Periya Tirumalai Nambi

Twenty men took refuge at the feet of Āḷavandār while he lived at Śrīraṅgam, all of them learned, all of them carrying the darśana, the whole teaching of the line. One of them was Periya Tirumalai Nambi. His Sanskrit name is Śrīśailapūrṇa, and the verses of the tradition salute him by it.

The hill was Tiruvēṅkaṭam. The old Tamil hymn calls out to those who live with Vēṅkaṭam for their dwelling, and Nambi lived so. He had gone in under the feet of Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ, the Lord who owns Vēṅkaṭam, and settled there, and he worshipped him.

The account does not say where he was born, or when, or how he first came to Āḷavandār. It begins with him already on the hill.

He had two sisters. The elder was Śrī Bhūmippirāṭṭiyār. She was married at Śrīperumbudūr to Āsūri Kēśavapperumāḷ, a Sarvakratu-dīkṣitar, a man who had performed every one of the great sacrifices. The younger was Periya Pirāṭṭiyār. She was married to Kamalanayana Bhaṭṭar of the Vaṭṭamaṇi family at Mazhalaimaṅgalam. Each of them went to live in her husband's house.

At Śrīperumbudūr a son was born to the elder sister. It was the month of Caitra, the fifth day of the bright fortnight, a Thursday, under the star Tiruvātirai. The account says that Ananta, the serpent on whom the Lord lies, had looked for a place to be born in the Kali age for the lifting up of every soul, and had found it in her. Kēśavapperumāḷ performed the birth rite for the child.

Nambi heard the news on his hill. He came down to Śrīperumbudūr.

He met Kēśava Sōmayājiyār, the father, and honoured him. Then he looked at the child, and his face shone as he looked.

"This one is endowed with every auspicious mark," he said. "He will master all the śāstras. So he is fit to be given the holy name of Iḷaiya Perumāḷ."

Iḷaiya Perumāḷ, the younger lord, is what the Tamil country calls Lakṣmaṇa, the brother of Rāma, the one the Sanskrit line names "Lakṣmaṇa, endowed with Lakṣmī," endowed with every good fortune.

On the twelfth day came the naming. There is an old rule for it: first the child's right arm is to be marked with the discus, and after that the left shoulder with the conch. Nambi did as the rule says. First he set on the child the holy marks, the discus and the conch. Then he gave him the holy name.

"Iḷaiyāzhvār."

After that he had the other rites done for the boy, each at its proper time, as the śāstra lays down: the first feeding, the tonsure, the sacred thread and the rest. Iḷaiyāzhvār learned the Veda with its limbs and its subsidiary sciences, in the word-by-word and the linked recitations, and came to the far shore of the fourteen branches of learning. Like the moon that is full in its sixteen parts, he was made full by the sixteen rites. When he was sixteen he entered the life of a householder, and his own life tells the rest.

The shorter telling remembers that day at Śrīperumbudūr in a few words, and in words of its own. When it counts the graces Rāmānuja received from his teachers, it says that the grace of Periya Tirumalai Nambi was this: he looked upon the child born to his sister Bhūmippirāṭṭiyār, said, "This one is the very first," and gave him the holy seal as his protection. It also says, among the graces of Āḷavandār, that Āḷavandār had laid a command on Periya Tirumalai Nambi long before; and long afterwards, as the next chapters tell, Rāmānuja himself would thank his uncle for the seal and for a prapatti, a giving over into the Lord's keeping, made for him at Āḷavandār's command.

The account tells next of a son born to the younger sister at Mazhalaimaṅgalam. It was the year called Krōdhana, in the month of Tai, when the full moon fell on a Monday under the star Punarpūsam.

After the birth rite, Tirumalai Nambi went there too. He met Kamalanayana Bhaṭṭar and honoured him, and he looked at Periya Pirāṭṭiyār's son with his lotus eyes. He rejoiced in his heart. "This one will have the true qualities of the self," he said within himself. "He will master every branch of learning. He will stand on the side of the Veda."

He had Kamalanayana Bhaṭṭar give the child his name. Gōvindaṉ.

It is the boy the account will later call Embār.

So the two boys were named, both of them, by the uncle on the hill.

Govinda grew. He had the tonsure and the sacred thread and the other rites, he became a householder, and he studied all the śāstras. Then he heard that Iḷaiyāzhvār was studying Vedānta under Yādavaprakāśa at Tiruppuṭkuzhi, near Kāñcī, and he went there with great longing and sat down to study beside his cousin.

The account does not say whether Nambi saw either of them in the years after that. When it turns back to him, Iḷaiyāzhvār has taken the triple staff and the ochre robe and is called Rāmānuja, and Govinda has given himself to another god.

Rāmānuja took sannyāsa at Kāñcī. Pēraruḷāḷar, the Lord of that place, gave him the staff and the robe and the name, and Kāñcīpūrṇa took him to the maṭha and left him there.

He kept the duties of his new āśrama without a fault. And he reflected. Āḷavandār had once given him a special glance, and since then, he reflected, the things that stood in the way had fallen off and the things that helped had been gathering. If Āḷavandār's intention was to be fulfilled, he would need a helper.

He thought of Govinda Bhaṭṭar. Govinda had always been the one who looked to his good. He was detached from every object, and he had skill in the śāstras. It would be good if someone could bring him back. But just now Govinda was given over to another god. Who was clever enough to go where Govinda was, show him the fragrance of the Lord of whom it is said, "all scents, all tastes," and win him home?

Then he settled it. It must be Periya Tirumalai Nambi. Nambi had the special qualities of the self. He was first among those who knew the Veda and the Vedānta. His mind was glad with the buds of the songs of Vakuḷābharaṇa, the Āzhvār adorned with the vakuḷa flower. He held in unbroken contemplation the Lord of Tiruvēṅkaṭam, who stands as the mark on the brow of the world, and served him without ever leaving him. He was the foremost of teachers.

So Rāmānuja sent a Śrīvaiṣṇava who loved him to Nambi's presence, with a message.

"Your Honour's nephew, Vaṭṭamaṇi Govinda Bhaṭṭaṉ, studied beside me and was always on my side. Through the weight of his evil impressions he has given himself to another god, and he is standing in the harsh forest called Kāḷahasti. For my sake, show him the grace that asks for no reason, and take him into the service of Your Honour's holy feet."

The messenger went.

Rāmānuja came to Śrīraṅgam after that, and Periya Perumāḷ gave him the wealth of both realms, the charge of the temple, and, in some copies, the name Uḍaiyavar. He was running the temple and keeping its festivals when the Śrīvaiṣṇava came back.

The man came in great joy and fell at Uḍaiyavar's feet. Uḍaiyavar saw how his face shone and knew that it was done.

"Tell me all of it," he said.

This is what the Śrīvaiṣṇava told him.

Nambi had heard the message and said, "This is a thing we ought to have done ourselves, and Rāmānuja has taken it to heart as nectar that enters the mind and is sweet." That same moment he set out with the mudalis who were his own disciples, taking the messenger with them, and at Kāḷahasti he sat down under a tree on the bank of the tank.

Govinda was the Nāyaṉār there, the Nāyaṉār who brought it in the palm of his hand, and he came by with a pot of water for Rudra's bath. Nambi said a verse to him: "What do you gain by bathing him cool, the one with koṉṟai flowers in his matted hair?" The Nāyaṉār looked up at him with a smile and went on his way, and Nambi, his mind clear, went back to Tirumalai.

Another day he came and sat again on the bank of that tank, in the shade of a banyan. This time he had a verse of his own ācārya Āḷavandār written on a palm leaf, the one that speaks of a lordship whose greatness is natural to the Lord, and had it dropped on the Nāyaṉār's path. The Nāyaṉār picked it up and threw it aside, went for his water, and then came back for the leaf, and came and stood before Nambi turning its meaning over.

"Is this the thing that slipped from your hands?" he asked. The word he used was poruḷ, which is a thing, and wealth, and a meaning.

"Other men's poruḷ may slip," Nambi said. "Ours does not slip."

So it went, question and answer, until the Nāyaṉār asked whether no inquiry was needed first. "It is in the matter of who is supreme," Nambi said, "that the inquiry lies." The Nāyaṉār had no answer, and he went back to his own place shaking his head. "His heart is melting!" said Nambi. "From now on he will be theirs." And he went back to Tirumalai.

Uḍaiyavar heard it with great joy. "Āḷavandār's words went into Govinda's heart," he told the mudalis about him, and he wondered at the skill that had passed between the two of them: Govinda knew the śāstras, and he had been caught by the order and the excellence of Nambi's words. Embār's own life gives the whole exchange, word by word.

"And then what?" Uḍaiyavar asked.

Nambi had set out from the hill again, the man said, and stopped in a grove at the edge of the Kāḷahasti land, and sat there teaching the commentary on the Tiruvāymozhi to his disciples. The Nāyaṉār was up a pāṭiri tree close by, gathering flowers. Nambi came to the decad that begins "Tiṇṇaṉ vīḍu," and at the fourth verse the words came: "Are flowers and worship fit for anyone but Emperumāṉ?"

The Nāyaṉār jumped down out of the tree, flung away his flower basket and his rudrākṣa beads, and fell at Nambi's feet lamenting the god he had worshipped. "You must save this soul," he said, and lay there and would not rise.

Nambi looked at his disciples' faces. "There is nothing lacking," he said, "in the way Āḷavandār gives his grace."

He took the Nāyaṉār by the head and lifted him up, stroked him and comforted him, and looked at him coolly, as if he would drink him in with both his eyes.

The people of the Kāḷahasti temple came to Nambi. "This man is responsible for our temple," they said. "How is it right for you to put the Lord's powder on him?"

"Ask the man himself," Nambi said. "It is the Lord's powder that has taken him. Our way is another kind of way. We are not men who come by a neighbour's path."

The Nāyaṉār threw down the key of the treasury and the seal ring, and the temple people let him go. Their own god, they told Nambi, had come to them in a dream and told them so.

Nambi took the Nāyaṉār with him to Tiruppati. That same moment he had the rite of the sacred thread and the others performed for him. He gave him the pañcasaṃskāra, the five sacraments of the Vaiṣṇava, on the bank of the Svāmipuṣkariṇī, which is the stream of the Lord. He had him learn the sacred songs of the Āzhvārs, beginning from the Tiruppallāṇḍu. He gave him knowledge of the five meanings, the arthapañcaka, and showed him a special grace.

"And Govinda knows no other god now," the Śrīvaiṣṇava ended. "He holds to his ācārya's feet alone, and does every kind of service at Nambi's feet, in thought and in word and in deed. I stayed there serving until today, and then I took my leave and came."

Uḍaiyavar was very gracious to him. The rest of that turning, the Nāyaṉār's lament and the dream of the Kāḷahasti god, is Embār's story.

The shorter telling says something of Nambi's own house on the hill in those years.

He was married, and his wife's nephew, Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, who is also called Praṇatārtihara, came up to Tirumalai to see her and stayed some days in the house. While he was there a son was born to Nambi, and Nambi named him Piḷḷai. Afterwards a second son was born, in the month of Aippaci, under the star Pūrvāṣāḍhā, and Nambi named him Piḷḷāṉ.

The child listened when Nambi expounded the sacred Tamil songs, and did not cry and laugh as small children do. "This is a wonder!" Nambi said, and in his heart he kept a thought: "He is like Iḷaiyāzhvār, who was born to our Bhūmippirāṭṭiyār." Piḷḷāṉ's own life tells of that childhood.

The account names Nambi's sons differently. It calls them Irāmānujaṉ and Piḷḷai Tirumalai Nambi, and when it counts Piḷḷāṉ among Uḍaiyavar's disciples it does not call him Nambi's son.

One day some Śrīvaiṣṇavas came from Kōyil, as the Tamil calls Śrīraṅgam, and told Nambi at length of the glory of Emperumāṉār.

Nambi heard it and was very glad. "Our Āḷavandār's command has borne fruit," he said. He went and worshipped Tirumalaiyappaṉ, the Father of the hill, who had brought it about. Then he turned to the Śrīvaiṣṇavas again. As the verse says, "Speak, gentle one, again and again."

"Tell more," he said. "Tell more."

They told it over again.

Afterwards he had Piḷḷāṉ married, and he sent him down to Kōyil with Kiḍāmbi Āccāṉ, who was eager to take refuge at Emperumāṉār's feet; and he sent word with them that Emperumāṉār too should come and worship the feet of Tirumalaiyappaṉ. Emperumāṉār heard from Āccāṉ of the gladness in Nambi's heart, and was glad himself, and he looked on Piḷḷāṉ with cool grace.

So, in that telling, it was at Nambi's command that Emperumāṉār set out for the hill.

In the account, he came to it from Kāñcī. Kāñcīpūrṇa gave him leave. "Go and bow down to Vēṅkaṭam that rises high," he said, in the words of the hymn.

On the road Uḍaiyavar lost his way. A man was working a water-lift beside the path, and the mudalis asked him the way to Tirumalai, and he showed them. Uḍaiyavar fell down before him.

At the foot of the hill he worshipped the hill itself and the Āzhvārs whose images stand there, and stayed in Tiruppati, the town below. Anantāzhvāṉ and the other Śrīvaiṣṇavas came down to beg him to climb up and worship the Father. He would not. "The Āzhvārs would not tread on the holy hill," he said. "We will not climb it either."

"If Your Lordship does not climb," Anantāzhvāṉ said, "we will not climb it either, and no one else will."

So he climbed. He made himself clean, and worshipped the hill at the foot of the tamarind there, and went up as a freed soul goes up, at the Lord's command, setting its foot on the Lord's footstool. He looked at the hill as the hymns describe it: the steep rock, the streams that roll down among gems, the golden peaks, the bamboos that shed white pearls, the monkeys and the hunters.

He came near the rock called Tirupparivaṭṭappāṟai.

Periya Tirumalai Nambi came out to meet him, bringing the tīrtha and prasāda of Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ, the holy water and the food that had been offered to the Lord.

Uḍaiyavar fell full length at Nambi's feet, every limb to the ground. He took the tīrtha and the prasāda.

Then he said, "Did Your Reverence have to come yourself? Was there no one lesser to send?"

"I searched all four holy streets," Nambi said, "and I found no one lesser than myself."

Uḍaiyavar and the mudalis heard it, and were astonished.

The shorter telling gives the meeting another shape. In it Nambi sent a Śrīvaiṣṇava down the hill with the Lord's prasāda in his hand. "Go and meet Emperumāṉār," he told him. "Give him the tīrtha and the prasāda, and come back." Anantāzhvāṉ was already bringing Uḍaiyavar up. When Uḍaiyavar came near the temple, Nambi had his retinue come out in front of him with garlands to honour him, and came out himself before them; and Uḍaiyavar fell at his feet.

He rose rejoicing. "Your Lordship gave me the holy seal," he said, "to keep me and make me what I am. As Āḷavandār had commanded, you made prapatti to the Lord for me, so that I should grow. Is it only now that I am given to worship your feet!"

Nambi took him up in his arms. "Our Father on the hill has carried out our Āḷavandār's intention," he said, glad at heart, and he put the temple garlands on him.

On the hill, in the account, Uḍaiyavar went round the temple and worshipped. He crossed the threshold of Kulacēkaraṉ and stood before the Lord and took in the whole of that form from the feet to the crown, in the words of the Āzhvārs. He took the tīrtha and prasāda, and he marvelled. "This is Vaikuṇṭha on earth!" He saw the holy bath and the festival of the offerings.

Then he said, "This is the mountain of the celestials. It is the eternal ones who should dwell here. It is not right for us to stay." And he made ready to go down at once.

"One must stay three days at a holy place, you know," said Periya Tirumalai Nambi.

Uḍaiyavar agreed. For all three days he did not eat. He took in the Father, moment by moment, the nectar he could never have enough of, and lived on that alone.

When the three days had passed he went with Nambi into the Father's presence and recited the Tiruppallāṇḍu and stood with joined hands. The Lord gave him tīrtha and prasāda, set his feet on his head, and opened his coral mouth. "Did we not say in our southern house that we have given you and yours the wealth of both realms?"

"Great grace," Uḍaiyavar said. The Lord gave him leave.

He went down from the hill with Nambi that same hour. He went to Periya Tirumalai Nambi's house at Tiruppati and ate there.

And he stayed one year in Nambi's presence, hearing from him the meaning of the Śrī Rāmāyaṇa, the best of the old histories.

The shorter telling agrees: three days on the hill, then down, and a year in that same Periya Tirumalai Nambi's presence hearing the meaning of the Rāmāyaṇa.

What Nambi taught in that year, neither account says.

Govinda was in Nambi's house that year, and he did every kind of service there, and Uḍaiyavar was glad to see it.

Once he lay down on the bed he had made for Nambi, to try it, before Nambi lay on it. Uḍaiyavar saw it and told Nambi, and Nambi called Govinda and asked him what the fruit of such a thing was. "Hell," said Govinda; and hell was enough for him, he said, if Nambi could sleep without anything pricking him or crawling on him or biting him. Another day Uḍaiyavar saw him put his hand into a snake's mouth on the way to Nambi's flower garden. Govinda's own life tells both stories, and Uḍaiyavar's delight in them.

Then the Rāmāyaṇa was finished.

Emperumāṉār fell at Periya Tirumalai Nambi's feet. "Your servant takes leave," he said, "for the great city of Tiruvaraṅgam."

"You came so far," said Nambi, "and we have not been able to give you anything!"

Uḍaiyavar answered him in the words of the Tamil hymns.

"If Your Honour has a mind to give: you did for this man what the hymn says, you removed the two strong deeds that clung to him, cut away the bond of illusion, and set him right so that his mind rests on the Lord. You cut away his evil impressions, so that the false knowledge, the wicked ways and the foul body, the state he was in, will not be his again. And I had been waiting, saying, 'When will it be that we are together?', and you brought that wish of mine to its end. Give me this Govindapperumāḷ."

Periya Tirumalai Nambi called him.

"Come, Govindapperumāḷ. Serve Emperumāṉār as you would see us."

And he poured water, and gave him.

In the shorter telling, it was when the Rāmāyaṇa was done that Nambi brought his sons to take refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet. Then he spoke of Piḷḷāṉ, of the goodness that had been in him from his birth, and showed him to Uḍaiyavar. "This is a fit vessel for your special grace," he said. Emperumāṉār agreed and took Piḷḷāṉ as his own, and gave him the pañcasaṃskāra and all the special meanings. After that, that telling says, Uḍaiyavar asked Nambi for Govindapperumāḷ, and received him with the pouring of water. The account, too, remembers among Nambi's gifts to Uḍaiyavar that he gave him Embār with water poured, and had his sons Irāmānujaṉ and Piḷḷai Tirumalai Nambi take refuge at his feet.

Uḍaiyavar prostrated to Nambi and set out with Govinda. He went by the hill of Kaḍikai and by Tiruppuṭkuzhi, and on to Kāñcī, and came back to the presence of Kāñcīpūrṇa.

There Govinda began to fail. The hymn speaks of one who cannot keep life in him when he is parted from his beloved. Govinda's body lost its colour and his face wasted away.

Uḍaiyavar saw it and knew what was in his heart. "Govindapperumāḷ," he said, "go and see Nambi, and come back." He sent two Śrīvaiṣṇavas with him, and stayed at Kāñcī with Kāñcīpūrṇa, worshipping Pēraruḷāḷar.

Govinda came to Tiruppati. He prostrated at the gate of Nambi's house and stood there.

The people of the house saw him and went in and told Periya Tirumalai Nambi.

Nambi was troubled at heart. "Tell the madman to go away," he said.

His wife spoke up. "He has come all this way, and he has grown so thin. Should we not call him in, and let him see you, and give him the water of your feet and the food prasāda?"

"Does anyone put grass before a cow he has sold?" said Nambi.

He showed nothing but harshness. He would not turn his face toward him, and he sent him away.

Govinda had no hope there. He prostrated at the gate, and went back with the two Śrīvaiṣṇavas to Kāñcī, and stood before Uḍaiyavar.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas told Uḍaiyavar what had happened. He heard it, and he praised Nambi as one who knows all things. And from then on he bound Govinda to himself with his own nearness and gentleness and the rest of his qualities, so deeply that Govinda never looked back.

The shorter telling has it on the road. Uḍaiyavar had set out for Perumāḷ Kōyil, meaning to go on to Kōyil, when he saw the pallor on Govinda. "Go and pay your respects to Nambi, and come back," he said. Govinda went. Nambi would not turn his face to him. And Govinda came back with his hope gone and his mind clear, and stood at Uḍaiyavar's feet, and they went on to Kōyil together.

At Śrīraṅgam Namperumāḷ looked at Uḍaiyavar and asked him, "Have you been to our northern mountain and come back?"

The shorter telling brings Uḍaiyavar back to the hill once more, on his way home from the north.

When he came up, the Śaivas were there, quarrelling with Periya Tirumalai Nambi. Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ was theirs, they said. "He is our Nāyaṉār." Uḍaiyavar settled it by laying the discus and the conch, and a trident and a small drum, before the Lord and shutting the doors for the night; and in the early morning the Lord was found wearing the discus and the conch, with the trident and the drum broken at his feet. Piḷḷāṉ's life tells that night in full.

Periya Tirumalai Nambi was very glad with Uḍaiyavar. He looked with cool grace on Piḷḷāṉ too, and gave Uḍaiyavar leave. Uḍaiyavar worshipped Nambi's feet and went on toward Perumāḷ Kōyil.

The account tells the same quarrel on the hill and the same morning, with Uḍaiyavar dancing for joy before the Lord; but it does not name Nambi in it.

Afterwards, in the shorter telling, Uḍaiyavar called Piḷḷāṉ to him at Kōyil and commanded him to write a commentary on the Tiruvāymozhi. Among his reasons he named this one: "You are the son of Periya Tirumalai Nambi, who carried Āḷavandār's command through to its end." Piḷḷāṉ wrote the commentary, the Āṟāyirappaḍi, and Uḍaiyavar named it the Bhagavad-viṣayam and had it taught beside his own commentary on the Sūtras.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas of Kōyil carried all of it to Periya Tirumalai Nambi. He heard it and was overjoyed, and glad within that Āḷavandār's command had been brought to its end.

That is the last news the accounts carry to him.

After that, the shorter telling says, Periya Tirumalai Nambi went to the sacred land, the Lord's own world, which the Tamil calls tirunāḍu. Piḷḷai Tirumalai Nambi did all that had to be done for him, and then came to Kōyil and told Uḍaiyavar. Uḍaiyavar performed for him the śrīcūrṇa-paripālana, the rite of the sacred powder, and the rest.

Neither account says where he died, or how, or what he said at the end.

The two accounts give him different holy stars. The account gives his holy star as Svāti in the month of Cittirai. The shorter telling gives his star as Anūrādha in the month of Puraṭṭāci.

After Uḍaiyavar himself had gone to the sacred land, his disciples set up his image in the holy places, as he had commanded. Piḷḷai Tirumalai Nambi set up Periya Tirumalai Nambi's image at Lower Tirupati, at the foot of the hill, and set up Uḍaiyavar's image there as well, and on the hill, and in the presence of Tiruvēṅkaṭamuḍaiyāṉ.

His taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, is in Sanskrit:

பிதாமஹஶ்யாபிபிதாமஹாய ப்ராசேதஸாதேஶபல

ப்ரதாய-ஸ்ரீபாஷ்யகாரோத்தமதேஶிகாய ஸ்ரீஶைலபூர்ணாயநமோநமஸ்தாத்.

pitāmahaśyāpipitāmahāya prācētasātēśapala

pratāya-srīpāṣyakārōttamatēśikāya srīśailapūrṇāyanamōnamastāt.

To the grandfather even of the grandfather, giver of the fruit of what Prācetasa taught, noble teacher of the author of the Bhāṣya, to Śrīśailapūrṇa: bow, and bow again.

Prācetasa is Vālmīki, who made the Rāmāyaṇa.

Naḍātūr Āzhvāṉ, one of Uḍaiyavar's own, made a verse counting those who had shown Rāmānuja grace. It names the Lords of Śrīraṅgam, of Veṅkaṭa, of the Elephant Hill and of other holy places, and it ends:

ஆசார்யஶ்ச ஸ யாமுநோ முநிவர:

ஸ்ரீஶைலபூர்ணஸ் ததா

ஸ்ரீராமாநுஜஸம்யமீந்த்ரகுரவே

தாத்ருக் ப்ரஸாதம் தது: ‖

ācāryaśca sa yāmunō munivaraḥ

srīśailapūrṇas tatā

srīrāmānujasamyamīntrakuravē

tātruk prasātam tatuḥ ‖

and the ācārya Yāmuna, best of sages, and likewise Śrīśailapūrṇa: to the teacher Śrī Rāmānuja, lord of ascetics, these gave such grace.

Explaining it, the shorter telling says again what Nambi's grace had been. He looked on his sister's child, said, "This one is the very first," and gave him the holy seal for his protection.

The account, for its part, counts Tirumalai Nambi among those who made Uḍaiyavar's glory known to the world, with the Lords of the great temples and the teachers before him. It gives three reasons. He came down the hill to meet Uḍaiyavar with the prasāda and said, "I searched all four holy streets and found no one lesser than myself." He gave Embār to Uḍaiyavar with water poured. And he had his sons take refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet.

Embār remembered him to the end.

When Uḍaiyavar was about to go to the sacred land, Embār took hold of his feet, and in the words he spoke then he named Nambi. He had stood in wrong knowledge in the harsh forest called Kāḷahasti, he said, and Periya Tirumalai Nambi had said to him, "Come along," and set him right, and made him who was nothing into something, and shown him that Uḍaiyavar's feet were all his kin.

"We received you from Nambi's holy hand with water poured," Uḍaiyavar said. "Can there be any parting between us?"

He lifted Embār up and held him, and set his feet on Embār's head, and went to the sacred land.