Madhurakavi Āzhvār

Madhurakavi Āzhvār: the disciple who knew no God but his teacher

A learned Brahmin of the Pāṇḍya country was on pilgrimage in the far north when he saw, night after night, a strange light burning low in the southern sky. He followed it the whole length of India, walking by night, until it led him to a tamarind tree at Thirukkurugūr and went out. Under the tree sat a youth of sixteen who had not opened his eyes or spoken in all his life. Madhurakavi asked him one question, heard his answer, and fell at his feet, and from that day he served Nammāzhvār and knew no other God.

The dawn before the sun

He was born before Nammāzhvār, as the dawn comes before the sun, to herald his coming. He came of a Brahmin family of the Sāma Veda, at Thirukkōḷūr, not far from Thirukkurugūr, in the month of Chithirai under the star Chithirai, and he was an embodiment of Kumuda, one of the captains who serve under Viṣvaksēna, the commander of the Lord's hosts.

As a Brahmin boy he received every sacrament in its time, the sacred thread and all the rest, and he mastered all fourteen branches of learning that make a man wise: the six limbs of the Veda, which are phonetics, grammar, metre, etymology, astronomy and ritual; the four Vedas; both schools of Mīmāṃsā; logic; the eighteen Purāṇas; and the law. Then he set out on pilgrimage to the north, to the holy cities that are said to free the soul: Ayodhyā, Mathurā, Māyā, Kāśī, Kāñcī, Avantikā and Dvārakā.

The light in the south

Something in him already sensed that a great soul had been born in the south. He was on his way back from Badarikāśrama to Ayodhyā when, one night, he went out under the open sky, and lifting his eyes, saw far away in the south a strange, unearthly light. It shook him, and filled him with wonder and with joy. What could it be? Was a village on fire, or a forest? He dozed, and woke with a start, and the light was still there, steady, dancing before his eyes and drawing his spirit. Night after night it shone in the same place.

He resolved to find out what it was, and turned south at once, ready to go wherever it led. By day he rested, and as soon as darkness fell he walked fast towards it, the bright light guiding him. So he came from one holy place to the next, until he reached Śrīraṅgam, the chief city of the Vaiṣṇavas. But still the light was further south. He followed it on, and at Thirukkurugūr it seemed to settle in one place and disappear.

The youth under the tamarind

He felt sure that if he asked carefully in that town he would find the answer. When he asked, he was told about a wonderful child who had opened neither his eyes nor his mouth since his birth, and who lived under a tamarind tree beside the temple. Madhurakavi went to the tree, and there was his light: a youth of sixteen, seated in the lotus posture, absorbed in meditation, his eyes closed, his right hand half raised with the palm open and the thumb and forefinger joined, the sign of the teacher.

For all the living radiance of the young face, Madhurakavi wondered whether there was any life in the still figure at all, let alone hearing. He would test it, he thought. He lifted a large stone and let it fall to the ground with a thud, to startle the figure if it lived. At the sound the youth opened his eyes and looked at him with heavenly grace. But his lips stayed sealed. "He may be dumb after all," Madhurakavi thought. "Let me test him." And he asked:

"If a small thing is born in the belly of a dead thing, what will it eat, and where will it lie?"

The dead thing is the body, matter without life of its own, and the small thing is the soul born into it. The youth opened his mouth at once and answered:

"It will eat that, and there it will lie."

The soul takes its pleasures and pains from the body, and lies bound in it, unable to escape. And the answer carried a second meaning, which the youth under the tree was living, growing without any earthly food: the soul that takes God for its food rests in God, and needs neither food nor house.

At his teacher's feet

Madhurakavi had no doubt left. Here was a great soul born on earth with the knowledge of God, a guide he was bound to follow if he was to be saved. Overwhelmed with joy and devotion, he threw himself full length on the ground with his feet together and his hands joined, and worshipped his master with a heart overflowing with love. The love poured into his speech and broke into song, and filled his whole body with the wish to serve. From then on he dwelt always on his master's lotus feet, called on his holy names, and passed his days in the joy of his master's company.

The youth was Māṟaṉ, whom the world calls Nammāzhvār. The Lord came to him on Garuḍa with Śrī at his side, and showed him everything he is, and the youth overflowed in song: the four works that are the four Vedas in Tamil, Thiruviruttam, Thiruvāsiriyam, Periya Thiruvandhādhi and Thiruvāymozhi. Into all the mysteries of those songs of love between God and the soul, Madhurakavi was initiated and taught, so that the word of God that came through his master might go out through him to the world. He was his master's first apostle. His master's own deepest wish was the salvation of every soul, past and to come, and Madhurakavi gave his life to carrying it.

After the master had gone

When Nammāzhvār laid aside his body and went back to the Lord, Madhurakavi lived on for many years to keep his memory. He built temples, set up his master's holy image in them, and established his worship, daily, monthly and yearly, on a royal scale. He proclaimed far and wide the truths set out in his master's four Tamil Vedas, and with cymbals in his hands he went about singing his master's songs of divine love.

In those days the Pāṇḍya kings kept at Madurai an academy of three hundred learned poets under a chief poet, and no one could be called a poet whose work had not passed their judgement. Some of them heard how Madhurakavi went about proclaiming his master's inspired greatness, took offence at such unlicensed praise, and demanded that the master and his songs be brought before the academy for its approval.

"My master will not stir from his place," said Madhurakavi. "Take this." And he handed them a palm-leaf fragment on which were written the opening words of one of his master's songs:

kaṇṇaṉ kazhaliṇai naṇṇum maṉamuḍaiyīr

eṇṇum thirunāmam thiṇṇam nāraṇamē

"You whose hearts long to reach the feet of Kaṇṇaṉ: the holy name to hold in your thoughts, surely, is Nārāyaṇa."

The academy kept a sacred plank that floated on the lotus tank of the temple, which held up what was worthy and threw off what was not. They laid the scrap of palm leaf on it beside the works of other poets, and the plank kept the palm leaf and threw everything else into the water. The chief poet and all three hundred were convinced. They praised the master in verses of their own and became his followers.

The eleven verses

Every other Āzhvār sang of the greatness of God. Madhurakavi sang of the greatness of God's servants, and above all of one servant, his own teacher. That is the song he left, the Kaṇṇinuṇ Siṟuttāmbu, eleven verses on his master. It opens with the little cord with which Yaśodā tied the child Kṛṣṇa:

kaṇṇi nuṇ siṟuttāmbiṉāl kaṭṭuṇṇap

paṇṇiya peru māyaṉ eṉ appaṉil

naṇṇit theṉ kurugūr nambi eṉṟakkāl

aṇṇikkum amudhūṟum eṉ nāvukkē

"Rather than the great wonder-worker, my father, who let himself be bound by a fine, knotted little cord, it is when I come near and say 'Nambi of southern Kurugūr' that sweetness fills my tongue and nectar wells up on it."

And the last of the eleven promises that those who hold his song in faith will reach the highest heaven, because the one he loves is the Lord of Thirukkurugūr, his master.

The song that brought back the rest

Long afterwards, when the songs of the Āzhvārs had fallen silent and were all but lost, Śrīvaiṣṇavas from the western country came to Kāṭṭumannārkōil and sang one decad of Nammāzhvār's, Ārāvamudhē, before the Lord there. Nāthamuni, who served that Lord, was held by the verses and asked them for more. They knew nothing beyond those eleven; but the last of them speaks of a thousand, and they told him he might learn the rest at Thirukkurugūr. So he went south. At Thirukkurugūr, Parāṅkuśadāsa, of Madhurakavi's line of disciples, taught him Madhurakavi's eleven verses in praise of his master and told him to recite them under the tamarind twelve thousand times without a break. He did, and Nammāzhvār appeared to him and gave him all his songs, and with them the four thousand verses of all the Āzhvārs. So the eleven verses that Madhurakavi sang for no one but his teacher became the way by which his teacher's songs, and all the others, came back to the world.