Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ

Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ came to Rāmānuja at Kāñcī, near the beginning, and after that he did not leave him. The Sanskrit verses call him Dāśarathi. He was of the Vādhūla family, and he was Rāmānuja's own sister's son.

The account brings him in as Kandāḍai Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, and it brings him in with a companion: Kūreśa, Kūrattāzhvāṉ, the ornament of the Hārīta clan, who bore the holy name Tirumaṟumārpaṉ. The two of them heard the news that Iḷaiyāzhvār had entered the order of ascetics. The account does not say where they were when the news reached them, or how Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ had lived until that day. It says that they came with great joy to Perumāḷ Kōyil, the Lord's town at Kāñcī, and stood before Rāmānuja and asked him.

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

The pañcasaṃskāra is the fivefold rite by which an ācārya, a teacher, takes a man into the Lord's service. Rāmānuja was glad at heart, and did just as they had asked.

So they had what they came for. The account sets a Sanskrit verse beside them here:

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 way of life hanging on the ācārya, he should be ever pure as long as he lives.

That was how the two of them lived. They never left Rāmānuja, their own ācārya. They stayed and served him, and serving him was their one delight.

They were standing with him on the day his old opponent came over.

Yādavaprakāśa had once taught Iḷaiyāzhvār and had argued against him. Now, old, he had been told by Pēraruḷāḷar, the Lord at Kāñcī, in a dream to walk once round Rāmānuja and take the triple staff from his hand, and Kāñcīpūrṇa, Tirukkacci Nambi, had asked the Lord and confirmed it. His own life tells how it came about. He came and prostrated at Rāmānuja's feet and asked for the tridaṇḍa, the triple staff, and walked round Rāmānuja once, and stood there humbly.

Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ were astonished.

"How the Lord's favour and his own wish have come together!" they said. They marvelled at it. "There is a verse, 'Caidya and the others, through hatred.' The very hatred he bore Your Honour has become the cause of his salvation." Caidya was the king who hated Kṛṣṇa. And they asked one thing more of Rāmānuja for the old man: "Let him be equal to us."

Rāmānuja was greatly pleased. He had the expiation done as the śāstra lays it down, and gave Yādavaprakāśa the triple staff and the ochre, and the name Govinda Jīyar.

After that Rāmānuja set Kūreśa and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ to labour at the two Mīmāṃsās, the twin inquiries into the Veda. They were at that work when the news of all these things reached Kōyil, as the tradition calls Śrīraṅgam, and the disciples there began to ask the Lord of Śrīraṅgam for Iḷaiyāzhvār.

They won him in the end by song. Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar came to Kāñcī and sang before Pēraruḷāḷar until the Lord offered him anything he wished, and he asked for Rāmānuja and would not take back the asking, and the Lord gave him up. The Araiyar took Uḍaiyavar by the hand and said, "Come."

Uḍaiyavar prostrated to Pēraruḷāḷar and set out with the Araiyar for Kōyil. He did not go back into his maṭha, his house, even once. He looked at Kūreśa and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ.

"Go to the maṭha," he said, "and bring Pēraruḷāḷar, our image for worship, and all our other things."

So it was the two of them who went back into the maṭha. They brought the image and the rest, and caught him up on the road, and Kāñcīpūrṇa, who had come to see them off, turned back. Uḍaiyavar went on toward Tiruvaraṅgam by stages, bathed in the northern river, and put on the twelve marks of the Lord's names, while the disciples of Āḷavandār in the town heard that he had come.

Another account, the one kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple there, follows them in through the gate. The Lord of Śrīraṅgam received Uḍaiyavar, gave him the honours and the sceptre, and had him taken to the Cēraṉ maṭam on the northern street. Uḍaiyavar went to that maṭam with Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ.

From the very next day he took the temple in hand, and he gave the two of them their places at once. Āzhvāṉ was to be his close companion in carrying on the darśana, the teaching. Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was to have the uḷtuṟai, the service within the inner precincts. Uḍaiyavar himself sat on the terrace south of the store-house gate and went through the temple lands, the groves and the rules of the store-house, and fixed the daily allowances, and every day, after the Lord's great offering, he laid the accounts before the Lord in private.

That account remembers one day when the inner service went wrong. A hall of timber had been put up on the terrace of the great hall in Ālināḍaṉ street. One day Āṇḍāṉ had the Lord partake of good nāval fruit with curd-rice. Afterwards Uḍaiyavar came into the presence of Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ and saw that the holy face was drawn. He asked what had been eaten.

"He has eaten nāval fruit with curd-rice," he said, "and this is what has come of it."

And he rebuked Āṇḍāṉ.

Then he had his own disciple Garuḍavāhana Paṇḍitar treat the Lord. He set up again the old shrine of Dhanvantari, the physician among the Lord's forms, which had fallen into ruin, gave it into the Paṇḍitar's charge, and arranged that every night, before the doors were shut, a medicinal drink and milk should come in state from the Paṇḍitar and be offered.

There was other news in those days that Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ heard with his own ears. A Śrīvaiṣṇava came down from Tirumalai and told Uḍaiyavar how Śrīśailapūrṇa, Periya Tirumalai Nambi, had argued with Govinda Bhaṭṭar, who had gone over to the god of Kāḷahasti and kept that temple's treasury. This was not the new Govinda Jīyar but the young man who had studied beside Iḷaiyāzhvār under Yādavaprakāśa, the one the tradition later calls Embār. Uḍaiyavar was delighted. He looked at Kūreśa, at Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, and at the others who were there.

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

And he went through the whole argument with them, verse by verse, showing how Govinda had put up only a show of debate, and how Nambi had answered him with skill, and how Govinda, being learned, had been caught by Nambi's words and gone away with nothing to say.

The same messenger carried the end of that story. The temple people of Kāḷahasti had come to Nambi to take their man back, and Govinda had thrown down the treasury key and the seal ring and turned his face from them. Then they told Nambi a dream. The god of their own temple had told them in a dream that Śeṣāśana, Ananta and Vainateya, the Lord's own attendants, had come down as Yamunaitturaivar, Iḷaiyāzhvār and Govinda Bhaṭṭar, to put down those who denied the Veda.

And to go with them, the god had said, the conch and the discus had come down too, as Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Kūrattāzhvāṉ.

That is how Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ heard himself spoken of, in a dream told at Kāḷahasti and carried down the hill to Kōyil.

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Nambi, held the meaning of the tirumantra, the eight-syllable mantra, and he would not give it to Uḍaiyavar. Eighteen times Uḍaiyavar went to Tirukkōṭṭiyūr for it and came back with nothing, as Goṣṭhīpūrṇa's own story tells. Then Nambi sent him word.

"Let him come alone, as staff and pavitra."

The staff is the tridaṇḍa, the triple staff an ascetic carries. The pavitra is the ring of sacred grass that hallows the hand in a rite.

Uḍaiyavar took Kūreśa and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and went to Tirukkōṭṭiyūr in great haste, and fell at Nambi's feet.

"Did we not tell you to come alone? Why have you brought these?"

"They are the staff and the pavitra," said Uḍaiyavar. He pointed to Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ. "He is the tridaṇḍa." He pointed to Kūreśa. "He is the pavitra."

"If that is so," said Nambi, "do not tell this meaning to anyone but these two." And he taught him the eight-syllable mantra.

Afterwards Nambi called Uḍaiyavar back alone and gave him the carama-śloka as well, the last word of the Lord in the Gītā, under oath. He allowed it to be told to Kūreśa alone, and only after a year's service. Kūreśa fasted a month at Uḍaiyavar's gate instead, and Uḍaiyavar gave it to him. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa's story and Kūreśa's tell all that in full.

Then Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ came. He prostrated at Emperumāṉār's feet. "Your Honour must graciously give this meaning to your servant as well."

"It was for Āzhvāṉ alone that I made the request at Nambi's feet," said Uḍaiyavar. "Go to Nambi's feet yourself and ask."

So Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ went to Tirukkōṭṭiyūr.

He prostrated at Nambi's feet and stood there. He stood there six months. In all that time Nambi did not once turn his face to him.

Then one day, as Āṇḍāṉ stood serving at his feet, Nambi spoke to him.

"You are like a man Rāmānuja has taken up!"

"Your servant is Dāśarathi," he said.

"If so, what is it?"

"Your Honour must graciously give your servant the meaning of the last secret as well."

Nambi answered him with a verse.

வித்யாமதோதநமதஸ் த்ரு

தீயோஉபிஜநாந்மதஃ - ஏதேமதாவலிப்தாநா மேதவவஸதாந்தமாஃ

vityāmatōtanamatas tru

tīyōupijanānmataḵ - ētēmatāvaliptānā mētavavasatāntamāḵ

Pride of learning, pride of wealth, and the third, pride of birth: in those smeared with pride these are prides, and these same, in the good, are the very things that hold them in.

"When these three mischiefs are gone, Emperumāṉār himself will be gracious and give it to you. Go, and do not be afraid."

And he set his own lotus feet on Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's head, adorning it with them, and gave him leave.

Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ went back to Kōyil. The account says he was now full of the qualities of the self, calm and self-command first among them. He prostrated at Uḍaiyavar's feet and told him everything Nambi had said, and all his distress showed as he told it, and he stood there humbly.

Uḍaiyavar looked round at the disciples about him.

"See how Āṇḍāṉ looks," he said, "now that his true nature has been examined in Nambi's presence!"

And with great joy he taught Āṇḍāṉ the meaning of the carama-śloka, the most secret of all.

Then Uḍaiyavar was wholly content. "Now at last," he said, "our staff and our pavitra have come into our hand."

There is another saying of Uḍaiyavar's about his staff. It was remembered that when he took sannyāsa, the question was put to him whether a man must give up a bodily relation too.

"We have taken sannyāsa," said Uḍaiyavar, "except for our Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ."

The disciples asked him, "May one say it like that?"

"Only if I give up the tridaṇḍa in my hand," he said, "would I give up our Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ."

At Kōyil Uḍaiyavar kept Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ beside him, with Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, and they sat with him as an assembly of the learned. Word went round that all the ācāryas had taken refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet, and more men came wanting to do the same.

When Uḍaiyavar resolved to write on the Vedānta, he gathered Kūreśa, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār and the other disciples and told them why. The rival creeds had to be pulled up like weeds. The teachers who held that knowledge born of the great sentences frees a man, and those who held that knowledge and ritual works together free him, had to be answered. And it had to be shown that the means to freedom taught by the Vedānta is meditation that has become bhakti, devotion. So they must set out the Vedānta.

"Please do so," said the disciples.

Kūreśa was to write, and that work brought the day when he would not write a sentence and Uḍaiyavar kicked him away. Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was among the disciples gathered for it. The account gives him no words there.

Another account names the company a little differently. It says Emperumāṉār took Kūreśa, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Embār and other disciples with him when he resolved on the commentary, and that he wrote the Vedārthasaṅgraha, the Vedāntasāra and the Vedāntadīpa first, and the Śrī Bhāṣya after.

When it was written, Uḍaiyavar taught the Śrī Bhāṣya to Kūreśa, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār and others. In the list of daily services the account keeps for his household, Kūreśa, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ and the Bhaṭṭars are his companions in the study of the Śrī Bhāṣya. Others kept the kitchen, applied the oil, carried the water-pot and the sandals, kept the treasury. These four sat with him over the book.

He studied the Tiruvāymozhi from Uḍaiyavar too, and one day it overcame him.

Emperumāṉār had gone up onto his couch and was teaching by santhai, giving out a verse for the disciple to say after him. He had given out a single verse, and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was overwhelmed by it and lost himself.

Emperumāṉār saw it. "There is a verse," he said.

வேத

வேத்யேபரேபும்ஸிஜாதேதஶரதாத்மஜே-வேதஃப்ராசேதஸாதாஸீத்ஸாக்ஷாத்

ராமாயணாத்மநா

vēta

vētyēparēpumsijātētaśaratātmajē-vētaḵprācētasātāsītsākṣāt

rāmāyaṇātmanā

When the Supreme Person, whom the Vedas make known, was born as the son of Daśaratha, the Veda came forth from Vālmīki, son of Pracetas, as the Rāmāyaṇa itself.

"In the same way, have not the Vedas themselves come down through the mouth of the Āzhvār as the Tiruvāymozhi?"

At the great festival, when the Lord went to the Kāvēri to give the sacred bath, Emperumāṉār went down to the river holding Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's hand. When he came back up from his bath he was holding the hand of Piḷḷai Uṟaṅgāvilli Dāsar instead.

The disciples about him asked, "What is the reason for this?"

"Others have their conceit," said Uḍaiyavar. "'Though our birth is high, see how low we stand.' This man has not even that fault."

Attuzhāy was the daughter of Mahāpūrṇa, Periya Nambi, and she lived in her husband's house. One day she asked her mother-in-law to come with her to the river as a companion for her bath.

The mother-in-law spoke sharply. "Take your dowry maidservant and go."

Attuzhāy came to her father. "Father! She spoke to me like this."

"We know nothing about it," said Nambi. "Tell your Jīyar."

She went to Uḍaiyavar and told him. Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was there beside him. Uḍaiyavar gave him to her.

"Here. Take him. Your dowry servant." And to Āṇḍāṉ: "Go."

So Āṇḍāṉ went with her. He saw her bathed and brought her home. Then he stayed in her husband's house and began to do a servant's work.

Her husband's people saw him at it. "Āṇḍāṉ! What is this?"

"Ask Uḍaiyavar, who sent me," he said. "Must one not do what the ācārya says?"

They went to Nambi. "Nambi! Must you send Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and ruin us like this?"

"Did we know of it?" said Nambi. "Ask Uḍaiyavar."

They went and told Uḍaiyavar.

"We gave Āṇḍāṉ to Attuzhāy as her dowry servant," said Uḍaiyavar. "If his standing there is unwelcome to you, he will do his service from here."

And he had Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ called back.

He could argue as well as serve. Miḷakāzhvāṉ once said to him, "Come and debate with me."

"If you lose, what will you do?" said Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ.

"If I lose, I will carry you on my shoulder."

They debated, and Miḷakāzhvāṉ lost. He took Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ up on his shoulder and carried him a little way, and then he said, "Now you must have mercy on your servant."

Āṇḍāṉ brought him to Uḍaiyavar's feet and had him take refuge there. And he told him, "Hold Emperumāṉār's feet alone as your refuge."

It was the same word he gave his own disciples, as Āzhvāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, Embār and Bhaṭṭar gave theirs: hold Emperumāṉār's feet alone as your refuge. The first reason the account gives is their love for their own ācārya.

Vaḍuga Nambi, who would take no one's foot-water but Uḍaiyavar's, used to call Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ "the people of two banks," because they meditated on both together, saying that Emperumāṉār's feet are the refuge and that Namperumāḷ's feet are the refuge. Yet when Vaḍuga Nambi had broken every pot in his house that his worldly relations had touched, it was from Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's backyard that he took the thrown-out pots to use in their place, for nothing that lay within the bounds of the ācārya's own people could be impure to him. His own life tells it.

When Bhaṭṭar, Kūreśa's son, was still a child playing in the dust of the holy street, a man came by in great pomp, blowing a horn and crying that Sarvajña Bhaṭṭaṉ, the all-knowing, had come. The child asked who this fellow was, to come blowing such a title in the place where the great ones lived: Uḍaiyavar, Āzhvāṉ, Āṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, Embār and the rest.

The account keeps the roll of the disciples who took refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet while he lived at Kōyil, and it sorts them by their titles. Among the Āṇḍāṉs, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ comes first. In the list of the seventy-four ācāryas who held seats under Emperumāṉār, the seventh seat is his and his son's together: Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, and his son Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ.

Another account counts the seventy-four its own way, gives Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ a seat each, and names four of them as the holders of the Śrī Bhāṣya seat: Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ. That account also says that the older disciples, the ones who had taken refuge first and were older in years, Kūreśa, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, Embār and the rest, looked on Piḷḷāṉ as above them once Uḍaiyavar had made him his son by knowledge. They did their services as men placed under him, the way sons adopted early still follow a true-born son who comes later. Uḍaiyavar saw it and was very glad.

When the account sets out at length why Uḍaiyavar stands first of all, it ends by saying there is no need to add that he stands first among his own disciples, Kūreśa, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and the rest.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple tells how the temple came into Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's hands.

Uḍaiyavar had learned every meaning from five ācāryas, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa first among them, and had gathered many disciples, and he was running the affairs of the Lord of Tiruvaraṅgam without a fault. He made Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ answerable for both services. Then he resolved to go out on a dig-vijaya, a journey to win the four quarters for the teaching. He would take Āzhvāṉ with him on the road. Āṇḍāṉ would stay and run the temple. And he asked in the Lord's presence that the sceptre be given to Āṇḍāṉ.

The Lord was greatly pleased.

"Dāśarathi, who is your sandals, will look after Our house," He said. "You give Our gardens into someone's keeping, and go and weed Our darśana. Plant pillars of victory in the four quarters, that Emperumāṉār's darśana alone stands above all, and come back."

He gave Uḍaiyavar leave, and gave every honour, and gave Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ the honour of the sceptre. Uḍaiyavar went out on his journey with Āzhvāṉ.

Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ stayed. He sat at the terrace and looked into the temple lands and the services of the store-house. He went inside and stood at the store-room gate and looked into the service of the Lord's holy body. He stood in the Lord's presence and looked into the service of the holy mouth, all by the rule Uḍaiyavar had given him. And he saw to it that the Lord was shown every beauty there was.

That account says more about the office he held. The Lord had given Rāmānuja both realms, this world and the eternal one, and given him the sceptre as the token of it, and named him Ubhaya-vibhūtiyuḍaiyavar, the owner of both realms. With that writ in his hand Uḍaiyavar took the temple's servants, who had stood in five kottus, five companies of service, and made them ten. Over the ten he set Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, in the office of the Ceṅkōl, the sceptre, as the one who governed them all.

So Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was the sceptre-officer of the first company and master over all the officers. The account calls him Sēnāpati-durandhara, the one who bears the yoke of the commander, and says he stood as a limb of Śrī Sēnēśar, the Lord's own commander. To make the temple's wealth secure, Uḍaiyavar had the Cōzha king take refuge and had a deed of gift drawn up. From Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's time, that account says, the order he kept ran on by itself for two hundred years.

It remembers one service as his own. At the festival of Tirukkārttigai, so that no heat should settle on the holy body of Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ, and on the evening when the Lord goes out to the Tiru-ūṟal at the Citrā festival, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, as the bearer of the commander's yoke, had sengazhunīr flowers brought, the red water-lily. He did it as a calming for the festival and as his own kaiṅkarya, his service. He sat down with the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, and the Tirukkarakakkaiyār, whose office is the Lord's water, poured water on their hands, and together they bound the flowers into an arch and offered it.

From then on Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ had that service done by Śrīvaiṣṇavas, with the Tirukkarakakkaiyār only helping them. So the red lily arch is not bound in the Tiruppū-maṇḍapam, the Tirukkarakakkaiyār's own hall, but in the Cittirai maṇḍapam.

Then came the Cōzha.

The king held that there was nothing higher than Śiva, and made the learned men of his country sign it, and sent his men to Kōyil for Rāmānuja. The two accounts tell what happened at the maṭam in two ways.

One account says the king's men came to the gate of the maṭam while Kūreśa was drawing the water for Uḍaiyavar's bath. A Śrīvaiṣṇava whispered the news to Kūreśa, and Kūreśa put on Uḍaiyavar's triple staff and ochre robe and went with the king's men without a word to Uḍaiyavar, and Periya Nambi went with him.

Then Uḍaiyavar said, "Give me the tridaṇḍa, the ochre, the rest."

It was Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ who answered him. "Kūrattāzhvāṉ has put them on and gone with the king's men."

"Then give me his white cloth."

Uḍaiyavar took Kūreśa's white cloth and put it on himself, and he was in great distress. "What harm is coming to Āzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi?"

All the disciples, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ among them, said to him, "Your Honour must not stay here."

Uḍaiyavar went before Periya Perumāḷ with a troubled heart and took refuge at his feet, and then went on with the disciples. The king's men came after them. "Men are coming fast behind," the disciples told him. Uḍaiyavar took up sand from the road and said a verse over it, and told them to scatter it on the way the men were coming. The disciples did it. The king's men trod on the sand and could not go one step beyond it. "The brahmins have worked a spell," they said, and turned back. And Uḍaiyavar and his disciples went on, with the Lord who lives in Araṅgam as their companion on the road.

The other account says Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was not in the house when the king's men came. He had gone for the midday bath, and he heard of it there, and came back after bathing. In the meantime Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ had brought the news to Kūreśa, and Kūreśa had put on the robes and gone, and Periya Nambi with him. Then Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ and others said to Uḍaiyavar, "Your Lordship must not stay here," and dressed him in white, and led him away toward the western country. One day, drenched with rain, they came to the foot of a hill where some hunters lived who were disciples of Tirumalai Nallāṉ, and the hunters knew him for Emperumāṉār.

In the western country Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ was still at his side.

They came to Sāḷagrāmam. The whole town were enemies who did not show it, and they took no notice of Uḍaiyavar. Uḍaiyavar called Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ.

"At the place where the people of this town draw their water," he told him, "stretch out your foot in it, and keep it there."

Āṇḍāṉ did just that.

The people of the town drew their water there. By the power of the water that had touched his feet their pride left them. By the very next day their minds were clear, and they came and took refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet.

Uḍaiyavar named the town for that water. "From today," he said, "this town is Śrī Sāḷagrāmam."

It was there that he took Vaḍuga Nambi into the shade of his feet.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells how they came home. While Uḍaiyavar was in the west, the Cōzha who had driven him out, Krimikaṇṭha, the worm-throated, died. His son Kulōttuṅga came to Kōyil with the Cēra and the Pāṇḍya kings, and the three of them left their seals with the temple's guards and had Emperumāṉār called back.

Uḍaiyavar came back. He had the dead king's son take refuge at Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's feet. And he had Kōyil given to the Lord as a gift, cut in stone and sealed with the pouring of water.

When he was running the temple again as before, he and Āṇḍāṉ heard about the seals the kings had left. Kōyil had never had any need of a royal seal. But because the three kings' marks were on it, Uḍaiyavar and Āṇḍāṉ took it as a protection for Kōyil, and from then on they put the four seals into effect.

After the invaders came, that account says, the temple's offices passed into many hands and went on under many names, a Kandāḍai among them. Yet there were honours that, among all who served there, belonged only to the Kandāḍai house, the bearers of the commander's yoke: tīrtha given three times, the white garland, a handful of sandal, and the Śrī Śaṭhakōpaṉ set on the head and on the shoulders.

The longer account does not tell how Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ died, or when. In the last years of Uḍaiyavar it speaks of his son. The shorter account still has the father living and speaking at the end. They are told here one after the other.

The shorter account says that when Uḍaiyavar fell ill, Piḷḷāṉ, Āzhvāṉ, Āccāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ were in distress, and he asked 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?"

Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ said, "You must graciously command that an image of you be set up, as for the Āzhvārs."

And Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ said, "Without this the siddhānta will fail."

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.

When he lay down for the last time, facing Kōyil, the disciples and jīyars led by Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, Embār and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ recited the Upaniṣads from the Brahmavallī and the Tiruvāymozhi from "Cūzhvicumpaṇimukil," and the conch sounded, and Uḍaiyavar went to the holy land. Afterwards, as he had commanded, Piḷḷāṉ set up his image at Kōyil, and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ set up his image at Śrīperumbudūr, the town where Uḍaiyavar was born.

The longer account gives the image at Śrīperumbudūr to the son.

Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ was the son of Uḍaiyavar's sister's son. He bore Uḍaiyavar's name and delighted in his name and in his qualities. When he had served Emperumāṉār a long while, he made his request.

"Your Grace was born at Śrīperumbudūr, as the verse says:

புண்யாம்போஜவிகாஸாய பாபத்வாந்தக்ஷயாயச - ஸ்ரீமா

நாவிரபூத்பூமௌ ராமாநுஜதிவாகரஃ

puṇyāmpōjavikāsāya pāpatvāntakṣayāyaca - srīmā

nāvirapūtpūmau rāmānujativākaraḵ

To open the lotus of merit and to break the dark of sin, the glorious sun Rāmānuja rose on the earth.

"There you must have your image set up, so that every soul may serve it at every time."

"Do so," said the Svāmi.

Āṇḍāṉ sent at once for a skilled sculptor and set before him the form the verse describes:

పుణ్డ్రైర్ద్వా

దశభిర్యుతంవిలసితందణ్డైస్త్రిభిర్మణ్డితంకాషాయేణశిఖోపవీతరుచిరందోర్మూలచక్రాంబుజం।

ఆసీనంజలజాసనేచతుళసీపద్మాక్షమాలాఙ్కితం యుక్తజ్ఞానాఞ్జలిముద్రయావినతం శ్రీభాష్యకా

రంభ జే.

puṇḍrairdvā

daśabhiryutaṃvilasitaṃdaṇḍaistribhirmaṇḍitaṃkāṣāyēṇaśikhōpavītaruciraṃdōrmūlacakrāṃbujaṃ।

āsīnaṃjalajāsanēcatuḷasīpadmākṣamālāṅkitaṃ yuktajñānāñjalimudrayāvinataṃ śrībhāṣyakā

raṃbha jē.

With twelve marks upon him, shining, adorned with the triple staff, lovely in the ochre with the tuft and the sacred thread, the discus and the lotus at the roots of his arms, seated on a lotus, with tulasī and a rosary of lotus seeds, bowing with the sign of knowledge and his palms joined: Śrī Bhāṣyakāra, I worship him.

The image was made, and brought into Uḍaiyavar's presence, and set down there. Uḍaiyavar looked at it with grace and was glad, and he embraced it tightly so that all his power would shine out in it. He wrote a letter fixing the day: "Install this image on Guru-puṣya in the month of Puṣya." Āṇḍāṉ worshipped at his feet and took the image away and had it installed on the day the letter named.

On that very day great weakness came over Uḍaiyavar's body, and his strength failed. "What is this?" he said. "What day was written down and given to Āṇḍāṉ?" It was that day. He was astonished, and sent Āṇḍāṉ a letter. "Come quickly."

Āṇḍāṉ took the letter and set it on his head and came back at once, and stayed serving at his feet.

Many copies add that then all the disciples closest to him, Āṇḍāṉ first among them, gathered round him like parrots guarding a ripe mango, and looked their fill on his last form, and held him a special descent of the Lord, as a Tamil verse says:

அடையார்கமலத்துஅலர்மகள்கேள்வன்கையாழியென்

னும், படையோடு நாந்தகமும் படர்தண்டு மொண்சார்ங்கவில்லும், புடை

யார்புரிசங்கமும் இந்தப்பூதலங்காப்பதற்கென்று, இடையே யிராமாநுசமுநி

யாயின விந்நிலத்தே

aṭaiyārkamalattualarmakaḷkēḷvaṉkaiyāzhiyeṉ

ṉum, paṭaiyōṭu nāntakamum paṭartaṇṭu moṇcārṅkavillum, puṭai

yārpuricaṅkamum intappūtalaṅkāppataṟkeṉṟu, iṭaiyē yirāmānucamuni

yāyiṉa vinnilattē

The weapon called the discus, in the hand of the husband of the Lady of the close-petalled lotus, together with the sword Nāndaka, the spreading mace and the bright bow Śārṅga, and the curling conch at his side: to guard this earth, they became, in between, Rāmānuja Muni on this ground.

In his last dispositions Uḍaiyavar gave Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ the service of his own last form. When he entrusted his disciples to their teachers, he put Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ, Ukkalāzhvāṉ, Kōmaḍattāzhvāṉ, Cēṭṭalūr Ciṟiyāzhvāṉ, Vedāntiyāzhvāṉ and others into Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ's hands.

Then he looked at Bhaṭṭar, Kūreśa's son.

"As Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ were," he said, "so you, the ornament of the Kūra family, and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, the ornament of the Vādhūla family, keep the brotherhood that has come to you through us. Be as the verse says: 'their minds on Me, their lives given to Me, waking one another.'"

The account does not say who the first pair were. Kūrattāzhvāṉ was Bhaṭṭar's own father, and the Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ beside him may well be Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, whom the account first brought in as Kandāḍai Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ. The verse the account sings of Uḍaiyavar's going says the same in its own way: that before he went, he crowned the loving sons of Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ as servants.

When Uḍaiyavar went, Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ is the first named of those who cried out and fell like trees cut at the root. They lay writhing and helpless, their throats choked, the tears running down in streams.

When the Lord's own garments and garland came to the maṭam, the disciples rose, bathed the body and adorned it, and in the procession Bhaṭṭar, Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ and Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ went close about him, each carrying the things of his own service. Some copies say that Periya Perumāḷ would not let the body be carried outside, and that it was laid to rest within the temple enclosure, as the Āzhvār's had been, with Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, as close to him as Arjuna, keeping watch at his head. The same copies say that the Lord, grieving, told Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, Bhaṭṭar and the others to keep an avabhṛtha for Uḍaiyavar, the closing bath of a festival, as they kept one for the Lord himself.

Then all of them, Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ first, did everything that sons and disciples do, and bathed the avabhṛtha bath, and stayed grieving. Afterwards Āṇḍāṉ, with Namperumāḷ's leave, set up Emperumāṉār as an image in that very place, so that all might worship him and be raised. Some copies have only that they kept the festival and the rites of ten or twelve days and a great recitation. Those present said a verse: the lord of ascetics became an image at the place of his birth and at Śrīraṅgam.

After that Bhaṭṭar and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, in great brotherly love, went over together the meanings that had been taught in Uḍaiyavar's time. They kept his star, Tiruvātirai in Cittirai, as a great festival, and its return every month. When Anantāzhvāṉ came down from Tiruvēṅgaḍam and saw the signs by the Kāvēri and knew that Uḍaiyavar was gone, he was overcome with grief, and it was seeing Bhaṭṭar and Āṇḍāṉ that consoled him.

Of Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ himself the longer account keeps his star and two verses. His star is Punarvasu in Cittirai.

The first verse says:

பாதுகேயதிராஜஸ்ய கதயந்தியதாக்யயா - தஸ்ய

தாஶரதேஃபாதௌ ஶிரஸாதாரயாம்யஹம்

pātukēyatirājasya katayantiyatākyayā - tasya

tāśaratēḵpātau śirasātārayāmyaham

By whose name they call the sandals of the king of ascetics, of that Dāśarathi the feet I bear upon my head.

The second says:

அஜஹத்பாகிநேயத்வம்

பாதுகாத்வந்த்ரிதண்டதாம்-ஸம்ப்ராப்தோயதிராஜஸ்ய குணைஸ்தத்ப்ரீதிஹே

துபிஃ - ஸ்ரீவைஷ்ணவாநாந்தாஸத்வம் ஸ்வாமித்வம்ப்ரபுதாம்ஸ்வயம்-வாதூல

குலதேளரேயம் வந்தேதாஶரதிம் குரும்.

ajahatpākinēyatvam

pātukātvantritaṇṭatām-samprāptōyatirājasya kuṇaistatprītihē

tupiḵ - srīvaiṣṇavānāntāsatvam svāmitvampraputāmsvayam-vātūla

kulatēḷarēyam vantētāśaratim kurum.

Never letting go of being his sister's son, he came to be the sandals and the triple staff of the king of ascetics, by the qualities that won his love; the servant of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, and, of himself, their master and their lord. The Vādhūla family's yoke-bearer, Dāśarathi the teacher, I bow to him.