Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ

Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ, whose Sanskrit name is Mālādhara, was a disciple of Āḷavandār.

While Āḷavandār lived at Śrīraṅgam in the service of Periya Perumāḷ, twenty mudalis, first men of the tradition, came and took refuge at his feet. The account names all twenty. Mahāpūrṇa comes first, then Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, Śrīśailapūrṇa, Māṟaṉēri Nambi, Kāñcīpūrṇa and Āḷavandār Āzhvāṉ, and seventh in the list stands Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ. All of them, the account says, were men of learning who carried the darśana forward.

What Āḷavandār gave him shows only later, in what he gave in his turn. It was the meaning of the Tiruvāymozhi, the thousand songs of Nammāzhvār, as he had heard it from Āḷavandār himself.

The account does not say where he came from, or what he did in the years between Āḷavandār's death and Uḍaiyavar's coming to Śrīraṅgam. He comes into the story on a single day.

Some days after Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ had come back from Tirukkōṭṭiyūr, Goṣṭhīpūrṇa came to Kōyil. He worshipped Namperumāḷ and set out, and he took Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ with him and came to Emperumāṉār's maṭha. Uḍaiyavar served at Goṣṭhīpūrṇa's feet and stood before him.

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa looked on him with grace.

"Hear the meaning of the Tiruvāymozhi from Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ," he said.

He handed Uḍaiyavar over into Mālādhara's hands, and he himself went back to Tirukkōṭṭiyūr.

So Mālādhara began the Tiruvāymozhi, as Goṣṭhīpūrṇa had told him, and the teaching went on. He gave each verse as Āḷavandār had taught it. And for every verse, beyond what Mālādhara gave, Uḍaiyavar set out some special meanings of his own.

"This we did not hear from Āḷavandār," Mālādhara said.

They came to the verse that has in it the words aṟiyākkālattuḷḷē, "in the time when I did not know."

Mālādhara explained it. "The Āzhvār speaks it out of grief," he said. "In a state where knowledge does not stir, the Lord made the knowledge of his bond with Him arise in him. And then He still kept him tied to the body, which is bound to destroy the knowledge once it is born."

Uḍaiyavar heard him.

"The verses before it and the verses after it go on in great joy," he said. "To speak in the middle of them in a way that shows displeasure does not fit. So it must be just this. 'Me, Your servant, in the great māyā that is past knowing, in the time when I did not know, You made to love Your service, and so You kept me.' That is what he is saying."

So he made this verse too a verse of upakāra-smṛti, the remembering of a kindness received.

"This is a Viśvāmitra creation," Mālādhara said. "We did not hear it from Āḷavandār."

And he stopped teaching the Tiruvāymozhi.

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa heard of it. He came to Kōyil, to Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ, and asked him, "Is the Tiruvāymozhi going on?"

"Apart from the meaning I heard from Āḷavandār," Mālādhara said, "he tells certain other meanings of his own making. So I stopped."

"What meaning did he give?"

"On the verse aṟiyākkālattuḷḷē, he says it must be about remembering a kindness."

"This meaning too we have heard Āḷavandār give," Goṣṭhīpūrṇa said.

Then he said, "Emperumāṉār hearing the Tiruvāymozhi from you is like Kṛṣṇa doing his Vedic study with Sāndīpani, you see. Nothing will shine out to him except the meaning that was in Āḷavandār's heart. Do not think that you are telling him something he does not know."

Then Goṣṭhīpūrṇa took Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ and Mahāpūrṇa with him and came to Emperumāṉār's maṭha.

Uḍaiyavar saw them and was full of joy. He joined his feet and folded his long hands, and stood worshipping at their feet.

They said to Mālādhara, "Begin the Tiruvāymozhi from the place where it was left off, and bring the prabandha to its end."

The Tiruvāymozhi was begun again, and it went on.

Then, once more, in the course of some meaning, Uḍaiyavar heard what Mālādhara set out and said to him, "Āḷavandār would not explain it so."

"You have never even seen Āḷavandār with your eyes," Mālādhara said. "What ground have you for saying, 'He would not explain it so'?"

"Am I not an Ekalavya to Āḷavandār?" said Uḍaiyavar.

Mālādhara heard that.

"What Tirukkōṭṭiyūr Nambi told us was right," he said. "This too is a holy incarnation. All the meanings we did not hear from Āḷavandār, we have heard here."

And he prostrated to him.

When the account comes back to this, later, to show how each of Uḍaiyavar's teachers made his glory known, it tells it again more briefly. In that telling Goṣṭhīpūrṇa says that Āḷavandār gave both meanings of the verse, the grieving one and the grateful one. And when Uḍaiyavar has said that he is an Ekalavya to Āḷavandār, Mālādhara prostrates to him and asks, "Is this too an incarnation?" Then he has his own son, Sundarattōḷuḍaiyār, take refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet.

So the son of the teacher became the disciple. When the account lists the seventy-four ācāryas who took refuge at Emperumāṉār's feet, it begins with the sons of his own teachers: Āḷavandār's line first, then the son of Mahāpūrṇa, then the son of Goṣṭhīpūrṇa, and then Sundarattōḷuḍaiyār, the son of Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ.

The shorter telling of Uḍaiyavar's life has the teaching of the Tiruvāymozhi otherwise, and it is gentler.

In it, it is Mahāpūrṇa who sends him. "Go and hear the meaning of the Tiruvāymozhi from Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ," he says. Emperumāṉār worships Mālādhara's feet and begins to hear it. When they reach the verse aṟiyākkālattuḷḷē, Mālādhara gives one meaning, and Emperumāṉār puts the words together another way, so that gratitude shows in them, and asks him, "Would this too fit this verse?"

Mālādhara is pleased. He goes himself to where Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa are sitting with the mudalis, and tells them the meaning.

"We had heard this meaning from our Āḷavandār," they say. "Emperumāṉār, on whom Āḷavandār's full glance of grace rested, learning special meanings from us is just like Kṛṣṇa taking his learning from Sāndīpani."

"That is right," says Mālādhara, and he is glad.

Then Mahāpūrṇa goes with that whole company to Emperumāṉār's maṭha, looks on him with cool grace, and comes back. And Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ completes the meaning of the Tiruvāymozhi.

In that telling there is no quarrel. Mālādhara does not stop, and the word Ekalavya is not spoken.

His star, the account says, was Makam, in the month of Māci. His taṉiyaṉ, the Sanskrit verse in his praise, sets down the one thing he is remembered for:

ராமா நுஜமுநீந்த்ராய த்ராமிடீஸம்ஹிதார்த்ததம்-

மா லாதரகுரும்வந்தே வாவதூகம்விபஶ்சிதம்

rāmā nujamunīntrāya trāmiṭīsamhitārttatam-

mā lātarakurumvantē vāvatūkamvipaścitam

To Rāmānuja, lord of sages, he gave the meaning of the Tamil Veda: I bow to Mālādhara, the teacher, a master of speech, and wise.

The longer account does not tell how he died. The shorter one says only this. Some time afterwards, word came that Tirumālai Āṇḍāṉ had gone to the sacred land, and Uḍaiyavar, hearing it, performed for him the śrīcūrṇa-paripālana and the other rites, as he had done for Goṣṭhīpūrṇa.