Tiruvaraṅgattu Amudaṉār

Before he was given the name the tradition knows him by, Tiruvaraṅgattu Amudaṉār, whom the Sanskrit calls Śrīraṅgāmṛta, was Periya Kōyil Nambi, the purōhita of the great temple at Tiruvaraṅgam, its priest of rites. His story begins with that office.

He was a learned man and an eloquent one, and he was a favourite of the king.

All the recitation done before the Lord in those days was his. The Vedas, each in its own branch, the sūtras of ritual and of the Mīmāṃsā, the Purāṇa, the Itihāsa, grammar, the praise of Śrīraṅgam, Āḷavandār's hymn: before the temple's servants were set in order, every one of these was a service that Periya Kōyil Nambi did as purōhita. The office was his by inheritance, his kāṇi, the hereditary holding a family keeps in a temple.

He was the temple's paurāṇika too, the reader of the Purāṇa. Perumāḷ had ordained that the old story of Kaiśika, which had happened long before at Tirukkuṟuṅguḍi, be read out before Him on Uttāna Dvādaśī, at the festival. At the end of that festival, in the way the Pāñcarātra lays down, the Lord gave Periya Kōyil Nambi a reward for his reading: the Brahma-ratha, the chariot in which He Himself goes round the holy street. So the reader of the Kaiśika rode the Lord's chariot round the streets.

Then Uḍaiyavar came to Śrīraṅgam, and the Lord gave the running of the temple into his hands.

He set many things right. He was turning over in his heart a plan to take the temple's servants, who had served since before Tirumaṅgai Maṉṉaṉ's time in five companies, and make them into ten.

All that while, Periya Kōyil Nambi did not respect Uḍaiyavar. He did wrong, and went on doing it. Uḍaiyavar made up his mind to put him out of Tiruvaraṅgam.

Then, on a festival day, while Uḍaiyavar was waiting for the procession to set out, he had a dream. Perumāḷ came to him in the form of an old Śrīvaiṣṇava and said, "Periya Kōyil Nambi has relied on us for a long time. Do as your heart pleases."

Uḍaiyavar woke and called Āzhvāṉ, Kūreśa.

"It seems Perumāḷ wants Periya Kōyil Nambi, our enemy, kept here," he said, and he spoke of going away to Perumāḷ Kōyil.

Āzhvāṉ heard the dream another way. "When Perumāḷ speaks like that," he said, "it means that you will win him over and have him take refuge at your feet."

"Then you reform him," said Uḍaiyavar.

Āzhvāṉ did. He did it slowly. Little by little he turned the learned Periya Kōyil Nambi, and at last he brought him to Uḍaiyavar's feet.

Uḍaiyavar looked on him with grace and showed him kindness. Because his speech was so sweet, he gave him a new name.

"Amudaṉ," he called him. Nectar.

And Uḍaiyavar was glad.

The great account of the teachers keeps a long roll of those who took refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet. Near the end of it two Amudaṉārs stand side by side, Aṇiyaraṅgattamudaṉār and Tiruvaraṅgattamudaṉār.

Not long after he came to Uḍaiyavar, in the month of Aippaci, Amudaṉār's mother died.

He did all the rites of the ten days. Then came the ekāha, the rite of the single day, at which brahmins are fed in the dead one's name. His own kin, his relations by the body, were worldly men, as they had always been, and he could not have them eat at that rite. So he went to Emperumāṉār and laid the matter before him.

Uḍaiyavar looked round at his own mudalis, the disciples about him.

They were not willing. He saw it.

So he called Āzhvāṉ. "You go," he said. "Eat at the ekāha and complete it."

Āzhvāṉ went and ate, as he had been told. When the meal was over and it was time for the closing sip of water, he had Periya Kōyil Nambi put into his hand, as a gift, the temple right that was his: the office of purōhita and the reading of the Purāṇa. Āzhvāṉ took the deed of gift as well, and he brought it back and laid it before the maṭha.

Uḍaiyavar was well pleased. Then he did what he had been meaning to do, and made the temple's servants into ten companies, the ten kottu. The eighth he made of those who recite before the Lord in His presence, and named it the Paṭṭāḷ kottu. Each man was given his part. Āzhvāṉ was given the Purāṇa. Tiruvaraṅgattamudaṉār was given the Iyal, the recited Tamil of the Āzhvārs.

So the work that one purōhita had done alone was divided up. The account says it was shared out among the mudalis who had taken refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet, each one a student of his own branch of the Veda, and each was given one service. But the purōhita's own portion stayed whole. The almanac of the year, and the honours of the Purāṇa, the Kaiśika and the chariot, went on for Āzhvāṉ alone. Periya Kōyil Nambi had not joined any company. He had stayed on in the holy town and done the purōhita's work, and he gave that work to many, who did not join a company either. That, the account says, is how the Paṭṭāḷ kottu got its name.

When the same account comes back to the gift, it tells it in another way. It does not speak there of the ekāha. It says that at a certain time Periya Kōyil Nambi had grown detached from the temple, and so he gave Āzhvāṉ his office of purōhita, the reading of the Purāṇa and the Brahma-ratha. From then on Āzhvāṉ belonged to the Paṭṭāḷ kottu and held the office of purōhita in the Lord's presence. The reading of the Kaiśika Purāṇa, and the ride round the streets in the chariot after it, went on for Āzhvāṉ alone.

Uḍaiyavar saw how things stood.

"The learned Tiruvaraṅgattamudaṉār," he said, "must not be left out like this."

He made up his mind. All this time, from Nāthamuni's day into his own, the Araiyars had recited the Iyaṟpā before the Lord along with the rest of the Āzhvārs' songs. The Iyaṟpā is the part of those songs that is spoken, not sung. Uḍaiyavar went to the house of Piḷḷai Tiruvaraṅga Perumāḷ Araiyar and asked him for the manuscript of the Iyaṟpā as bhikṣā, as alms.

"From today," he told him, "you need not recite the Iyaṟpā in the sannidhi."

Then he called Amudaṉār and taught him the Iyaṟpā himself.

He laid the manuscript in the sannidhi, before the Lord, and had the command given over it: "Recite the Iyaṟpā, all the thousand of it." And he had every honour that had been given to the Araiyar until that day given to Amudaṉār instead.

So Amudaṉār, as the Āzhvār's instrument, recited the Iyaṟpā before the Lord. When the closing verses had been said, he was given the honours the Araiyar used to be given, and Uḍaiyavar had him escorted to his house.

After that, the account says, it was settled this way. The singing belonged to the Araiyars, and all the spoken verses to the Śrīvaiṣṇavas. In the great sannidhi Amudaṉār recited the Iyaṟpā himself, and there he was the Āzhvārs' instrument. In Nācciyār's shrine and the other shrines he began the Iyaṟpā and the Śrīvaiṣṇavas took it up, standing to him as they stood to the Araiyar, as his helpers. On the temple street, where the Iyal and the Tirukkōvai were the Āzhvār's own court, the Śrīvaiṣṇavas were the Āzhvār's instrument.

Some days after Uḍaiyavar had settled all this, Tiruvaraṅgattamudaṉār offered up a poem.

It was about Emperumāṉār himself. It was an antādi, a chain of verses in which each one takes up where the one before left off, and he made it in kalittuṟai, a hundred verses to the count of the Gāyatrī japa. The account calls it the Nūṟṟantādi, the hundred-verse antādi.

Then came a Saptāvaraṇa festival.

Perumāḷ told Uḍaiyavar that he must come out with Him. In the holy street the Lord had every instrument stopped, and He listened while the Śrīvaiṣṇavas recited Amudaṉār's verses, and He was very greatly pleased.

At the gate of his maṭha Emperumāṉār looked at the svāmis and made a sign to them with his eyes. From that day it has been the custom for the procession to halt at the maṭha.

And from that day, by Perumāḷ's own command, as soon as the Iyaṟpā has been recited in the great sannidhi, the Lord hears the Nūṟṟantādi, with honours. In Nācciyār's shrine, and in Āṇḍāḷ's and the Āzhvār's, Amudaṉār began the Iyaṟpā as the one presiding, the Śrīvaiṣṇavas recited it and brought it to its close, and at the start of the Nūṟṟantādi he was given honours like the Araiyar's. That was by Uḍaiyavar's command.

Uḍaiyavar joined the Nūṟṟantādi to the Iyaṟpā, as Kaṇṇinuṇ Ciṟuttāmpu is joined to the First Thousand. He ordained that every Śrīvaiṣṇava should recite it every day as the Prapanna-Gāyatrī, the Gāyatrī of those who have taken refuge. And for Amudaṉār, and for those who did the tiruppaṇi, the work of the temple's service, he arranged a maṭha, and gave them precedence of honour in the houses of the teachers, before the Śrīvaiṣṇavas who taught there.

The great account of the teachers knows the poem too, and it tells of the day Amudaṉār said some of it to Uḍaiyavar's face.

In one verse he had said that even if the Lord were shown to him plain as a gooseberry in the palm of the hand, the beauty of Rāmānuja's form was the one thing he would want to enjoy. In another he had said: "The place where the great ones who worship Irāmānucaṉ rise up and cry out and dance, that place is my dwelling." In another he had prayed: "Make me one who loves your servants alone, and set me there to serve them."

He said these verses looking up at Uḍaiyavar's face.

Uḍaiyavar heard them, and he assented, and stayed where he sat.

The account holds that there is no surer proof than this that to hold to Emperumāṉār, and to his servants, is the goal.

And it says how Amudaṉār ended his poem. In the verse that begins "Aṅkayal pāy vayal," he took the Lord over all, the ruler of all, and Nācciyār, as his mediators, his puruṣakāra, the ones who would plead for him, so that he might reach Emperumāṉār's feet. The shorter account of the teachers gives that verse whole. In Amudaṉār's words:

அங்கயல் பாய்வயல் தென்னரங்கனணியாக மொன்றும்,

பங்கய மாமலர்ப்பாவையைப் போற்றுதும் பத்தியெல்லாந்

தங்கியதென்னத் தழைத்த நெஞ்சே நந்தலைமிசையே,

பொங்கிய கீர்த்தியிராமாநுசனடிப்பூமன்னவே

aṅkayal pāyvayal teṉṉaraṅkaṉaṇiyāka moṉṟum,

paṅkaya māmalarppāvaiyaip pōṟṟutum pattiyellān

taṅkiyateṉṉat tazhaitta neñcē nantalaimicaiyē,

poṅkiya kīrttiyirāmānucaṉaṭippūmaṉṉavē

She who abides on the lovely breast of the Lord of southern Araṅgam, where the lovely carp leap in the fields, the Lady of the great lotus flower: let us praise her. As if all devotion had come to rest in you, O heart grown lush, so that upon our heads the flower feet of Irāmānucaṉ, whose fame wells up, may stay.

It sets a verse of Āzhvāṉ's beside it, the one in which Āzhvāṉ tells Varada that his refuge is Rāmānuja's feet. Uḍaiyavar heard the two of them, the verse of Tiruvaraṅgattamudaṉār and the verse of Āzhvāṉ, and he was glad.

The great account calls on Amudaṉār once more, under the name Piḷḷai Amudaṉār, when it tells how Mahāpūrṇa taught Iḷaiyāzhvār the dvaya. Mahāpūrṇa, it says, was only the instrument in Āḷavandār's hand, and Iḷaiyāzhvār's own ācārya was Āḷavandār. It gives Piḷḷai Amudaṉār's line as its witness: "Rāmānuja, who has won for his refuge the two feet of Yamunaitturaivaṉ, lord of ascetics."

The verses went on being said after the men who first heard them were gone.

When Āzhvāṉ went to the sacred land, Uḍaiyavar had Bhaṭṭar do his rites, and he laid down then how the recitation for a departed Śrīvaiṣṇava was to go. The Tiruvāymozhi was to be the chief of it, and the Nūṟṟantādi was to have its place there too. The mudalis did so for Āzhvāṉ. Uḍaiyavar ordained that it be done that way from then on, whenever a Śrīvaiṣṇava went to the sacred land. So the man who had once eaten at Amudaṉār's mother's rite was sent on his way with Amudaṉār's verses.

When Uḍaiyavar himself went, they carried his body through the streets of Kōyil in procession. Tiruvaraṅgattu Amudaṉār walked in it, with Poyyilvaḷḷalār and others, and they recited the Nūṟṟantādi, the hundred verses on Uḍaiyavar. Embār and Piḷḷāṉ and others recited the hymns and the prose prayers, and Vaḍuga Nambi came along with Kōmaḍattu Ciṟiyāzhvāṉ, reciting the prayer of refuge at Uḍaiyavar's feet.

Of Amudaṉār after that the great account keeps one more thing, from Bhaṭṭar's day.

Amudaṉār was put out with Bhaṭṭar once. He said, and it came to Bhaṭṭar's ears: "You were born of the pride of Āzhvāṉ's betel. Was I not born of the pride of Āzhvāṉ's knowledge?"

Bhaṭṭar heard it.

"The words are fine," he said. "Only, he has said them himself!"

The account draws the lesson. Pride in one's ācārya is good, but praise of oneself that grows out of it does not befit a servant.

The accounts do not say when he was born, or when he died, or where his maṭha stood.