Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar

Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar was the singer before the Lord at Śrīraṅgam. His Sanskrit verse calls him the teacher Śrīraṅgādhipa, which is the same name, the Lord of Śrīraṅga. The accounts very often give him a title in front of it and call him Āzhvār Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells his glory this way.

He was awake to the truth, it says, and he excelled in song and the arts that go with it, and in love for the Lord. On the festival days of the Tirumozhi and the Tiruvāymozhi he would put on costume and act out, as drama, the deeds that Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ, the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, had done in his incarnations, and he pleased the Lord greatly.

Perumāḷ was so pleased that he gave him a holy name, Kōyiluḍaiya Perumāḷ Araiyar, the Araiyar of the Lord who owns the temple. And he gave him every honour there was.

Once, at the great festival of Tiruvūṟal, the Lord went out on Tōḷukkiṉiyāṉ, and he called the Araiyar.

"Sing," he said, "to match the beauty of our walk."

The Araiyar came along with him, raising his praise in song, and so the Lord came back to his temple.

Another time, at Paṅkuṉi Uttiram, the Lord was in Nācciyār's grove, and he and Nācciyār had been at their sport together. Then the Lord glanced at the Araiyar and called out, "Vasantaṉ!" Kōyiluḍaiya Perumāḷ Araiyar knew what was in the Lord's heart, and he sang, and the Lord relished it. Perumāḷ was greatly pleased.

From that Araiyar onward, the account says, these things became the custom: the title Kōyiluḍaiya Perumāḷ Araiyar; the acting out, in costume, of the deeds of the ten incarnations and the rest; the music as the Lord comes back from the Kāvēri at the Tiruvūṟal festival; and at Paṅkuṉi Uttiram, when he is with Nācciyār, the call to Vasantaṉ and the listening to song. These, it says, still go on.

None of the accounts says plainly whose son he was. His Sanskrit verse calls him one of his lord's line, and says no more.

He sang in Āḷavandār's time, and the account counts him among Āḷavandār's chief disciples.

At the Tiruvadhyayana festival of Namperumāḷ, while Namperumāḷ sat listening to the holy recitation, the Araiyar was singing the decad of the Tiruvāymozhi that begins Keṭumiṭar, acting it out with his hands as he sang. Āḷavandār was there. The Araiyar looked at Āḷavandār's face, and he sang one line again and again:

"Walk on, you who are our own; we have told you, so that you may know."

Āḷavandār heard it. "When one is counted among the Āzhvār's own," he said, "one must go to Tiruvanantapuram and worship."

He rose from the assembly then and there. He prostrated before Periya Perumāḷ, took his leave, and set out, and he went to Tiruvanantapuram and worshipped the Lord who lies on the hooded serpent.

What came of that journey belongs to Āḷavandār's life. Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ had promised to tell him a secret at the end of his body, had written down for him the day it would end, and had told him to come before it; and at Tiruvanantapuram Āḷavandār sent for the letter, and read it, and found that the month and the day were that very day. He turned back in great grief.

It was the Araiyar's singing that had sent him.

Āḷavandār fell ill.

Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa, his two chief disciples, wanted to ask him for something, and they took Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar with them as their puruṣakāra, the one who speaks on another's behalf. Āḷavandār's life tells what he taught the three of them in those days. The Araiyar's part in it was this.

When Āḷavandār showed them his proof, a chain of men who each knew where another's life was held, the Araiyar was the last link in it. Kuṟumbaṟutta Nambi knew the vital point of the Lord of the hill, Kāñcīpūrṇa knew Pēraruḷāḷar's, Tiruppāṇāzhvār knew Periya Perumāḷ's, and Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar knew Tiruppāṇāzhvār's.

Āḷavandār looked at the Araiyar.

"The form that you serve, knowing Periya Perumāḷ's vital point," he said, "that alone I hold to be my means and my goal."

The words are upāya and upeya: the way, and the thing the way leads to.

The Araiyar prostrated at his feet.

"Has Your Honour resolved," he asked, "to go to the eternal realm, to serve the Lord of the highest heaven, and to stay there with eyes that never close?"

"Rejoice at another's good fortune," Āḷavandār told him, "and make up your mind to it."

Later, when Āḷavandār had taught them more, the Araiyar took it all to heart, and he said a hard thing.

"When Your Honour's incarnation gives tīrtha and departs," he said, "it is no loss if some destruction comes to worms and insects and such."

Āḷavandār heard the word. He looked away, and gave no reply.

Two of the chief disciples took the word to heart, and resolved to give up their lives when Āḷavandār was parted from them. Periya Perumāḷ heard of it in his hall of audience, and called Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar and Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and the others, and forbade it, and handed the two of them over into the Araiyar's holy hand. The Araiyar took both mudalis by the hand, brought them to Āḷavandār's feet, and told him all of it; and Āḷavandār forbade it too, and gave them their final meaning. Then he prostrated to Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar, and he handed Goṣṭhīpūrṇa and Mahāpūrṇa over into his hands.

The Araiyar received them.

"If you commit an indiscretion when you are parted from your ācārya," he told them, "you will have no place of your own to go to. You will not even get in among the throng of the eternal ones. You will be lost."

Āḷavandār heard it and was glad in his heart.

"Hold it in mind," he said to the two of them, "that for you, the form of Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar is both the means and the goal."

And they held it so.

For a while after that the illness left Āḷavandār, and he went up to worship on a festival day of Periya Perumāḷ. The Lord knew what was in his mind and called for the Araiyar, and the Araiyar set the usual order of the singing aside and sang Sūzhvisumbaṇimugil. As the assembly marvelled, the garland on the Lord's forehead slipped and fell, and the Araiyar was quicker than the priest: he took it up and gave it to Āḷavandār. "Your thought has come true!" he said. And back at the maṭha, when Āḷavandār lay on the ground begging the mudalis to bear with his offences and would not rise, it was Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar who took him by the head and lifted him up. "Have you any offence?" he said.

The illness came back. When his day came, Āḷavandār put Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar and the other mudalis into the hands of the mudalis who were there, and went to the sacred land. The Araiyar and all the rest cried out, and fell like trees with their roots cut. In the rites that followed, the Araiyar had his part: he sang Tiruppallāṇḍu, and Kaṇṇinuṇciṟuttāmbu, and Sūzhvisumbaṇimugil over his teacher's body, and he was the first to receive the oil and powder that had been on it as prasāda. Āḷavandār's life tells those rites in full.

At Kāñcī, Iḷaiyāzhvār took up the order of renunciation.

The news came to Kōyil, and all the mudalis of Āḷavandār's feet were glad. They went to Namperumāḷ together and asked him to call Iḷaiyāzhvār to Śrīraṅgam, to live always in his presence. Periya Perumāḷ sent a holy letter to Pēraruḷāḷar at Kāñcī.

Pēraruḷāḷar would not part with him. "Only if one lets one's own self-regard go elsewhere," he said, "would we give up our Rāmānuja."

The mudalis at Kōyil, with Mahāpūrṇa at their head, heard the answer.

"What can be done now?" they said, and they talked it over among themselves. "Dēvapperumāḷ is supremely generous," they said, "and he is very fond of song."

So they turned to Āzhvār Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar.

"Please go to the great city of Kāñcī," they said, "and please Pēraruḷāḷar, who sits in the midst of the Puṇyakoṭi vimāna and gives everyone all they desire, with your singing. Ask him, 'You must give us Rāmānuja.' Get him, and bring him back with you."

The Araiyar set out at once. He told Namperumāḷ, and he went toward Perumāḷ Kōyil, the Lord's own town at Kāñcī.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells the sending otherwise. In it, the Lord himself gave the command, and it was the temple's people who sent the Araiyar, telling him to bring Rāmānuja back with him.

At Kāñcī the Araiyar had a kinsman, Varantarum Perumāḷ Araiyar. He heard that the Araiyar was coming and went out to meet him, and took him to his own house, and honoured him and fed him. The Araiyar stayed there, well pleased.

At daybreak the next day Pēraruḷāḷar went up into the holy maṇḍapa called Kaccikkuvāyttāṉ in the Vaiyamāḷigai, and his whole retinue was serving him there. Kāñcīpūrṇa was waving the fan. Rāmānuja was near, reciting the Varadarājāṣṭaka, and serving.

Kāñcīpūrṇa heard that Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar had come. He went to meet him and paid him honour, and the Araiyar was gracious to him in return, and they asked after each other's welfare.

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

Kāñcīpūrṇa took him into the Lord's assembly. The Araiyar worshipped Varadarāja and spoke a Sanskrit verse:

கதாபுநஶ்

ஶங்கரதாங்ககல்பக த்வஜாரவிந்தாங்குஶவஜ்ரலாஞ்சநம் - த்ரிவிக்ரமத்வச்சர

ணாம்புஜத்வயம் மதீயமூர்த்தாநமலங்கரிஷ்யதி

katāpunaś

śaṅkaratāṅkakalpaka tvajāravintāṅkuśavajralāñcanam - trivikramatvaccara

ṇāmpujatvayam matīyamūrttānamalaṅkariṣyati

When again will your two lotus feet, marked with the conch, the discus and the wishing-tree, the banner, the lotus, the goad and the thunderbolt, O Trivikrama, be the ornament of my head?

He prostrated and stood.

Perumāḷ gave him tīrtha and prasāda and the Śrīśaṭhakōpaṉ. The Araiyar spoke a Tamil line, "You have set on my head your holy feet, shining with splendour," and stood there glad.

Then Perumāḷ called him forward.

Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar sang. He sang with devotion, in holy music, in recitation and in song, with dance besides, the hymns the Āzhvārs had made: Tamil sweet as milk, songs set to their tunes. He sang the verses on the Lord of Attiyūr whom the whole world praises, who holds the discus; on Pēraruḷāḷar, who makes the closed lotus buds open; on Pēraruḷāḷar, who takes away the ills of the servants who rise and worship him, and gives them the great heaven of the immortals.

Pēraruḷāḷar was delighted. He gave the Araiyar the pearl necklace he was wearing, and the holy cloth, the parasol, the chowries, and every other mark of honour.

"O Lord," the Araiyar said, "I have no wish for any of these. Your Honour is pledged to give petitioners what they ask. Please give me what I ask."

And he sang again, abundantly.

Perumāḷ heard it and was pleased. "We will give you whatever you ask," he said. "Say it." Some copies of the account have him add, "except ourselves and our consorts"; many copies do not.

The Araiyar pointed to Rāmānuja.

"Please give him to me."

"Had we only known, at the time!" Perumāḷ said. "Except for him, we will give you everything you ask. Ask."

"Your Honour is the one of whom it is said, 'Rāma does not speak twice,'" the Araiyar said. "Can you speak two words?"

Pēraruḷāḷar was displeased. "We have given him," he said. "Can you not take him and go!"

Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar took Uḍaiyavar by the hand.

"Come," he said.

Uḍaiyavar prostrated to Pēraruḷāḷar, and set out with Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar for Kōyil, and Perumāḷ gave him leave.

He did not go back into his maṭha. He looked at Kūrattāzhvāṉ and Mudaliyāṇḍāṉ and told them, "Go to the maṭha and bring Pēraruḷāḷar, the image I worship, and everything else that is ours." Then he went on without even entering the maṭha. They brought it all and joined him, and Kāñcīpūrṇa saw them on their way and turned back.

They went south by stages toward Tiruvaraṅgam, and Uḍaiyavar bathed in the Vaḍavāṟu, the northern arm of the river, and put on the twelve marks. The mudalis of Āḷavandār's feet, with Mahāpūrṇa at their head, and the jīyars and the ekāṅgis and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas, heard that he had come. The great welcome that followed is Uḍaiyavar's own story. The account says no more here of the Araiyar.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells this more shortly. The Araiyar went to Perumāḷ Kōyil, it says, and made Dēvapperumāḷ swoon with the sweetness of his singing, and received Rāmānuja as his reward. It remembers the month of the coming: Rāmānuja came to Kōyil in Vaikāsi, at the full moon.

The same account tells of a second fetching, which the longer account does not have.

When Uḍaiyavar had taken charge of the temple's affairs, he looked into everything closely, and there was much disorder, and he resolved to set each department right. His close watch weighed on the temple's attendants, and through the fault of the age they made trouble for him, poisoning and the like. So Uḍaiyavar left Tiruvaraṅgam and stayed two years at Tiruveḷḷaṟai. He installed Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ there and built a lake, and he carried on the service of Paṅkayaccelvi there and the teaching of the darśana.

Then, by Perumāḷ's command, the attendants repented. They sent Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar, telling him to bring Uḍaiyavar back.

And the Araiyar brought Uḍaiyavar back.

When Emperumāṉār had finished hearing the Tiruvāymozhi from Mālādhara, and was glad of it, Mahāpūrṇa looked at him and said, "Āzhvār Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar has one more special meaning. Hear it from him."

Uḍaiyavar set himself to get it.

From that day on, for six months, he boiled milk the way the Araiyar liked it and brought it to him. In the seasons of the Tiruvadhyayana festival he ground turmeric paste to suit the Araiyar's body and brought it to him. He went on serving him like this.

One day he had ground the turmeric paste and was bathing the Araiyar with it, and he saw from a change in the Araiyar's face that the paste did not suit his body. He set the turmeric vessel aside. He ground the paste again, another way, a way that suited, and put it on him, and bathed him.

Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar saw it, and he was very glad at heart.

"Did you do this," he asked Uḍaiyavar, "to plunder everything I have?"

Then he said, "Come, Emperumāṉār! We will tell you a final goal of man. Listen."

And he told him. Be like Śrī Madhurakavi, he said, who knew no other god. As the Sanskrit verse says:

குருரேவபரம்ப்ரஹ்ம குருரேவபரந்

தம் - குருரேவபர:காமோ குருரேவபராயணம் - குருரேவபராவித்யா குரு

ரேவபராமதி: - யஸ்மாத்ததுபதேஷ்டாஉஸௌ தஸ்மாத்குருதரோகுரு:

kururēvaparamprahma kururēvaparan

tam - kururēvaparaḥkāmō kururēvaparāyaṇam - kururēvaparāvityā kuru

rēvaparāmatiḥ - yasmāttatupatēṣṭāusau tasmātkurutarōkuruḥ

The guru alone is the supreme Brahman, the guru alone the supreme wealth; the guru alone the supreme desire, the guru alone the supreme refuge; the guru alone the supreme knowledge, the guru alone the supreme understanding; and because he is the one who teaches it, the guru is the weightiest of all.

Hold firmly, he said, that the ācārya who destroyed the evil in your mind, who made known to you what you did not know, is himself the means and the goal. And as it is said, "The ācārya is Hari himself in moving form; there is no doubt," and as the Tamil has it, "the Lord in the yellow cloth came as the supreme guru," so hold this:

"The Lord who sleeps has himself come as the Lord who walks."

So the Araiyar gave him the special meaning of the last stage, the account says: steadfastness in the fifth means, which is the ācārya himself.

Why did Uḍaiyavar need so many teachers, the account asks, when he was already complete the day he took refuge at Mahāpūrṇa's feet? And why did they themselves press their meanings on him? It answers with a king. A king leaves treasures with several ministers for his son's sake, and goes away, and tells them to give the treasures to the boy when he comes of age. So Āḷavandār had left one special meaning with each of these men, and he had told them, "Tell Iḷaiyāzhvār the supreme secret that we tell you." Uḍaiyavar had lost the chance to serve at Āḷavandār's own feet, and he went to each of them to make the loss good. And they taught him gladly. "As his disciple or as his teacher," they said, "a bond with this extraordinary one is what we need." So, the account says, the teachers before him gained their distinction by being his teachers, and those after him found their true nature by being his disciples, and he shone between them like a ruby in the middle of a necklace, making the whole of it beautiful.

The shorter telling of Uḍaiyavar's life keeps a piece of the Araiyar's teaching in other words. As it comes to us here, the passage opens in the middle of a saying about great faith in one's ācārya: with such faith, the goal of man comes into one's hand. "This," the Araiyar said, "is the good word our Āḷavandār spoke." He expounded Kaṇṇinuṇciṟuttāmbu, and spoke its closing words: those who trust in what Madhurakavi said, devoted to the Nambi of southern Kurukūr, have Vaikuṇṭha for their home. And he taught the Tiruvāymozhi as the work that shows clearly what the self is, what the means is, and what the goal is. When he had received all this, the one who had listened, and all that follows shows it was Emperumāṉār, worshipped the Araiyar's feet, took his leave, and went and prostrated at Mahāpūrṇa's feet. In that telling the Araiyar's teaching comes first, and Mālādhara's after it.

When the longer account comes to tell how each of Uḍaiyavar's teachers made his glory known, it names Āzhvār Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar among them, and this is how it says he did it. Uḍaiyavar served him six months, grinding the turmeric paste well and putting it on him and bathing him. The Araiyar was pleased and asked, "Did you do this to plunder all I have?" He taught him steadfastness in the fifth means. And he had his own son, Tiruvāymozhi Araiyar, take refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet.

In the roll of the mudalis who took refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet, among the Araiyars, there stands a Tiruvāymozhi Araiyar.

The account kept at Śrīraṅgam tells one more thing that touches an Araiyar of this name, though it calls him Piḷḷai Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar, and it does not say whether he is the same man. The Araiyars had recited the Iyaṟpā, the recited part of the Āzhvārs' hymns, before the Lord since Nāthamuni's time. Uḍaiyavar resolved that the learned Tiruvaraṅgattamudaṉār should not be left without a part. He went to the house of Piḷḷai Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar and asked him for the manuscript of the Iyaṟpā as alms. "From today," he told him, "you need not recite the Iyaṟpā in the sannidhi." He taught the Iyaṟpā to Amudaṉār himself and laid the manuscript in the sannidhi, and the command was given over it that Amudaṉār should recite all the thousand verses. The honours given to the Araiyar until that day were given to Amudaṉār. The singing stayed with the Araiyars. How that came about is Amudaṉār's story.

Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar's star was Kēṭṭai, in the month of Vaikāci. His taṉiyaṉ says what he was to Uḍaiyavar:

அத்யாபயத்யதீந்த்ராய பராங்குஶஸஹஶ்ரிகாம் -

தந்நாதவம்ஶ்யம்வந்தேऽஹம் ஸ்ரீரங்கா திபதேஶிகம்

atyāpayatyatīntrāya parāṅkuśasahaśrikām -

tannātavamśyamvantēऽham srīraṅkā tipatēśikam

He taught the king of ascetics the Thousand of Parāṅkuśa: one of the line of that Nātha, I bow to him, the teacher Śrīraṅgādhipa.

The longer account does not tell how he died. The shorter one says that one day Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar went to the sacred land, and that the śrīcūrṇa-paripālana and all the other services for him were done through Coṭṭai Ammāḷ, his grandson.