Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār

Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār: the singer carried into the sanctum

On the south bank of the Kāvēri at Uṟaiyūr, facing the island of Śrīraṅgam across the water, a singer of the Pāṇar, a caste of lute players kept outside the temple towns, stood every day with his lute and sang to the Lord he would not let himself go near. He would not set his feet on that holy island. So the Lord sent the temple priest to carry him there on his shoulders, and when the singer saw the Lord at last, he sang ten verses and passed into him. He is Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār.

Uṟaiyūr

Uṟaiyūr, on the south bank of the Kāvēri, was in old days a thriving city behind its ramparts, full of houses like palaces, the capital of the Chōzha king Dharmavarma. He ruled in peace and righteousness and was a devoted worshipper of Raṅganātha, whose temple stood across the river on the island. To him was born a daughter, Uṟaiyūr Nācchiyār, as Lakṣmī was born from the sea of milk, and he loved her as Janaka loved Sītā.

From childhood she played with no doll but an image of Raṅganātha, and kept it always with her. When she was in her teens she went out one day with her maids to the pleasure gardens near the city, and Raṅganātha himself, the living Lord of whom her doll was only an image, happened to come that way on a hunting ride from Śrīraṅgam. Her eyes fell on him and would not leave him. She was in love, and resolved, as firmly as Āṇḍāḷ ever resolved, that she would marry no one but Raṅga. She came home lovesick and told her father. The king was overjoyed, hurried across to the shrine and offered the Lord his daughter's hand, and came back with the glad news that the Lord accepted. Uṟaiyūr and Śrīraṅgam were hung with banners and garlands, music played and people sang and danced, and the marriage was celebrated with every rite. The king gave a dowry of gold and jewels, fine clothes, cattle, elephants and horses, and then made over all he had to the Lord, and ruled on in peace.

A child in the paddy field

It was in this city that Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār was born, in the month of Kārthigai, under the star Rōhiṇi. He was an embodiment of the Śrīvatsa, the mark on the Lord's breast. He was born no woman's child. Outside the town, in a field where the paddy stood green and gold, a man of the Pāṇar caste found a baby lying among the stalks, as if dropped from heaven, and took him up with a glad heart. His wife was barren, and the child filled that want. The two of them cherished him and guarded him from everything that might harm body or mind, and fed him on pure cow's milk.

He grew up with every instinct turned towards heaven. As a boy he cared nothing for the glitter of the world, and as a man he would take up no worldly trade. His one occupation was his lute. He would take it up and draw from its strings songs to glorify God.

The far bank

He knew his place among men, and he respected it. "By the Lord's dispensation I am born low," he said to himself. "That belongs to the body, which does not last. By his grace my soul is lit and burns with love for him, and that is what makes me fit for him, and not my birth. I will keep the customs of the world. Here I am on the south bank of the Kāvēri. Between this branch and the northern one lies the holy island of Raṅganātha, my very life, and I dread to tread that sacred ground with my unholy feet. I will stand at the edge of this bank, with my face turned always north to where my Lord lies, and play my lute to him, and think of him and long for him, and faint, and come to myself, and faint again, with my palms joined in worship."

So he did, day after day. And as Kṛṣṇa once told Yudhiṣṭhira, when he found the Lord sitting silent and far away, that his mind had gone to Bhīṣma lying on his bed of arrows, because Bhīṣma's whole mind was fixed on him: just so, while Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār fixed his thoughts on Raṅga, Raṅga's thoughts were fixed far more closely on him.

His love grew wider and deeper. For hours together he was lost in it. He would close his eyes and know nothing of the world outside, while he saw the Lord within, drew near him, and feared for his safety.

The stone

One day, while he stood like this, dead to everything around him, Lōka Sāraṅga Mahāmuni came down to the river to fetch the day's water for Raṅganātha's holy bath. He found the singer standing in his way like a statue, and called out to him to move aside: he, a Brahmin and a servant of the Lord's temple, was holy, and an outcaste must keep his distance. Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār did not hear him. His hearing had stopped with the rest of his senses. Sāraṅga took his silence for stubbornness, even for an insult, and in his anger he picked up a pebble and threw it. It struck the singer in the face and drew blood.

He came to himself, slowly opened his eyes, saw the sage standing at a distance fuming, and understood at once. He moved away from the place, grieving and full of sorrow that he had, without meaning to, ignored the just warnings of a holy man.

When the way was clear, Sāraṅga went down to the water, performed his daily rites, and carried his pots of holy water to the temple in the usual procession, with music and fans and umbrellas. But when he came to the shrine, the Lord did not welcome him as he always did, and his service was not accepted. His face fell, his heart sank, and he was plunged in grief.

The Lord's command

Then the Lord came to him in a vision. "How dared you hurt my faithful Thiruppāṇ?" he said. "Did you take him for a low creature? We are deeply offended with you." Sāraṅga was bewildered and did not know how to make amends.

Meanwhile Raṅganāyakī, the Lord's consort, asked her Lord why he was so slow to draw the singer closer to him. "I have often tried," Raṅga answered. "But as I come nearer, he draws back. He is so aware of his low birth that he thinks any touch of his would defile me. I have been held off again and again by this beloved of mine who is so careful and so humble. But the time has come to settle it, my queen, and soon you will have your wish."

Then the Lord called Sāraṅga, who came trembling. "You shall not think Thiruppāṇ low," said the Lord. "He is my very soul, my close friend, my trusted servant. Go now to where he is. With reverence and humility lift him onto your shoulders and bring him in triumph into our shrine, and let the whole world see it. This is our command."

Sāraṅga came out of his trance with the weight gone from his heart, and ran, crying out with joy that his life was blessed, that this was a blessed morning.

On the priest's shoulders

He found the singer standing far off as usual, talking with his lute about God in the language of music. Sāraṅga went up to him and fell at his feet, begged forgiveness for the hurt he had done him in body and in honour, and told him humbly that it was the Lord's wish that Thiruppāṇ should be carried to him on Sāraṅga's shoulders. The singer drew back and pleaded: do not touch me; I am lower than the lowest; I cannot claim any of the four castes; I know no way; how can I tread the Lord's land with my feet?

"But you need not fear, sir," said Sāraṅga. "You will not have to tread the holy ground at all. I have been commanded to carry you on my shoulders."

Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār saw how things stood. To resist any more, he thought, would be disobedience. "As the Lord wills," he said. "If he makes the shoot spring from the plant, who can stop it? What he wills is our good and his pleasure. Let it be as he wills. Do with me what you like, holy sage."

Lōka Sāraṅga did not wait. He lifted the singer onto his shoulders and, like a victor coming home, like the heavenly bearers who carry the souls of the blessed up to heaven, he carried him to the Lord's shrine amid cheering and praise. For this the Āzhvār is called Munivāhanar, the one whose mount was a sage.

Ten verses

Sāraṅga was about to set him down in the holy court within when the Lord appeared in a dawn of heavenly glory, surrounded by his hosts and his shining attendants, radiant with all his ornaments, his consorts beside him. It was sunlight and moonlight and lightning all blended into one blaze of beauty, a sight no eye had seen before. Thiruppāṇ Āzhvār saw it. He was bathed in glory, and his devotion overflowed every bound, and he broke into song: the Amalaṉādhipirāṉ, ten verses on the whole Lord standing there before him. It begins with the holy lotus feet of the Lord of Araṅgam, which, he says, have come and entered his eyes:

amalaṉ ādhipirāṉ aḍiyārkku eṉṉai āṭpaḍuththa

vimalaṉ viṇṇavar kōṉ viraiyār pozhil vēṅkaḍavaṉ

nimalaṉ niṉmalaṉ nīdhi vāṉavaṉ nīḷ madhil araṅgaththu ammāṉ thiruk

kamala pādham vandhu eṉ kaṇṇiṉ uḷḷaṉa okkiṉṟadhē

"The spotless one, the first Lord, the pure one who made me the servant of his servants, king of the gods, the Lord of Vēṅkaḍam with its fragrant groves, the stainless, the faultless, the just one of heaven, the Lord of long-walled Araṅgam: his holy lotus feet seem to have come and entered my eyes."

Verse by verse he went up from those feet to the whole beautiful form, and in the last verse he said that the eyes which had seen his nectar, the Lord of Araṅgam, the cloud-coloured cowherd with the butter-stained mouth who had stolen his heart, would look on nothing else again:

kaṇḍa kaṇgaḷ maṟṟoṉṟiṉaik kāṇāvē

"Eyes that have seen him will see nothing else."

And while everyone there stood gazing in wonder, the singer did not stay on earth to see anything else. He melted and passed into the Lord, body and soul, in his fiftieth year. As some fragrant roots keep the scent of the earth that clings to them, so a saint may sometimes pass into his God without leaving even his body behind.

His ten verses are left to us, to read and to turn over in the heart, sung by the man who stood all his life on the far bank of the river and was carried at last into the sanctum.