Uyyakkoṇḍār

Uyyakkoṇḍār, whose Sanskrit name was Puṇḍarīkākṣa, the lotus-eyed, comes into the story already at his teacher's feet.

His teacher was Nāthamuni. In the years when Nāthamuni lived at Vīranārāyaṇapuram in the service of the Lord there, Maṉṉaṉār, eight men had taken refuge with him, and Uyyakkoṇḍār's name stands first among them. The others were Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ, Nambi Karuṇākaradāsar, Ēṟutiruvuḍaiyār, Tirukkaṇṇamaṅgai Āṇḍāṉ, Vāṉamāmalai Dēvi Āṇḍāṉ, Uruppaṭṭūr Āccāṉ Piḷḷai and Cōkattūr Āzhvāṉ.

The account says what kind of men they were by quoting an old verse about disciples:

ஶரீரம்வஸூவிஜ்

ஞாநம் வாஸ:கர்மகுணாநஸூந் - குர்வர்த்தந்தாரயேத்யஸ்து ஸஶிஷ்யோநே

தரஸ்ஸ்ம்ருத:

śarīramvasūvij

ñānam vāsaḥkarmakuṇānasūn - kurvarttantārayētyastu saśiṣyōnē

tarassmrutaḥ

Body, wealth, learning, dwelling, work, good qualities and very breath: whoever holds these for his teacher's sake is a disciple, and no other is called one.

To them Nāthamuni gave the meaning of the dvaya, the two-line prayer of refuge that the tradition praises as the jewel among mantras, and taught them the sacred Tamil songs, Tiruvāymozhi first among them, and the Vedas and the śāstras.

Uyyakkoṇḍār was with him in the days that followed, which Nāthamuni's own life tells. When the king and his women came to see Nāthamuni sitting in yoga, and he went after them as they left, it was Uyyakkoṇḍār and Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ and the other leading disciples who followed him to Gaṅgaikoṇḍacōzhapuram.

"Should Your Honour be doing this?" they asked him.

Nāthamuni said, "I took them for Kṛṣṇa and his women, and I came along with them."

And he came back.

He sat in yoga again for a little while. Then he looked at Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ and said, "You practise the secret of yoga." And he taught him the eight limbs of yoga in their order.

Then he looked at Uyyakkoṇḍār. "You too," he said. "Practise the secret of yoga."

Uyyakkoṇḍār answered him with a question.

"While a corpse lies in the house, can a man sit down to a wedding? It will be enough for me to practise it when this body comes to its end."

The account does not say what the corpse was.

Nāthamuni said, "Then you must make the śāstras go out into the world, and the sacred songs, Tiruvāymozhi and the rest."

So the one disciple was given the inward practice, and the other was given the teaching to carry.

Nāthamuni was not finished. He turned to his own son, Īśvaramuni.

"A son is going to be born to you," he said. "Give him the name Yamunaitturaivar."

Then he spoke to the two of them together, Uyyakkoṇḍār and Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ, and it was a command.

"The purport of the darśana that we have told you," he said, meaning the whole teaching of the tradition, "and the special meanings of the secret of yoga: teach them to Yamunaitturaivar."

Having said it, he sat in yoga as before.

The child had not yet been born. The charge was laid on Uyyakkoṇḍār all the same, and it stayed with him to the end of his life.

Afterward Nāthamuni left the world, and his own life tells how: he went after a monkey, two bowmen and a woman whom he took for Rāma and Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa, as far as the eastern gate of Gaṅgaikoṇḍacōzhapuram, and the grief of losing sight of them carried him away.

The news came to Uyyakkoṇḍār, and to Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ, and to Īśvaramuni and the others. They went there, filled their eyes and their hearts with their teacher's body, and lay on the ground and writhed with grief. Then they steadied one another and stood up. They had the brahmamedha, the full funeral rite for one who has known Brahman, performed for him by the hand of his son Īśvaramuni, and they laid him to rest and went back to Vīranārāyaṇapuram for the other rites. Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ sat down in yoga near the place where Nāthamuni had always sat.

Uyyakkoṇḍār had the other half of the charge.

Many years later, when the boy Nāthamuni had named was grown and had become Āḷavandār, Maṇakkāl Nambi would give him Uyyakkoṇḍār's answer about the corpse and the wedding word for word, to explain why one more special secret had not come down to them and had to be sought from Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ.

That is how the line remembered the refusal. The yoga stayed with Kurukai Kāvalappaṉ. The songs and their meanings went on with Uyyakkoṇḍār.

After Nāthamuni was gone, Uyyakkoṇḍār did what he had been told to do.

He gathered the leading disciples who had taken refuge at Nāthamuni's feet, the mudalis, as the Tamil calls them, the first men of the tradition, and he expounded to them the meanings of the darśana and of the sacred songs beginning with Tiruvāymozhi. While he was teaching them, five took refuge at his own feet. They were Maṇakkāl Nambi, Tiruvallikkēṇi Pāṇperumāḷ Araiyar, Ceṭṭaippūcic Caṇḍalaṅkārar, whom some copies call Ceṭṭalūr Ceṇḍalaṅkārar, Śrī Puṇḍarīkadāsar, and Ulakuperumāḷ Naṅgai.

Of the five, it is Maṇakkāl Nambi the account follows.

For twelve years he served Uyyakkoṇḍār in every way there was to serve, and when Uyyakkoṇḍār's wife Āṇḍāḷ died, he took the running of the whole household on himself. Maṇakkāl Nambi's own life tells that service.

One day Uyyakkoṇḍār heard that Nambi, bringing his two daughters home from their bath, had lain down like a step in a channel turned to mud and brought the girls across on his back.

"That he should do such a thing!" he said, and he was overjoyed. He set his own lotus feet on Nambi's head, crowning him with them as if with a crown of golden flowers, and asked him, "What should we do for you?"

Nambi asked only for service at his feet, and Uyyakkoṇḍār was so glad of that answer that he gave him the dvaya a second time, the highest of all meanings.

Some days after that, Uyyakkoṇḍār was about to leave for the sacred land, the Lord's own world.

Maṇakkāl Nambi asked him, "Who will carry the darśana now?"

Uyyakkoṇḍār said, "Gather the mudalis here, and carry it yourself."

Then he told him what was coming, as Nāthamuni had told him.

"Later, Īśvaramuni, of the Coṭṭai family, will have a son, and he will be Śrīman Nāthamuni's grandson. Have him given the name Yamunaitturaivar. Teach him all the special meanings of the secrets of the whole darśana, so that he becomes the one who carries it. He will be the one who carries it."

And then he said the thing that had been his own unfinished work.

"Nāthamuni laid this service on me in his last days, and I did not get to do it. You teach him the secret meanings, even if you have to go and wait upon him to do it."

Having laid that charge on Nambi, he sat in the lotus posture, leaning on a cushion, with his mind on the feet of Śrīman Nāthamuni, and left for the sacred land.

The account draws one lesson from it: what an ācārya commands must be carried out. Uyyakkoṇḍār had been given a charge and had not seen it done, and he did not let it die with him.

When they saw that he was gone, Maṇakkāl Nambi and all the mudalis were overcome. They could not bear to be parted from their ācārya. They cried out and fell down and grieved for a long time. Then they steadied one another. Nambi performed the brahmamedha for Uyyakkoṇḍār, laid him to rest, and did every rite after that which had to be done.

His birth-star was Kārttikai, in the month of Cittirai.

His taṉiyaṉ, the verse by which the tradition salutes him, names him by the lotus that is in his name:

நம:பங்கஜநேத்ராய நாதஸ்ரீபாதபங்கஜே - ந்யஸ்த

ஸர்வபராயாஸ்மத் குலநாதாயதீமதே.

namaḥpaṅkajanētrāya nātasrīpātapaṅkajē - nyasta

sarvaparāyāsmat kulanātāyatīmatē.

Salutation to the lotus-eyed one, who at the holy lotus feet of Nātha laid his whole burden down, to our wise lord of the line.

Another account, the one kept at Śrīraṅgam about the temple there, remembers Uyyakkoṇḍār and Maṇakkāl Nambi together, carrying on the darśana and the running of the temple. In their time, it says, the lord of the Oṭṭiya country came over the borders, and the Lord of Śrīraṅgam, Azhagiya Maṇavāḷap Perumāḷ, went away and stayed a year at Tirumāliruñcōlai. When he came back, some of the temple's own people had turned against him, the priests had joined them, and men of six other faiths had built houses in Tiruvaraṅgam and lived there as they pleased.

The charge Uyyakkoṇḍār passed on was carried out. Maṇakkāl Nambi named the child, and when the child was grown, Nambi went and waited on him, just as he had been told, and brought him to the Lord. The account says that Nambi alone kept the command of his ācārya and of his ācārya's ācārya, and saw the word of both of them come true. He died with his mind on Uyyakkoṇḍār's feet.

And long after that, when Āḷavandār lay ill at Śrīraṅgam and two of his disciples meant to give up their lives when he went, he forbade it in Uyyakkoṇḍār's name. If they did such a thing at his parting, he told them, they would be setting aside the will of the mudalis whom Periya Perumāḷ loved, Uyyakkoṇḍār and Maṇakkāl Nambi first among them.