Periya Nambi

The account never says where Periya Nambi was born, or to whom, or how he first came to Āḷavandār. When he enters the story he is already at Āḷavandār's feet.

His Tamil name means the great Nambi. The Sanskrit verse by which the tradition salutes him calls him the great Pūrṇa, Mahāpūrṇa, and that is the name this book gives him.

Āḷavandār had given up a kingdom and was living at Śrīraṅgam, serving Periya Perumāḷ, the Great Lord who lies in the temple there. Twenty men took refuge at his feet in those years, all of them learned, all of them carrying the darśana, the whole teaching of the line. When the account names the twenty, it names Mahāpūrṇa first. After him come Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, Śrīśailapūrṇa, Māṟaṉēri Nambi and Kāñcīpūrṇa, and fifteen more, Mālādhara among them.

A time came when Āḷavandār lay ill.

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa, his two chief disciples, went to him together. They took Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar, who sang before the Lord, as their puruṣakāra, the one who speaks for another, and they prostrated at Āḷavandār's feet and asked him for a meaning that would be their refuge. What he taught them in those days is told in his own life: that Kōyilāzhvār, the shrine itself, was where their life lay; that they should worship from foot to head the form of Tiruppāṇāzhvār beneath the Lord's feet; and that they were not to take Āḷavandār himself as their means and goal.

Then the Araiyar said a hard thing. "When Your Honour gives tīrtha and goes, it is no loss if some destruction comes to worms and insects."

Āḷavandār looked away and gave no reply. But the two of them, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa, took the word to heart, and they resolved that when Āḷavandār went, they would give up their lives.

Periya Perumāḷ heard of it in his hall of audience and forbade it, and put them into the Araiyar's hands; and Āḷavandār forbade it too. He gave them their final meaning instead. To make one jasmine bud open at the feet of Periya Perumāḷ; and, toward the ācārya, the teacher, to hold the first and middle stages as the last. Then he prostrated to the Araiyar and put Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa into his hands.

"Hold it in mind," he told the two of them, "that for you the form of Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar is both means and goal."

They held it so.

The illness left Āḷavandār for a time. When he came back from worship to his maṭha he had all the mudalis, the Araiyar and Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa first among them, take tīrtha and eat, and he prostrated before them and begged them to bear with all his offences.

In those days two Śrīvaiṣṇavas came to Kōyil, as the account calls Śrīraṅgam, from the shrine of Pēraruḷāḷar at Kāñcī. They had heard that Āḷavandār was ill. He asked them for the news of that place, and then he asked, "What is Iḷaiyāzhvār doing?"

"Iḷaiyāzhvār has grown angry with Yādavaprakāśa," they said. "He has given him up, and now he stands devoted to Pēraruḷāḷar."

Āḷavandār was glad. "Pēraruḷāḷar has made our prapatti fruitful," he said, and in his great joy he made a hymn, a stotra, on the greatness of Pēraruḷāḷar.

He gave it into the hand of Mahāpūrṇa, who was held within his own care. He looked at him.

"We hear that Iḷaiyāzhvār no longer keeps to Yādavaprakāśa, that he has left him and is devoted to Dēvapperumāḷ. You must go there now, and join him to us."

Mahāpūrṇa set out at once.

Another account, kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple there, tells it a little differently. Āḷavandār, it says, had been asking himself who would carry the service of the temple and of the teaching after him, and before this he had gone to Kāñcī himself, looked on Iḷaiyāzhvār with grace and blessed him. When he heard that Iḷaiyāzhvār had left Yādavaprakāśa and was bringing the Lord's bathing water from the Sālai well, he made his hymn on Dēvapperumāḷ and sent Mahāpūrṇa with it. In that telling Mahāpūrṇa recited the hymn in the shrine of Dēvapperumāḷ itself, and Iḷaiyāzhvār heard it there and was wholly taken by it, and set out with him to see Āḷavandār.

So Mahāpūrṇa was not at Śrīraṅgam for what came next. Āḷavandār's illness came back. He fixed his day, begged everyone's forgiveness, and went to the sacred land, and his disciples carried him through every holy street with the horn sounding and bore him to Tirukkarambaṉtuṟai to lay him in the earth. His own life tells all that.

Mahāpūrṇa went at a traveller's pace and came to Kāñcī. He told Kāñcīpūrṇa the news he carried, and with Kāñcīpūrṇa as his puruṣakāra he went into the shrine of Pēraruḷāḷar and recited the hymn before him. He received tīrtha, the holy water from the worship, and prasāda, the food the Lord has been offered. Then he came out.

On the path by the Sālai well, the path Iḷaiyāzhvār took with the bathing water, he was reciting Āḷavandār's hymn.

Iḷaiyāzhvār heard one verse of it.

ப்ரஹ்மாஶிவஶ்ஶதமகஃபரமஸ்வராடித் யேதேபியஸ்யமஹிமார்ணவவி

ப்ருஷஸ்தே

prahmāśivaśśatamakaḵparamasvarāṭit yētēpiyasyamahimārṇavavi

pruṣastē

Brahmā, Śiva, Indra of the hundred sacrifices, and the supreme self-ruler: even these are drops of the ocean of Your greatness.

"Who composed this?" he asked.

"It is a sacred utterance of Āḷavandār," Mahāpūrṇa said.

"I must see him. I must serve him."

"Then come along with us."

Iḷaiyāzhvār offered the bathing water before the Lord, worshipped him, and took his leave. He went to Kāñcīpūrṇa and worshipped him too and told him the news. Then he set out with Mahāpūrṇa.

They were coming near Kōyil when they saw a great crowd at Tirukkarambaṉtuṟai. They asked the people coming toward them, "What is this crowd?"

"Āḷavandār has gone to the sacred land."

One of them, hearing it, sighed and swooned and fell, and lay writhing, sunk in a sea of grief. The account does not name him at that point, but the way it goes on suggests it was Mahāpūrṇa. Iḷaiyāzhvār lamented in many ways, and stood with the tears streaming down, all other feeling gone out of him, wanting only to turn back.

Then Mahāpūrṇa forgot his own grief, the way the sting of a scorpion is forgotten when a sword wound is seen. He comforted Iḷaiyāzhvār.

"As it is said, even for the great, good things come with many obstacles. So you need not grieve."

He took him by the hand and led him to see Āḷavandār's body, spotless in its last form.

Iḷaiyāzhvār prostrated before it. "How it has turned out," he said, astonished. "The gain of what could not be gained!"

There, looking at the body from foot to crown, Iḷaiyāzhvār saw that three fingers of the hand were folded. He asked the disciples about it, and heard from them the three things Āḷavandār had wished, and he made his vow over the body, and the fingers straightened. All of them saw it, and they blessed him: the ācārya's grace was with him, they said, and he would be the one to carry the darśana. That belongs to Iḷaiyāzhvār's own story, and to Āḷavandār's.

Iḷaiyāzhvār grieved. "What Namperumāḷ has done to us!" he said. He performed the closing bath, and he prostrated to Mahāpūrṇa. Then, without worshipping even at Namperumāḷ's feet, holding it against him, he turned back and went to Kāñcī.

At Kōyil the disciples laid Āḷavandār in his resting place and did every rite that had to be done.

At Kōyil, after that, all the disciples of Āḷavandār gathered together and put a question to Mahāpūrṇa.

"Who is to be responsible for this darśana?"

"Has it not settled in your minds?" he said. "How Āḷavandār long before set his mind on him and looked on him with special grace? And the fingers, how they straightened? Āḷavandār's regard can never prove false."

All the disciples agreed. "Then Your Honour must go now," they said. "Look on Iḷaiyāzhvār with special grace, make him fit to carry our darśana, and bring him here."

Mahāpūrṇa set out at once, with his family. He went to Namperumāḷ's shrine, worshipped, told him why he was going, and took his leave. He went in haste. On the road to Kāñcī he halted at Madhurāntakam, in the temple of Ērikātta Perumāḷ, the Lord who guarded the lake, and stayed there.

At Kāñcī, in those same days, the Lord had named him.

Iḷaiyāzhvār had been carrying certain thoughts in his heart, and he had asked Kāñcīpūrṇa to put them to Pēraruḷāḷar. That night, when they were alone, the Lord gave Kāñcīpūrṇa six words. The supreme reality is We ourselves. Difference is the darśana. The means is prapatti alone. Remembrance at the last is not needed. Release comes when the body ends. And the sixth: take refuge at the holy feet of Periya Nambi.

Kāñcīpūrṇa told him at daybreak. "Are these your thoughts?"

"Yes," said Iḷaiyāzhvār, and prostrated at his feet.

So Iḷaiyāzhvār set out from Kāñcī to take refuge at the feet of Mahāpūrṇa. He worshipped Kāñcīpūrṇa and Pēraruḷāḷar and took their leave, and went toward Kōyil. The way lay through Madhurāntakam, and he went into the temple there to worship Ērikātta Perumāḷ.

Mahāpūrṇa was there.

Iḷaiyāzhvār saw him from a distance and was amazed. "Like the fruit you were thinking of coming to meet you and falling into your hand," he said, "see how Nambi has come out ahead of us to show us grace! Have you seen it, my heart?" His eyes filled with tears of joy that would not stop. In a rush of gladness he fell full length at Mahāpūrṇa's feet and stood.

Mahāpūrṇa saw his own wish come to him on the road, sooner than he could have hoped. He was full of joy. He gathered Iḷaiyāzhvār up and held him.

"Your Honour must give your servant the saving teaching now," Iḷaiyāzhvār said, "and protect me."

"We shall do it," Mahāpūrṇa said, "in the presence of Pēraruḷāḷar, whom every being from Brahmā down serves, in the middle of the Puṇyakoṭi shrine on Hastigiri." He gave the verse that speaks of that hill:

அஸ்திஹஸ்திகிரிர்நாம தத்ரஶைலவரோமஹாந்-விதாத்ராஉப்யர்ச்சிதோ

விஷ்ணுஸ் தஸ்யஶைலஸ்யமூர்த்தநி - புண்யகோடீதிவிக்யாதம் விமாநம்புண்ய

வர்த்தநம்

astihastikirirnāma tatraśailavarōmahān-vitātrāupyarccitō

viṣṇus tasyaśailasyamūrttani - puṇyakōṭītivikyātam vimānampuṇya

varttanam

There is a mountain called Hastigiri, best of mountains and great; worshipped by the Creator, Viṣṇu is on the summit of that mountain; and the shrine there, famed as Puṇyakoṭi, makes merit grow.

"Is what we saw with Āḷavandār not enough?" Iḷaiyāzhvār said. "It shows that one cannot let time pass. While this body of mine, which lasts less than a flash of lightning, is still here, Your Honour must show me grace."

He fell at Mahāpūrṇa's feet and lay there.

Mahāpūrṇa lifted him up by the head. "How great his longing is!" he said, and he was very glad. He took Iḷaiyāzhvār by the hand and led him to the holy Makizh tree in the temple of Ērikātta Perumāḷ, and sat there.

There he bestowed on him the holy emblems. This is the rite the tradition calls pañcasaṃskāra, the five sacraments that mark a man as the Lord's own; the account here speaks only of the emblems, and sets beside them the verses that enjoin them. One of them says:

சக்ராதிதாரணம்பும்ஸாம் பரஸம்பந்தவேதநம் - பதிவ்ரதாநிமித்

தம்ஹி வலயாதிவிபூஷணம்

cakrātitāraṇampumsām parasampantavētanam - pativratānimit

tamhi valayātivipūṣaṇam

For men, the wearing of the discus and the rest makes known their bond with the Supreme, just as, for a wife true to her husband, bangles and such ornaments are the sign.

Then he did as the old verse on initiation lays down. He placed the humble Iḷaiyāzhvār on his own right side, touched his head with his own hands, and called to mind the feet of Āḷavandār, his true ācārya. And, beginning from the line of teachers, he taught into Iḷaiyāzhvār's right ear the dvaya, the jewel of mantras, with all its limbs and all its parts.

Then he said to him:

"When Perumāḷ went to the forest, he set his sandals on the head of Śrī Bharata for the sake of the kingdom. Think of it so. For your sake Āḷavandār set his lotus feet on my head and went to the sacred land."

The account says plainly what that meant. Mahāpūrṇa was only an instrument in Āḷavandār's hand. Iḷaiyāzhvār's own ācārya is Yamunaitturaivar, Āḷavandār himself. That is why Piḷḷai Amudaṉār would later sing of "Rāmānuja, who has gained for his refuge the two feet of Yamunaitturaivaṉ, lord of ascetics."

Iḷaiyāzhvār asked him three questions under that tree. "What is the means of knowing? What is the thing known? And who are the knowers?"

"The verse says that to speak the name of Mādhava is the sum of the Veda," Mahāpūrṇa said. "So the means of knowing is the dvaya itself. The thing known is Perumāḷ, whom it teaches, who stands on Śrī Hastigiri with his hand and his holy discus. The knower is you yourself. Come, and through this means of knowing, enjoy the thing known."

The next day they set out. Mahāpūrṇa went to worship the feet of Ērikātta Perumāḷ first, and he blessed him. "As it is said, 'That Rāma, who delights the world': Your Honour has acted as befits your holy name, so that this darśana has not become a breached tank!"

Then they went on to Kāñcī.

Kāñcīpūrṇa came out to meet them and worshipped Mahāpūrṇa, and Mahāpūrṇa showed him grace in return. With Kāñcīpūrṇa as his puruṣakāra he went before Pēraruḷāḷar, the Lord of Attiyūr with the discus in his hand, whom the world praises, and worshipped.

The account sets the two journeys side by side. Maṇakkāl Nambi, by the command of his own ācārya, had won Āḷavandār with a gift of greens, and taught him what Nāthamuni had taught, and taken him to Kōyil and made him see Periya Perumāḷ face to face. In the same way Mahāpūrṇa, by Āḷavandār's command, taught Iḷaiyāzhvār and made him see Pēraruḷāḷar face to face and take his joy in him.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells the meeting in a few lines and gives it another cause. It says that the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ, commanded Mahāpūrṇa to go, at the same time that the six words came to Iḷaiyāzhvār at Kāñcī; that Mahāpūrṇa came by stages along the road, and Iḷaiyāzhvār met him at Madhurāntakam and had the thing he came for done; and that the two of them went to Kāñcī and stayed some time. And one line near the close of the longer account, summing up Uḍaiyavar's whole life, says only that at Kāñcī, by the command of Pēraruḷāḷar, he took refuge with Periya Nambi and received the five sacraments.

At Kāñcī Iḷaiyāzhvār took Mahāpūrṇa home.

He gave him half of his own house to live in with his family, and he brought everything the kitchen would need. Mahāpūrṇa stayed there six months. He taught Iḷaiyāzhvār the prabandhas of the Tamil Veda, the sacred songs, and the special secrets of the darśana. Iḷaiyāzhvār listened with love to words sweet to the ear, and he lived as a man who has got what he came for.

The house was not at peace. One day, at the hour of the Lord's holy bath, a Śrīvaiṣṇava who had come to apply the oil said that he was faint with hunger. Iḷaiyāzhvār asked his wife whether there was no food left over, and she said there was not even a little. He sent her off on an errand, went in and searched, and found plenty of old prasāda in a vessel; and he was very angry with her. That was Iḷaiyāzhvār's trouble, and the account does not put Mahāpūrṇa in it.

Then, another day, there was a quarrel at the edge of the well.

Iḷaiyāzhvār's wife and Mahāpūrṇa's wife quarrelled. The account says the pretext was a water-pot.

Mahāpūrṇa heard of it, and he was very angry with his own wife. He did not tell Iḷaiyāzhvār. He took his wife and went back to Kōyil.

Iḷaiyāzhvār finished his observances and came to worship Mahāpūrṇa, and Mahāpūrṇa was not there. He asked the people of the house, "Where is Periya Nambi?"

"He has gone back to Kōyil."

"Why so? What made him go without telling me?"

"There was a quarrel between the two sisters-in-law over a water-pot," they said. "He was angry with his wife. He shrank from the offence against a devotee, and he left for Kōyil at once."

Iḷaiyāzhvār's heart was troubled when he heard it. He turned to his wife in great anger. She had offended Kāñcīpūrṇa before this, he said, and a Śrīvaiṣṇava; now she had quarrelled with the wife of Periya Nambi, and that offence could not be borne. He gave her what was hers and sent her home to her father's house. Then he went and bathed in the tank called Anantasaras, and before Pēraruḷāḷar he took up the āśrama of one who has renounced everything. His own life tells that.

So Mahāpūrṇa went home to Śrīraṅgam over a water-pot, and the man he had gone to fetch stayed behind at Kāñcī.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam says nothing of the quarrel. It says only that the two of them stayed some time at Kāñcī, and that Mahāpūrṇa went back to Kōyil.

The news came after him. All the disciples of Āḷavandār at Kōyil heard that Iḷaiyāzhvār had entered the order, and they were very glad. They went to Namperumāḷ and asked him to call Iḷaiyāzhvār to Śrīraṅgam to live always in his presence, and Periya Perumāḷ sent a letter to Pēraruḷāḷar. Pēraruḷāḷar would not let him go. "Only if one lets one's own self-regard go elsewhere," he said, "would We give up Our Rāmānuja."

The disciples, with Mahāpūrṇa at their head, heard the answer and said to one another, "What is to be done now?" They talked it over. Dēvapperumāḷ was very generous, they said, and very fond of song. So they sent Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar to Kāñcī to please the Lord with singing and ask him for Rāmānuja. The Araiyar went, and sang, and asked, and Pēraruḷāḷar gave Rāmānuja into his hand.

Rāmānuja came south by stages and bathed in the northern arm of the river, and stayed there. The disciples, Mahāpūrṇa first among them, heard that he had come, and they told Perumāḷ. Perumāḷ sent out the Sēṉai Mudaliyār, the chief of his hosts, to bring him in. The Sēṉai Mudaliyār went with the disciples, Mahāpūrṇa among them, and the jīyars and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas and all the companies of the temple, with dance and song and every kind of music, and they received Rāmānuja on the bank of the Kāvēri. Rāmānuja worshipped the Sēṉai Mudaliyār and those with Mahāpūrṇa at their head, and he walked into the town behind them.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam adds that when he went into the sanctum to worship, Rāmānuja put Periya Nambi in front of him.

Periya Perumāḷ set his feet on Rāmānuja's head. He gave him the wealth of both realms, this world and the eternal one, for him and for all who were his, and charged him to look after all the affairs of his house. Some copies add that he gave him the holy name Uḍaiyavar as well.

Rāmānuja received the tīrtha and the garland and all of it, as plain as a fruit held in the palm. Then he turned and looked at Mahāpūrṇa's face.

"'How the reward is won by those who have become servants of the great!'" he said, in the words of the old Tamil verse. "It is because of my bond with Your Honour's holy feet that Perumāḷ has made me flourish like this."

"The Āzhvār said of the time to come, 'Kali too will be destroyed, see!'" Mahāpūrṇa answered. "It has come true before our eyes." And then: "Should you not carry out the work Perumāḷ has given you?"

Uḍaiyavar sat down in the great hall with everyone and began to examine the treasuries.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam says that afterwards, when he had gone to the maṭha given him, he made his formal greeting there to the temple's people and to Periya Nambi, and stayed.

After that, Rāmānuja went to Mahāpūrṇa's house.

He joined his feet and his long hands, prostrated at his feet, and said, "I lost the chance to serve at Āḷavandār's feet. So that the loss might be made good, I have been allowed to take refuge at Your Honour's feet. You must give me the special meanings that are in Your Honour's heart."

"So be it," Mahāpūrṇa said.

There is a Sanskrit verse in praise of the dvaya that cries out at its greatness and its power:

அஹோத்வயஸ்யமாஹாத்ம்ய

மஹோவீர்யமஹோபலம் - மந்த்ரரத்நம்ஶூபகரம் வேதஸாரம்ஸநாதநம் -

ஸர்வபாபக்ஷயகரம் ஸர்வபுண்யவிவர்தநம் - ஸ்ரீகரம்லோகவஶ்யஞ்ச †ஸத்யம்

ஸம்ஸாரதாரணம்

ahōtvayasyamāhātmya

mahōvīryamahōpalam - mantraratnamśūpakaram vētasāramsanātanam -

sarvapāpakṣayakaram sarvapuṇyavivartanam - srīkaramlōkavaśyañca †satyam

samsāratāraṇam

Oh, the greatness of the dvaya! Oh, its power, oh, its strength! The jewel of mantras, bringing good, the essence of the Veda, everlasting; it destroys every sin, it makes every merit grow; it brings fortune and draws the world to it; it is true, it carries a man across the round of birth.

Mahāpūrṇa gave Rāmānuja the meaning of that mantra in full, in every part.

Then he said, "There are still some special meanings. Go to the feet of Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, who is held within Āḷavandār's regard, and hear them from him."

What Rāmānuja went through at Tirukkōṭṭiyūr to hear them, the eighteen journeys and the rest, is Goṣṭhīpūrṇa's story.

The account names the disciples who took refuge at Mahāpūrṇa's feet. There were four: Iḷaiyāzhvār; Malaikuṉiyaniṉṟa Perumāḷ; Piḷḷai Tirukkulamuḍaiyār; and Saḍagopadāsar.

Mahāpūrṇa had a part, too, when Rāmānuja heard the Tiruvāymozhi, the thousand songs, from Mālādhara. In the middle of it the two of them fell out over the meaning of one verse, "In the time when I did not know," and Mālādhara stopped the teaching, saying he had not heard such a meaning from Āḷavandār. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa came to Kōyil and set him right: he had heard Āḷavandār give that very meaning, he said. Then Goṣṭhīpūrṇa took Mālādhara and Mahāpūrṇa with him to Emperumāṉār's maṭha. Uḍaiyavar, overjoyed, joined his feet and folded his hands and stood worshipping at their feet; and Mālādhara was told to begin again from where he had stopped and bring the work to its end.

When the Tiruvāymozhi was finished and Emperumāṉār was glad of it, Mahāpūrṇa looked at him and said, "Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar has one more special meaning. Hear it from him."

So Rāmānuja went to the Araiyar. For six months he boiled milk the way the Araiyar liked it and ground turmeric paste for his bath, until the Araiyar gave him the last meaning: that the ācārya himself is the means and the goal.

The shorter telling of these things puts them in the other order. In it Rāmānuja learned first from the Araiyar, and then came and prostrated at Mahāpūrṇa's feet; and Mahāpūrṇa sent him to hear the Tiruvāymozhi from Mālādhara. When Mālādhara brought the new reading of "In the time when I did not know" to where Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa sat among the disciples, the two of them said, "We heard this meaning from our Āḷavandār. For Emperumāṉār, whom Āḷavandār looked on with his whole grace, to learn special meanings from us is like Kṛṣṇa going to school with Sāndīpani." And Mahāpūrṇa went with all that company to Emperumāṉār's maṭha, looked on him with cool grace, and came back.

Someone may ask, the account says, why Rāmānuja went to so many teachers, when he was already complete the moment he took refuge at Periya Nambi's feet. The answer it gives is a king who, for his son's sake, leaves treasures with several ministers and goes away, telling them to hand them over when the son comes of age. Āḷavandār had left one special meaning with each of these men, and he had told them, "Tell Iḷaiyāzhvār the highest secret we tell you." Rāmānuja had lost the chance to hear them at Āḷavandār's own feet, and he went to each of them to make the loss good. And the account adds that the elder teachers themselves gained their distinction by becoming his teachers.

There was a time when a man at Kōyil, out of malice, mixed poison into the alms Rāmānuja begged, and Rāmānuja would eat nothing. The two accounts tell what followed differently. The longer one names only Goṣṭhīpūrṇa: he heard of it, it says, and came to Kōyil. The shorter one says that Mahāpūrṇa was staying with Goṣṭhīpūrṇa when the news reached them, and that Mahāpūrṇa set out in haste and took Goṣṭhīpūrṇa with him. They came to the Kāvēri at midday. Emperumāṉār came out with his disciples to meet them and prostrated before Mahāpūrṇa, and Mahāpūrṇa lifted him up by the head and looked on him with a cooling glance. Then Rāmānuja lay down before Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, and what happened there, and how Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ came to cook his food from that day, is told in their lives.

The shorter telling sets Mahāpūrṇa in the great assembly on the day Rāmānuja took Piḷḷāṉ for his son in knowledge and named him Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ; and when Piḷḷāṉ's commentary on the Tiruvāymozhi was given its name and put among the works to be taught, it says that the elders, Periya Nambi first among them, took it to heart and were glad.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam, listing the men Uḍaiyavar appointed to recite before the Lord in the temple, gives the Ṛgveda to a Periya Nambi and the Yajurveda to a Periya Nambigaḷ. It does not say whether either is this Mahāpūrṇa.

It was to Mahāpūrṇa's kin that Uḍaiyavar sent Kūreśa for a bride. When Kūreśa's son Bhaṭṭar was old enough to marry, Kūreśa asked Uḍaiyavar where a bride could be found, since his own relations were worldly people. "If you bring a bride for Bhaṭṭar from the Śrīvaiṣṇava families that are Periya Nambi's own relations," Uḍaiyavar said, "it will be a great refuge, in sūtra and śākhā, and in being brahmins and Vaiṣṇavas; there will be no hindrance." For a while that family would not consent, because the connection was new. Then Perumāḷ sent them a dream, and they came of themselves and gave the girl, Akkacci.

When Uḍaiyavar went out on his long journey through the land, he came to Tirukkuṟuṅguḍi, and the Lord there, Tirukkuṟuṅguḍi Nambi, asked him how he had caught so many souls. Uḍaiyavar would tell him only if he asked in the proper order. So the Lord came down from his throne and sat on the ground, and set a throne for Uḍaiyavar. He imagined that his own ācārya, Periya Nambi, was seated there, and he sat on the ground himself and taught the dvaya into the Lord's ear. Where the account tells it a second time, it says he imagined Periya Nambi and Āḷavandār seated on that throne together.

On the way home from that journey his road took him through Madhurāntakam again. He worshipped Ērikātta Perumāḷ, and he went and prostrated at the holy Makizh tree where Periya Nambi had shown him grace.

Mahāpūrṇa had a daughter, Attuzhāy. She was married, and lived in her husband's house.

One day she asked her mother-in-law to come with her to the bathing place, and the mother-in-law told her sharply to take her dowry maidservant and go. Attuzhāy came to her father. "Father! She said this to me."

"We know nothing of it," Mahāpūrṇa said. "Tell your Jīyar."

She went to Uḍaiyavar, and Uḍaiyavar gave her Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, who was there beside him, to be her dowry servant. When her husband's people found Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ doing a servant's work in their house, they came to Mahāpūrṇa. "Nambi! Must you send Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and ruin us like this?"

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

They went to Uḍaiyavar, and he had Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ called back, as Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ's own story tells.

Māṟaṉēri Nambi died. He had been one of the twenty at Āḷavandār's feet.

Mahāpūrṇa did his last rites himself, with the rite called brahmamedha, and laid him to rest.

Emperumāṉār heard of it. He went to Mahāpūrṇa, prostrated before him, and said, "Your servant goes on fencing it in on one side, so that saṃsāra, the round of birth and death, makes no trouble, and Your Honour is breaking it open on the other!"

"Come, Uḍaiyavar!" said Mahāpūrṇa. "Am I greater than Perumāḷ, who was born in the line of Ikṣvāku and showed the world the common dharma? Is this man lower than Periya Uḍaiyār? Am I greater than Dharmaputra, who stood firm in the common dharma? Is this man lower than Śrī Vidura? Are 'Payiluñcuḍaroḷi' and 'Neḍumāṟkaḍimai' the roar of the sea?"

Uḍaiyavar was glad, and agreed.

Then Mahāpūrṇa put a question of his own to Uḍaiyavar. "When Māṟaṉēri Nambi was going to the sacred land, we did not see him say 'The feet of Periya Perumāḷ are my refuge,' or 'The feet of Āḷavandār are my refuge.' Why was that?"

"Take it that at that hour he was meditating on the pair of verses," Uḍaiyavar said.

"Is that not the talk of a man gone mad at the sight of a woman?"

"Why will you not take to heart that woman's eternal union?" said Uḍaiyavar.

The account leaves it there, and does not explain either of them.

Mahāpūrṇa was Uḍaiyavar's teacher, and he bowed down to him.

Once Attuzhāy and her father were sitting together when Uḍaiyavar came with his disciples, and Mahāpūrṇa rose and prostrated before him.

"What is this!" said Attuzhāy. "Is Uḍaiyavar not your disciple? May one do such a thing?"

"This is a head fit for those feet," Mahāpūrṇa said.

Another day Uḍaiyavar and his disciples were coming back from bathing, and Mahāpūrṇa saw him coming toward him on the road. He joined his feet and his large hands and prostrated full length. Uḍaiyavar joined his palms to him, showed him grace, and went on.

The disciples saw it. "What is this? Shame!" they said.

"Now that he wishes it," Uḍaiyavar said, "is it not ours to follow his wish?"

So the disciples went to Mahāpūrṇa. "What is the cause of your prostrating full length before Uḍaiyavar?"

"I took it to be Āḷavandār with his disciples," he said.

"What ground is there for that?"

"After Āḷavandār, the fullness of standing in every meaning is in him alone," Mahāpūrṇa said. "And there is no difference between the presence of a true teacher and the presence of a true disciple. So I bowed."

He did one thing more. He had his own son, Puṇḍarīkākṣa, take refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet. When the account lists the seventy-four teachers who took refuge at Emperumāṉār's feet, the list opens with the sons of the teachers of the line, and the second of them is Periya Nambi's son, Puṇḍarīkar. And among the women it lists who were Uḍaiyavar's, there is an Attuzhāyammai.

In those years the Cōzha king who ruled the land was a Śaiva, and a wicked one. He sat with his purohita and gathered all the learned men of his country and made them sign a palm leaf that said, "There is nothing higher than Śiva." Some signed out of fear of him, and some for wealth and fields.

Nālūrāṉ saw it. "What use is it that these worthless men have signed?" he said. "It counts as signed only if Irāmānucaṉ and Kūrattāzhvāṉ sign."

The king at once sent men to Kōyil. "Bring Irāmānucaṉ here."

They came to the gate of Uḍaiyavar's maṭha and asked, "Where is Irāmānucaṉ?" Kūreśa, whom the account calls Kūrattāzhvāṉ, was drawing the water for Uḍaiyavar's bath when a Śrīvaiṣṇava came and told him secretly. Kūreśa put on Uḍaiyavar's triple staff and ochre robe, and without a word to Uḍaiyavar he went out to go with the king's men.

Mahāpūrṇa heard of it, and he set out with Kūreśa.

The king's men took them both away.

When Uḍaiyavar learned what had been done, he put on Kūreśa's white cloth, and he was in great distress. "What harm is about to come to Āzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi?" he said. His disciples would not let him stay, and he went out of that country to the west. His own life tells that road.

What happened at the court came to him later, at Tirunārāyaṇapuram, where he had gone to live. A Śrīvaiṣṇava came from Kōyil and worshipped at his feet. Uḍaiyavar asked after Periya Perumāḷ, and then he asked, "What happened to Āzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi, who went to the Cōzha?"

The Śrīvaiṣṇava told him.

The king's men had taken Kūreśa and Mahāpūrṇa from Kōyil and set them before the Cōzha, and the Cōzha told them to sign the leaf. Kūreśa answered him at length out of the Veda and the Purāṇas, that Śrīman Nārāyaṇa alone is higher than all. The king would not hear it and pressed him hard, and Kūreśa signed the leaf as his own firm mind dictated: "There is nothing higher than Śiva. Beyond that there is the droṇa." The king saw that he had signed the leaf in mockery, and he was seized with rage.

Here the copies of the account do not agree.

In some copies the king then called Mahāpūrṇa. "You sign," he said. And Mahāpūrṇa said in many ways, "Śrīman Nārāyaṇa alone is the Supreme." The king ordered that the eyes of both men be torn out. Kūreśa, those copies say, told the king that eyes which had looked on so great a Śaiva were of no use to him, and tore out his own eyes with his nails and threw them down. The king's men seized Mahāpūrṇa and took him away and did as the king had said, and put them both out of the camp-city. And Kūreśa was glad: "We have been able to give sight to the darśana!"

Other copies leave all that out. In them the king, in his rage, simply ordered the eyes of Āzhvāṉ and Nambi torn out, and the king's men did as he said and put them out of the city.

Mahāpūrṇa could not bear the pain. Some copies say it was because he was old.

At the head of a field there, he grew faint and lay down, with his head in Kūreśa's lap and his feet in Attuzhāy's lap. The account does not say how Attuzhāy came to be there.

He was near the end, and Kūreśa and Attuzhāy said to him, "Shall we go on from here to Kōyil?"

"If I go there and leave this body," Mahāpūrṇa said, "the Śrīvaiṣṇavas will have their doubts. They will say, 'Even Nambi, when he was going to the Lord's feet, had to get himself to Kōyil, did he?'"

He said that. Then, with his mind on the feet of Āḷavandār, he went there, from that field, to the sacred land. Some copies add that he was certain of the highest heaven because his ācārya had shown him grace at the very beginning.

The account draws the lesson in one line. For one who has taken refuge, there is no rule about the place where he dies.

Some copies tell one more thing. Men who went about burning the bodies of the dead whom no one claimed came by, and said, "We will do it for him too," and began to make ready. Kūreśa, still unshaken, sent them away. "Come, lads," he said. "When the Lord and all the Lord's world stand ready to do some service for a Vaiṣṇava, where will you find a man who is a Vaiṣṇava and has no one?"

Then some Śrīvaiṣṇavas did Mahāpūrṇa's last rites there and laid him to rest. They carried Kūreśa in a litter and brought him into Kōyil by night, when no one would see.

"This body of mine has not gone from me," Kūreśa said, "as Periya Nambi's went from him." And he lamented with an old song: "Is this right? O cloud-dark one, lying on the serpent!"

The shorter telling gives it in a few words. The Cōzha had the eyes of both men put out. Afterwards Periya Nambi, on the road to Kōyil, went to the sacred land from the pain in his eyes; and Kūrattāzhvāṉ was living at Kōyil. It says nothing of the field, or of Attuzhāy, or of his last words.

All this the Śrīvaiṣṇava told at Tirunārāyaṇapuram.

Uḍaiyavar heard words that burn the ears of those who hear them. "Alas! Kaṇṇapirāṉ! Is this fair?" he cried out, and he fell like a tree with its root cut and lay writhing. His throat choked. He was utterly spent. He shed tears like pearls and bailed them away with his hands.

The disciples sitting near him saw it and comforted him. When he came to himself he said, "At least Āzhvāṉ is still with us in his body!"

He performed for Periya Nambi the śrīcūrṇa-paripālana, the rite of the sacred powder, and he had the holy recitation done for him on a large scale. And still his heart was troubled for Kūreśa's eyes, and he sent Māruti Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ to Kōyil to look after him and bring back word. Then he went on teaching as before.

Word came, in time, that the Cōzha had died. Māruti Ciṟiyāṇḍāṉ came from Kōyil with Ammaṅgiyammāḷ, found Uḍaiyavar at the tank where he kept his observances, and told it so: "The Cōzha who offended Āzhvāṉ and Periya Nambi got a sore on his neck, and it festered with worms, and he perished."

Uḍaiyavar went up the hill of Azhagiyaciṅgar, the Man-Lion who gave Prahlāda his boon, and bowed at his feet. "As You destroyed Hiraṇya of old," he said, "so now You have made this one's neck a nest of worms and brought him down: he who said No to You, the Supreme, and offended Kūrattāzhvāṉ, who is like Prahlāda, and Periya Nambi."

When he had come back to Kōyil, all the Śrīvaiṣṇavas of that country came to his feet and prostrated and grieved with him. "Periya Nambi has gone to the sacred land! And Āzhvāṉ's flower eyes are gone!" Then they said, "At least we have been able to see Your Honour," and they were glad.

Mahāpūrṇa's birth-star, his tirunakṣatra, is Kēṭṭai in the month of Mārkazhi. Both tellings give the same.

His taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, is two verses. The first is short:

கமலாபதிகல்யாண குணாம்ருதநிஷேவயா - பூர்ண

காமாயஸததம்பூர்ணாயமஹதேநம:

kamalāpatikalyāṇa kuṇāmrutaniṣēvayā - pūrṇa

kāmāyasatatampūrṇāyamahatēnamaḥ

By tasting the nectar of the good qualities of Kamalā's Lord, to him whose every desire is fulfilled, always, to the Pūrṇa, the great one, salutation.

The second tells his whole life in a breath:

ஆசார்யாத்யாமுநேயாதததிமதநிமமாந்

தார்த்தஜாதம்ப்ரபத்திஞ் சோபாதிக்ஷத்ரஹஸ்யாந்யபிய திபதயேகிஞ்சதத்ர

க்ஷணார்த்தம்-சோளேந்த்ரம்ப்ராப்யசோக்த்வாஸதஸிபரபுமாந் ஸ்ரீபதிர்ஹேதி

பீடாம் ஶாரீராம்தத்க்ருதாஞ்சாப்யஸஹதமநவைதம்மஹாபூர்ணமார்யம்

ācāryātyāmunēyātatatimatanimamān

tārttajātamprapattiñ cōpātikṣatrahasyānyapiya tipatayēkiñcatatra

kṣaṇārttam-cōḷēntramprāpyacōktvāsatasiparapumān srīpatirhēti

pīṭām śārīrāmtatkrutāñcāpyasahatamanavaitammahāpūrṇamāryam

From his ācārya Yāmuneya he received the whole meaning of the Vedānta, and prapatti, and the secrets too, and taught them to the lord of ascetics; and more, for his protection he went to the Cōzha king and said in the assembly, ‘The Supreme Person is the Lord of Śrī,’ and bore the bodily torment the king inflicted: honour him, the noble Mahāpūrṇa.

The account does not forget him afterwards.

In some copies, though not in many others, Embār's picture of the whole line of teachers runs through him. The Āzhvār is a dark rain cloud, Embār said, that went down into the sea that is Periya Perumāḷ and drank up the nectar of his good qualities, and came and rained on the great mountain that is Nāthamuni. It ran down the waterfalls that are Uyyakkoṇḍār and Maṇakkāl Nambi, and joined the great river that is Āḷavandār. In those copies it then goes out through the channel that is Periya Nambi, and comes to stand gathered in the great lake that is Emperumāṉār, and from there it flows through the sluices of our teachers into the field of this world.

When the Lord called Azhagar once called out, "The servants of our Irāmānusaṉ!", all the teachers came and stood worshipping at his feet; but some of Periya Nambi's line stayed away. "Why do you not come when We call?" Azhagar asked them. "Your Grace called the servants of Irāmānusaṉ," they said, "and he is a disciple to us." "Your holding Irāmānusaṉ as your disciple," Azhagar said, "is like Daśaratha and Vasudeva holding Us as their son."

A later teacher, in the shorter telling, gathered the six words that came to Kāñcīpūrṇa into one Sanskrit verse, and it ends where they ended, with the guru who is Mahāpūrṇa. Kāñcīpūrṇa's life gives it whole.

When Piḷḷai Uṟaṅgāvilli Dāsar stood up in the assembly, afraid that he was not fit to enter among the Lord's people, Uḍaiyavar gave him a chain to hold. "Do not fear, child. If I attain, you attain. If Periya Nambi attains, I attain. If Āḷavandār attains, Periya Nambi attains."

When Uḍaiyavar's own time came, and he saw that his disciples meant to give up their lives at his going, he forbade it with an oath on his two teachers. "Come, mudalis! If any give up their lives at our parting, by the holy feet of Periya Nambi and Āḷavandār, they have no bond with us."

The shorter telling says that when Uḍaiyavar went to the sacred land, he lay facing Kōyil, and the disciples recited the Upaniṣads and the Tiruvāymozhi, and the conch sounded, and he went while he was meditating on the feet of Periya Nambi.