Pasuram 5.1.7

Tamil text and transliteration:

அம்மான் ஆழிப்பிரான் அவன் எவ் இடத்தான்? யான் ஆர்?,
எம் மா பாவியர்க்கும் விதி வாய்க்கின்று வாய்க்கும் கண்டீர்,
'கைம்மா துன்பு ஒழித்தாய்!' என்று கைதலைபூசல் இட்டே,
மெய்ம் மால் ஆயொழிந்தேன் எம்பிரானும் என் மேலானே.

ammāṉ āḻippirāṉ avaṉ ev iṭattāṉ? yāṉ ār?,
em mā pāviyarkkum viti vāykkiṉṟu vāykkum kaṇṭīr,
'kaimmā tuṉpu oḻittāy!' eṉṟu kaitalaipūcal iṭṭē,
meym māl āyoḻintēṉ empirāṉum eṉ mēlāṉē.

English translation of verse 5.1.7:

How great is the Lord wielding the discus
And how unworthy am I and yet, how gracious
That He, my Benefactor great, should His grace immense shed
Unto me, a sinner great! with joined palms overhead
I did, in hollowness address Him, as the one who rescued
The elephant in great distress and a devotee true
He has turned me, with love immense unto Him!

Notes

(i) One can’t but shrink back while contrasting one’s own abject lowliness with the Lord’s peerless excellence. Reciting the first line of the original text of this song.

Piḻḻai-amutaṉar would exclaim: “How great and worthy He is, the Lord wielding the discus!” raising his arms up, pointing to heaven and then drop them down earthward, saying “how vile and unworthy I am!” And yet, when His grace descends and overflows its continents, this enormous disparity is more than made up. Then it is all one vast expanse of water (grace), where the high and low, big and small, cannot be differentiated. Śrī Vedānta Deśika would appear to echo the substance of this song in Śloka 65 of his ‘Dayā śatakaṃ’, where he has observed that inundation of the Lord’s grace has rendered one and all, big and low, quite even, all of them having been submerged under the vast expanse of His grace-people of low stature like Guha, the hunter chief, Sugrīva, the monkey King, a jungle inhabitant, named Śabari, kucela, the famished brahmin in rags, Kubjā, the malformed maid of Kaṃsa’s establishment, the young Gopīs of Vraja, Mālākāra, the flower vendor etc., on the one hand, and Lord Śrīnivāsa Himself at that charming eminence, known as Tiruvēṅkaṭam, on the other.

(ii) The Lord’s grace becomes all the more lustrous and pronounced, when it embraces even fakes like the Āḻvār (as he puts it). He just feigned devotion and referred to the Lord’s rescue of Gajendra in distress, though not with the intense feeling of a true devotee whose heart can’t but melt down at the Lord’s posthaste arrival in the pond which was the scene of a titanic struggle between the elephant and a crocodile. The Lord pounced upon the Āḻvār even as a famished fellow pounces upon food.