Paṭṭiṉattu Piḷḷaiyār

Before there is a man, there is a city, and it deserves to be taken slowly. Kāvirippūmpaṭṭiṉam, which the Tamil poets also call Pūmpukār or simply Pukār, stood where the Kāviri spread out into the Bay of Bengal. The river came down from the Western Ghats through the whole Chola country, and at Pukār it met the sea at a broad confluence. Everything the river carried came with it: sandalwood and eagle-wood from the hills, ivory, gold, honey, ripe fruit and sweet flowers. Everything the sea carried came in against it. Ships rode in from many islands with silk pennants straining in the wind, and the city took the wealth of both and gave it away again in double handfuls.

Listen to the noise of the place. The cries of the buyers, the calls of the sellers and the din of the crafts in the narrow streets swallowed even the roar of the dark sea where the conches breed. At night lamps burned in every shop. The city's old stories were piled as high as its goods, as if to prove that nowhere on earth was like it. Here the Chola king Karikāl's daughter called to her husband lost at sea, and the waves gave him back. Here Mādhavi the dancer was born. Here Kaṇṇaki, the wife whose faith outlasted her husband, was taken up into the sky. Indra himself, the king of the gods, founded the town, so that merchants might prosper there and the shrines of Śiva at Cāyāvaṉam and Pallavaṉīccaram might never want for worship. And at the end of all this praise comes the one thing it has been building towards. Pūmpukār is the city where Veṇkāṭar was born.

He came of a merchant house, one of the Vēḷāḷa merchant families of Kāvirippūmpaṭṭiṉam, a line whose people could still be found in the city long after him. They were people of trade, and people of Śiva.

His story begins long before his birth. In a former age of the world the god Kubera, lord of wealth and friend of Śiva, stood in the courts of heaven and watched Śiva go out in procession. Among the sights of that procession was the city of Pukār, and Kubera was so taken with it that he could not bear to be parted from it. He asked to be born there, and Śiva granted it. So the richest of the gods came down to be the richest of merchants, and the rest of the story is the long work of grace by which that wealth was taken away from him. Tamil remembers him by the name of his city, Paṭṭiṉattup Piḷḷai, the son of the city.

His parents were Civanēcar and Ñāṉakalāmpai. Their child had been long prayed for. When he came, the signs were all good ones: the sky was clear, the wells and tanks ran sweet, and the old men of the town wondered aloud whether all the merit of the Śaiva faith had come together in one small body. He was called Veṇkāṭar, which is also the name of Tiruveṇkāṭu, the old shrine of Śiva a few miles inland from Pukār: the man of the white forest. The name sits inside one of his own poems too, where at the very end of his hymn to Tiruviṭaimarutūr he calls himself "this one called Veṇkāṭaṉ".

Grief came early to the house. His father died while he was still a small child, and the boy, guided by his kin, carried out the funeral rites himself as custom required. His mother raised him alone. When he was old enough she brought a learned brahmin teacher to the house, and the boy took to his lessons quickly, so that he learned in a short time everything the teacher had to give. Devotion seemed to come to him without being taught: the worship of Śiva, love for Śiva's devotees, pity for living creatures and an odd indifference to the pleasures that other boys of his class pursued.

The setting matters. Veṇkāṭar grew up among quays and counting-houses, in a city whose whole life was buying, carrying and selling. When, much later, he sat down to make poems about the life of the spirit, the sea came with him. His poems speak of pilots and cargoes, of masts and sails and ropes, of a ship labouring among the waves and the long shore beyond them. They are a merchant's images, and it is good to remember, reading them, that the man who made them had once watched his own ships come home.

When Veṇkāṭar came of age, his mother began to look about for a bride, a girl of good family, good conduct and good sense. She found her in the house of a merchant of Pukār called Civacitampara Ceṭṭiyār, a man as rich as the god of riches himself. His daughter was Civakalai. The wedding had every ornament of the old Tamil marriage: the procession through the streets by palanquin, the drums and pipes and lutes, the married women waiting at the door with lamps and red water to turn away the evil eye, the tying of the marriage thread, the walk round the sacred fire and the step on the grinding stone. After four days of feasting the young husband brought his wife home, and the two of them set up house under his mother's roof.

It was a model household. Veṇkāṭar and Civakalai performed the daily duties of a family of their station, fed guests and holy men, honoured their dead and kept the worship of Śiva in their home. The trade went on and grew. Their way of living became a pattern for anyone who wanted to know how a household should be kept.

The trade itself was enormous. Veṇkāṭar's ships could not be counted. They went out across the sea, put in at many lands, weighed out great heaps of goods on the long scales, and came home laden; men spoke of a thousand of them, and then of a thousand thousand. And this wealth was not only the gift of Brahmā, who writes every man's lot, but the gift of Śiva, so that kings themselves held such a man in awe.

At the head of his affairs stood a man whose story would be bound up with his master's to the end. His name was Cēntaṉār. He was Veṇkāṭar's close friend and his chief agent, a wise elder, first among his counsellors. Cēntaṉār was a man who kept accounts, saw ledgers balanced and knew where every bale was stored. He was also a man of deep devotion, the same Cēntaṉār whose songs stand in the ninth book of the Tirumuṟai. He will come back more than once.

For all this, one thing was missing from the house. Veṇkāṭar and Civakalai had no child, and the lack sat heavy on them. They prayed for a son and laid their sorrow before Śiva, and in particular before Śiva as he is worshipped at Tiruviṭaimarutūr, the great temple on the Kāviri far upstream, whose god is called Marutavāṇaṉ, the Lord of the Marutu tree.

It is worth pausing here, before the boy comes, to listen to how Veṇkāṭar himself would later speak of the life he was then living. In his poem to Śiva of Tiruviṭaimarutūr he describes the household life from the far side of it, speaking as "we", and he does not despise it. He sets down soft beds and silk cushions spread in pavilions and on the shore of the sea, women in fine cloth, rice of six tastes served in gold dishes, and gifts given freely to dancers, singers and those who were wasting with want. He tells of living with every one of the five senses filled, children and kin delighting in it all. It is the voice of a man remembering. Yet even then, he says, he did not forget the five holy syllables of Śiva's name, and so he did not lose his share of freedom either. Then he gives the reason in an image anyone can hold in the hand:

வல்லான் ஒருவன் கைம்முயன்று எறியினும்

மாட்டா ஒருவன் வாளா எறியினும்

நிலத்தின் வழாஅக் கல்லேபோல்

நலத்தின் வழார்நின் நாமம்நவின் றோரே.

(Whether a strong man hurls it with all his effort, or a weak man simply lets it drop, a stone does not fail to reach the ground. So too those who speak your name do not fall short of the good.)

It is a householder's comfort, spoken by a man who had stopped being one. It also tells us something the story takes for granted. Before the needle came, Veṇkāṭar was already a man of Śiva. What changed was not his faith but everything around it.

His other poems remember the work of ordinary men with an exact eye. In the garland he later made at Tillai he runs through the ways he has scraped a living, birth after birth, and the list takes in the whole working world: ploughing and sowing and then sitting watching the sky for rain, walking where the arrows of pitiless soldiers fly, driving a craft through the dark sea and peering over the crowding waves for the sight of a hill, taking a king's rice and living by the sword, teaching the ignorant and making speeches out of what he had learned. Through all of it, he says, he was bound by the long chain of family and dragged in five directions by the senses, born and dying and born again like a flash of lightning. There is a shipowner's memory in that line about the hill.

So the house of ships stood, prosperous and devout and very nearly complete. What happened next came from Tiruviṭaimarutūr.

At Tiruviṭaimarutūr, in the shade of the Marutu trees, there lived a priest of the temple called Civacarumar, with his wife Cucīlai and their children. They were as poor as they were devout. Once they had been comfortable, and everything they had went on the worship of Śiva and the feeding of his devotees; then the Lord who owns all things let their means wane like the moon after the full, to show the world what their love was made of. Their love only grew.

One morning Civacarumar asked his wife to gather what was needed for the day's worship. There were a few things put by for the children, she said, and the worship could be done with those. He took them gladly to the temple, bathed the god and made the offering, and was turning home to feed the devotees when an old brahmin, faint with hunger, stopped him and asked for food. He could not wait as far as the house, he said, and so Civacarumar served him there and then. The old man ate every grain that had been meant for the devotees, rested a little, and vanished. Then Civacarumar knew whom he had fed.

At home the devotees were waiting. When his wife heard that the offering was gone, she did not reproach him. We and the children can go hungry, she said, but Śiva's devotees must not; and she took the ornament from her own neck and gave it to him to buy what was needed. That night they fed the devotees, and the family ate after them.

The next day the same thing happened. Again the old brahmin came, again he ate everything, and again he vanished, this time telling Civacarumar to hurry home, for devotees were waiting there and must not be sent away hungry. Civacarumar went slowly, not knowing what he would set before them. But the god had been there first. Taking the priest's own form, with the leaders of his hosts dressed as temple servants, he had carried the offerings to the house and given them into Cucīlai's hands, and when Civacarumar came in he found food eight times richer than what the old man had eaten. He told his wife the whole story, and they fed the devotees and ate what was left, rejoicing. Cucīlai said nothing, but in her heart she wished that a Lord so gracious might spare them a little wealth.

That night Śiva came to them both in a dream. By the bank of the temple tank called the Kāruṇyāmirtam, he told them, they would find a child. They were to sell him to Veṇkāṭar of Kāvirippūmpaṭṭiṉam, for long ago Śiva had promised Kubera that when he was born among men, Śiva would come to him as his son. The priest woke and was horrified. To sell his god for gold, he said, would be worse than throwing himself into fire or into the Ganges. Śiva assured him that this was his own will and that the family would have their reward.

So the priest and his wife went to the tank, and there was the child. They took him up and could not stop calling him by every sweet name they knew. Milk came to Cucīlai's breasts as she held him, and she could not bear to give him to anyone at all. They set off home, but grace turned their steps, and without knowing where they were going they walked east and came before long to a garden behind a house in Pukār. The house was Veṇkāṭar's. Civakalai, Veṇkāṭar's wife, had dreamed the same dream. Cucīlai laid the child in her arms and told her that from now on he was her son and not her own, and the milk came to Civakalai too. Veṇkāṭar, who had watched it all, took the boy, set him in the pan of a great scale and weighed him against gold, and sent the gold to the priest's house at Iṭaimarutūr. With the consent of the elders and devotees, the child was named Marutavāṇaṉ. Sixteen years later Civacarumar and his whole household were taken up into a column of light.

In this way the god of Iṭaimarutūr came to live in a merchant's house, as a child who could be weighed against gold. Veṇkāṭar himself, when he came to sing at Tiruviṭaimarutūr, never told the story. He only called the god there his father and the master who owns him, and gave him thirty poems.

The boy grew up in the house of ships as the delight of two people who had waited a long time for him. They watched every stage of him with great tenderness: the baby who clapped his hands and crawled, the mothers calling him to come and be kissed, and then the small boy with a crowd of merchants' sons at his heels, keeping elephants and monkeys and deer and fighting cocks, raiding the gardens and tanks for fruit and flowers, swimming in the river and the sea, and giving his playmates whatever ornaments and clothes they wanted.

One day he took the merchants' boys out to sea in a boat. A great fish, a league long, came at them, rose as high as the masthead and swallowed one of the boys whole, and the rest fainted with terror. Marutavāṇaṉ stretched out his foot and kicked the fish on the head, and it died. Out of its body rose a shining figure who stood in the air and bowed to him: a gandharva called Maṇikkirīvaṉ, who had once mocked a sage in the pride of his beauty and been cursed to live as a fish until the foot of the Lord, come to earth as Marutavāṇaṉ, should touch him. The swallowed boy walked out of the fish's mouth with an armful of gems, and when the others came to themselves and saw them, Marutavāṇaṉ told them they could go in and gather their own. They came home with the boat low in the water, to parents who had been searching the whole town for them. Veṇkāṭar looked at the jewels, wondered, and gave them away to brahmins and the poor.

When the boy was old enough for lessons, Veṇkāṭar found him a teacher of great austerity, and he learned the sixty-four arts in a few days. It is no great wonder, after all, for the teacher of the whole world to learn quickly.

Then came the matter of the gem. A trader from another country brought a great gem to sell, and Veṇkāṭar, after studying it for a long time, set its value at ten thousand gold pieces. The boy came by on his way home from school and asked about it. When his father told him to go in and eat, he answered that a student ought to know how things in the world truly are, and that he had noticed something about this stone. I will pay the ten thousand myself, he said, but this jewel is not fit to be looked at, for there is water inside it, and it brings poverty and sickness to whoever handles it. Then he broke it open in front of them all, and water ran out. From then on Veṇkāṭar looked at his son with something like fear as well as love.

When the boy was sixteen he came to his father with a request. He wanted to go to sea and trade among the islands, where he had heard there were precious stones and rare goods. A merchant born, he said, ought to earn while he was young; what could he do in old age? Veṇkāṭar was shaken. You came to end our childlessness, he said; how can I live a moment without you? There is wealth enough in the vaults for any spending you could do in a lifetime, rusting where it lies. You still have milk on your lips. And your mother and your grandmother will die of your going. The boy smiled and answered him out of the Tirukkuṟaḷ: a son's return to his father is to make the world ask what penance the father did to have such a son, and that cannot be done without means. Besides, he said, one who does not know the world cannot know dharma or grace, and the world is learned young; did not Daśaratha send his boys after Viśvāmitra? Veṇkāṭar saw that he would not be stopped and offered to go with him. No, said the boy. If we both go, the mothers will die of it. Stay with them, and I will come back soon.

So a new ship was loaded with goods and stores, a good pilot was found, and on an auspicious day Marutavāṇaṉ took leave of his mother and grandmother, his father, his kin and the devotees, and sailed with the sons of the other merchants of Pukār. After some days they came to an island and traded their goods. The others sailed on to other lands to trade again. Marutavāṇaṉ stayed. He sold what he had, and with the money he built temples and pavilions, monasteries and rest-houses, flower gardens and groves, tanks and wells, out of pity for living things, and gave to the poor and to anyone in need, until his name was praised all over the island.

When his friends came back for him, rich with trade, they asked how he had done. All he had to show was dung cakes, the round flat cakes of dried cow-dung that every Tamil household burns for fuel, and sacks of parched rice and gram. They were aghast. Where are the goods you brought, they said, and all that fortune? You are the son of the famous Veṇkāṭar, the cleverest of us all; what will your father say? He only gave them a sidelong look and asked why they were grieving on his account. They could not make him out, but they resolved among themselves that whatever happened they would not leave him.

On the way home the boy, who could do anything, chose to play. A great storm of wind and rain came down on them and drove the ships off course, and for many days they wandered lost in the dark, until their food ran low and they had nothing left to burn against the cold. Shivering and hungry, they came to Marutavāṇaṉ. You are our only refuge, they said. Give us your dung cakes at least. He told them they need only repay him in kind, cake for cake, when they reached home, and they wrote him a note to say so. He weighed out the cakes and they went back to their ships, warmed and fed. Then the rain stopped, the wind dropped, they found their bearings and came safe into the harbour of Kāvirippūmpaṭṭiṉam.

The families had hardly eaten or slept while they were gone. When word came that the ships were in, Veṇkāṭar opened his treasury to the poor in his joy, and set out for the shore with the whole town round him. On the way one of the men who had sailed with his son came up and told him that the boy had not been himself for some days, and that he had come ahead to warn him. Veṇkāṭar, shaken, told himself it was enough that the boy was home, went out to the ship and embraced him. Then he saw the cargo: dung cakes and parched rice and nothing else. He took the boy ashore, settled him in an upper room of a mansion by the harbour with guards to watch him, and went back to the ship to look properly.

Among the ship's things there was a box with a dung cake in it, and Veṇkāṭar wondered why anyone would keep such a thing in a box. He broke it, and a ruby blazed out of it like the sun. Every cake he broke was the same. The parched rice was mixed through and through with gold dust. With the cakes he found the note the other merchants had written, and called them over. Yes, they said, we wrote it; and they stood there in wonder and fear. In the rain they had burned his cakes without a second look, and now they had promised to repay them in kind.

Veṇkāṭar hurried back to the mansion to take his son in his arms. The guards stood at the door, but the room was empty; they had watched as they were told, they said, and had no idea where he had gone. Veṇkāṭar's heart turned over. I did not know who my son was, he said, and I listened to fools and had him guarded like a madman. Perhaps he has only gone home to see his mother. He ran home. His wife and mother were bright with joy: the boy had just come in, eaten, and gone out again, and had given them clothes and jewels he had brought back from his trading. Veṇkāṭar went out and searched the whole city for him and found him nowhere, and came home at last to his great mansion and sat there, unable to eat.

Then his wife came to him with a small box. Our son left this for you, she said, to be given to you as soon as you came. Veṇkāṭar opened it with trembling eagerness. Inside lay a needle with its eye broken, and a narrow strip of palm leaf with a line written on it. The words on that leaf were these: even a needle with a broken eye will not come with you on the last road.

He looked at the needle, and looked again, and looked for a long time. He looked at it as at the beauty of the god whose hair is full of flowers; he looked at it as at his own good fortune; he looked at it until the whole world fell away from him. The needle was a riddle without words. A thread passes through a needle's eye as learning passes in through the ear. This needle's eye is broken, and no thread can pass through it, and so it says without speaking that the whole world must be let go. A needle cannot help leaping to a lodestone, and so the soul, once it is free of rust, leaps to the one who draws it.

It was the simplest lesson a merchant could be given. Veṇkāṭar had spent his life making certain that things went with him: cargo out and cargo back, gold into the vaults, ledgers that balanced. Here was the cheapest thing in his house, broken and useless, and it would not go with him either. Neither would anything else.

Long afterwards, singing before the dancing Śiva at Tillai, he would speak to his own heart in words that still sound like a man going through his inventory:

கண்டன மறையும் உண்டன மலமாம்

பூசின மாசாம் புணர்ந்தன பிரியும்

நிறைந்தன குறையும் உயர்ந்தன பணியும்

பிறந்தன இறக்கும் பெரியன சிறுக்கும்

ஒன்றொன் றொருவழி நில்லா வன்றியும்

செல்வமொடு பிறந்தோர் தேசொடு திகழ்ந்தோர்

கல்வியிற் சிறந்தோர் கடுந்திறல் மிகுந்தோர்

கொடையிற் பொலிந்தோர் படையிற் பயின்றோர்

குலத்தின் உயர்ந்தோர் நலத்தினின் வந்தோர்

எனையர் எங்குலத்தினர் இறந்தோர் அனையவர்

பேரும் நின்றில போலுந் தேரின்

(What is seen is lost to sight, what is eaten turns to filth, what is smeared on becomes dirt, what is joined comes apart, what is full runs low, what is high bows down, what is born dies, what is great grows small. Not one thing stays on one road. Those born to wealth, those who shone with glory, those great in learning, those of fierce strength, those trained in arms, those famed for giving, the high-born and the fortunate, all of my own kin who have died: not even their names remain.)

And in another poem of the same garland, he tells that same heart to melt now and bow to the dancer in the Hall, before it slowly turns to sickness and all its kin, on the last road, call it a corpse.

He did not wait. He went to his mother first and told her that her long austerities had borne their fruit, and that from now on he would walk the way his teacher had shown him. She did not try to hold him back. She asked only one thing: her end was near, and she wanted him to stay until he had performed her last rites. He promised. Then he turned to Cēntaṉār, his friend and chief agent, and told him to throw the treasuries open and let anyone who wished take what they wanted.

Civakalai came to him then. She fell at his feet and told him she had no refuge but him, and that she would go with him. He answered her gently. Śiva is the refuge of everyone, he said. I must walk as my teacher has bidden me, and you do not have the strength to follow where I am going. Stay here, keep your love for Śiva and his devotees, and you will come to his feet; do not refuse my word.

So he walked out. As he went, his upper cloth slipped from his shoulders, and he did not even know it. He had a loincloth and a begging bowl. In the poem he later made at Tiruviṭaimarutūr he drew the whole of a renouncer's wardrobe, and now it was his:

சின்னச் சீரை துன்னல் கோவணம்

அறுதற் கீளொடு பெறுவது புனைந்து

சிதவல் ஓடொன் றுதவுழி எடுத்தாங்

கிடுவோர் உளரெனின் நிலையினின் றயின்று

படுதரைப் பாயலிற் பள்ளி மேவி ஓவாத்

தகவெனும் அரிவையைத் தழீஇ மகவெனப்

பல்லுயிர் அனைத்தையும் ஒக்கப் பார்க்கும்நின்

(a little scrap of rag, a stitched loincloth, a strip of cloth to tie it, worn as they come; a broken bowl taken up when one is offered; to stand where he is and eat, if anyone offers; to lie down to sleep on the bare ground; to embrace unfailing compassion as his wife and look on every living thing alike as his children.)

He went no further, on that first day, than the public hall of his own town. The man who had owned the harbour now sat in the hall where travellers rested, and waited to see who would come.

The whole city came. The old men of the town, his friends, his kin and his neighbours crowded into the hall and stood round him. Sir, what have you done, they said. You were the first among us. What did you lack, that you have put on a beggar's guise? Who will look after us now? He did not look at them. He looked away, into the grace he was thinking of, and spoke to them in verses about how little of any life goes with a man past the burning ground, until they went away abashed, telling one another that they could not hope to reach such a state, nor even understand it.

A fortune like Veṇkāṭar's, thrown open in the street, was a matter of state. When the king of that country heard that the great house was being plundered, he came and stopped it. He called in the son of Veṇkāṭar's elder sister, set him in Veṇkāṭar's place with enough to maintain the household, and had the rest carried into the royal treasury for works of charity.

Then the king turned on Cēntaṉār. He had heard that Veṇkāṭar's wealth was beyond measuring, and he did not believe that what he had found was all of it. Where is the rest, he demanded. Cēntaṉār told him he had shown everything he knew of. The king did not believe him and had him put in chains until he should reveal the hidden treasure, and seized his own property as Veṇkāṭar's besides. There was a grave reason for this suffering of a good man. When his master had ordered the treasure thrown open, Cēntaṉār had wondered for one moment whether wealth earned so honestly ought really to be scattered like that. That single doubt of his master's word was the seed of his imprisonment. His wife took their only son and fled to another town, where she lived by hired labour and kept her honour.

Only then did the king go to see Veṇkāṭar himself. He found him in the public hall, sitting in the stillness of Śiva, and asked him what special gain had come to him from taking up this beggar's guise. The reply was very short. This much: that you stand, and I sit. The king went away ashamed.

Veṇkāṭar himself went begging. Hunger came, and he went into the streets of the city where he had been the first of the merchants and held out his two hands. The life he now lived was the very picture he would later paint in his own verse: detachment for a wife, all living things for children, Śiva's devotees for kin, alms for food and the ground for a bed. His kinsmen could not bear it. To them it was disgrace to the whole family, and they forbade anyone in the town to give him food. Then, out of pity for them and to wake them to the truth, he gave them more to be ashamed of. He played with the boys who herded cattle, rolled on rubbish heaps, had children tie a rope to his feet and drag him about, and went round saying he would set fire to the house where he had lived, until the whole town called him mad.

His elder sister could bear it least of all. Shamed past endurance, she decided that it would be better for everyone if he died. She baked a cake, the kind called an oṭṭappam, mixed with poison, and had it given to him to eat. He knew what was in it. He took it and sang a couplet over it, but he did not eat it. He reached up and tucked the cake into the thatch of her roof, and her house caught fire. The fire did not stop at her house. It spread from roof to roof until the whole town was burning and no one could put it out. The townspeople ran to him in terror and fell at his feet, and he took pity on them and sang, and the fire died down.

Then he went to Tiruveṇkāṭu, the shrine whose name he bore, and stayed there, singing to the god and living on alms. One of his first days there is worth the telling. The devotees came out to meet him in a crowd, and he bowed to them as they bowed to him and went into the temple. He stood before the god and wept, and called him the sea of nectar, the one who had borne with all his faults. At that moment the temple brahmins, meaning only to honour him, brought him a costly garment set with gems and asked him to wear it. A thought rose in him and never reached his lips. Is a jewel fit for a dog, he was about to say, or gold for the dog's master? Before the words were out he had shaken the garment off. From then on he went naked, clothed only in the directions of the sky, and took up a new name, Nakkaṉ, the naked one.

While he was at Tiruveṇkāṭu his mother died. He knew it by grace, and knew that her kinsmen had carried her to the burning ground at Kāvirippūmpaṭṭiṉam. He came back to keep his promise. The relatives shrank from him when they saw him come. He pushed aside the pyre they had built, laid a new one of green plantain stems, which no ordinary fire will burn, set his mother upon it, and lit it with the fire of wisdom alone.

Whatever he said there, the act said more. A son who had given up everything else kept the one promise he had made, and gave his mother back to the fire with his own hands.

When it was done he did not go back into the town. He set out from the burning ground for Tiruviṭaimarutūr, and Pukār did not see him again.

He walked many leagues to reach Tiruviṭaimarutūr, the town the boy had come from, singing as he went. The devotees there heard that he was coming and came out on the road to meet him and brought him in among them. When at last he stood before the god, the god who had come to his house as a child to be weighed against gold, he walked round the shrine and fell down before it again and again. His body melted, his hair stood on end, the sweat broke out on him, the tears ran from his eyes like a river through a broken dam, and his voice failed in his throat. He stayed. He made his home at the temple's gate tower, going from house to house each day with his bowl and coming back to sleep under the gateway.

There he made the Tiruviṭaimarutūr Mummaṇikkōvai, the garland of three kinds of jewel, thirty poems in three metres strung one after another. Its first line, "Opening in its season like a divine lotus", is the beginning of a long poem that walks slowly over the god's body half man and half woman, foot by foot and hand by hand, one eye burning with sun and fire, the other cool as a blue lily lying in milk. It ends with the reason for all that looking:

மருதிடங் கொண்ட ஒருதனிக் கடவுள் நின்

திருவடி பரவுதும் யாமே நெடுநாள்

இறந்தும் பிறந்தும் இளைத்தனம் மறந்தும்

சிறைக்கருப் பாசயம் சேரா

மறித்தும் புகாஅ வாழ்வுபெறற் பொருட்டே.

(Only god, who made Marutu your home, we praise your holy feet, we who have died and been born and grown weary through long ages, that we may win the life which never again, even unawares, enters the prison of the womb.)

Further on in the garland he calls the five holy syllables a sweet fruit ripening slowly on the Marutu tree, and says that beside the life of Śiva's servants, the life of those who live for wealth is no more than the water in a cow's hoof-print beside the sea of the great flood. In one of the short verses he set down what his days at the gateway had come to:

வருந்தேன் இறந்தும் பிறந்தும் மயக்கும் புலன்வழிபோய்ப்

பொருந்தேன் நரகிற் புகுகின்றி லேன்புகழ் மாமருதிற்

பெருந்தேன் முகந்துகொண் டுண்டு பிறிதொன்றில் ஆசையின்றி

இருந்தேன் இனிச்சென் றிரவேன் ஒருவரை யாதொன்றுமே.

(I will not grieve for dying and being born; I will not go the way the senses lead; I am not bound for hell. I have gathered up and eaten the great honey of famous Marutu, and here I stay, wanting nothing else. I will not go now to beg anything of anyone.)

It is a strange thing for a beggar to say, and he meant it exactly. He went every day to the doors of Tiruviṭaimarutūr with his bowl, and asked for nothing.

It was there that the god came to him a second time. He was lying asleep one night on the outer veranda of a house, as wandering ascetics did. The night was very dark. A watchman came along the street, the kind every town set to guard it after dark, carrying a heavy staff. He struck the ground with it, kicked the sleeping man awake, and demanded: who are you?

Veṇkāṭar did not take fright. Watchman of the town, he answered, am I nerve, or flesh, or hair, or bone, or blood, or marrow, or breath, or mind? I do not know. It is the answer he had already put, at greater length, into one of his poems for the god of that same town:

மேவிய புன்மயிர்த் தொகையோ அம்மயிர்

பாவிய தோலின் பரப்போ தோலிடைப்

புகவிட்டுப் பொதிந்த புண்ணோ புண்ணிடை

ஊறும் உதிரப் புனலோ கூறுசெய்

திடையிடை நிற்கும் எலும்போ எலும்பிடை

முடைகெழு மூளை விழுதோ வழுவழுத்து

உள்ளிடை ஒழுகும் வழும்போ மெள்ளநின்

றூரும் புழுவின் ஒழுங்கோ நீரிடை

வைத்த மலத்தின் குவையோ வைத்துக்

கட்டிய நரம்பின் கயிறோ உடம்பிற்குள்

பிரியா தொறுக்கும் பிணியோ தெரியா

தின்ன தியானென் றறியேன் என்னை

ஏதினுந் தேடினன் யாதினுங் காணேன்

(Am I this crop of coarse hair? the skin spread out beneath the hair? the wound packed in beneath the skin? the blood that seeps through the wound? the bones set here and there between? the stinking marrow inside the bones? the slippery fat that oozes within? the rows of worms that slowly crawl? the heap of filth stored in the water? the cords of nerve that bind it all? the sickness that never leaves the body? I cannot tell which of these I am. I have searched for myself in everything, and found myself in nothing.)

The watchman said nothing. He was simply no longer there. Then Veṇkāṭar understood who had kicked him. He melted with love and wept, and bowed again and again in the direction the watchman had gone; he wondered aloud whether the soft lotus feet had been hurt by the blow; and he touched the print of the foot to his eyes and put the dust of it on his head.

The poem does not stop at not knowing. After the long list of what he is not, it turns to the god of Iṭaimarutūr and tells how grace came into his hand, tore the film of illusion away and gave him the eye of knowledge:

நின்பெருந் தன்மையுங் கண்டேன் காண்டலும்

என்னையுங் கண்டேன் பிறரையுங் கண்டேன்

நின்னிலை அனைத்தையும் கண்டேன் என்னே

நின்னைக் காணா மாந்தர்

தன்னையுங் காணாத் தன்மை யோரே.

(I saw your greatness, and in seeing it I saw myself. I saw other people too, and the whole of what you are. And those who do not see you, what of them? They do not even see themselves.)

It is the closest he ever came, in his own words, to telling what happened to him.

Not every day at Iṭaimarutūr was so full of grace. Once he was parched with thirst and could find no water anywhere. He sang to the god of Marutu, and then, in disgust with a body that kept making such demands, he had himself dragged through a field of sugar-cane, and lay down afterwards on a veranda to sleep. That night the god came to him in a dream. Veṇkāṭa, he said, go now to all my shrines and sing.

Before he left, though, he gave the god of Iṭaimarutūr one of the strangest and most generous poems in the Tirumuṟai. It is a roll-call of everyone who had ever won grace there: the goddess and her sons, Viṣṇu and Brahmā, the gods of all the quarters, the sages, the singers of the Tēvāram, the young saint of Perunturai and many more. At its end comes a king called Varaguṇa, and the poem delights in his excesses of devotion. It says that he loosed a thief from his bonds because he saw sacred ash on his body; that he gave cloths to howling jackals because they seemed to him to be singing to Śiva; that he scattered gold over frogs croaking in a lily pond because they seemed to be praising the Lord; that he found a skull lying alone in the precinct at Marutu and bowed to it, begging that his own head might one day lie there too. Then Veṇkāṭar sets himself at the end of that shining line:

அனையவர் நிற்க யானும் ஒருவன்

பத்தி என்பதோர் பாடும் இன்றிச்

சுத்த னாயினும் தோன்றாக் கடையேன்

நின்னை

இறைஞ்சிலன் ஆயினும் ஏத்திலன் ஆயினும்

வருந்திலன் ஆயினும் வாழ்த்திலன் ஆயினும்

கருதி யிருப்பன் கண்டாய் பெரும

(Let all of those stand where they are. I too am one of them, with not the least share of what is called devotion: even were I made pure, the very last, who would not be seen among them. Though I do not bow to you, though I do not praise you, though I do not grieve for you, though I do not bless you, I will go on keeping you in mind. Mark that, great one.)

He signed his garland, in its last poem, with the only name he still claimed. Your feet, he told the god, have come to rest on my head and inside my mind, and they have become the very standing of this one called Veṇkāṭaṉ.

The road that began at Iṭaimarutūr led a long way. It took him through Kuṭamūkku, Mayilāṭuturai and more than a dozen other shrines of the Kāviri delta to Tiruvārūr, then south to Madurai, west over the hills to Tiruvañcaikkaḷam on the Malabar coast, up into the Koṅku country to Pēraiyūr and Avināci, and from there along the western coast to Kōkarṇam in the Tuḷu country. At every shrine he sang Tamil to the god.

At Tiruvārūr there was a young man who had taken to Veṇkāṭar with great love and served him day and night. The boy's mother and his aunt wanted him to marry the aunt's only daughter, his cousin, and when he would not, they came weeping to Veṇkāṭar; and Veṇkāṭar, seeing what was to come, told the boy to take her, and went to the wedding to bless them. Not many days later the young man fell into a fever in the night and died. His wife, his mother-in-law and all his kin were crying in the house when Veṇkāṭar came down the street. Someone ran to him and told him that the boy who had served him so lovingly was dead. He went into the house, looked at the body with compassion and sang, and the young man stirred and sat up as if waking from sleep, and his first worry was that he was late with his master's food.

In the Koṅku country, where he was keeping a vow of silence, came one of the hardest nights of his wandering. In the middle of the night hunger rose in him like the fire that burns under the sea. He went to the door of a householder of the place and, since his vow would not let him speak, stood there and clapped his hands. The householder, who had no idea who he was, decided that a lustful thief had come prowling after his women, and fell on him with a stick and beat him. Veṇkāṭar did not move from where he stood, and only said Śiva's name. A man who was lying on the veranda of the next house heard the noise, pulled the fool away and told him that this was a great one, perfect in the yoga of Śiva. Then he bowed to Veṇkāṭar, took him home and fed him until his hunger was gone.

Then the road took him north, much further than any Tamil shrine, to Ujjain, where Śiva is worshipped as Mahākāla. Outside the town there was a little wood, and in the wood a small shrine of Gaṇeśa, and there Veṇkāṭar sat down one night and went deep into meditation.

The king of that country was called Bhadragiri. That night a band of thieves came to the little shrine and prayed to Gaṇeśa for a good night's work, then broke into the palace and carried off the king's jewels. Fleeing through the dark, they remembered the god who had granted their prayer, and came back to the shrine, where the naked ascetic sat still as a stone. They meant to hang a jewelled pendant on Gaṇeśa as a thank-offering, but in the darkness it missed the god and fell round the neck of the man sitting before him. Then they ran on. When the king's men came searching at first light they found a stranger in the wood with the king's jewel on his breast. Some of the guards had their doubts. A thief who had stolen the king's necklace would hardly sit wearing it a stone's throw from the city, nor smile and say Śiva's name while they hauled him away. But others went to the king and told him they had caught the thief with the jewel on him, and asked for judgement. The king ordered him impaled on the stake.

They led him to the stake. He looked up and smiled, and the stake took fire. The guards ran to the king. Bhadragiri did not wait for a horse or a palanquin. He ran on foot to the place, saw the stake still burning and the ascetic standing calmly beside it, and fell full length at his feet like a felled tree. I am a sinner, he cried. In my ignorance I have done this to your holy body. What shall I do?

What he did was to leave his kingdom on the spot. He stripped off his royal robes where he stood, did not once look back at his courtiers and his household, and clung to Veṇkāṭar's feet, begging to be saved. The two went south together to Tiruviṭaimarutūr, the king who had owned a kingdom walking behind the merchant who had owned a harbour.

At Iṭaimarutūr the new disciple was given one more lesson. A dog had begun to follow Bhadragiri about, and he fed it from his bowl. One day Śiva himself, in the guise of a wandering siddha, came to Veṇkāṭar at the eastern gate of the temple and asked for food. Veṇkāṭar answered him with a smile: I own nothing but a loincloth, so how could I feed anyone? But there is a householder at the western gate; go to him. The siddha went to Bhadragiri at the western gate and told him that the man at the eastern gate had sent him to a householder. Bhadragiri understood. This begging bowl, he said, and this dog that eats my leavings, have made a householder of me. He threw the bowl at the dog. It struck the animal on the head and it died, and the siddha smiled and vanished. The dog was born again as a princess, and in time she came to Bhadragiri at that same gate and was freed; and Bhadragiri himself, after some time, reached Śiva's feet.

After all this Veṇkāṭar came back once more to Tiruveṇkāṭu. While he was there, Cēntaṉār's wife and young son, who had lived by hired labour since the day of his arrest, heard that he had come and fell weeping at his feet. Who are you, he asked, and what is your trouble? They told him everything, and begged him to free Cēntaṉār from the king's prison. Veṇkāṭar went before the god at once and sang, and Śiva sent Gaṇeśa to bring Cēntaṉār out of the prison. Cēntaṉār came and bowed to his master and to the god of Tiruveṇkāṭu, and the two of them stood together before the Lord, two of his true lovers.

Cēntaṉār did not ask for his house or his goods back. He asked for something harder. You have freed me from this prison, he said; now show me the way out of the prison of this body. Veṇkāṭar saw that he was ripe for it and gave him a plain task. Go with your family and live at Tillai, he told him. Break dry wood in the forest and sell it, and with what it fetches feed one of Śiva's devotees every day. So the man who had kept the accounts of the greatest house in Pukār became a seller of firewood, and what came of that is a story of Tillai.

North of the Kāviri, not far from Tiruveṇkāṭu, lies the town the Tamil hymns call by a dozen names: Kāzhi, Pukali, Tōṇipuram, Kazhumalam, and now Sīkāzhi. It was there, long before Veṇkāṭar's time, that the child Sambandar was born, and it was there, at the edge of the temple tank, that the most famous scene in all Tamil Śaiva memory took place. From Tiruveṇkāṭu Veṇkāṭar went there. He walked round the bounds of the town where the boy saint had been born, worshipped the god and goddess who sit in the boat in the temple, and made the Tirukkazhumala Mummaṇikkōvai, his garland for the god of Kazhumalam.

He stayed there some days, and the town's very names seemed made for him. Tōṇipuram means the town of the boat, for the god there rode out the great flood at the end of an age in a boat. So the disciple who had let go of his ship on the black sea came to praise the great teacher who had launched a boat on the sea of the flood. He honoured the boy saint of that town as his own teacher. And there was a lovely reason why he could not stay longer. A greater grace than before was now coming down on him, and the dancer of Tillai had resolved to take the cargo of his soul out of the ship of his body and bring it safe to the shore of his feet.

The poems he left there are full of Sambandar. The first of them, a long poem in the old āciriyam metre, tells the story of that morning at the tank as Kazhumalam had always told it, and then turns it round so that the god is its hero:

தாதையொடு வந்த வேதியச் சிறுவன்

தளர்நடைப் பருவத்து வளர்பசி வருத்த

அன்னா யோவென் றழைப்பமுன் னின்று

ஞான போனகத் தருளட்டிக் குழைத்த

ஆனாத் திரளை அவன்வயின் அருள

அந்தணன் முனிந்து தந்தார் யார் என

அவனைக் காட்டுவன் அப்ப வானார்

தோஒ டுடைய செவியன் என்றும்

பீஇ டுடைய பெம்மான் என்றும்

கையில் சுட்டிக் காட்ட

ஐயநீ வெளிப்பட் டருளினை ஆங்கே.

(A little brahmin boy came with his father, at the age when he could hardly walk, and hunger hurt him, and he cried out, Mother! And you stood before him, and grace kneaded the food of wisdom into a ball and gave it to him. The brahmin was angry and asked, who gave you this? And the child said, Father, I will show him: the one of the heavens with the earring in his ear, the Lord of greatness; and he pointed with his hand. And there, Lord, you showed yourself.)

The child's words in that poem, "the one with the earring in his ear", are the first words of the first hymn of the Tēvāram. Veṇkāṭar sets them back in the small child's mouth, at the moment he first said them.

He does not stay with the child for long. The garland moves between that old story and his own state, and some of its finest lines are the plainest. In one of them he makes himself a bedchamber for the god:

கருமுதல் தொடங்கிப் பெருநாள் எல்லாம்

காமம் வெகுளி கழிபெரும் பொய்யெனுந்

தூய்மையில் குப்பை தொலைவின்றிக் கிடந்ததை

அரிதின் இகழ்ந்து போக்கிப் பொருதிறல்

மையிருள் நிறத்து மதனுடை அடுசினத்

தைவகைக் கடாவும் யாப்பவிழ்த் தகற்றி

அன்புகொடு மெழுகி அருள்விளக் கேற்றித்

துன்ப இருளைத் துரந்து முன்புறம்

மெய்யெனும் விதானம் விரித்து நொய்ய

கீழ்மையில் தொடர்ந்து கிடந்தஎன் சிந்தைப்

பாழறை உனக்குப் பள்ளியறை யாக்கிச்

சிந்தைத் தாமரைச் செழுமலர்ப் பூந்தவி

செந்தைநீ இருக்க இட்டனன் இந்த

(From the first day in the womb, through all the long days since, lust and anger and the great lie lay piled up in me, a heap of filth that never cleared. With great trouble I scorned it and threw it out. I loosed and drove away the five dark, fierce, maddened buffaloes of the senses. I swept the place with love and lit the lamp of grace; I drove the darkness of sorrow out and spread the canopy of truth overhead. And this ruined room of my mind, which had lain bound to meanness so long, I have made your bedchamber. On the lotus of my heart I have laid your couch, my father, for you to rest there.)

In another he looks back over every life he has lived, and makes a debt of it:

யானொன் றுணர்த்துவன் எந்தை மேனாள்

அகில லோகமும் அனந்த யோனியும்

நிகிலமுந் தோன்றநீ நினைந்தநாள் தொடங்கி

எனைப்பல யோனியும் நினைப்பரும் பேதத்து

யாரும் யாவையும் எனக்குத் தனித்தனித்

தாய ராகியுந் தந்தைய ராகியும்

வந்தி லாதவர் இல்லை யான் அவர்

தந்தைய ராகியுந் தாய ராகியும்

வந்தி ராததும் இல்லை முந்து

பிறவா நிலனும் இல்லை அவ்வயின்

இறவா நிலனும் இல்லை பிறிதில்

என்னைத் தின்னா உயிர்களும் இல்லை

யான் அவை

தம்மைத் தின்னா தொழிந்ததும் இல்லை

அனைத்தே காலமும் சென்றது யான்இதன்

மேல்இனி

இளைக்குமா றிலனே நாயேன்

நந்தாச் சோதிநின் அஞ்செழுத்து நவிலுந்

தந்திரம் பயின்றதும் இலனே தந்திரம்

பயின்றவர்ப் பயின்றதும் இலனே ஆயினும்

இயன்றதோர் பொழுதின் இட்டது மலராச்

சொன்னது மந்திர மாக என்னையும்

இடர்ப்பிறப் பிறப்பெனும் இரண்டின்

கடற்ப டாவகை காத்தல்நின் கடனே.

(Let me tell you one thing, my father. Since the day long ago when you first thought to bring the worlds and their countless wombs into being, there is no one who has not been mother and father to me, and no one to whom I have not been father and mother. There is no land where I was not born and none where I did not die. There is no creature that has not eaten me, and none I have not eaten. All of time has gone in this. I can grow no wearier than I am. Dog that I am, I have not learned the discipline of your five syllables, light that never fades, nor even kept company with those who have. Yet let whatever I once offered be counted as flowers, and whatever I said be counted as mantra, and keep me from falling into the sea of birth and death. That is your duty.)

The tone of that last line is a merchant's. He is calling in a debt. He does not plead his merits, for he says he has none. He reminds the god of what is owed to anyone who has once made an offering, however small, and presents the account.

There is a gentler side to the Kazhumalam garland, too. One of its short quatrains is a whole theology of worship for the poor:

போதும் பெறாவிடில் பச்சிலை உண்டு புனலுண்டெங்கும்

ஏதும் பெறாவிடில் நெஞ்சுண்டன் றேஇணை யாகச் செப்பும்

சூதும் பெறாமுலை பங்கர்தென் தோணி புரேசர்வண்டின்

தாதும் பெறாத அடித்தா மரைசென்று சார்வதற்கே.

(If no flowers can be had, there are green leaves; there is water everywhere; and if nothing at all can be had, there is the heart. That is enough to reach the lotus feet of the Lord of Tōṇipuram in the south, who shares his body with her whose breasts not even the paired caskets they are likened to can match, feet where not even the bees can get at the pollen.)

He never scorned the simplest worship, only worship done for gain. The man who wrote this verse had once owned a temple's worth of gold; now he was telling the poor that a leaf and a handful of water and a heart would do.

There is one more poem in the Kazhumalam garland that comes straight out of his own story. It begins by confessing how the world looked to him in the days when he did not know the god: everything his eyes fell on was his or someone else's, coming or going, being made or falling apart, numberless as the sand on the shore, and he spent long days in the dark, seeing things that were not there and missing the one thing that was. Then the god's grace looked on him, and everything changed. He reaches for an image from the painted walls of temples and palaces:

யாவையும் எனக்குப் பொய்யெனத் தோன்றி

மேவரும் நீயே மெய்யெனத் தோன்றினை

ஓவியப் புலவன் சாயல்பெற எழுதிய

சிற்ப விகற்பம் எல்லாம் ஒன்றித்

தவிராது தடவினர் தமக்குச்

சுவராய்த் தோன்றுங் துணிவுபோன் றனவே.

(Everything appeared to me as false, and you alone, so hard to reach, appeared as true. It was as when people run their hands over all the figures a master painter has drawn on a wall, so true to life, and every one of them turns out to be wall.)

The god of Kazhumalam had shown him the wall behind the pictures. Now a longing came over him to see the dance at Tillai, and he took his leave of Sambandar's town with the shore of the Lord's feet already in sight, crossed the Koḷḷiṭam river, and went north.

Everything slows as he comes to Tillai, as it always does for those who reach it. Past the Koḷḷiṭam the flower gardens seemed to him like devotees themselves: the white pollen on them was sacred ash, the dew falling from the blossoms was tears, the hum of the bees was praise. The fields were full of lotuses, white and red. Then the town rose up: the high walls, the four towers that seemed to shine like the sun coming up over a mountain, the four great streets laid out by the rules of the scriptures. He bowed in every street and at the gate tower of seven storeys. The brahmins of Tillai, the three thousand who serve the Lord of the Hall, came round him with their fires. He bathed in the Śivagaṅgā tank, where the lotuses open everywhere and the bees sing, and then went in to the Hall where Śiva dances.

There he stood before the dancer a long while, stunned, unable to tell any longer where the centre was, or the end, or the beginning. When he came a little to himself he began to sing, and what he sang was the Kōyil Nāṉmaṇimālai, the garland of four jewels for the Temple, as Tamil Śaivas call Tillai: forty poems in four metres, each one picking up the last word of the poem before. Its first verse begins with a question about praise:

பூமேல் அயனறியா மோலிப் புறத்ததே

நாமே புகழ்ந்தளவை நாட்டுவோம் பாமேவும்

ஏத்துகந்தான் தில்லை இடத்துகந்தான் அம்பலத்தே

கூத்துகந்தான் கொற்றக் குடை.

(The crown on his head lies beyond what Brahmā on his flower could ever come to know. Shall we, then, set bounds to it with our praises? The royal parasol held over him is this: he loves the praise that lives in verse, he loves the place called Tillai, he loves the dance in the Hall.)

The second poem picks up the parasol and turns it over. A king's white parasol, held over his head, was the sign that the whole land lay cool in its shade. Veṇkāṭar sets it beside his own life:

குடைகொண்டிவ் வையம் எலாங்குளிர் வித்தெரி பொற்றிகிரிப்

படைகொண் டிகல்தெறும் பார்த்திவர் ஆவதிற் பைம்பொற்கொன்றைத்

தொடைகொண்ட வார்சடை அம்பலத் தான்தொண்டர்க் கேவல்செய்து

கடைகொண்ட பிச்சைகொண் டுண்டிங்கு வாழ்தல் களிப்புடைத்தே.

(Better than being a king who holds the whole world cool beneath his parasol and with his flaming golden discus breaks the pride of his foes: to serve the servants of the Lord of the Hall, whose long matted hair wears a garland of fresh golden koṉṟai flowers, and to eat the alms I gather at the doors, and live here. That is joy.)

He did exactly that. He went from door to door in Tillai with his bowl, ate what he was given, and stayed a long while worshipping the Lord's feet in Tamil.

It is in this Tillai garland, more than anywhere else, that the old merchant shows through. In one poem he becomes a ship's master again, describing a vessel in distress:

அறிவில் ஒழுக்கமும் பிறிதுபடு பொய்யும்

கடும்பிணித் தொகையும் இடும்பை ஈட்டமும்

இனையன பலசரக் கேற்றி வினையெனும்

தொல்மீ காமன் உய்ப்ப அந்நிலைக்

கருவெனும் நெடுநகர் ஒருதுறை நீத்தத்துப்

புலனெனும் கோள்மீன் அலமந்து தொடரப்

பிறப்பெனும் பெருங்கடல் உறப்புகுந் தலைக்கும்

துயர்த்திரை உவட்டில் பெயர்ப்பிடம் அயர்த்துக்

குடும்பம் என்னும் நெடுங்கல் வீழ்த்து

நிறையெனும் கூம்பு முரிந்து குறையா

உணர்வெனும் நெடும்பாய் கீறிப் புணரும்

மாயப் பெயர்ப்படு காயச் சிறைக்கலம்

கலங்குபு கவிழா முன்னம் அலங்கல்

மதியுடன் அணிந்த பொதியவிழ் சடிலத்துப்

பையர வணிந்த தெய்வ நாயக

தொல்லெயில் உடுத்த தில்லை காவல

வம்பலர் தும்பை அம்பல வாண நின்

அருளெனும் நலத்தார் பூட்டித்

திருவடி நெடுங்கரை சேர்த்துமா செய்யே.

(Laden with a cargo of ignorant ways, of lies that change their shape, of heaps of cruel sickness and piles of trouble, steered by that old pilot, karma, out from the single harbour of the great city of the womb, chased by the crocodiles of the senses, it sails into the great sea of birth and is thrown about there. In the swell of the waves of grief it forgets where it was bound. It is flung onto the long rock called family, the mast of restraint snaps, the long sail of understanding is torn. Before this prison-ship called the body, so full of illusion, rolls over and sinks, divine Lord who wear a garland and the moon and a hooded snake in your loosened matted hair, guardian of Tillai girt with ancient walls, Lord of the Hall crowned with fresh tumpai flowers, make fast to it the good rope of your grace and bring it in to the long shore of your holy feet.)

A man who had sent out ships and waited for them knew what it was to lose one. In another poem he says simply that he has found his place:

கொண்டல்வண் ணத்தவன் நான்முகன் இந்திரன் கோமகுடத்

தண்டர்மிண் டித்தொழும் அம்பலக் கூத்தனுக் கன்பு செய்யா

மிண்டர்மிண் டித்திரி வாரெனக் கென்னினி நானவன்றன்

தொண்டர்தொண் டர்க்குத் தொழும்பாய்த் திரியத் தொடங்கினனே.

(Let the stubborn who will not love the dancer of the Hall, whom the cloud-coloured one, Brahmā, Indra and the crowned gods crowd in to worship, go stubbornly about as they please. What is that to me? I have begun to wander as the servant of the servants of his servants.)

Even at Tillai there were hungry days. Once, after he had seen the dance, he was very hungry and nothing had come his way. He sang, and at noon the goddess Śivakāmi, the dancer's consort, came out to him in the form of a brahmin woman, carrying the food that had been offered in the temple, gave it to him with her own hand, and vanished. When he understood who had fed him, he was overcome.

Tillai also had a story for Cēntaṉār. He had come there with his family, as his master told him, and lived by selling firewood, and every day he looked for one of Śiva's devotees to feed. Once it rained without stopping for seven days, so that no one could go out. Cēntaṉār struggled into the forest and back with a load of wood, sold it for a little flour, and his wife cooked it into the plain porridge called kaḷi. Then he went out to find a devotee to eat it. He searched every street and every hall in the town and found no one, until at last, in one of the temple pavilions, he came upon an old devotee bent with age and faint with hunger. He brought him home, washed his feet, seated him and served him the kaḷi. The old man ate, took what was left, and went on his way.

That night the Chola king who worshipped daily at Tillai waited for the sound of the temple bell that told him the god had been fed, for he had vowed never to eat until he heard it. It did not ring. He lay down on the bare floor, wretched, and in his dream the Lord of the Hall came to him and told him not to grieve: he had been late because he had gone to eat the kaḷi that Cēntaṉār gave him. In the morning the king went to the temple and found the floor of the Hall strewn with grains of kaḷi. He and the brahmins of Tillai praised Cēntaṉār's love, and praised Veṇkāṭar, who had sent him there. There was a sequel. At the Tiruvātirai festival soon after, the god's chariot stuck fast in the rain-soaked streets until a voice from the sky bade Cēntaṉār sing, and at his song it rolled. In time Cēntaṉār and all his household came to rest at the feet of the dancer.

Veṇkāṭar stayed on at Tillai many days, going each day to see the dance. In the last of his forty poems he gathers up the gifts the god has given through the ages, the discus to Viṣṇu, the treasures to Kubera and the life spared to young Mārkaṇḍēya, and praises each of them. For anyone who remembers how this story began, the second of those gifts reads strangely. The god who gave Kubera the riches of the north is the god who came to Pukār to take them all away again. At last a prompting of grace told him to go to Tiruvoṟṟiyūr, and he took leave of the dancer and set out northward.

From Tillai the road ran north through country thick with memories of the first singers of Śiva, and he walked it slowly. He came to Tiruttiṇainakar and then to the Keṭilam river, where the waves had once brought a great saint safely to shore on a raft of stone. That was Appar, whom the Jains had bound to a stone and thrown into the sea. Veṇkāṭar bathed in the river and worshipped at Pātirippuliyūr on its bank, and a little further on, at Tiruvatikai, where Appar first sang, he bowed before the god who had given Appar his name, the King of Speech. At Veṇṇainallūr he worshipped the god who had once claimed Sundarar as his slave by producing an old deed, and the likeness between the two men fits in one phrase: this was the Lord who took Sundarar by showing him a palm leaf, and took Veṇkāṭar by showing him a broken needle and a leaf. Then came Tiruvaṇṇāmalai, the mountain of fire, which he walked round, staying there some days, and then shrine after shrine to Kanchi.

At the edge of Kanchi it is worth stopping, for the whole of Veṇkāṭar's life can be summed up there in two lines. Men who seek wealth that does not last go out across the great waters and come back; men who seek the wealth of love walk the long roads of the land. Veṇkāṭar had done both. Word went ahead of him. The devotees of Kanchi heard that the great one from Kāvirippūmpaṭṭiṉam was coming, and came out to meet him with lamps and auspicious things, with the chanting of the Vedas and the sound of music, and he bowed to them before they could bow to him. He walked the streets of the city weeping and singing, worshipped before Ēkampaṉ, the god under the mango tree, and went into the shrine of the goddess Kāmākṣi.

At Kanchi he made the longest of his works, the Tiruvēkampamuṭaiyār Tiruvantāti, a hundred quatrains for the Lord of Ēkampam, each linked to the next by its last word. It opens with one of the most humble things he ever wrote:

மெய்த்தொண்டர் செல்லும் நெறியறி யேன்மிக நற்பணிசெய்

கைத்தொண்டர் தம்மிலும் நற்றொண் டுவந்திலன் உண்பதற்கே

பொய்த்தொண்டு பேசிப் புறம்புற மேயுன்னைப் போற்றுகின்ற

இத்தொண்ட னேன்பணி கொள்ளுதி யோகச்சி ஏகம்பனே.

(I do not know the path your true servants walk. I have not even taken up the good service of those who serve you with their hands. For the sake of my food I talk of a false service, and stand outside and praise you from outside. Will you take service even from this servant, Ēkampaṉ of Kacci?)

A great part of the hundred is love poetry in the old Tamil manner, spoken by girls and their friends on the slopes of the Kailāsa that Ēkampaṉ rules: girls guarding millet fields from parrots, lovers meeting by waterfalls, a mother grieving that her daughter has run away with her lover over the burning wasteland. The Tamil poets had long sung of the soul's longing for the god in the voice of a girl longing for her beloved, and Veṇkāṭar sang a great deal of it. But in the midst of all that tenderness the antāti also says some hard things plainly. One verse turns on the kings of the earth:

அன்றும் பகையடர்க் கும்பரி மாவும் மதவருவிக்

குன்றும் பதாதியுந் தேருங் குலவிக் குடைநிழற்கீழ்

நின்றும் பொலியினுங் கம்பர்நன் னீறு நுதற்கிலரேல்

என்றும் அரசும் முரசும் பொலியா இருநிலத்தே.

(Though they stand in splendour under the royal parasol, with horses that break the foe and elephants streaming with must like mountains, with foot soldiers and chariots all about them, if their brows do not bear the good ash of Kampaṉ, neither their kingdom nor their royal drum will ever shine on this wide earth.)

And another turns just as plainly on the question of birth:

படையால் உயிர்கொன்று தின்று பசுக்களைப் போலச்செல்லும்

நடையால் அறிவின்றி நட்பிடைப் பொய்த்துக் குலங்களினும்

கடையாய்ப் பிறக்கினும் கச்சியுள் ஏகம்பத் தெங்களையாள்

உடையான் கழற்கன்ப ரேலவர் யாவர்க்கும் உத்தமரே.

(Even if they are born the lowest of all peoples, who kill with weapons and eat what they kill, who go about like cattle, who know nothing and are false to their friends, if they love the feet of the Lord who rules us at Ēkampam in Kacci, they are the highest of all.)

He speaks of the lowest as harshly as anyone of his day spoke, and then sets them above everyone else for one reason only.

Hunger found him at Kanchi too. He was staying near the shrine called Kārōṇam, and one day, weak with hunger, he sang of it, and the goddess Kāmākṣi came out of her temple in the form of a brahmin woman and fed him. Hunger walked with him the length of the Tamil country, and it was answered sometimes with blows and sometimes by the goddess herself.

From Kanchi he went on by Tiruvālaṅkāṭu and other shrines towards Kāḷatti, the hill shrine where the hunter Kaṇṇappar had once given his own eyes to the god. On that road, so the story goes, the creatures of the forest served him. Snakes held up the gems in their hoods to light his way, elephants went ahead and broke off the thorny branches, tigers swept the path with their tails, deer walked before and behind him to show the way, peacocks spread their wings to fan him and shade him from the sun, and monkeys brought him fruit and roots. He would take none of it for himself. Such service, he told them, belonged to the feet of the Lord of Kāḷatti. At Kāḷatti he wept, remembering Kaṇṇappar's service, and climbed the hill. Then, singing as he went, he turned back towards the sea and came at last to Tiruvoṟṟiyūr. It was his last road.

Tiruvoṟṟiyūr stands on the open shore of the Bay of Bengal, and the sea was the first thing Veṇkāṭar saw there. He began his last poem with it:

இருநில மடந்தை இயல்பினின் உடுத்த

பொருகடல் மேகலை முகமெனப் பொலிந்த

ஒற்றி மாநகர் உடையோய் உருவின்

பெற்றியொன் றாகப் பெற்றோர் யாரே

மின்னின் பிறக்கம் துன்னும்நின் சடையே

மன்னிய அண்டம்நின் சென்னியின் வடிவே

பாவகன் பரிதி பனிமதி தன்னொடும்

மூவகைச் சுடரும்நின் நுதல்நேர் நாட்டம்

தண்ணொளி ஆரம் தாரா கணமே

விண்ணவர் முதலா வேறோர் இடமாக்

கொண்டுறை விசும்பே கோலநின் ஆகம்

எண்திசை திண்தோள் இருங்கடல் உடையே

அணியுடை அல்குல் அவனிமண் டலமே

மணிமுடிப் பாந்தள்நின் தாளிணை வழக்கே

ஒழியா தோடிய மாருதம் உயிர்ப்பே

வழுவா ஓசை முழுதும்நின் வாய்மொழி

(Lord of the great city of Oṟṟi, which shines like a face above the girdle of fighting sea that the wide earth wears for her garment, who has ever come to know your form as it truly is? The lightning is your matted hair, the round universe is your head, sun and moon and fire are your three eyes, the stars your cool necklace, the sky where the gods and all others make their dwelling is your lovely body, the eight directions your shoulders, the great sea your robe, the earth your waist, the jewel-crowned serpent the ground your two feet tread. The wind that never stops is your breath, and every sound there is, is your speech.)

He sang it with the tears streaming down and his hands raised above his head, and stood a long while lost to himself before he could leave the shrine. The poem is the Tiruvoṟṟiyūr Orupā Orupatu, ten poems in one metre, and it is also called the Oṟṟiyūrttokai, the Oṟṟiyūr garland. It is the shortest of his five works, and its ten poems are all long ones in the old āciriyam metre. In it the merchant's sea comes back for the last time, and this time he is not the shipowner but a passenger. The body, he says, is itself a great sea, heavy with earth and long with craving; its foam is the white of grey hair, its waves are wrinkled skin, its water is blood, its roar is the cough of age, and hunger and anger are the sharks that hunt in it. Then he tells how some cross it:

காவா என்றுநின் அருளினைப் பெற்றவர்

நாவா யாகிய நாதநின் பாதம்

முந்திச் சென்று முறைமையின் வணங்கிச்

சிந்தைக் கூம்பினைச் செவ்விதின் நிறுத்தி

உருகிய ஆர்வப் பாய்விரித் தார்த்துப்

பெருகிய நிறையெனுங் கயிற்றிடைப் பிணித்துத்

துன்னிய சுற்றத் தொடர்க்கயி றறுத்து

மன்னிய ஒருமைப் பொறியினை முறுக்கிக்

…

சுருங்கா உணர்ச்சித் துடுப்பினைத் துழாவி

நெருங்கா அளவில் நீள்கரை ஏற்ற

ஆங்க யாத்திரை போக்குதி போலும்

ஓங்குகடல் உடுத்த ஒற்றியூ ரோயே.

(Those who cry out, Ah, ah, and win your grace take your feet for their ship. They go to it first and bow as is fitting. They set up the mast of the mind and spread the sail of melting love and make it fast. They tie it with the rope of restraint. They cut the close-knit cable of kinship. They turn the one steady wheel of a single mind … and pull on the oar of an understanding that never shrinks, until they are brought to the long shore beyond all measure. So, it seems, you see them through their voyage, Lord of Oṟṟiyūr, who wear the high sea for your garment.)

In the next poem he is a child again, and not a very good one. A mother who has gone some way off may not hear her baby crying, he says, yet the child cries all the same, out of a nature that cannot be parted from her. He has been crying like that through ages beyond counting, without knowing who it was he cried for. Now he has laid it all at the god's feet, father and mother and caste and learning, mind and wealth and the road ahead, sorrow and renunciation and purity, pleasure and fame, every taste and light and touch and sound and smell, and stands there with nothing. It was you who tied these knots, he tells the god, in all that endless craving. Unless you untie them yourself, I do not know how to loosen them by so much as a sesame seed.

He stayed on at Oṟṟiyūr and never left its bounds. He bathed and wore the sacred ash and worshipped with the five syllables, and little by little he gave himself up wholly to grace, until his very body was Śiva's own.

He used to walk out on the wide sands by the sea and among the groves of punnai trees, where the boys who herded the town's cattle played, and he would join their games and become one of them, playing and singing as they did. Children, he said to them one day, let me show you a wonder. Bury me in a pit in the sand. They did it, laughing, and the next moment he was standing on top of a dune some way off, laughing with them. They buried him again, and again he came up somewhere else. Over and over they heaped the sand on him, and over and over he rose out of it in another place, and the children shrieked with delight. Then, once, they buried him and he did not come up anywhere. Where they had buried him, a liṅga of Śiva was standing in the sand.

The children ran into the town and told everyone, and the people came hurrying and saw it with their own eyes. Flowers rained down, the drums of heaven sounded, and the sages and devotees cried out Hara, Hara, until the whole world was drowned in a flood of joy. A shrine by the shore at Tiruvoṟṟiyūr is still honoured as the place, and people still go there to worship.

The news came to Pūmpukār that its great merchant, who had walked out of his house with a loincloth, had become a liṅga on the shore at Oṟṟiyūr. His kinsmen wept and folded their hands above their heads. Will we ever see our family god again, they said. They gathered in crowds and took the long road north that he had walked, and came to Oṟṟiyūr, and worshipped the god of the temple there and the liṅga in the sand, and did it many services. Some of them stayed and made their homes in that town. His wife Civakalai was not among them. She had gone before him, reaching Śiva's feet through her meditation on her husband's feet.

He had left one more poem behind him, the last of the Oṟṟiyūr ten, and it is nothing but praise. It ends a life that had begun among ledgers with a list of a different kind:

காலற் சீறிய கழலோய் போற்றி

மூலத் தொகுதி முதல்வ போற்றி

ஒற்றி மாநகர் உடையோய் போற்றி

முற்றும் ஆகிய முதல்வ போற்றி

அணைதொறுஞ் சிறக்கும் அமிர்தே போற்றி

இணைபிறி தில்லா ஈச போற்றி

ஆர்வஞ் செய்பவர்க் கணியோய் போற்றி

தீர்வில் இன்சுவைத் தேனே போற்றி

(Praise to you whose foot spurned Death. Praise to the first one, source of all things. Praise to you who own the great city of Oṟṟi. Praise to the first, who became the whole. Praise to the nectar that grows sweeter each time we come near. Praise to the Lord who has no equal. Praise to the one close at hand to those who long for him. Praise to the honey whose sweetness never ends.)

So the man who had kept ships and ledgers at the mouth of the Kāviri came to rest in the sand at Oṟṟiyūr, under a mound that children had heaped over him in play, and the kin who had once crowded the hall at Pukār to plead with him came there to worship. His poems leave all of that to others. They do not tell of the needle, the poisoned cake, the stake that burned or the liṅga in the sand. They are what a man says to his god when the story is over: that he does not know who he is, that he has nothing left to offer but leaves and water and a heart, that the knots are the god's own and only the god can untie them, and that he has begun, at last, to wander as the servant of the servants of his servants.