's own nature," said Āzhvāṉ, "to come out from that light to meet Your Holiness, and take you there?"

The mudalis were amazed. Uḍaiyavar was greatly pleased. "Now what are we to do?" he said; and having made up his mind, he gave him the water of his feet. And Āzhvāṉ, meditating on Uḍaiyavar's feet, went to the sacred land.

Uḍaiyavar heard of it and came. He looked at Bhaṭṭar, Āzhvāṉ's son. "Do not grieve," he said. "Do the last service for Āzhvāṉ."

Bhaṭṭar gathered the temple's people and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas. He bathed his father as the rule says a son should, with the hymns and the Gāyatrī and the Nārāyaṇa verses, put on him the holy names beginning with Keśava, adorned him, and carried him out. The old verses say:

‘‘கேஶவார்ப்பிதஸர்வாங்கம்ஶரீரம்மங்களாவஹம்-நவ்ருதா

தாஹயேத்விப்ரோப்ரஹ்மமேதவிதிம்விநா’’

‘‘kēśavārppitasarvāṅkamśarīrammaṅkaḷāvaham-navrutā

tāhayētviprōprahmamētavitimvinā’’

“A body every limb of which has been offered to Keśava is a bringer of good; not idly let a brahmin burn it, without the rite of the brahmamedha.”

So Bhaṭṭar laid Kūrattāzhvāṉ, best of the Lord's great devotees, to rest by the brahmamedha, and did the rites of the twelve days. He brought Uḍaiyavar and the mudalis, received the water from the devotees' feet, had the Tiruvāymozhi recited, made the offering of flowers, and fed and honoured the Śrīvaiṣṇavas.

The shorter account says Uḍaiyavar had Bhaṭṭar do the twelve days' rites as Nāthamuni had laid down, and that he ordered then that in the recitation for the dead the Tiruvāymozhi should be the chief text, with Amudaṉār's hundred verses, and that an areca nut be offered to Nammāzhvār in honour. The mudalis did so for Āzhvāṉ, and offered the nut to the Āzhvār and to Emperumāṉār. Uḍaiyavar accepted it, and ordered that it be done so from then on whenever a Śrīvaiṣṇava went to the sacred land.

The next day Uḍaiyavar took Bhaṭṭar to Namperumāḷ, led him by the hand to Periya Perumāḷ's feet, and set him there. Perumāḷ drank turmeric water once more and took Bhaṭṭar specially as his son, and said through the priest, "Do not be troubled, thinking 'We have lost Āzhvāṉ.' Think of us as Āzhvāṉ." Then Uḍaiyavar went home and gave Bhaṭṭar into Embār's hands to be trained.

Kūrattāzhvāṉ's birth-star is Hasta, in the month of Tai.

He has two taṉiyaṉs. The first:

‘‘ஸ்ரீவத்ஸசிஹ்நமிஶ்ரேப்யோ நமஉக்திமதீமஹே -

யதுக்தயஸ்த்ரயீகண்டே யாந்திமங்களஸூத்ரதாம்,’’

‘‘srīvatsacihnamiśrēpyō namauktimatīmahē -

yatuktayastrayīkaṇṭē yāntimaṅkaḷasūtratām,’’

“To Śrīvatsacihna Miśra we offer the word of homage; his sayings become the marriage-thread on the throat of the threefold Veda.”

The second:

‘‘ஸ்ரீமத்கூரகுலாதீஶம்

ஸ்ரீவத்ஸாங்கமுபாஸ்மஹே - அக்ர்யம்யதீந்த்ரஶிஷ்யாணாம் ஆத்யம்வேதாந்த

வேதிநாம்’’

‘‘srīmatkūrakulātīśam

srīvatsāṅkamupāsmahē - akryamyatīntraśiṣyāṇām ātyamvētānta

vētinām’’

“Lord of the glorious Kūra family, Śrīvatsāṅka, we worship: foremost of the disciples of the prince of ascetics, first of the Vedānta's knowers.”

When the account comes to sum up the mudalis, it puts Āzhvāṉ first, and names what it saw in him. He held that even in the land he was going to, his place below his ācārya must not fall out of its order. At his end his own ācārya gave him the dvaya to quench his thirst, food for the road. And the place where he died was a place dear to the Lord's own people.

In time Uḍaiyavar followed him. The account sets down an old line: "This very day I shall go the way Lakṣmaṇa went." So Uḍaiyavar went after Āzhvāṉ on his road. A Sanskrit verse tells it:

“இத்தம்ப்ராப்தே

ஸபதிபரமவ்யோமஶிஷ்டாக்ரகண்யேகூராதீஶேநிகமஶிகரவ்யாக்ரியாலம்படத்

வம்-ஶிஷ்யஸ்தோமாந்ஶ்ருதிகுருமுகேரங்கிகார்யேணஸாகம்விந்யஸ்யோச்சை:

பரமகமதாரோடுமைச்சத்யதீந்த்ர:”

“ittamprāptē

sapatiparamavyōmaśiṣṭākrakaṇyēkūrātīśēnikamaśikaravyākriyālampaṭat

vam-śiṣyastōmānśrutikurumukēraṅkikāryēṇasākamvinyasyōccaiḥ

paramakamatārōṭumaiccatyatīntraḥ”

“When thus had gone, so suddenly, into the highest heaven Kūrādhīśa, foremost of the learned, the prince of ascetics laid his zeal for expounding the summit of the Veda, and his host of disciples, in the hands of the teacher of the śruti, with the service of Raṅga, and wished on high to go up himself to the highest place.”

Before he went, he charged Bhaṭṭar and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's son, to keep the brotherhood that had come to them through him. "Be like Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ," he said to Bhaṭṭar, "you, the ornament of the Kūra family, and he, the ornament of the Vādhūla family."

In the roll of the seventy-four ācāryas who took refuge at Emperumāṉār's feet, Kūrattāzhvāṉ's sons Bhaṭṭar and Śrīrāmappiḷḷai stand together in one place. A Tamil verse on Uḍaiyavar's going says he crowned the loving sons of Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ as servants before he left. And when Uḍaiyavar was gone, and disciples came from every country to Kōyil and found their comfort in Bhaṭṭar, one of the verses they made bowed to him as the one in whom the Lord of Raṅga himself took on sonship to Kūreśa.

Later, the shorter account says, when Uḍaiyavar lay ill, images of him were made for Kōyil, Śrīperumbudūr and Tirunārāyaṇapuram. Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ asked, "What fault has our Pēraruḷāḷar committed?" Uḍaiyavar was greatly pleased, and remembered Āzhvāṉ. "Kūrattāzhvāṉ calling you 'the beloved nephew' long ago," he said, "was right indeed." And at Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ's prayer he ordered such images for every holy place.

Āṇḍāḷ lived on after him.

In the roll of the women who took refuge at Śrī Bhāṣyakārar's feet there is a Kūrattāṇḍāḷ. The account does not say where she came from, or when she married him. It has given her in her husband's story: the night of the rain, when she spoke to the Lord and was rebuked and given her handful; the day she was afraid with him when the boy recited the lesson perfectly; "The children have grown up; should we not have the thing done?"; and at the end, "Apart from following your wish, has this servant any other thought?" It was to her that he told their sons to listen. After him it gives her a few scenes of her own, and Bhaṭṭar's own life tells them in full.

There was a man called Vīrasundarabrahmarāyaṉ, Āzhvāṉ's own disciple, who was building the Lord's temple wall. He pulled down the house of Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ, in whose lap Āzhvāṉ had laid his head, because it stood in the wall's line, and he harassed Bhaṭṭar until Bhaṭṭar left Kōyil. While Bhaṭṭar was away, Vīrasundaraṉ died.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas who served Āṇḍāḷ threw their upper cloths into the sky and came dancing to tell her that Bhaṭṭar's enemy was gone. Āṇḍāḷ went inside, bolted the doors, held her stomach in her pain, and wept aloud. Vīrasundaraṉ had been Āzhvāṉ's disciple, she told them, and he had died without once bowing his head at Bhaṭṭar's feet to ask forgiveness, and so he had lost both the good that cannot be seen and the good that can. "That a soul bound to Āzhvāṉ's feet should be ruined like this!" she said. "Not one of you knows how my stomach burns to think of it."

To wish well, and to melt with pity, even for those who have done wrong, the account says, belongs only to those who are bound to Āzhvāṉ.

When Bhaṭṭar came home, Āṇḍāḷ knew he would not allow what she wanted. So she had another Śrīvaiṣṇava wash his feet, and she took that water as tīrtha. When a Śrīvaiṣṇava asked how his mother could do this, she answered with a line from an old song: "Will they think of the child who worships at Kaṇapuram as only a child?" Those who are greater in knowledge, the account says, even if they are one's own sons, are to be served as the Lord's own.

She outlived Bhaṭṭar too. On the day he came home from the Kaiśika reading in the Brahma-ratha that Āzhvāṉ had once ridden, she blessed him in the words of an old song, "May you enter the land that has no end of good," and that same day he went to the sacred land, as his own life tells. When the mudalis came in to her, Āṇḍāḷ gathered him up and held him to her breast. Her heart was not troubled. Her face did not darken. No tears came into her eyes.

"When the owner takes what is his," she said, "may we resent it?"

The mudalis did Bhaṭṭar's last rites through Śrīrāmappiḷḷai, his younger brother. When Śrīrāmappiḷḷai came back into the empty house and wailed aloud, Āṇḍāḷ was vexed. "This one is not fit to have been born of Āzhvāṉ's holy womb," she said; and to him, "Child! Can you not bear the gain Bhaṭṭar has had?" Śrīrāmappiḷḷai rose with a start, fell at her feet and asked her forgiveness, and she forgave him. Perumāḷ gave him all Bhaṭṭar's honours, and Śrīrāmappiḷḷai went on carrying the darśana.

The account does not say when Āṇḍāḷ died, or how.