Tirukkacci Nambi

At Kāñcī, the town the Tamil calls Kacci and the account calls Perumāḷ Kōyil, the Lord's own temple, there lived a man whose service was the fan. The Tamil calls him Tirukkacci Nambi, the Nambi of holy Kacci. His Sanskrit name is Kāñcīpūrṇa.

The Lord he fanned was Pēraruḷāḷar, the Lord of great grace, who stands on the hill called Hastigiri. The service had its own name, tiruvālavaṭṭa-kaiṅkarya, the holy service of the fan, kaiṅkarya being the tradition's word for service done to the Lord; and it was a service close to him.

The account does not say where he was born, or to whom, or how he came to the fan. When it first names him, he is one of the twenty mudalis, the leading disciples, who took refuge at the feet of Āḷavandār while Āḷavandār lived at Śrīraṅgam serving the Lord there. Mahāpūrṇa, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Śrīśailapūrṇa are named in that list, and Māṟaṉēri Nambi, and Kāñcīpūrṇa with them. All of them were learned men, the account says, and all of them carried the darśana, the whole teaching of the line.

So Āḷavandār was his ācārya, his own teacher.

In time Āḷavandār himself came to Kāñcī. Word had reached him at Śrīraṅgam of a young man of Śrīperumbudūr called Iḷaiyāzhvār, who was studying Vedānta under an ascetic named Yādavaprakāśa and disputing with him over the meaning of the Upaniṣads, and he set out with his chief disciples to see him. Āḷavandār's own story tells that journey and that day in full. Here it is Kāñcīpūrṇa's part that matters.

Some copies of the account add a sentence here. Kāñcīpūrṇa heard, they say, that his own ācārya Āḷavandār had come, and he went out with great joy to receive him. The other copies do not have it.

The Śrīvaiṣṇavas of the place met Āḷavandār with tīrtha, the holy water of the worship, and prasāda, the food the Lord has been offered, and he received them. Then Kāñcīpūrṇa, full of delight, fell at his feet in a heap and served him.

Āḷavandār took him by the head and lifted him up, full of affection.

"Śrī Gajendradāsa!" he said. "The service of the fan, so close to Pēraruḷāḷar: does it go on without a break?"

Kāñcīpūrṇa covered his mouth with his hand. "By Your Honour's grace," he said, "Pēraruḷāḷar accepts it."

Then Āḷavandār took Kāñcīpūrṇa with him and went in to worship, and as they went round the shrine, Yādavaprakāśa came round the same way with the whole crowd of his students.

"Which of these is Iḷaiyāzhvār?" Āḷavandār asked Kāñcīpūrṇa.

"The one coming in the middle," Kāñcīpūrṇa said. "Ruddy, tall and strong, with arms that reach to his knees, long and well rounded, as the verse says."

Āḷavandār looked at him again and again and said, "This one is indeed the first," and he prayed to Pēraruḷāḷar that the young man might become the one who carries their darśana. Then he went up Hastigiri to worship, and he left Kāñcīpūrṇa there. He found no chance at that time to speak a good word to the young man, and he went back to Śrīraṅgam with his disciples.

At Kāñcī, after that, Iḷaiyāzhvār's studies came to an end. Yādavaprakāśa had read a text as teaching that the soul and Brahman are one, and Iḷaiyāzhvār had answered him, and the teacher in a rage had told him to study with him no longer. Iḷaiyāzhvār went home very glad and told his mother.

"Come, child," she said. "What you have studied up to now is enough. Tirukkacci Nambi is close to Pēraruḷāḷar. Serve him, and go on doing what he tells you."

So Iḷaiyāzhvār went and served Kāñcīpūrṇa, and was fulfilled. He asked him in the words of the old verse, "Tell me, 'Let this be done.' Appoint the service I am to do."

"Water from the Sālai well pleases Pēraruḷāḷar," Kāñcīpūrṇa said. "As before, bring one pot of bathing water every day, in time for the worship, and offer it."

Iḷaiyāzhvār did it, and did not miss a day.

At that time Āḷavandār lay ill at Śrīraṅgam. Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa, with Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar to speak for them, fell at his feet and asked him for a meaning they could hold to as their refuge. He told them that Kōyilāzhvār, the Lord's own shrine there, was itself their life and their refuge, and that they should worship, from foot to head, the form of Tiruppāṇāzhvār standing with his vīṇā beneath Periya Perumāḷ's feet. And as proof of it he pointed them to men who knew where the Lord's life lay. Kuṟumbaṟutta Nambi knew where the life of the Lord of Tiruvēṅkaṭam lay. Tiruppāṇāzhvār knew where Periya Perumāḷ's life lay, and the Araiyar knew Tiruppāṇāzhvār's. And Kāñcīpūrṇa, he said, knew where the life of Pēraruḷāḷar lay.

Then Mahāpūrṇa came from Śrīraṅgam. Āḷavandār had made a hymn and sent him with it, to join Iḷaiyāzhvār to them. He came at a traveller's pace to Perumāḷ Kōyil, and he went first to Kāñcīpūrṇa and told him the news he carried. With Kāñcīpūrṇa as his puruṣakāra, the one who speaks for a man before the Lord, he went into the shrine and recited the hymn before Pēraruḷāḷar. Then he came out and recited it again on the path from the Sālai well, and Iḷaiyāzhvār, coming up with the water, heard a verse of it and asked who had made it. That is Mahāpūrṇa's story and his own life tells it.

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

They came too late. Āḷavandār had gone to the sacred land, and Iḷaiyāzhvār saw only his body, with three fingers folded, and vowed to fulfil the three wishes the fingers held.

He came back to Perumāḷ Kōyil at a traveller's pace, fell at Kāñcīpūrṇa's feet and told him.

Kāñcīpūrṇa grieved greatly.

Iḷaiyāzhvār was utterly cast down, because what he had meant to do had not come about.

"Is not Pēraruḷāḷar all-knowing and all-powerful?" Kāñcīpūrṇa said to him. "He will bring it to completion as you intend. You need not fear."

Afterwards, the account says, he kept the observance of the sacred powder for Āḷavandār and held the holy recitation for him on a great scale. The sentence seems to mean Kāñcīpūrṇa. It could be read as Iḷaiyāzhvār.

Iḷaiyāzhvār took heart. He worshipped Pēraruḷāḷar and went back to carrying the bathing water, as before. He had come away from Śrīraṅgam, the account says, without even worshipping the Lord there, and the account kept at Śrīraṅgam says so too: that he came back to Kāñcī without worshipping the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, and took up the water again.

As the days went on, Iḷaiyāzhvār's love for Kāñcīpūrṇa ripened, and Kāñcīpūrṇa's grace toward him grew. He came to know all Kāñcīpūrṇa's greatness. "I must take refuge at his feet," he said to himself, and he went and prostrated before him.

"Your Honour must save this soul," he said.

"Come, Iḷaiyāzhvīr," Kāñcīpūrṇa said. "You saw how Pēraruḷāḷar took me, who was no one, and made me someone, and took me as his servant, and you were drawn to that. There is a verse that says it."

கிமப்யத்ராபி

ஜாயந்தே யோகிநஸ்ஸர்வயோநிஷூ - ப்ரத்யக்ஷிதாத்மநாதாநாம் நைஷாம்சிந்த்

யங்குலாதிகம்

kimapyatrāpi

jāyantē yōkinassarvayōniṣū - pratyakṣitātmanātānām naiṣāmcint

yaṅkulātikam

Some yogis are born here too, in every kind of womb; for those who have seen the Lord of the self face to face, nothing of theirs is to be weighed, not family nor the like.

"You have the highest steadfastness of the Veda, the kind that goes with the qualities of the self, and you have thought to take refuge with me. Even so, it would not suit the order of the Veda that belongs to caste and stage of life."

So he declined.

The next day a new thought came to Iḷaiyāzhvār. He came to look on Kāñcīpūrṇa as one whose leavings would be prasāda to him, and he wanted to be joined to him by that.

"Please take your meal in my hut," he asked him.

Kāñcīpūrṇa agreed.

Iḷaiyāzhvār went home overjoyed and told his wife. "Make the kitchen ready," he said, "and cook rice with good side dishes." He bathed himself and did his daily rites. He fetched the bathing water quickly and offered it to Pēraruḷāḷar. At home he had Pēraruḷāḷar in his own worship, and he offered him food. Then he went out to bring Kāñcīpūrṇa, going west along the south street toward Kāñcīpūrṇa's maṭha.

But Kāñcīpūrṇa had already left the maṭha. He had worshipped the Lord and come by another street to Iḷaiyāzhvār's house.

"I must go and help with the service of the fan," he said there, and he ate quickly and left.

Then Iḷaiyāzhvār's wife took a stick and pushed away the leaf he had eaten from. She purified the place with cow dung and sprinkled it, and she bathed.

Iḷaiyāzhvār came back. He had looked for Kāñcīpūrṇa at the maṭha and had not found him. He saw that his wife had bathed.

"What is this?" he asked.

"That Śrīvaiṣṇava came and ate," she said, "and went back, saying he must do the service of the fan. He is a sāttādavar, one who does not wear it, so I pushed the leaf he ate from away with a stick and purified the place with cow dung. So I had to wash my body."

The account does not say what it was that Kāñcīpūrṇa did not wear. It gives only her word.

Iḷaiyāzhvār looked at her, and he was very angry that she had bathed. His wish had come to nothing, and he grieved over it deeply. "What is fitting for us to do now?" he asked himself, and as the old line says, he thought the thoughts that are not thought. He turned it over in his heart.

Then he went to Kāñcīpūrṇa's maṭha.

"I have been holding certain thoughts," he said. "Your Honour must ask the Lord what they are, and tell me what he says."

That night, when Kāñcīpūrṇa had been enjoying the Lord's presence and they were alone, the Lord spoke first.

"Nambi! You look like one who has something to say to us."

"Iḷaiyāzhvār says he has been holding certain thoughts," Kāñcīpūrṇa said. "He is very eager that I should ask Your Honour what they are and go back and tell him. Please tell them."

"He is a man whose servitude to us was born with him," the Lord said, "who acts as we wish. As we once studied with Sāndīpani, he has learned all the śāstras in many places, thoroughly, in every part. He is only making us say it. These are the 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 at the end of the body. Take refuge at the holy feet of Periya Nambi."

The third word, prapatti, is the giving of oneself into the Lord's keeping. The Periya Nambi of the last is Mahāpūrṇa.

Kāñcīpūrṇa heard the six words and came away with them. At daybreak he called Iḷaiyāzhvār.

"Iḷaiyāzhvīr! Hear the words Pēraruḷāḷar has spoken." He told them all. "Are these your thoughts?"

"Yes," said Iḷaiyāzhvār. He was overjoyed, and he prostrated at Kāñcīpūrṇa's feet.

Kāñcīpūrṇa was full of delight. "How his thought and the Lord's heart have been one!" he said.

So Iḷaiyāzhvār set out to take refuge at the feet of Mahāpūrṇa, as Pēraruḷāḷar had commanded him through Kāñcīpūrṇa. He worshipped Kāñcīpūrṇa and the Lord and took leave of them both, and went toward Śrīraṅgam. At Madhurāntakam, on the way, he found Mahāpūrṇa, who had been sent to fetch him and had halted there, and there under the Makizh tree of the temple Mahāpūrṇa gave him the holy emblems and taught him the dvaya, the two-line prayer of refuge. Mahāpūrṇa's life tells all of that.

The next day they came back together to Perumāḷ Kōyil.

Kāñcīpūrṇa came out to meet them and worshipped Mahāpūrṇa, and Mahāpūrṇa showed him grace in return. Then, with Kāñcīpūrṇa as his puruṣakāra, Mahāpūrṇa went in and worshipped Pēraruḷāḷar, and he made Iḷaiyāzhvār see the Lord face to face and enjoy him.

Mahāpūrṇa lived six months in Iḷaiyāzhvār's house after that, teaching him. Then there was a quarrel at the well between the two wives, and Mahāpūrṇa took his wife and went back to Śrīraṅgam without telling Iḷaiyāzhvār. When Iḷaiyāzhvār heard why, he was troubled to the heart, and in great anger he named his wife's offences against the Lord's servants one by one. Earlier, he said, she had offended against Tirukkacci Nambi, and against a Śrīvaiṣṇava; now she had quarrelled with Periya Nambi's wife. He gave her what was hers and sent her back to her father's house, and he resolved to give up the world.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells these days more shortly. It says only that because Pēraruḷāḷar had spoken the six words to Tirukkacci Nambi, Iḷaiyāzhvār set out to take refuge at Periya Nambi's feet, and that at the same time the Lord of Śrīraṅgam commanded Periya Nambi, and the two met at Madhurāntakam. It says nothing of the refusal or of the meal.

Iḷaiyāzhvār bathed in the tank called Anantasaras, went into the presence of Pēraruḷāḷar, and asked the Lord himself to be his ācārya and to give him the triple staff and the ochre cloth of one who has renounced. Pēraruḷāḷar was pleased. Through the archaka, the priest who serves the image, he commanded him to bear them as long as he lived, and he gave them to him, and he named him Irāmānuja Muni.

Then the Lord turned to Kāñcīpūrṇa.

"Take our Rāmānuja," he said, "and settle him in the maṭha, and come back."

Kāñcīpūrṇa did so. He took him along, cherishing him, and settled him in the maṭha, and came back.

There was a woman in Kāñcī in those days, the mother of Yādavaprakāśa, the teacher who had sent Iḷaiyāzhvār away. For a long time she had been coming to the service of Pēraruḷāḷar. Tirukkacci Nambi's eyes had rested on her, and she had been talking lovingly with Rāmānuja, and from these three things, the account says, a firmness in our darśana was born in her too. She told her son to take the triple staff as Rāmānuja had. He was old, and the expiation for it was to go round the whole earth, and he lay down disheartened; and that night Pēraruḷāḷar came to him in a dream and told him to go round Rāmānuja once instead. Yādavaprakāśa's own life tells all this.

Yādavaprakāśa did not trust the dream. He went to Kāñcīpūrṇa.

"I am holding a certain thought," he said. "Put it to Pēraruḷāḷar and tell me what his will is."

That night, as he was taking leave of the Lord after his service, Kāñcīpūrṇa said, "Yādavaprakāśa says he is holding a certain thought."

"His mother told him, 'You too become an ascetic of the triple staff, like Rāmānuja,'" said Pēraruḷāḷar. "He lay down disheartened, because he would have to go round the earth. We told him, 'Go round our Rāmānuja once, and take the ascetic's order.' He does not trust the word we spoke to him by way of a dream, and he is sending you to ask. That is all."

At daybreak Kāñcīpūrṇa told it to Yādavaprakāśa. Then he believed. He went to Rāmānuja and walked round him and took the triple staff from his hand, and Rāmānuja named him Govinda Jīyar.

At Śrīraṅgam, meanwhile, the disciples of Āḷavandār heard that Iḷaiyāzhvār had taken the ascetic's order, and asked Namperumāḷ, the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, to have him brought there. Pēraruḷāḷar would not part with him, and so the disciples, with Mahāpūrṇa at their head, sent Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar, the singer of Śrīraṅgam, to win him with song. How the Araiyar sang and what he asked for is his own story.

At Kāñcī Kāñcīpūrṇa was the one who brought him in. It was daybreak, and Pēraruḷāḷar was seated on the holy maṇḍapa called Kaccikkuvāyttāṉ in the Vaiyamāḷigai, with his whole retinue serving him. Kāñcīpūrṇa was waving the fan. Close by stood Rāmānuja, reciting the Varadarājāṣṭaka, the eight verses to Varadarāja that Kāñcīpūrṇa had made.

Word came to Kāñcīpūrṇa that the Araiyar had arrived. He went out to meet him and paid him reverence, and the Araiyar showed him grace in return, and they asked after each other's welfare.

"I wish to worship Pēraruḷāḷar," the Araiyar said.

Kāñcīpūrṇa took him in to the tiruvōlakkam, the Lord's assembly. There the Araiyar sang until the Lord promised him whatever he would ask, and he pointed to Rāmānuja. "We have given him," Pēraruḷāḷar said at last, displeased. "Take him and go!"

The Araiyar took Rāmānuja by the hand. From here the account calls him Uḍaiyavar. Uḍaiyavar prostrated to Pēraruḷāḷar and set out at once, without going back into his maṭha. Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ, two disciples who had come to him at Kāñcī, went to bring his own image of Pēraruḷāḷar and everything else that was his, and joined him on the road.

Kāñcīpūrṇa saw them off on their way, and turned back.

The account brings Uḍaiyavar back to Kāñcī one more time. Namperumāḷ gave him leave to go with the words, "Go, and come back quickly," and he set out with his disciples, worshipped at Tirukkōvalūr on the way, and came to Perumāḷ Kōyil.

The account tells how he went to Kāñcīpūrṇa's maṭha and recited a verse there.

ஸ்ரீமத்

காஞ்சீமுநிம்வந்தே கமலாபதிநந்தநம் - வரதாங்க்ரிஸதாஸங்கரஸாயநபராய

ணம்

srīmat

kāñcīmunimvantē kamalāpatinantanam - varatāṅkrisatāsaṅkarasāyanaparāya

ṇam

The blessed sage of Kāñcī I salute, the delight of the Lord of Kamalā, for whom the nectar of clinging always to Varada's feet is his whole refuge.

He stood there, and Kāñcīpūrṇa showed him grace.

Then the two of them went together, and with Kāñcīpūrṇa as his puruṣakāra Uḍaiyavar went round the whole temple. He worshipped the great tower and Āṉaikātta Perumāḷ, the Lord who saved the elephant. He went in and bathed in the Anantasaras and put on the twelve marks of the Lord's names. He worshipped Ñāṉappirāṉ, the Lord who took the form of a boar and lifted up the earth, and the Āzhvārs, and the altar of offering, and Jaya and Vijaya, and Tiruvanantāzhvāṉ and the holy anthill. East of it was the courtyard where Yamunaitturaivar, Āḷavandār, had once cast his special glance on him. There he said these words and prostrated.

நமோநமோயாமுநாய யாமுநாயநமோநமஃ

namōnamōyāmunāya yāmunāyanamōnamaḵ

Obeisance, obeisance to Yāmuna; to Yāmuna, obeisance, obeisance.

He worshipped Kariyamāṇikkattu Emperumāṉ, and the Puṇyakoṭi vimāna, the tower over the shrine, and Tirumaḍaippaḷḷi Nācciyār, and Perundēviyār, the Lord's consort, and received tīrtha. He worshipped the discus, and Garuḍa, and Sēṉainātaṉ, who rules the immortals of the high heaven. He saluted Hastigiri, the king of mountains.

Then he climbed the Vaiyamāḷigai and went in, with Kāñcīpūrṇa in front of him, and worshipped Pēraruḷāḷar, the Lord of Attiyūr with the discus, whom the world praises. He stood and recited the Tiruppallāṇḍu, and the Varadarājāṣṭaka.

Kāñcīpūrṇa had the tīrtha and prasāda given to him, and the Śrīśaṭhakōpaṉ, the radiant feet that end sorrow. Uḍaiyavar received them and was fulfilled.

"I take leave of you," he said to Kāñcīpūrṇa, "to go to Periya Tirumalai."

Kāñcīpūrṇa sent him with a line of the Āzhvār's Tamil. "Go and bow down to Vēṅkaṭam that rises high."

So Uḍaiyavar went to the hill of Tiruvēṅkaṭam, and afterwards heard the Rāmāyaṇa from his uncle Śrīśailapūrṇa at Tiruppati, the town below it, and was given his cousin Govindapperumāḷ to take back with him. On the way home he worshipped at Kaḍikai and at Tiruppuṭkuzhi, and at Tiruveḵkā and the holy places about it, and he came back to the presence of Kāñcīpūrṇa.

Then Govindapperumāḷ began to waste in separation from the teacher he had left on the hill, and Uḍaiyavar saw it and sent him back to see him with two Śrīvaiṣṇavas. While Govindapperumāḷ was gone, Uḍaiyavar stayed with Kāñcīpūrṇa, worshipping Pēraruḷāḷar. Śrīśailapūrṇa would not even look at Govindapperumāḷ. Does a man put grass before a cow he has sold? he said, and sent him away from his gate; and Govindapperumāḷ came back to Kāñcī and to Uḍaiyavar.

Then Uḍaiyavar prostrated to Kāñcīpūrṇa, took his leave, and set out for Tiruvaraṅgam.

That is the last meeting the account tells. It says nothing of Kāñcīpūrṇa's last days or of his death.

It says other things of him.

It says that Vaḍuga Nambi called Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ the people of two banks, because they held both Emperumāṉār's feet and Namperumāḷ's feet as their refuge. Others held to one. Vaḍuga Nambi said that Emperumāṉār's feet alone were his refuge. Bhaṭṭar said it of the feet of the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, Anantāzhvāṉ of the Lord of Tiruvēṅkaṭam, and Emperumāṉār himself of the feet of Selvappiḷḷai. And Tirukkacci Nambi said that the feet of Pēraruḷāḷar were his refuge. Such a resolve, the account says, is not for everyone.

And when it asks why some holy places stand above the others, though all are alike, it answers for each. Why does Śrīraṅgam stand first? Because the Lord there mingled closely with Tiruppāṇāzhvār. Why Tirumalai? Because the Lord there spoke with Kuṟumbaṟutta Nambi and Toṇḍaimāṉ Cakravarti and mingled with them. And why does Perumāḷ Kōyil stand first?

Because the Lord there talked with Tirukkacci Nambi, smiling as he spoke, and mingled very closely with him.

His birth-star was Mṛgaśīrṣa, in the month of Māsi. His taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, keeps the name Āḷavandār had called him by:

கருணாகரபாதாப்ஜஶரணாயமஹாத்மநே - ஸ்ரீமத்

மஜேந்த்ரதாஸாய காஞ்சீபூர்ணாயதேநமஃ

karuṇākarapātāpjaśaraṇāyamahātmanē - srīmat

majēntratāsāya kāñcīpūrṇāyatēnamaḵ

To you whose refuge is the lotus feet of the Lord who is a mine of mercy, great soul, to the blessed Gajendradāsa, to you, Kāñcīpūrṇa, salutation.

The shorter account, which carries the line of teachers on after Uḍaiyavar, remembers him once more, at the place where he served. A teacher called Naḍātūr Ammāḷ used to expound the Śrī Bhāṣya every day in the presence of Pēraruḷāḷar, near the Kaccivāyttāṉ maṇḍapa. One day some of his hearers asked him whether there was any special excellence in spending their time every day in that one place. Ammāḷ answered with a verse:

பரம் தத்த்வம் ஶ்ரீமாநஹமபி ச பேதோ மம மதம்

ப்ரபத்திஸ்தூபாயஶ்ச சரமஸமயே ந ஸ்ம்ருதிரபி |

ஶரீராந்தே மோக்ஷோ குருரபி மஹாபூர்ண இதி தா-

நவாதீதர்த்தாந் ஷட் வரத இஹ பூர்ணாய து புரா ||

param tattvam śrīmānahamapi ca pētō mama matam

prapattistūpāyaśca caramasamayē na smrutirapi |

śarīrāntē mōkṣō kururapi mahāpūrṇa iti tā-

navātītarttān ṣaṭ varata iha pūrṇāya tu purā ||

The supreme reality is I, the Lord with Śrī; difference is my doctrine; prapatti is the means; at the last hour no remembrance is needed; at the end of the body, release; the teacher is Mahāpūrṇa. These six meanings Varada told long ago, here, to Pūrṇa.