Pēy Āzhvār

Pēy Āzhvār: the one who said "I saw"

At Mayilai, in the grounds of the temple of Ādikēśava Perumāḷ, a red lotus opened on the water of the holy well, and a child lay in it. He was the third of three children born from flowers on three days running, and he grew into a man so lost in love for Viṣṇu that people called him pēy, the one possessed, the madman. On a night of storm at Thirukkōvalūr two lamps were lit in the dark beside him, and in their light he was the one who looked up and saw.

Born in a temple well

He was born in the Dvāpara age, in the month of Aippasi, under the star Śadayam, on a Thursday. He was an embodiment of Nandaka, the sword that hangs at the Lord's side. His Sanskrit name is Mahadāhvaya, but he is better known by what his love made of him. In Sanskrit they called him Bhrānta-yōgi, in Tamil Pēy Āzhvār: the yogi who had lost his wits for God.

Two days before him, Poigai Āzhvār had come up out of a golden lotus in the temple tank at Thiruvekkā in Kāñcī, and one day before him Bhūthathāzhvār had been found in a mādhavi blossom on the shore at Thirukkadalmallai. None of the three had a mother. They are called the first Āzhvārs, and they are always spoken of together.

A man possessed

Like the other two he was made of the clearest stuff of nature, so that his body was no screen to the soul within it. He needed neither food nor drink; God was his food. He knew nothing of what the world wanted and cared for none of it. What others called day was night to him, and he was awake when they slept.

He described his own state plainly. His mad love for the lotus feet of the Lord drove him out of himself. His longing for Viṣṇu made him tremble and sweat; tears ran from his eyes as if floodgates had burst; his voice broke into sweet sounds; he danced for joy, afraid of nothing and sure of the one he loved. People who met such a man kept clear of him, and he kept clear of them. He walked from town to town, staying a day or a night or an hour, as long as a place could bear him.

The Lord had been following him a long time, as he had followed the other two, and he wished at last to have the three together. So he turned their steps, each unknown to the others, towards Thirukkōvalūr, where he stands as Trivikrama, who measured the worlds.

The third at the door

Night came down on the road to Thirukkōvalūr, and with it a great storm, black sky, wind and rain in torrents. Poigai Āzhvār had already taken shelter in a narrow recess in a wall, behind a small door, a space where one man could lie down. Bhūthathāzhvār had come after him and been let in with the words, "Where one can lie down, two can sit." The two of them were sitting side by side in the dark when Pēy Āzhvār came and knocked.

"There is no room for a third," they called to him. "We have only just enough to sit."

"If two can sit," he answered, "three can stand."

The two inside said to each other, "This must be someone out of the ordinary. Let him in." So he came in, and the three stood shoulder to shoulder where there was room for one, and talked of God. Asked who he was, each answered for himself. Poigai Āzhvār said he was other than the body and was God's alone; Bhūthathāzhvār, that he belonged to Vāsudeva only. Pēy Āzhvār said, "I am the servant of the king of Kōsala": Rāma's man.

The Lord rejoiced to see his three together, and said so to Śrī. Then into that space where there was no room at all, someone else began to press. The three felt a body wedging itself between them, tighter and tighter, though no one had come through the door.

Two lamps, and the one who saw

Poigai Āzhvār said he would light a lamp to see who it was, and he made it out of the earth and the sea and the sun. Bhūthathāzhvār lit a second from love and longing and a melting heart.

Then Pēy Āzhvār spoke. "Here is my part, brothers, beside your lights. You have lit lamps. I cannot even do that. My name says what I am: the one whose love has driven him mad. But when you strike your light and show me what is here, I can only cry out what I see." And in the light of their two lamps he looked, and cried out:

thirukkaṇḍēṉ poṉmēṉi kaṇḍēṉ thigazhum

arukkaṉ aṇi niṟamum kaṇḍēṉ, seṟukkiḷarum

poṉṉāzhi kaṇḍēṉ puri saṅgam kaikkaṇḍēṉ

eṉ āzhi vaṇṇaṉpāl iṉṟu

"I saw Śrī. I saw the golden form. I saw its beauty, bright as the sun. I saw the golden discus, fierce for battle. I saw the curling conch in his hand. All this I saw today, in my Lord the colour of the sea."

Five times in four lines he says it: I saw. And the first thing he saw was Śrī.

As the light grew, the one who had been pressing among them was there before all three: Nārāyaṇa with Śrī at his side, who cannot stay away from those who love him, any more than light can stay away from the sun or scent from the flower. It was he who had been the unseen body in the dark, pushing them apart. His splendour dazzled them and poured over them, and the three broke into song.

The hundred verses

Each sang a hundred verses in the andhādhi form, where each verse begins with the word on which the last ended, and the end of the hundredth comes round to the start of the first. Pēy Āzhvār's hundred, the third Thiruvandhādhi, begins with that cry of sight. Poigai Āzhvār had begun his with God as shown in all he has made, and Bhūthathāzhvār his with the name Nārāyaṇa. Pēy Āzhvār set Śrī beside the name.

Knowledge of God, love of God and sight of God fill all three works, and in each a different one leads. In Pēy Āzhvār's it is sight: the knowledge of the first lamp, warmed into the love of the second, come at last to seeing. The Lord speaks of these three in the Gītā, telling Arjuna that by undivided love alone he can be known, and seen, and entered. In heaven they are known completely. The three first Āzhvārs knew them by grace while they still walked the earth.

The sage in the cave, and the well at Mayilai

The three were together from that night on, wandering as before. Once, while they were still far off, they saw a marvellous light shining from one place. "What can it be?" they wondered. "Let us find out." They followed the light and came to a cave where a yogi sat so absorbed that he knew nothing of what was around him. Looking within, they knew him for Bhārgava's son, the sage who would be called Thirumazhisai Āzhvār.

"Holy one, are you well?" they asked.

"Holy three," came the answer, "born of the lotus in the tank, born of the mādhavi, born of the flower in the well, are you well?"

The four greeted one another with tears of joy and trembling bodies; they embraced, and spoke of God's glories, and drank so deep of him that they were lost together, one as milk is one with milk and honey with honey. They had one pursuit and one aim, and they stayed a while in that joy.

Then the three set off again, and came to Mayilai, the place where Pēy Āzhvār had been born. There they were glad to see the holy well in the temple of Ādikēśava Perumāḷ, where the red lotus had opened, and they stayed beside it a long time, absorbed in God. From Mayilai they went back to the sage in his cave and were with him again, and then took their leave and went out once more on their long wandering over the earth.

What he cried out that night, with the rain still falling and two lamps lit beside him, stands at the head of his hundred verses: thirukkaṇḍēṉ, I saw Śrī.