Third Centum, in retrospect (Decad-wise Summary)

(3-1): In the opening decad oj this Centum, the Āḻvār, who had expounded the glory of mount Māliruñcōḷai in the immediately preceding decad (11-10), drinks deep of the nectarean charm and enthralling beauty of Lord Aḻakar (The Beautiful), enshrined there;

(3-2): In the second decad, we note the Āḻvār’s mental agony due to his inability to enjoy the Lord in His Iconic Form in toto and give the fullest expression to such enjoyment. God is limitless and to enjoy His boundless beatific vision in full, would be attempting the impossible, namely, limiting the limitless. The Āḻvār is, however, invited by the Lord to enjoy Hit Iconic Form at Tiruvēṅkaṭam to his heart’s content;

(3-3): In the third decad, the Āḻvār seeks to render blemishless service unto the Lord at lovely Tiruvēṅkaṭam in ever so many ways, without break, even as a person, feeling the pinch of hunger and with food packet in hand sets the table, as soon as he comes across a suitable spot with plenty of shade and water;

(3-4): Profoundly impressed by the intensity of the Āḻvār’s yearning for Divine Service, the Lord threw into focus His unique faculty of omnipresence, pervading all things, all over and at all times. It is the Lord’s immanence, the astounding phenomenon in front of him, that the Āḻvār attempts to sing in the fourth decad, with bewildering amazement;

(3-5): In the fifth decad, the Āḻvār extols the kindred souls, thrown into a state of ecstasy, enraptured by the contemplation of the Lord’s wondrous deeds and auspicious traits, moving about singing and dancing, and condemns unreservedly those that remain callously indifferent, unmoved by and impervious to the Lord’s glory;

(3-6): Expounding the Lord’s extreme ‘Saulabhya’ (easy-accessibility) in His Iconic manifestation, the Āḻvār exhorts, in the sixth decad, the fellowbeings out of deep compassion and love to worship the Lord in His Iconic Form and make good their lives;

(3-7): The Āḻvār’s advice, as in the sixth decad, having once again fallen on deaf ears, he drowns his disappointment, in the seventh decad, in the blissful contemplation of service unto the Lord’s devotees, the logical culmination of service unto the Lord, declaring that he is the vassal of those that stand last in the chain of the Lord’s devotees, sure and steadfast, who are enthralled by the bewitching beauty of the Lord holding the charming discus in hand;

(3-8): In the eighth decad, one witnesses a very extraordinary state of affairs, each one of the Āḻvār’s senses yearning for the delight experienced by the other senses; in its competitive exuberance to enjoy the Lord, each faculty aspires to transcend its functional limitations. Thus the hands would want to praise the Lord, the ears would long to drink deep of the nectarean charm of the Lord, the eyes would like to offer Him fruits and flowers, so on and so forth;

(3-9): The ninth decad contains the Āḻvār’s exhortation to the poets of the world not to debase their rare poetic talents by eulogising the frail humans for the sake of petty gains, flimsy and fleeting, or the minordeities, but to elevate themselves to their legitimate stature as the Lord’s bards, soaring high, singing exclusively the Supreme Lord’s great glory in beautiful metrical compositions;

(3-10): Once again, the worldlings would not listen to the Āḻvār’s advice as in the ninth decad and yet, it was no mean consolation for him that he could at least get back from them unscathed, without being contaminated by them. In the concluding decad of this Centum, the Āḻvār gives expression to the various benefits accrued to him through his total absorption in the Lord, namely, full and complete freedom from (1) want, (2) obstruction in the enjoyment of the Lord, (3) trouble, (4) Sorrow, (5) affliction, (6) fatigue etc.