Parāśara Bhaṭṭar

One rainy season it rained at Śrīraṅgam until midday.

Kūrattāzhvāṉ, whom the Sanskrit calls Kūreśa, lived in those days on what he gathered each day from the houses of good people, and kept nothing in store. That day the hour for gathering went by in the rain, and there was nothing in the house. He bathed, washed the Lord's feet, offered a single fruit, took tīrtha, the holy water, and at evening worshipped Namperumāḷ and lay down hungry, with the Tiruvāymozhi for his food.

In the night the trumpets sounded for the Lord's great offering. His wife Āṇḍāḷ heard them. "Your devotee lies starving," she said to the Lord, "and what is this, that You eat with such delight?"

The words reached Periya Perumāḷ's ear. He came in a dream to Uttama Nambi, who was asleep on a veranda, and told him to carry a dish of akkāravaḍisil, the sweet rice of the temple, on his own head to Āzhvāṉ's door, with umbrella and chowrie and all the instruments. Uttama Nambi did it. Āzhvāṉ took the dish on his head as prasāda, the Lord's own food, ate two handfuls, one for himself and one for Āṇḍāḷ, and sent the rest away. Then he asked her what she had said, and when she told him he was displeased with her.

Those two handfuls, the account says, are the cause of the births of Bhaṭṭar and of Śrīrāmappiḷḷai.

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

Āzhvāṉ would not name him. "The naming, and everything that belongs to raising him up, is Uḍaiyavar's charge alone," he said, and he kept himself out of it.

So when the ten days of birth-impurity were over, on the second day after them, Emperumāṉār came to Āzhvāṉ's house. He looked at Embār. "Bring Āzhvāṉ's son," he said.

Embār went inside to Āṇḍāḷ. He took up the child, the young shoot of that house, and held him against his own chest, and so that no evil eye should fall on him he said the dvaya over him as he came. The dvaya is the two-line prayer of refuge, the jewel among mantras. Then he laid the child in Emperumāṉār's hands.

Uḍaiyavar looked at him, and his joy rose in him, and tears of bliss came. He saw the child's fresh light, the brightness of his face.

"Embār," he said. "The dvaya is fragrant here. What have you done?"

"I said the dvaya over him for his protection as I brought him."

"You have gone ahead of the part that was mine to do!" Uḍaiyavar said. He was glad of the care Embār had taken of the child's little body. "You shall have the charge of raising him up as well."

With his own hand he put the pañcāyudha on the tender child, the ornament of the Lord's five weapons. At the naming he had Embār's hand put the holy seal on him. And he gave him a name, the name of the sage who made the Viṣṇu Purāṇa: Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar.

The Sanskrit verses of the tradition call him Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭārya. Most often the account calls him simply Bhaṭṭar.

Years before, when Āḷavandār lay dead at Śrīraṅgam, three of his fingers had been folded. The disciples told Iḷaiyāzhvār of three things Āḷavandār had often spoken of, and one of them was his gratitude to Vyāsa and Parāśara. Iḷaiyāzhvār vowed to make good all three, and the fingers opened. With this naming, the account says, Uḍaiyavar took away Āḷavandār's second grief. Uttama Nambi said it in a verse of his own:

புத்ரீக்ருதோரங்கதுரந்தரேணபராஶரஃகூரகுலப்ரதீபஃ-கோவிந்தஶிஷ்யஸ்

ஸதுயாமுநார்ய மநோரதம்பூரிதவாந்த்விதீயம்

putrīkrutōraṅkaturantarēṇaparāśaraḵkūrakulapratīpaḵ-kōvintaśiṣyas

satuyāmunārya manōratampūritavāntvitīyam

Made a son by the one who bore the yoke of Raṅga, Parāśara, lamp of the Kūra line, Govinda's disciple, fulfilled the second wish of Yāmunārya.

The shorter account tells the birth more simply. Āzhvāṉ shared the prasāda with his wife, it says, and from that time she conceived, and two sons were born; and Emperumāṉār had Embār give the elder the name Parāśara Bhaṭṭar. So in one telling Uḍaiyavar gives the name and Embār sets the seal; in the other Embār gives the name at Uḍaiyavar's word.

The younger son was Śrīrāmappiḷḷai. The account does not tell his birth or his naming apart from his brother's.

After that Perumāḷ had Bhaṭṭar given turmeric water to drink, and took him as His own son. A cradle was set by the Tirumaṇattūṇ, the pillar of the Lord's wedding, and Nācciyār, the Lady of the temple, brought him up there with great tenderness. He grew up so much at home that before Perumāḷ had eaten, he would crawl over to the dishes laid out for the Lord, scoop from them, and eat.

When he was in his fifth year he heard Āzhvāṉ reciting "Neḍumāṟkaḍimai", and he stopped him.

"Sir," he said, "smallness and greatness contradict each other. Can the two lie in one thing? Then why does the Āzhvār say both together, 'siṟu-mā-maṉisar', small-great men?"

"Good," said Āzhvāṉ. "That is a fine question. You have not yet had the sacred thread, so we cannot convince you from the śāstras. We will show you by what you can see. Listen. Men like Siṟiyāccāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, whose bodies are small and whose knowledge is great: those are the ones it calls small-great men."

And the child was satisfied.

Another day he was playing in the holy street, dabbling in the dust. A man came along with great pomp, blowing a horn, and the cry went before him: "Sarvajña Bhaṭṭaṉ has come! The all-knowing scholar!"

"Who is this fellow," he said, "who comes blowing his horn as the all-knowing scholar, in the place where Uḍaiyavar and Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāṉ and Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār and Embār and the great ones live?"

He scooped up the dust in both hands and held it out.

"You know everything, do you not? How much is this? Tell me."

The man could say nothing. He stood ashamed, his mouth shut, his head bowed.

"Wretch," said Bhaṭṭar. "You could have said, it is a handful of dust. You could not, and you go about blowing your horn as all-knowing, and now you have turned out to know nothing. From now on throw away your title and your pomp." And then, in a small child's lisp: "Take his horn away from him too."

"Whose son is he?" the man asked.

"Āzhvāṉ's son," the people there told him.

"Does the young of a creature that flies go crawling?" the man said, amazed. He set Bhaṭṭar in his own palanquin and carried him to the gate of Āzhvāṉ's house.

Poṉṉācciyār saw it, and heard what the little one had done. She snatched him up and said the dvaya over him for his protection. "Must he go and do, all by himself, feats of valour beyond his size? My lord! I who have the womb that bore you, what shall I do now?" She covered him with the end of her sari and took him inside, vexed. "Do they let him out into the holy street, for the evil eye to fall on him?" She gave him into Āṇḍāḷ's hands. Then she sprinkled him with the water of the holy feet, and held her stomach in dread.

"Will he stay long in this world?" she said.

The account does not say who Poṉṉācciyār was in that house.

After his sacred thread they set him to the Veda. One day he learned a lesson by repeating it after the teacher. The next day, when the class began going over the same lesson again, he got up from the place of recitation and went and sat down to play.

Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāḷ heard of it. "Everyone else is studying," they said, "and you have come away. Why?"

"They are reciting what they have already recited."

"Then recite the section you learned yesterday."

He recited it aloud, exactly as it had been taught.

Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāḷ were afraid. They talked it over between themselves. "We must not let him study for a little while," they said.

After that Āzhvāṉ and Embār taught him themselves, the meanings and the truths of the darśana. Embār's taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, tells of it:

பட்டார்யாயப்ரபத்திம்வ்யபதிஶததுலந் த்ரா

விடாம்நாயமௌலே ர்த்தம்ஸ்ரீபாஷ்யமந்யாநபிசயதிவராதேஶதோஉந்யாத்

ரஹஸ்யாந்-யஸ்சோக்தோ தேஶிகேந்த்ரோயதிபதிசரணச்சாயநாமார்யவர்யஸ்

தங்கோவிந்தார்யமஸ்மத்குலகுருமமிதஜ்ஞாநவைராக்யமீடே

paṭṭāryāyaprapattimvyapatiśatatulan trā

viṭāmnāyamaulē rttamsrīpāṣyamanyānapicayativarātēśatōunyāt

rahasyān-yascōktō tēśikēntrōyatipaticaraṇaccāyanāmāryavaryas

taṅkōvintāryamasmatkulakurumamitajñānavairākyamīṭē

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

Once Perumāḷ had drawn the curtain and was alone, and Bhaṭṭar went in to worship His feet. Perumāḷ was displeased, and had him sent out. When he had gone, Perumāḷ said, "Call him back. A summons for our Bhaṭṭar!"

Bhaṭṭar came in and prostrated and stood.

"When we sent you out," said Perumāḷ, "what were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of You as Perumāḷ and the Nācciyārs."

"And before? How did you think of us before?"

"As Āzhvāṉ and Āṇḍāḷ."

"By our oath," said Perumāḷ. "Think of us as you did before."

When Bhaṭṭar was of an age to marry, Āzhvāṉ went to Uḍaiyavar. "How are we to have the boy married?" he said. "Our relations by birth are worldly people."

Uḍaiyavar told him to bring a bride from the Śrīvaiṣṇava families who were kin to Periya Nambi, Mahāpūrṇa. In sūtra and śākhā, in being brahmins and in being Vaiṣṇavas, he said, that would be a great refuge, and nothing would stand in the way.

Āzhvāṉ agreed. He talked it over with Āṇḍāḷ, and with Uḍaiyavar going before them they asked that family for a girl. The family saw Bhaṭṭar's good birth and wanted to give her, but it was a new connection, and for a time they would not consent.

One day Āṇḍāḷ said to Āzhvāṉ, "The children have grown up. Should we not get something 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 and something should be done."

"Is that your burden?" said Perumāḷ. "Is it not ours? We will see it done properly. You go."

And He showed the girl's family a dream. The next day they came of themselves. "We give her," they said. They gave Akkacci to Bhaṭṭar with the pouring of water, and held a very grand wedding.

Bhaṭṭar grew up among Uḍaiyavar's disciples, and he and his brother are counted among them.

When the account sets down the names of all who took refuge at the feet of Śrī Bhāṣyakārar, the maker of the Śrī Bhāṣya, at Kōyil, it gives the Bhaṭṭars as one company, and Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar stands at their head. Among the seventy-four ācāryas who sat on lion-thrones about Emperumāṉār, Kūrattāzhvāṉ's two sons, Bhaṭṭar and Śrīrāmappiḷḷai, are named together as one seat; the shorter account gives each of them a seat of his own. And when the daily services of the disciples were set down, Kūrattāzhvāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ and the Bhaṭṭars were to be Uḍaiyavar's companions in the study of the Śrī Bhāṣya.

The shorter account remembers one work from those days. When Bhaṭṭar had received the tirumantra and the rest from Embār and had grown up, Emperumāṉār called him and told him to write a commentary on the Thousand Names of Viṣṇu. Bhaṭṭar wrote it, and Emperumāṉār ordered that it be read in the daily exposition as the commentary. Vaḍuga Nambi put it into a verse, the account says:

பட்டாரகந் தஞ்ச பராஶராக்யங்

க்ருத்வா க்ருதந் தேந ஸஹஸ்ரநாம்நாம் |

பாஷ்யம் ப்ரதிஷ்டாப்ய ச யாமுநார்ய-

மநோரதம் பூரிதவாந் த்விதீயம் ||

paṭṭārakan tañca parāśarākyaṅ

krutvā krutan tēna sahasranāmnām |

pāṣyam pratiṣṭāpya ca yāmunārya-

manōratam pūritavān tvitīyam ||

He named the child Bhaṭṭāraka, called Parāśara; the commentary that child made on the Thousand Names he established; and so Yāmunārya's second wish he fulfilled.

The company of the Bhaṭṭars also holds a Śrī Vedavyāsa Bhaṭṭar. The account does not say who he was, or whether he was Śrīrāmappiḷḷai, but it remembers him for one gathering. At Tirunārāyaṇapuram he held an assembly in Emperumāṉār's own presence and expounded the Śrī Bhāṣya. Fifty-two of those who heard him said, "This is like the Gaṅgā in flood. We cannot go down into it."

"If so," said Vedavyāsa Bhaṭṭar, "then be saved by holding that the feet of Emperumāṉār, your family's own deity, alone are the refuge."

Another account, kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple, says how a reading came into that family. Periya Kōyil Nambi, who had been the temple's purohita, grew detached from the temple and gave his office to Āzhvāṉ, and with it the reading of the Purāṇa before the Lord and the brahmaratha, the chariot in which the reader is drawn round the holy streets. On Uttāna Dvādaśī, at the festival, the old story of Kaiśika, which once happened at Tirukkuṟuṅguḍi, was read before the Lord, and from then on the reading of the Kaiśika Purāṇa and the riding of the brahmaratha went to Āzhvāṉ alone.

Then Āzhvāṉ's own time came. He called Bhaṭṭar and Śrīrāmappiḷḷai to him and gave them his last charge. While Perumāḷ and Nācciyār were there, he said, they would lack nothing. They were not to rest on the thought that Namperumāḷ had fathered them and brought them up, but to hold that Emperumāṉār's feet alone were their refuge, to do as Āṇḍāḷ told them, and never to offend a bhāgavata, a devotee of the Lord, in thought or word or deed.

The two of them lay fallen at his feet. He lifted them up and wiped their tears with his own hand. And that same day he went to the sacred land, as Kūreśa's own story tells.

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

So it fell to Bhaṭṭar, as the son, to bathe his father with the hymns and carry him out. He cremated him by the brahmamedha, the rite for one who has known Brahman, and through the twelve days he did the rites the śāstras lay down. He brought Uḍaiyavar and the disciples to the house, received the water from the bhāgavatas' feet, recited the Tiruvāymozhi, and fed and honoured the Śrīvaiṣṇavas. The shorter account says it was Uḍaiyavar who had him do those rites, and who set then the order of the recitation that was to be kept from that day whenever a Śrīvaiṣṇava went to the sacred land.

The next day Uḍaiyavar took Bhaṭṭar with him to worship Namperumāḷ. In the Azhagiyamaṇavāḷaṉ hall he prostrated, and then he took Bhaṭṭar by the hand and set him at the feet of Periya Perumāḷ.

Perumāḷ drank turmeric water once more and took Bhaṭṭar specially as His son. And through the priest He spoke to him. "Do not be troubled, thinking, we have lost Āzhvāṉ. Think of us as Āzhvāṉ."

Uḍaiyavar was glad of it. "May Your Grace give him long life," he said to the Lord. "I will see that he learns."

Perumāḷ did not open His mouth. He gave tīrtha and prasāda, and leave to go.

Uḍaiyavar brought Bhaṭṭar back to his own maṭha and looked at Embār. "Train him in the śāstras," he said, "so that he becomes one who carries on our darśana." He gave Bhaṭṭar into Embār's hands, and went on expounding the Lord's glory to the disciples.

The account has kept one quarrel from those years.

Amudaṉār was displeased with Bhaṭṭar. "You were born of the pride of Āzhvāṉ's betel leaf," he said. "Was I not born of the pride of Āzhvāṉ's knowledge?"

"The words are fine," said Bhaṭṭar. "But he has said them of himself."

The account does not explain the betel leaf. It says only that to praise oneself out of pride in one's ācārya does not suit what a servant of the Lord is.

When Emperumāṉār's last days came, he made his dispositions before the whole assembly.

He gave Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ the lion-throne of the Śrī Bhāṣya, to carry on its teaching. Then, over and above the rank of Vedāntācārya, the teacher of the Vedānta, that had been given before, he gave Periya Bhaṭṭar, the elder Bhaṭṭar, the lion-throne of the Śrīsūkti, the throne of the teaching of prapatti, because he was of the royal line of which an old verse says that it has crossed the Lord's māyā by the strength of prapatti. He gave Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's son, the service of his carama-vigraha, the image of his last form. And he looked at Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ and the other disciples. "Be agreeable to Bhaṭṭar," he said.

He called all the companies that served the temple and asked their pardon. They wept. "Is there any fault on your side?" they said. "How shall we bear losing you, the one life of all the worlds?"

"While the beautiful Raṅgaṉ lies here facing the south," Uḍaiyavar said, "you will lack nothing. In the affairs of Periya Perumāḷ, put Bhaṭṭar first. Keep Namperumāḷ's service without lack, and hold the Śrīvaiṣṇavas close."

Then he gave them all into Bhaṭṭar's hand. And he looked at Bhaṭṭar. "Keep up the worship of Periya Perumāḷ in abundance," he said, "who is father and mother to you. And conduct our darśana, and examine it well."

Some copies of the account do not have these dispositions at all. In their place they have Uḍaiyavar asked by his grieving disciples what they should do now, and answering, "Is it only going on fasting and breaking fast that you do?"

After he had taught the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, Emperumāṉār went to Namperumāḷ's presence and took Bhaṭṭar with him. He worshipped, and he had the tīrtha and prasāda given to Bhaṭṭar first, and only then took them himself. He turned to the disciples and pointed to Bhaṭṭar.

"From now on, this one carries the darśana."

Then he said to him, "Come, Bhaṭṭar. We have heard that in the western country there is a great scholar called Vedānti. Go up there, and set him right, so that he too carries our darśana."

Back at the maṭha he bound all the disciples by his oath to do nothing rash when he was gone, and had them touch his feet and take the vow. And he gave the disciples into the keeping of his chief men, by name, group by group. Bhaṭṭar was in the group he gave to Embār, with Kaṇiyaṉūr Ciṟiyāccāṉ, Caṭṭampaḷḷi Cīyar, Periyāṇḍāṉ, Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ and others.

He had one more word for Bhaṭṭar. "Like Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ," he said, "you, the ornament of the Kūra family, and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, the ornament of the Vādhūla family, keep the close 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."

When he had gone to the sacred land and his body was borne through the streets of Śrīraṅgam, the disciples walked about it each carrying the things of his own service, and Bhaṭṭar walked there with Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ and Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ. And Perumāḷ, grieving, looked at Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ and Bhaṭṭar and the others and told them to keep a closing festival for Uḍaiyavar as they kept His own; not every copy of the account has this.

Afterwards, the account says, Bhaṭṭar and Kandāḍai Āṇḍāṉ, in their great brotherly love, would consult each other on the special meanings that had been taught in Uḍaiyavar's day. They kept his birth-star, Tiruvātirai in the month of Cittirai, as a great festival, and its return every month as well, as the birth-stars of Rāma and Kṛṣṇa and the Āzhvārs are kept. They made his greatness known, and they consoled themselves together with Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ and the others.

Anantāzhvāṉ came down from the Tiruvēṅkaṭam country with Śrī Guhadāsar and others to learn what had happened. Near the Kāvēri he saw the signs of it, and knew that Uḍaiyavar had gone, and grief took him. Then he saw Bhaṭṭar and Āṇḍāṉ, and he was consoled, and went straight back to his own town.

From every side they came. From the Cōzha country in the east, Eccāṉ and others. From the Pāṇḍya country in the south, Yāmunācārya the son of Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Nambi, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, and Cokkattēvar, and Sundarattōḷuḍaiyār the son of Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ, Mālādhara. From the western country Sōmāsiyāṇḍāṉ, Marudūr Nambi and Toṇḍaṉūr Nambi, and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas of Tirunārāyaṇapuram and the other places Emperumāṉār had set right there, and everyone else from every other land. They came to Kōyil in a great crowd, and they grieved bitterly for Emperumāṉār.

Then they worshipped Bhaṭṭar, and all their grief was ended. They saw Bhaṭṭar as they had seen Emperumāṉār, their chosen deity. They asked of him what each one needed, and they had it, and out of what they had received they spoke verses in his praise.

ஸ்ரீபராஶரபட்டார்ய

சரணௌஸம்ஶ்ரயேமஹி - யத்வக்த்ரரங்கேரங்கேஶகோஷ்ட்யாம்ப்ராஹ்மீ

ப்ரந்ருத்யதி

srīparāśarapaṭṭārya

caraṇausamśrayēmahi - yatvaktraraṅkēraṅkēśakōṣṭyāmprāhmī

pranrutyati

Of Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭārya let us take refuge at the feet, on the stage of whose mouth, in the assembly of the Lord of Raṅga, Speech herself dances.

ப்ரமாணநகநிர்ப்பிண்ணவாதிமத்தேபமஸ்தகஃ-ராஜதேநிம

மாந்கர்ஜந்ஸ்ரீபராஶரகேஸரீ

pramāṇanakanirppiṇṇavātimattēpamastakaḵ-rājatēnima

mānkarjansrīparāśarakēsarī

He has torn open with the claws of the scriptures the heads of the rutting elephants that are the disputants; he shines, roaring out the Vedas, the lion, Śrī Parāśara.

ஸ்ரீபராஶரபட்டார்யம்பூயோபூயோநமாம்ய

ஹம்-யதாத்மநாஸ்வயம்ரங்கீ பேஜேகூரேஶபுத்ரதாம்

srīparāśarapaṭṭāryampūyōpūyōnamāmya

ham-yatātmanāsvayamraṅkī pējēkūrēśaputratām

Again and again I bow to Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭārya, in whose person the Lord of Raṅga Himself took on being Kūreśa's son.

Then, with his leave, they went back each to his own town.

Not every copy of the account keeps these last three things, the festival, Anantāzhvāṉ's coming, and the crowd at Bhaṭṭar's feet.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple remembers the same succession in its own way. Because Bhaṭṭar carried on the darśana after Uḍaiyavar, it says, there is a service still done for it: when the Lord in procession reaches the Kulōttuṅgac-Cōzhaṉ hall in the Kulaśēkharaṉ street, the work he composed is brought to its close there.

Embār lived on a while after Uḍaiyavar and went on expounding to the disciples, Bhaṭṭar first among them, the special meanings Uḍaiyavar had taught. When at last he took leave of Periya Perumāḷ to go to Uḍaiyavar's feet, he called Bhaṭṭar to him at the maṭha.

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

He gave Kaṇiyaṉūr Ciṟiyāccāṉ, Caṭṭampaḷḷi Cīyar, Īccampāḍi Cīyar and the other disciples into Bhaṭṭar's hand, to be taught the special meanings Uḍaiyavar taught, and he blessed him, and went to the sacred land. Embār's own life tells that day in full.

Bhaṭṭar could not bear the parting from his ācārya. He was overcome with grief.

The disciples near him comforted him. "Come, Bhaṭṭar," they said. "May Your Honour grieve like this?"

While he was gathering himself, the companies of the temple came with the things Perumāḷ had worn and laid aside, and Embār was laid to rest by the rule for an ascetic, with the brahmamedha done in full by the hand of Siṟiya Govindapperumāḷ, Embār's younger brother.

After that, Bhaṭṭar sat at the head of a great assembly with the disciples and carried on the darśana.

A brahmin came there who wandered from one holy water to the next. He saluted Bhaṭṭar and heard him expound the Vedānta, and saw how great the assembly was, and he stood up and said, "Bhaṭṭar! In the western country there is a great scholar called Vedānti. You have learning like his, and an assembly like his."

"Is that so?" said Bhaṭṭar. "Is there such a scholar?"

"There is," said the brahmin, and he set out and went to the western country. He went into Vedānti's assembly. "Vedāntigaḷ!" he said. "There is one called Bhaṭṭar, who lives between the two rivers. He is your equal in learning and in his assembly."

"Is that so? Is Bhaṭṭar a scholar equal to us?"

"Bhaṭṭar is greater than you."

"Which śāstra is he master of?"

"All of them," said the brahmin. "Grammar, logic, the earlier and the later Mīmāṃsā. All the śāstras are in Bhaṭṭar's hand."

Vedānti heard him. "We thought no one in this world was our rival," he said. "We had set ourselves above all six darśanas. And the brahmin says Bhaṭṭar is greater than we are!" From that day he was uneasy.

The brahmin came back to Kōyil, as the Tamil calls Śrīraṅgam, and into Bhaṭṭar's presence. "Bhaṭṭar," he said, "I told Vedānti all your greatness."

"And what did he say to that?"

"He asked what śāstra Bhaṭṭar is master of."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I told him Bhaṭṭar knows grammar and logic, and the earlier and the later Mīmāṃsā."

"You are a cultured man," said Bhaṭṭar. "You have gone about every land and you know the measure of everyone's learning. And you did not tell Vedānti all that I am master of. You told him only the śāstras."

"Apart from the śāstras that are current in this world," said the brahmin, "what else should I have told him you know?"

Bhaṭṭar was displeased. "You did not tell Vedānti that I am master of the Tiruneḍuntāṇḍakam!"

The brahmin went back to the western country and told Vedānti. Vedānti wondered at it. "The very word Tiruneḍuntāṇḍakam means nothing to me," he said. "What kind of scholar can he be?"

Meanwhile Bhaṭṭar had made up his mind. What Uḍaiyavar had told him to do, to set Vedānti right so that he came into their darśana, must be done.

He went to Perumāḷ's presence, saluted, and stood. "Lord," he said, "in the western country there is a great scholar called Vedānti. I am taking leave to go there, to set him right and make him one who carries our darśana. Will that he be well set right, and that he come to uphold the teaching of Śrī Rāmānuja."

"So be it," said Perumāḷ, and He was pleased. "Go quickly, and come back." And He gave His son tīrtha and garland and the cloth of honour, and many of His own ornaments, and dancing and song and instruments, and all His own retinue and furnishings, and sent him off.

Bhaṭṭar set out for the western country and halted near Siṟupputtūr, on the bank of the Kāvēri.

Anantāzhvāṉ heard that Āzhvāṉ's son had come, and set out at once. He found Bhaṭṭar on the bank of the river and saluted him. "Alas!" he said. "One as delicate as you, was it right for you to come so far, over forest and hill?"

Bhaṭṭar fell at his feet. "Uḍaiyavar commanded me," he said, "to go to the western country and set Vedānti right and make him one who carries our darśana. Namperumāḷ has given me leave, and sent me."

"King of our clan!" said Anantāzhvāṉ. "Come." He lifted Bhaṭṭar up, and embraced him, and took him along.

They came to Yādavādri, the hill of the Yādavas, which the old verses praise: into the land of those who so much as long to go there, they say, the servants of Yama never go; the thousand-peaked hill is Śeṣa himself, the Lord's own serpent, and the Lord delights there with His Lady more than in Vaikuṇṭha; and all who dwell in Vaikuṇṭha have come down and taken birth there as beasts and plants, to have the Lord's nearness and His ease of reach. Bhaṭṭar climbed the red-gold hill like a man climbing onto the Lord's footstool, and came to the Kalyāṇa pool, whose water, the verses say, washes away every sin there is.

He bathed in it, and put on the twelve holy names. The Fifty-two of that place came out to meet him with all the others, carrying the śaṭhakōpa, the crown of the Lord's feet. He prostrated with all eight limbs and went into the holy town. He went first to Uḍaiyavar's shrine, and worshipped with the verse that begins "yo nityam" and ends "I take refuge in the feet of Rāmānuja"; and with Uḍaiyavar as the one who speaks for him, he went round the temple. He worshipped the Discus and Yadugiri Nācciyār, Nammāzhvār and Tirumaṅgaiyāzhvār. He worshipped the feet of Selvappiḷḷai and stood lost in the beauty of that image, and Selvappiḷḷai was pleased and gave him tīrtha and garland and the śaṭhakōpa. He took leave of the door-keepers, went in, recited the Tiruppallāṇḍu, and worshipped Tirunārāyaṇapperumāḷ from His feet to His crown. And Tirunārāyaṇar, with great delight, gave him garland and cloth and tīrtha and śaṭhakōpa, and leave to go.

Bhaṭṭar went on with Anantāzhvāṉ. As they came near the village where Vedānti lived, the long trumpets sounded, and the heralds cried: "Āzhvāṉ's son Bhaṭṭar has come! Aṇiyaraṅgaṉ's son Bhaṭṭar has come! Vedāntācārya Bhaṭṭar has come! The one leader of the Vedic scholars has come! Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar has come! The lion to the rutting elephants of rival disputants has come!" He went in a great crowd, with great pomp, in all his ornaments, under umbrella and chowries and fans, in a jewelled palanquin.

Two brahmins came toward him. "Who are you?" they said. "You come in such state. Where are you going?"

"We are Śrīraṅgarāja Bhaṭṭar," he said. "We are going to debate with Vedānti."

"If you come like this you will never see Vedānti," they said. "He stays inside his house. His disciples, and their disciples, sit at the main gate and debate with the scholars who come, for four months or six, and never let them in, and push them out again."

"Then how can we go straight in," Bhaṭṭar asked, "and see Vedānti in his house?"

"Vedānti is wealthy," they said. "He feeds brahmins in his satra, his free hall, without stint, and he watches them eat. Mix with the brahmins who eat there, and take on their look, and go in with them. That is where you can see Vedānti. Leave all this pomp here and go in alone among the satra-eaters." And they went away.

Bhaṭṭar thought it was sound advice. He left his whole retinue far from the village. He took off every ornament he wore. He pinned a pipal leaf into a cup and took it, put on an ochre cloth, and took a water-pot in his hand, and in the guise of a pauper he and Anantāzhvāṉ went in together among the satra-eaters.

Vedānti sat in a maṇḍapa, high on six seats laid one on another, watching the brahmins eat. The brahmins all went into the satra hall. Bhaṭṭar did not. He went straight toward Vedānti.

"Boy," said Vedānti. "Why do you come here?"

"I have come for alms."

"Go where everyone is eating, then, for your alms."

"Mine is not alms of rice."

Vedānti thought, He eats at the satra, but he may have a little learning. "Kā bhikṣā?" he said in Sanskrit. What alms?

"Tarka-bhikṣā," said Bhaṭṭar. The alms of debate.

Vedānti started. There is no one in this world, he thought, who could come and stand before us without shrinking and ask for the alms of debate, but the Bhaṭṭar the wandering brahmin told us of. His guise is a pauper's, but this must be Bhaṭṭar.

"You have asked us for the alms of debate," he said. "Are you Bhaṭṭar?"

"Yes," said Bhaṭṭar. He rolled up the water-pot and the leaf cup and the ochre cloth and threw them all away, and sat down, and began to expound with great force.

Vedānti had heard of his greatness, and still he wanted to see the measure of his learning for himself, and he debated with him. They went at each other like two rutting elephants locked together. Nine days went by so. On the tenth day, in the course of the debate, Bhaṭṭar refuted the doctrine of illusion a hundred ways over, and showed that everything means Viśiṣṭādvaita.

Vedānti rose and stood there trembling.

"I took you for a man," he said. "There is no difference between Namperumāḷ and you. He is the Perumāḷ who lies down, and you are the Perumāḷ who walks about. I cannot open my mouth to say a word."

He came forward with his cloth slipping and his hair loose, and fell full length at Bhaṭṭar's feet, and begged him again and again, "You must have mercy on me."

Bhaṭṭar was very glad that what he had come for had come to fruit so soon. He took Vedānti for his own, and gave him the pañcasaṃskāra, the five sacraments that make a Śrīvaiṣṇava, beginning with the mark of the discus and the upright mark on the brow, and gave him the knowledge of the five meanings, so that he became, as the verse says, a great bhāgavata. He looked on him with special grace.

"Vedānti," he said, "you know everything. There is nothing we need tell you at length. Viśiṣṭādvaita alone is the truth. Give up the way of illusion, with every trace of it. Hold to the Lord of Śrī, and carry on the teaching of Śrī Rāmānuja alone."

And he told him to recite the Four Thousand, the sacred songs of the Āzhvārs.

"Now we go to worship Namperumāḷ," Bhaṭṭar said, and made ready to leave.

Just then the whole retinue that had been left outside the village came in. They gathered round him in all their state and worshipped him, and adorned him with all his ornaments as before, and set him in the jewelled palanquin, and plied the paired chowries and fans, and sounded the instruments and blew the long trumpets, and he set out.

Vedānti saw it. He looked a long time at Bhaṭṭar's greatness and his splendour.

"This great one came all this way," he said, "over forest and hill and hardship, and has taken me, the lowest of those forever bound in this world, a speaker of falsehood, and he took my wretchedness itself as the reason!"

His eyes filled with tears, and he fell again at Bhaṭṭar's feet.

"You came with all this beauty and tenderness," he said, "being the very nature of Periya Perumāḷ, thinking that this soul, which has slipped away since time without beginning, and slipped out of reach even of that long, broad, labouring hand, would get away further still. And you took on the guise of utter poverty, and came in with the satra-eaters, and took me for your own, me, so proud. When I think of that guise I cannot bear it."

He wept aloud and lay at Bhaṭṭar's feet.

Bhaṭṭar raised him by the head and stood him on his feet and comforted him. "Stay here happily," he said, "given wholly to the worship of the Lord's own devotees." And he set out for Kōyil.

On the way he saw far off the shrine of Narasiṃha on its cloud-kissed peak, and saluted it with joined hands. He went back by Tirunārāyaṇapuram, with Anantāzhvāṉ leading him, and worshipped at the holy places of that hill and bathed in its sacred waters and in the Kalyāṇa pool among them, and worshipped as before, without missing a step of the order. He came down the hill, left Anantāzhvāṉ at Siṟupputtūr, and hurried on to Kōyil.

He bathed in the Kāvēri and put on the twelve marks, and went in with all his retinue, and the trumpets cried, "Vedāntācārya Bhaṭṭar has come! The clever one who conquered Vedānti has come!" The devotees of Aṇiyaraṅgaṉ's courts came out to meet him. He worshipped in order and went in, and stood before the Lord praising with a full mouth. Perumāḷ, with great love, gave him garland and cloth, tīrtha and śaṭhakōpa, and sent him home.

Bhaṭṭar went to his house and worshipped Āṇḍāḷ, his mother, there. And he stayed, and carried on the darśana for the disciples.

Some time after, Vedānti was away from home, worshipping the Lord's devotees, when two Śrīvaiṣṇavas came to his house worn out. "Hunger is tormenting us," they said. "Give us food."

Vedānti had two wives. They looked at the two men. "Your Vedānti has gone to bathe at the holy water," they said. "There is nothing here. Go over there." And they sent them off without a thought.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas went and told Vedānti. He was grieved. He went home and raged at both his wives, and wanted to leave for Kōyil at once; the people there held him back.

He had wealth without end. He divided it into three shares. Two he gave to his two wives. The third he had taken up for his own ācārya. Then he left that country and everything that bound him to it. The śāstra says that a man whose wife is not fit to honour guests may leave her and take sannyāsa, and he did that, there, giving up every attachment first.

On his way to Kōyil he came to Siṟupputtūr on the bank of the Kāvēri, and saw Anantāzhvāṉ, and stood worshipping him.

"Come, Vedānti," said Anantāzhvāṉ. "A delicate man like you, should you do such a thing? If you had bathed when you sweated, and eaten when you were hungry, and stayed holding Bhaṭṭar's feet alone as your refuge, would anyone have pushed you out of Paramapada? Well, what of it now. Born in the tirumantra and grown up in the dvaya, you will become one given wholly to the dvaya." So he blessed him, and sent him on.

The account opens the blessing. To be born in the tirumantra, the eight-syllable mantra, is to have the true nobility of knowing oneself the Lord's servant. To grow up in the dvaya is to live in its first line, coming to the Lord through Periya Pirāṭṭiyār, the Lady, who speaks for us; and to hold to its second line, and be given wholly to service.

Vedānti went on by stages and came to Kōyil, and worshipped at Bhaṭṭar's feet. He gave up every thought that the wealth he had brought was his own, and laid it at Bhaṭṭar's feet for Bhaṭṭar to use as he pleased, and stood there owning nothing.

Bhaṭṭar was very glad. "Our jīyar has come!" he said, and gathered him up and embraced him. A jīyar is an ascetic, a master among the renunciants. From then on Bhaṭṭar kept him at his side and would not be parted from him even for a moment, and taught him all the meanings. And the jīyar knew no god but Bhaṭṭar.

From the day Bhaṭṭar called him "our jīyar" and embraced him, Vedānti had the name Nañjīyar.

Bhaṭṭar had a word for him, the same kind of word Embār had once given Bhaṭṭar. "Do not grow proud," he told him, "thinking, we bear the name Vedānti, we took refuge, we gave great wealth to our ācārya. Hold Emperumāṉār's feet alone as your refuge."

Once Nañjīyar asked Bhaṭṭar, "What is in Perumāḷ's heart, that He lies asleep here on the bank of the Candrapuṣkariṇī?"

"Was it not only after the cry went up, 'Nārāyaṇā! Maṇivaṇṇā! You who lie on the serpent!', that He came to the bank of that pool?" said Bhaṭṭar. "He lies here to lift me out before I cry. He has come ahead of time and lies on the bank of the pool where I am caught, that is all. And you did not ask this of your own will. Namperumāḷ has drawn my thought out through you."

The account says that those whose knowledge is deep take every one of the Lord's descents as made for their own sake.

Once Nañjīyar began to put the pole of the palanquin on his own shoulder, to carry Bhaṭṭar.

"That goes against your ascetic's guise," said Bhaṭṭar.

"I took up this guise thinking it suited the service there is to do for you," said the jīyar. "If the guise itself stands in the way of that, I will put on the white cloth again."

The account says that even the dharma of one's caste and order of life is to be let go when it does not fit the service of one's ācārya.

When Bhaṭṭar's family was staying at Kūrakulōttamaṉ, some small harm came to the flower garden there, and Nañjīyar heard that the ekāṅgis who tended it, the single-minded servants of the temple, had said things about it. He called them.

"Do you think I keep this garden because Namperumāḷ's hair smells of tangles?" he said. "Did I not plan the garden, under that pretext, only so that Bhaṭṭar's family could have it to use as they please?" And he rebuked them and sent them off.

For one who depends on his ācārya, the account says, even the service he means for the Lord is for the sake of serving his ācārya.

Another time Bhaṭṭar was going to bathe at Tiruvaṇai. He had walked all day and was tired, and where they stopped he lay down at the foot of a bush with his head in Nañjīyar's lap and slept. Nañjīyar sat the whole night through without shifting his thighs or stirring.

To be a bed for the ācārya, the account says, holding even one's breath, is the fulfilment of what a disciple is.

Coming back from Tiruvaṇai, evening fell, and Bhaṭṭar went to a village called Pādiri and into a hunter's house. The hunter pulled away the seat he had been sitting on and threw it aside, and set up a cot for Bhaṭṭar.

Bhaṭṭar sat on it, and thought. This man did not do this knowing who I am. He did not do it for fame. He did not do it because I ever helped him. It is only the feeling, he has come into our house, that made him do so much. Then how must Īśvara feel toward those who have taken shelter under His regard?

He asked the man, "What news is there here?"

"Master," said the hunter, "I went hunting in the forest, and I caught a young hare. Its mother came and lay down in the path before me as if she were bowing. When I saw that, pity rose in me, and I let her young one go."

"What a creature does not have," said Bhaṭṭar, "the Lord has! Nobody taught that hare, Take refuge in Me alone. Nobody taught this hunter, Even an enemy must be protected, by one who is master of himself, at the cost of his own life. And still, with no one standing between, it bore fruit! How plain the proof is!"

He told it to Nañjīyar, and went back to Kōyil, and went on expounding as before.

In those days Vīrasundarabrahmarāyaṉ was building the wall of the Lord's temple, and the house of Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ, in whose lap Āzhvāṉ had laid his head when he died, stood in its line.

"His house must come down," Vīrasundaraṉ said, "and the wall go up."

"Is your wall the Lord's protection?" said Bhaṭṭar. "His protection is that devotee's blessing on Him. Did not Tirumaṅgaiyāzhvār long ago build the wall swerving aside, to spare the place where Toṇḍaraḍippoḍiyāzhvār made his garlands? You do the same now. Leave his house, and bend the wall round it."

Vīrasundaraṉ had no fear of him for being his ācārya's son. He overrode his word, pulled the house down and built the wall, and harassed Bhaṭṭar so greatly that he could not stay even in Kōyil.

Bhaṭṭar left Kōyil and set out for Tirukkōṭṭiyūr. On the way he grew weary. "I do not see Nañjīyar coming now," he said.

Nañjīyar came running, calling "Jīyā! Jīyā!", with food packed for the road and water to drink. He fed Bhaṭṭar quickly and refreshed him, and Bhaṭṭar turned on him then too a special look of grace.

One becomes a vessel of the ācārya's grace, the account says, by such acts of attendance.

At Tirukkōṭṭiyūr he stayed. He grieved greatly at being parted from Kōyil and from Perumāḷ. He would say a verse of his longing:

பூகீகண்ட

த்வயஸஸரஸஸ்நிக்தநீரோபகண்டா மாவிர்மோதஸ்திமிதஶகுநாநூதிதப்ரஹ்ம

கோஷாம் - மார்க்கேமார்க்கேபதிகநிவஹை ருஞ்ச்யமாநாபவர்க்காம் பஶ்யே

யந்தாம்புநரபிபுரீம்ஸ்ரீமதீம்ரங்கதாம்நஃ

pūkīkaṇṭa

tvayasasarasasniktanīrōpakaṇṭā māvirmōtastimitaśakunānūtitaprahma

kōṣām - mārkkēmārkkēpatikanivahai ruñcyamānāpavarkkām paśyē

yantāmpunarapipurīmsrīmatīmraṅkatāmnaḵ

Among the areca palms, its edges wet with lovely water, its sound of the Veda echoed by birds gone still with joy, and on every road the crowds of travellers gleaning release: may I see once more that glorious city of the Lord whose home is Raṅga.

And he would say the Tamil line, "When will be the day I see Him, and my eyes are cooled?"

A Śrīvaiṣṇava came to him there and worshipped him, and pressed him hard. "You must teach me the meaning of the Tiruviruttam, once through."

Bhaṭṭar looked at Nañjīyar. "Jīyā," he said. "My grief at being parted from Kōyil and from Perumāḷ is so great that I cannot open my mouth to say a word. You tell this Śrīvaiṣṇava the meaning of the Tiruviruttam, once through." And he gave the man over to the jīyar's feet.

While it went on so, Vīrasundaraṉ, who had stirred up Bhaṭṭar's heart as the sea is churned, died.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas in Kōyil who were serving Bhaṭṭar's mother Āṇḍāḷ cried out, "Bhaṭṭar's enemy is gone!" They knotted their upper cloths and threw them into the sky, and danced each where he stood, and went to tell Āṇḍāḷ.

Āṇḍāḷ went into the house and shut the doors and bolted them fast. She held her stomach in her pain, and wept aloud.

They heard her. "Why do you grieve," they said, "and not rejoice that the sinner is gone who stood against Bhaṭṭar and would not even let him stay here? Do you not want Bhaṭṭar's enemy gone, and Bhaṭṭar and the disciples back, and all of us living here together?"

"Children," said Āṇḍāḷ. "You understand nothing. Vīrasundaraṉ was Āzhvāṉ's own disciple. He saw Bhaṭṭar, his ācārya's son, in distress, and did him the great wrong to the full. And he died without once bowing his head at Bhaṭṭar's feet to say, I did it without knowing, forgive me; without even the remorse of saying, what have we done. So the moment he leaves his body Yama's servants will have him, and beat him until he shakes, and he will stare about him lost. He has lost the good that is unseen. I had thought that at least he would live some days longer and have the happiness that is seen. Has he not lost that too? That a soul bound to Āzhvāṉ's feet should be ruined like this! Not one of you knows how my stomach burns to think of it."

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

Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ heard the news, and went from Kōyil to Tirukkōṭṭiyūr and told it. Bhaṭṭar was glad. As the old song says, "Will you not come with your people and set your feet on my head?", he bowed again and again at Piḷḷaippiḷḷaiyāzhvāṉ's feet. That very hour he left Tirukkōṭṭiyūr with him and went up to Kōyil, and carried on the darśana as before.

The account keeps many of his sayings from the years at Śrīraṅgam, each with the occasion that drew it out.

Ammaṇiyāzhvāṉ walked two hundred kātams, the old measure of the road, to come to him. He prostrated at Bhaṭṭar's feet. "You must teach me one meaning," he said, "that will be my refuge."

Bhaṭṭar taught him the meaning of "neḍumāṟku aḍimai", servitude to the great Lord. "To know the Lord," he said, "is to know Him by half. To know His own is to know Him whole."

"Why say it many ways?" said Ammaṇiyāzhvāṉ. "I will only forget. This much is enough." And he took that one word as his food and went away.

A verse the account sets there says:

న్యగ్రోధబీజవటవ త్ప్రణవేశబ్దజాలవత్ । సిద్ధేతదీయశేషత్వే సర్వార్థాస్సమ్భ

వన్తిహి.

nyagrōdhabījavaṭava tpraṇavēśabdajālavat । siddhētadīyaśēṣatvē sarvārthāssambha

vantihi.

As the banyan lies in its seed, as all speech lies in the syllable Om, so when one has come to be the servant of the Lord's own, every aim is reached.

A good disciple, the account says, trusts the one last meaning his true ācārya gave him.

Vīraśikāmaṇi Pallavarāyaṉ came to him. "Bhaṭṭar," he said, "I do the king's business. I have no way to hear about the Lord. Give me one meaning that I can hold as my refuge."

"Keep in mind the open seashore," said Bhaṭṭar.

The man did not understand. He stood there wringing his hands.

"On the seashore," said Bhaṭṭar, "Perumāḷ lay encamped with the great monkey army, like an ocean of nectar, and on the far shore was that corpse-eater Rāvaṇa. The army, seventy crores of them, kept watch awake, their eyes on Perumāḷ. But they were creatures of nature, and when their legs grew weary and their hands went slack, they fell asleep. Then He Himself, with His divine younger brother, His girdle tied and His cloth tucked up, the quiver bound on His back, the arrow taken up and flicked and held in His hand, the bow borne, guarded that great army of the chiefs of the monkeys, as some creatures born from eggs keep their eggs under their wings, and went round on watch the whole night. Hold that the hand and the bow of that Emperor's son alone are your refuge, and stay at ease."

It need hardly be said, the account adds, that He who guards us while we sleep will look after us when we wake.

One day Tribhuvanavīradevarāyaṉ saw Bhaṭṭar's greatness and said, "Bhaṭṭar, come to us some day and go."

"Even if the hand of Perumāḷ that says Fear not should turn me away," said Bhaṭṭar, "is there any other door for me than that one?"

While there is a Lord who has vowed to protect all who come to Him, the account says, we shall not stand pining at the gate of some lesser man who owns a few villages.

One day Perumāḷ was seated in the tirukkaittalam, and Bhaṭṭar went to worship at His feet. The attendants who go before the Lord with canes, clearing the way, did not see who he was and spoke to him harshly. A Śrīvaiṣṇava of Bhaṭṭar's following began to answer them back.

"Come, child," said Bhaṭṭar. "Listen. I have never told Perumāḷ my faults in private, and He has never heard them. Now one of His own close attendants tells Him our faults in private, and Perumāḷ listens. What have you gained by stopping that?"

To have one's faults told to the Lord in private, the account says, is a sign of His tender love, and a cause of His taking one in.

A Śrīvaiṣṇava of Bhaṭṭar's following, a Somayājī who had performed the great sacrifices, asked him, "You must teach me the order of tiruvārādhana," the daily worship of the Lord in the house. Bhaṭṭar taught him from Uḍaiyavar's Nityam the full order of worship, a whole watch of the day long, and the man worshipped by it for a long time.

Then for a day or two he attended Bhaṭṭar's own worship, and saw none of that order in it. Bhaṭṭar bathed, put on a clean cloth and the upright mark, and when his dish of food had been brought in, he sat down before it. "Bring Teṟkāzhvār," he said. They brought the image. Bhaṭṭar held Him in his hand and fed Him the food that had been served for Bhaṭṭar himself, and the water set beside it, and then he took what was left as prasāda.

The Somayājī prostrated. "I have something to say," he said, "and I am afraid to say it."

"Say it without fear."

"You taught me to worship in that way, and you yourself worship in this way. Why?"

"When I searched all the śāstras," said Bhaṭṭar, "I found not one word to tell you but that way. When I looked at myself, I found not one word for doing anything but this."

The account says two things are seen in that. The ācārya who wishes a disciple well trains the senses that run among their objects according to the ripeness of that disciple's knowledge, as one ties a stick to a straying cow. And the ācārya's own way, given wholly to the Lord, shows what it means only to those who know what it is.

Someone asked Bhaṭṭar, "Why do the Śrīvaiṣṇavas not serve other gods?"

"There would be a doubt only if the scriptures contradicted one another," said Bhaṭṭar. "Here there is none. Those full of passion and darkness may serve those full of goodness. Should those full of goodness serve those full of passion and darkness?"

Āṇḍāḷ knew her son would never allow it. So she would have another Śrīvaiṣṇava wash Bhaṭṭar's feet, and she took that water as tīrtha.

A Śrīvaiṣṇava saw it. "You are his mother," he said. "May you do this?"

"What of it?" said Āṇḍāḷ. "If people take the tīrtha of the forms that others worship, why should I not take this one's?"

"But why?"

"Will they be able to think of the child who worships at Kaṇapuram as only a son?" she said, in the words of an old song.

Those who are greater in knowledge, the account says, are to be served as the Lord's own, even if they are one's disciples or one's sons.

Bhaṭṭar once sent a Śrīvaiṣṇava who served him to Akantāzhvāṉ. "Go and ask him what the marks of a Śrīvaiṣṇava are, and come back."

The man went. That day many Śrīvaiṣṇavas were eating at Akantāzhvāṉ's house, and there was no room, and he waited without a word until they had all eaten and risen. Then Akantāzhvāṉ saw him. "It has been so long!" he said. "You have had nothing to eat! You look worn out!" He was grieved, and had him served at once, and ate the food he and his wife had kept back for themselves, and sat down. "Where have you come from?"

"Bhaṭṭar sent me to ask you what the marks of a Śrīvaiṣṇava are."

"If so," said Akantāzhvāṉ, "they are like you."

Here the account has him say first that a Śrīvaiṣṇava is like a crane, and like a hen, and like salt, though many copies leave those words out. The answer, the account says, is that a Śrīvaiṣṇava does not want the front place in the assembly for pride in his learning or his practice, but wants only the back place, and loves to serve the Lord's own.

A Śrīvaiṣṇava who served Bhaṭṭar fell into bad company, and a hunger for the things of the senses rose in him. He came to Bhaṭṭar. "Bhaṭṭar," he said, "there is nothing more between you and me."

"Come, child," said Bhaṭṭar. "That is only your thought, is it not? Even if you leave us, will we leave you?"

The man tried to go. Bhaṭṭar held him by force. He took pains with him, correcting him by teaching him, and made him one of his close circle; and the man became deeply detached, and stood firm.

Not to let go even those who go away in ignorance, the account says, but to take pains to correct them and take them back, is the mark of a true ācārya.

One day Bhaṭṭar and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas were sitting in a great assembly, dwelling on the Lord's qualities, and a Śrīvaiṣṇava said, "Is it not by the merit we did that we have come to this?"

Siṟiyāccāṉ stood up. "After we have taught all this while that Perumāḷ is the one who protects us," he said, "has a god called Merit sprung up now?"

Once Perumāḷ had gone out in procession and was seated in a maṇḍapa, and Bhaṭṭar was fanning Him. His disciples came to him. "The time for the evening rite is passing," they said.

"For those intent on the Lord's service," said Bhaṭṭar, "the fault of missing the rite does not come."

The account sets beside it the Lord's own word, that when those doing His work fail in their rites, crores of great sages do the rites for them.

Once many scholars gathered and disputed with Bhaṭṭar, and he silenced every one of them. Then they said, "Let us test his omniscience." They shut a snake in a pot and tied it, and asked him, "What is in this pot?"

"The sacred white royal parasol," said Bhaṭṭar.

They laughed, and untied the pot, and the snake came out. "Is this a royal parasol?"

"Is it not?" said Bhaṭṭar. "Did not the Āzhvār say of the serpent, When He goes, it is His parasol?"

And they went away amazed at him, and fulfilled.

Nampi Tiruvazhuti Vaḷanāṭu Dāsar was dying, and a Śrīvaiṣṇava who served him wept.

"You ruined one!" said Nampi. "I am the one who is dying, and I am going. You are the one who stays on to hear Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar expound, and you are weeping!"

To love the sweetness of a true ācārya's words, the account says, can make a man care little even for release.

The account says too that Āzhvāṉ, Āṇḍāṉ, Aruḷāḷa Perumāḷ Emperumāṉār, Embār and Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭar all told their own disciples to hold Emperumāṉār's feet alone as their refuge, out of love for their own ācārya. And it remembers that each of the great ones had his own one refuge. Vaḍuga Nambi said Emperumāṉār's feet. Anantāzhvāṉ said the feet of the Lord of Tiruvēṅkaṭam. Tirukkacci Nambi, Kāñcīpūrṇa, said the feet of Pēraruḷāḷar. Emperumāṉār said the feet of Selvappiḷḷai. And Bhaṭṭar said the feet of Azhagiya Maṇavāḷapperumāḷ, the beautiful bridegroom of Śrīraṅgam.

Bhaṭṭar taught Nañjīyar well the Six Thousand, the first commentary on the Tiruvāymozhi, which Piḷḷāṉ had written at Uḍaiyavar's command. Nañjīyar studied it well and served Bhaṭṭar in many ways, and with his leave he began to write a commentary of his own on the Tiruvāymozhi, of nine thousand measures.

While that was going on, Kaiśika Dvādaśī came round. The account sets it in Bhaṭṭar's twenty-eighth year. Bhaṭṭar stood in Perumāḷ's presence and read out the Kaiśika Purāṇa, and that day, not as at other times, he stood on a single word and turned it over and over, many ways.

Perumāḷ saw it, and His heart took hold of it, and He was delighted. He gave Bhaṭṭar, as his reward, the garland He was wearing, and His cloth, and His ornaments, and the divine lion-throne He Himself sits on, and more besides. His chest and shoulders swelled. His form could hardly be seen for His haste. "What else shall we give him?" And out of the overflow of His joy, He said:

"Bhaṭṭarē! We have given you the higher abode."

"A great favour!" said Bhaṭṭar, and took it.

The whole court was thrown into turmoil like the churned sea. "Why should He say such a thing?" They held their stomachs in dread.

Bhaṭṭar, in great joy, prostrated at Perumāḷ's feet and stood with joined palms.

"Master," he said. "Instead of my only hearing the report that You once said to Arjuna, I will release you, You have said it Yourself to me. And the ground of this gain is the bond Uḍaiyavar made for me when he gave me at Your feet, and the tie of blood I have with Āzhvāṉ, and Embār's grace too. Is it not?"

The Vedic scholars of Śrīraṅgam who were in the court looked at Bhaṭṭar. "Perumāḷ's joy ran over," they said, "and He said a word without thinking. Why do you take it with such delight? Did not Perumāḷ mean to set this world right through you?"

"If so," said Bhaṭṭar, "if this world and those in it are unfortunate, what can I do? Will fine ghee stay in a dog's belly? Will this world bear me?"

Then the pride of one whom the Lord had looked on with special favour, the pride of His own royal house, rose up full in him, and he spoke his joy aloud.

"Master! If I do not see in Paramapada the lotus feet pressed on the lotus seat, the hand that says Fear not, the crown set on Your head, the red holy face full of smiles, and the musk mark on Your brow, I will break off a corner of it at the very foundation, and leap down, and come back here."

He took in Namperumāḷ and Periya Perumāḷ from their feet to their crowns, and worshipped the shrine and the Āzhvār to his eyes' content, and stood there.

Perumāḷ had a brahmaratha made ready for him with all His own honours, and all the companies of the temple, all the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, all the ācāryas and all the brahmins came along worshipping, and so he went home. He went in and worshipped Āṇḍāḷ.

She blessed him in the words of an old song. "May you enter the land that has no end of good."

Bhaṭṭar was glad. "Ammā," he said. "That is just what I want."

After everyone in the holy town had eaten at the house, he sat with a great gathering and, as on every other day, expounded the Tiruneḍuntāṇḍakam.

He came to the verse that begins "alampurinta neḍuntaḍakkai", and to the words "añciṟaippuḷ taṉippākaṉ", the one rider of the fair-winged bird. There he said a line twice over:

பறவையேறுபரம்

புருடா நீ யென்னைக் கைக்கொண்டபின், பிறவியென்னுங் கடலும் வற்றிப்

பெரும்பத மாகின்றதால்

paṟavaiyēṟuparam

puruṭā nī yeṉṉaik kaikkoṇṭapiṉ, piṟaviyeṉṉuṅ kaṭalum vaṟṟip

perumpata mākiṉṟatāl

Rider of the bird, Supreme Person! Since You took me for Your own, the sea that is birth has dried and become the great estate.

He opened his eyes wide. A thrill ran through his body. He smiled. He held his joined palms on his head. And as he leaned against the cushion, his skull burst open, and he went to the sacred land.

The disciples went inside to Āṇḍāḷ. "Bhaṭṭar is resting," they said. "He is tired."

Āṇḍāḷ rose at once. She gathered Bhaṭṭar up and held him to her breast, and saw the wonder of it, that he had gone to the sacred land. Her heart was not troubled. Her face did not darken. No tears came to her eyes.

"As bees know the fragrance of a flower and breathe it and take it," she said, "so Śrī Vaikuṇṭhanātha knew how tender Bhaṭṭar was, and without crushing him has opened the lotus of his heart and taken him, so that His nature as the divine bee shows! For Perumāḷ and the Nācciyārs here it is a great loss, and great pain, and a great burning of the belly. For the Lord who dwells in Paramapada and the Nācciyārs there it is great prosperity, and great wealth, and great rejoicing!"

There was not the least touch of a mother's grief on her. "When the owner takes what He owns," she said, "may we resent it?"

All Kōyil lay writhing in grief like a troubled sea. Vedānti fell like a tree with its roots cut, and cried aloud, and lamented, his eyes streaming with tears like rain.

Perumāḷ and the Nācciyārs gave for him their pearl-work and their spittoon, their white chowries and round fans, their white umbrella, their pearl finial, their canopy and their pearl festoons, all their own retinue and furnishings. "Keep a closing festival for Bhaṭṭar," Perumāḷ said, "as you keep Ours." With His face darkened and pearl tears falling, He took the holy bath with the Nācciyārs. "Mars has turned against us," He said in His pain. "We have lost a son!" And He would not take even the roll of betel, and stayed downcast.

The disciples, with Vedānti at their head, had the rites done for Bhaṭṭar by the brahmamedha through Śrīrāmappiḷḷai, his younger brother. They laid him to rest, and kept the closing bath.

On the way back Nañjīyar covered his head with his cloth and went by the back lane straight to his own maṭha.

His disciples asked him why.

"Will a woman newly widowed come out openly into the street?" said Nañjīyar.

For a good disciple to be to a good ācārya as a wife, the account says, is the fulfilment of what he is.

When Āṇḍāḷ and the disciples came back into the house and saw it empty, Śrīrāmappiḷḷai fell down singing an old verse:

நல்லதோர்தாமரைப்பொய்கை நாண்மலர்மேற்பனிசோர,அல்லியும்

தாதுமுதிர்ந்திட்டழகழிந்தா லொத்ததாலோ, இல்லம் வெறியோடிற்றாலோ!

nallatōrtāmaraippoykai nāṇmalarmēṟpaṉicōra,alliyum

tātumutirntiṭṭazhakazhintā lottatālō, illam veṟiyōṭiṟṟālō!

A fair lotus pool, the dew dripping on its fresh flowers, its petals and its pollen fallen and its beauty gone: is it like that? Has the house become empty?

And he wailed aloud and grieved, and cried out in his distress.

Āṇḍāḷ was vexed to see it. "This one is not fit to have been born of Āzhvāṉ's holy womb," she said to the disciples. And to him: "Child! Can you not bear the gain Bhaṭṭar has had? Are you making much of kinship?"

Śrīrāmappiḷḷai let his grief go. He rose with a start and prostrated at her feet. "I have done wrong," he said. "You must forgive me." And she forgave him.

He did the rites of tīrtha and the recitation for Bhaṭṭar and finished them, and they went to worship at Perumāḷ's feet. Perumāḷ called Śrīrāmappiḷḷai forward.

"We have lost Bhaṭṭar," He said. "For you, We are here. Do not be downcast."

He gave him all of Bhaṭṭar's honours, and had a brahmaratha made ready and sent him home in it. Śrīrāmappiḷḷai's dejection left him. He was glad again, and went on carrying the darśana.

The account sets down what was Bhaṭṭar's alone, of all who have the tie of blood with Āzhvāṉ: that the very One who had him given turmeric water, and fathered him and brought him up, should give him His own great abode; and that Perumāḷ Himself should be the giver of both, the gain and the loss, and nothing in it be disturbed.

"Bhaṭṭar's glory cannot be told in full," says the one who wrote it down. "I have told this much, as far as I understand it and as I have heard it."

His birth-star is Anurādha, in the month of Vaikāsi.

His taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, says:

ஸ்ரீபராஶரபட்டார்யஶ் ஸ்ரீரங்கேஶபுரோஹிதஃ -

ஸ்ரீவத்ஸாங்கஸுதஶ்ஸ்ரீமாந் ஶ்ரேயஸேமேஉஸ்துபூயஸே.

srīparāśarapaṭṭāryaś srīraṅkēśapurōhitaḵ -

srīvatsāṅkasutaśsrīmān śrēyasēmēustupūyasē.

May Śrī Parāśara Bhaṭṭārya, the purohita of the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, the glorious son of Śrīvatsāṅka, be for my good, my great good.

His word at the Kaiśika reading was not forgotten. Long after, when an old ascetic among Nampiḷḷai's disciples prayed to be let stay a little longer in this world, one of those asked to explain it remembered how Bhaṭṭar had said that if he did not see Namperumāḷ's red face and musk mark in Paramapada he would break through a corner and come back.