Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi Āzhvār

Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi Āzhvār: the dust at the feet of the Lord's servants

At Śrīraṅgam, in a garden beside the river, a young Brahmin grew flowers and tulasi for Raṅganātha and never lifted his eyes from his work, not even when the most beautiful woman of the Chōzha court sat down in the shade of his trees. She made a wager that she would bring him down, and she did. He lost his garden, his goods and his good name, and sat begging at her door, until the Lord he had once garlanded every morning came himself, as a servant carrying a golden cup, to fetch him back. Afterwards he would be called by no name but one: Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi, the dust at the feet of the Lord's servants.

Vipranārāyaṇa

He was born at Thirumandangudi in the Chōzha country, into a Brahmin family, in the month of Mārgazhi, the month the Lord in the Gītā names as his own. He came from the Vanamālā, the garland of forest flowers that hangs on the Lord's shoulders. His first name was Vipranārāyaṇa.

As a Brahmin boy he received every sacrament in its season, and he learned the four Vedas and their six limbs and the other sciences of life. By nature he was a saint. He saw early how empty and passing the world is, and he never let himself be bound by marriage or any such tie.

The garden at Śrīraṅgam

Once he went to Śrīraṅgam, between the two arms of the Kāvēri, and walked round the shrine on all four sides, and stood a long while before the Lord lying there: his body like a shining sapphire, his eyes like blooming lotuses, grace and kindness shining from his smiling face. Not every eye can see such beauty, but his eyes had been opened, and the sight filled his whole heart. He resolved to give the rest of his days to growing flowers for the Lord, above all the holy tulasi.

So, like Puṇḍarīka and Mālākāra in the old stories, he made a garden and gave himself to it. He wove his garlands as Periyāzhvār wove his, from chosen flowers that stand for the flowers of the mind the Lord loves best: harmlessness, mastery of the senses, kindness to every creature, forgiveness, prayer, austerity, contemplation and truth. His days went by in that service, quietly, one like the next.

Dēvadēvi's wager

In the town of Thirukkarambaṉūr there lived a courtesan of matchless beauty named Dēvadēvi, said to be of heavenly descent. She often went to the court of the Chōzha king, whose capital was then at Uṟaiyūr. One day, coming home from the palace with her maids, she passed Vipranārāyaṇa's garden. Tired, and tempted by the shade, she sat down to rest under a tree.

It was a lovely place. Mango and jack, fig and lime, plantain and pomegranate, coconut and areca grew there, bright with new leaves and heavy with flowers. Birds of every colour sang in the branches and bees hummed among the blossoms, and the breeze moving through the grove carried the scent of lotus and lily and champak. "Sister," said Dēvadēvi to the woman with her, smiling, "doesn't this garden rival the pleasure gardens of the gods?" "How could it not," said her sister, "when its flowers are thought fit to be laid on the head of Raṅganātha himself?"

As they sat talking, their idle eyes fell on the gardener at work among the beds. His hair and beard were long and thick. He was dressed in white, with the bright marks of a Vaiṣṇava on his brow and breast and arms, and beads of tulasi and lotus seed round his neck. He was building up beds round the trees, watering the plants, tending them in a hundred small ways, as his one service to God. The two women watched him for a long time, and he never once raised his eyes to their faces. If he knew they were there, he was too deep in his work to care, and he had no thought for a woman's beauty.

Dēvadēvi was piqued. "Is the man mad," she asked, "or no man at all, that he does not even look at us?"

"He is neither," said her sister. "His whole soul is given to his work for God, and his heart is turned away from the world. Your charms mean nothing to him. But listen: if you can melt the stone of that man's heart and turn it towards you, you are the best of us all. I'll make a wager with you. If you win him, I'll be your slave for six months."

"Done," said Dēvadēvi. "And if I fail, I'll be yours for as long."

Six months in the garden

At once she took off all her jewels and ornaments and sent her sister home with them and all the maids, telling them to wait and see. Then she went and stood right in front of Vipranārāyaṇa, so close he could not help seeing her, and fell at his feet.

"Who are you, my daughter?" he asked. "What are you doing?"

"Lord," she cried, "I was born low, for my past sins. My mother sells me to any man for money. I am what my sins have made me, but why should I go on sinking deeper? I have made up my mind to leave that wicked old woman and trust you alone to save me. I am helpless and have nowhere to go. Look on me with kindness. I ask only this: let me look after the garden while you carry your flowers to the temple, and let me bring you the alms that people give you each day."

Simple and kind as he was, and blind to the trick behind her words, he said yes. He took her on as a helper in his service to God, and shared his little food with her after offering it to the Lord.

She was patient. For six long months she worked in his garden, doing every humble task. Then one day in the rainy season a heavy storm came down. She was soaked and shivering but would not stop her work. Vipranārāyaṇa, in the shelter of his hut, pitied her and called her in. She came at once and stood beside him in her dripping clothes, and he gave her his own dry cloth to wear.

Alone with him, warm and dry, with the rain outside, she thought: there will never be a better chance. "Lord," she said softly, "may your servant press your tired limbs?" In all innocence he let her. As she pressed his limbs she spoke sweet words and gave him sidelong looks, until his holiness melted away like wax before a flame, and he fell into her embrace.

She sent at once for her jewels and fine clothes, and adorned herself like a peacock, and now he was her slave. The garden looked different to him. Its shady seats and arbours, its glades and paths, all seemed made for the two of them now. A new world had opened before him, and he lost sight of the old one. He forgot his daily prayers. He knew no god but Dēvadēvi.

At her door

Dēvadēvi had won her wager. She stripped her lover of everything he owned, left him, and went home. He ran after her and sat at her door, and bore every insult and injury that a cast-off lover suffers at such a door. Day after day went by like this.

One day Raṅganātha and his consort Śrī passed down that street in procession, and Śrī saw Vipranārāyaṇa crouching miserably under the eaves of Dēvadēvi's house. "Who is that?" she asked, smiling. "Don't you know him?" said the Lord. "That is our old servant Vipranārāyaṇa, who used to bring us flowers every day. See, poor soul, he has been made a beggar, and the woman inside has thrown him out." "My Lord," said Śrī, "do you let your lovers become castaways like this? Do you catch even such saints in your snares? He has sinned, but you should punish him if you must and bring him back to your service." "Yes," the Lord answered her. "Watch what I will do."

The golden cup

That night someone knocked at Dēvadēvi's door. It was not the weak knock of Vipranārāyaṇa, which she had long been ignoring. "Can it be him?" she wondered. "Where would he get such strength? He must have something new for me. Let me open." "Who are you?" she asked. "I am Vipranārāyaṇa's servant," said the man at the door. "My name is Raṅga. He sent me to give you this golden cup."

That was music to her ears. She took the golden cup gladly and asked where her dear lover was. The messenger went over to where Vipranārāyaṇa sat moaning. "Dēvadēvi is waiting for you at the door with open arms," he said. "Go in and enjoy yourself as before." Vipranārāyaṇa jumped up as if nectar had been poured into his ears, and found himself once more in her arms. And the messenger was gone. He was Raṅganātha himself, who had quietly gone back to his serpent bed.

Next morning, when the temple doors were opened for worship, a golden cup was missing from the vessels of the daily rite. The temple servants were in consternation. The matter went to the temple manager and then to the king at Uṟaiyūr, who had the priest and his attendants arrested and punished. Now Dēvadēvi's water-carrier happened to pass where the accused men were suffering, and saw among them a lover of hers. She asked what had happened, heard about the missing cup, and told him that a certain Vipranārāyaṇa had given just such a cup to her mistress, who kept it hidden under her pillow. The manager arrested Vipranārāyaṇa, went with him to the woman's house, and there under the pillow was the cup.

The king sent for them all. "How could you steal God's property?" he asked Dēvadēvi. "Lord, I am your slave," she cried. "I did not know until this moment that it belonged to God. This man sent it to me by his servant, one Raṅga. I took it without knowing." "What do you say to that, Vipra?" thundered the king. Vipranārāyaṇa denied knowing anything about it. She accused him and he denied it, and the quarrel raged back and forth. The king fined Dēvadēvi and had Vipranārāyaṇa locked up while he considered what punishment the law laid down for stealing gold, and sent the cup back to the temple.

The king's dream

Śrī, the mother of mercy, who pleads with the Lord for her children, spoke to him again. "Lord of my heart, enough of playing with your poor servant. Torment him no more. He has had enough of this world's illusions. Have mercy now." "Well said, my love," said the Lord. "Watch what I do next."

That night Raṅganātha came to the Chōzha king in a dream. "Listen, my faithful one," he said. "Our servant Vipra is innocent as far as this life goes. In past lives he did deeds that had to bear their fruit, and so we arranged things so that justice would be done. He has suffered a little. That is enough. We set him free, so you must acquit him. And we do not wish to take Dēvadēvi's money; remit her fine. Then do as we say, and let our dear Nārāyaṇa go back to his gardening, which is dear to him and to us."

The king woke with the dream still before his eyes, astonished and full of joy. He ordered Vipranārāyaṇa's release at once, told him the dream, begged his pardon for what had been done without knowing, honoured him in every way, and let him go.

The dust of the devotees' feet

His old self came back to him like a flood, and a hard fight began inside him between the man he truly was and the filth he had fallen into. Remorse showed him the hell of his own lust beside the holiness he had been born for. "My soul," he said, "now you have seen what that kind of company is. How is this stained nature to be made clean? There is one cure: to drink, in faith, the water that has washed the feet of holy men." He took it, and slowly his holiness came back to him. And to show that he had been saved by nothing but the dust of holy men's feet, he gave himself the name Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi, the dust at the feet of the Lord's servants.

From then on, like Hanumān, who said his heart was so bound to Rāma that it could not be parted from him, he belonged to God alone. Unlike other saints, he did not travel from shrine to shrine. He fixed his mind on the Lord as he shows himself at Śrīraṅgam, and on him alone. And through that one form, Raṅganātha opened every other to him: the Lord hidden in the hearts of all beings, the Lord come down to earth, the Lord in his forms for the work of the worlds, and the Lord supreme in the highest heaven. All his doubts vanished. He felt God as surely as if he held him in his hand.

What became of Dēvadēvi

Dēvadēvi saw which way her old lover had gone, and it astonished her and set her thinking. Her time with him had worked on her heart like a sacrament, and she resolved that she would become like him. She gave everything she had to the temple of Raṅganātha, and served there in the humblest tasks until she felt her old self made new.

The garland and the waking

His love for God rose higher and higher and folded round the Lord in every way, as a son loves a father, a friend a friend, a bride her bridegroom. And standing on that height he sang, in the first verse of his Thirumālai, the sacred garland:

kāvalil pulaṉai vaiththuk kalithaṉṉaik kaḍakkap pāyndhu

nāvalittu uzhitharugiṉṟōm namaṉ thamar thalaigaḷ mīdhē

"We have set our senses under guard and leapt clear of this dark age, and now we walk with a shout over the heads of Death's own servants."

It was the Lord's holy name, he said, that let him plant his feet on the heads of Death and his hosts, and set his head beneath the feet of the godly. In the same garland he told the Lord of Araṅgam that even the rule of Indra's heaven would mean nothing to him beside the joy of calling him by his names:

pachchai mā malai pōl mēṉi pavaḷa vāy kamalach seṅgaṇ

achchudhā amarar ēṟē āyar tham kozhundhē eṉṉum

ichchuvai thavira yāṉ pōy indhira lōgam āḷum

achchuvai peṟiṉum vēṇḍēṉ araṅga mā nagaruḷāṉē

"Body like a great green mountain, mouth like coral, red lotus eyes, Achyuta, chief of the gods, flower of the cowherds: leave the sweetness of saying this, and go and rule Indra's world? I would not want that sweetness if I could have it, Lord of the great city of Araṅgam."

The Thirumālai teaches that the body, made of the elements, is a cage that must sooner or later fall apart, and that the soul is a thing apart from it whose very nature is to belong to God and to those who are his. His second work, the Thiruppaḷḷiyezhuchi, the waking of the Lord, is sung at dawn before the sleeping Lord of Araṅgam, and in it he says that the highest thing a holy soul can hope for is to serve the servants of the servants of God.

The garden spared

He lived on at Śrīraṅgam to a great age, telling others what he had felt and seen of God. Long afterwards, when Thirumaṅgai Āzhvār was raising the great walls of the temple, the line of one rampart was found to run straight across the garden where Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi wove his garlands each day for the Lord. Thirumaṅgai Āzhvār reverently moved the wall, and Thoṇḍaraḍippoḍi blessed him for his care.

Then the gardener of Śrīraṅgam went to the Lord's own heaven, leaving behind his two songs, the garland and the waking.