Aandaal’s Tiruppaavai The Resplendent Resolution

AANDAAL’S TIRUPPAAVAI – I

(“The Resplendent Resolution”)
The Traditional Story of Godaa’s Life

Translated by
Prof. WILLIAM JACKSON
Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana. U.S.A.

[Prof. William Jackson is not new to the readers of ‘Triveni’. His translation of Sri Tyagaraja’s Naukaa charitamu was published in Triveni in 1986. Prof. Jackson stayed in India for a long time and studied deeply Tamil and Telugu languages. His Introduction to Tiruppaavai is published hereunder. The text will be published in the succeeding two numbers.          –Editor].

INTRODUCTION

South Indian bhakti is an ancient tradition in which the voices of men and women inspired by love are echoed by each generation. The stories of these devoted singers are kept alive by word of mouth as well as by the written word. The story of love-­enthused Godaa, who is thought to have lived in the 7th or 9th century AD, is still told all over Tamil Nadu;

Godaa, was the daughter of Vishnuchittar (“His mind is on God”), who became known as Periaalvaar (“The saint who blessed the Lord”) because of his great devotion to Krishna. He worshipped Krishna with the love a parent feels for a child, raising flowers and making garlands for temple worship. Some scholars have speculated that the Sanskrit word puja (worship) is derived from the Dravidian pu (flower), that puja means “making (offerings) with flowers.” Worship with flowers was a central expression of Vishnu­chittar’s bhakti, and according to the traditional narratives of his life, Krishna in response to these offerings appeared, in a dream, and commanded the unscholarly but sincere man to go to Madurai (which was fifty miles South West of his home), and ‘to engage in a court-sponsored debate there on his behalf. According to the story Vishnuchittar outspoke the learned men, establishing Vaishnavism, and when Vishnu appeared to show he was pleased with the victory, Vishnuchittar sang a song of blessing (Tiruppallaandu), as a parent would, to bless a child auspiciously. Hence his name Periaalvaar­–the aalvaar or saint who blessed the Lord.

Because he had been so devoted to the child Krishna Vishnu­chittar was rewarded with a boon. He was blessed to find a divine girl child under a tulasi plant in his garden. This child he called Godaa. Literally the name Godaa means Benefactoress or Offerer; she was “given” by the good earth (she is considered an incarnation of Bhoodevi, Goddess of earth) and is also the “giver” of flowers to God and of songs to people. Andal is an archetypal image of bridal mysticism, which through self-giving cultivates and consummates love of the divine. From an early age Godaa is said to have thought of herself as the bride of Vishnu at Srirangam the holy island in the Kaveri river. The aalvaar daughter of an aalvaar father, (aalvaar literally means saintly “diver” immersed in the depths of Vishnu; it is a title given to twelve Vaishnava poet-saints) Godaa is pictured as trying on the flower garlands she helped prepare for worship before offering them to Vishnu. When her father was scandalized by this taboo behavior, Vishnu is said to have responded in a dream which let the pious man know that Vishnu preferred the garlands sanctified by Godaa’s intimate touch to those she had not worn. In this way Periaalvaar came to realize that Godaa was Bhoodevi, and he gave her the name Aandaal, the Goddess as Rescuer of creatures. In art Godaa is often shown with thick colorful garlands around her neck. The small bronze statues of her found in South India show that she is popularly thought of not only as an aalvaar but also as an incarnation of the consort of Vishnu, Bhoodevi, Earth Mother.

Aandaal is remembered as immersed in the Krishna story, intoxicated with divine love, even while in her childhood. Her father, though saintly, is seen as a typical Indian father, with conventional hopes that his teenage daughter will be suitably married. Aandaal rejected any possibility of married life with a mortal, just as centuries later, Kannada poetess Mahadeviyakka, and Hindi poetess Mirabai did. In the proper month for girls to observe the custom of praying for the blessings of Katyayini Durga, Goddess of victory and elder sister of Krishna and bathing ritually each mor­ning as preparation for the new life of marriage, Godaa showed her heart was set on Krishna. Her father tried to reason with her, but her will was adamant. She told him she would wed only the Lord of the world stage: Vishnu at Srirangam. A ritual wedding was arranged, and when it came time to ‘approach her Lord in the inner sanctum, Aandaal is said to have been absorbed into him. This is an image of mahasamadhi and apotheosis. (A recent speculation holds that Aandaal, influenced by Jains in the Madurai region, fasted unto death. Could it be that her father won her by overcoming Jains in debate and lost her to a Jain practice, and that this is at once concealed and revealed in the story? The argument seems based on rather slender evidence and Vaishnavas reject it.) With this “Mar­riage” of his daughter, Periaalvaar once again was cast in an unusual relationship: he became “the father-in-law of the Lord”. The Dawnsong of Aandaal.

Godaa’s poetry has been remembered for over one thousand years. The Tiruppaavai, a song celebrating Godaa’s resolve to wed the Lord, is said to have been written when she was 15. The Tirupaavai lyrics are a flow of joyous praise and comraderie pulsing from the young worshipper’s heart. They “find us young and keep us so,” many Tamilians would say. The mode is emotional and active, excited exclamations and imperatives, urgent pleas to fellow-devotees. The lyrics are insistent morning songs to rise and get on with the purpose of life - praise, love, the winning of welfare for all beings.

Patterned after folk pr’actices and gopi traditions they are a dramatization of the nub of spiritual evolution. The leader of these songs knows the way, guides the efforts of bhakti’s surging feelings. Offering the gift of self, pleading to be worthy of the status of servitude, where the first is the last rand vice versa, placing others before her, Godaa goes to meet her Lord of the cosmic play.

The 30 verses stand for the 30 days of the month – the unit of a woman’s life and love, the cycle of moon phases in a devotee’s ever-youthful life of glorying in Krishna’s lilaas., Tiruppaavai is the offering of love to the teasing heart - thief day after day in wave upon wave of devotion. This classic beautifully locates a bhakti impulse - “Come, let’s go worship now!” – in the month of new life and in the fresh lives of tender maidens.
Other Songs of Dawn

The Saivite poet Maanikkavaachakar wrote a similar cycle of verses, known as Tiruvempaavdi. Both sets have the same setting and folk origins; both are quite popular in Tamil Nadu. They are sung especially by unwed girls performing their paavdi nonbu vow in Maargali, the springtime month at the beginning of the marriage season in India (January). Sangam literature, written largely in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, the earliest form of Tamil to survive, mentions thisobservance. French scholar Jean Filliozat speculated that Aandaal and Maanikkavaachakar may have been contempora­ries living in the mid - 9th century.

G.U. Pope, who first translated Maanikkavaachakar’s Tiruve­mpaavdi into English, refers to it as the “Maidens Reveille”. He describes how the women of Arunaachala for ten days in a row go before daybreak, from home to home waking friends, to bathe with joy and decorum in the sacred temple pool. He notes Tantric influences with disdain, but also discusses an interpretation of the song which finds symbolic significance in the ideas of a timely awakening of the cosmos from the cyclical period of involuted sleep, the emerging of a new creation. The dawn song is thus the arousing of the manifested energy of Siva, which incarnates as the Goddess of life, in this reading. Here is a sample of Pope’s quaint Victorian rendering:

The Splendor rare and great, that knows nor first nor end,
we sing; Thou hear’st the song, yet still sleep’st on;
O lady of the large bright eye! is thine ear dull
that it perceives not sound of praise that hails
The great God’s cinctured feet? She hears the strain resound
through all the street, yet in forgetful sleep
On her flower-conch she muttering turns!
See, here she nothing noting lies! Why thus, why thus?
doth this our friend be seen? – Our Lady fair, arise!

It is interesting that the textual source of much Western bridal mystic poetry, The Song of Solomon in the Old Testament, features a refrain about waking. The Song of Solomon, or Song of Songs, is a series of rapturous outbursts on the beauty and passionate moodswings of lovers, with dizzying shifts of perspectives. It depicts a lover dreaming of her beloved, and reflections of her companions, yearning separation. It is similar in some ways to Jayadeva’s 12th century AD Gita Govinda: both use the glories of nature to show “what a piece of work” is the human in love. Both reveal the concept that one who falls in love becomes cosmic in the poet’s imagination, dimensioned by the landscape in her soul. Her beauty is like earth’s treasurehouse of spices, fruits, jewels, aromatic trees, and the noses of roes feeding among frilly lilies. The refrain in Song of Songs is the reverse of a wake up song; the singer pleads: “.. stir not up nor awaken the beloved, till she please.” The refrain pictures the loving embrace (the goal of the Tiruppaavai) and begs: “Do not disturb.”

In the New Testament waking imagery is used in Paul’s spiritual symbolism. “...it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light.” (Rom. 13.11-12. Cf. Eph. 5.14.)

There are many examples of dawnsongs from various cultures. The European troubador alba or dawnsong “Reis glorios” was composed around 1200 by Guirat de Bornelh. Each stanza ends with the refrain “And soon it will be dawn.” The second stanza is:

Good friend if you are sleeping or awake,
Gently arise and sleep no more. Afar
The East is brightened by the morning star
Bringing the day, unless I much mistake.

Like the traditional music of the Tiruppaavai this composition is made up of flowing phrases with a gentle and solemn grace, yet it is edged with urgency and enacts a dramatic scene. Another old traditional sunrise lyric of the West is the English Sailors’ song:

Awake, awake you weary sleepers!
Know you not it’s almost day?
Half your life you waste in dreaming
While God’s best hours slip away!

Suprabhaatam songs form another variety of wake-up lyric found in India, one which gently plays at rousing and welcoming with praise the Lord (who is perfect awareness already, and beyond time) to a new day. It is an auspicious way for bhaktas to begin their days.

Waiting for Godaa

Godaa’s dawnsongs directed toward her companions in devotion are full of delight and meaning. The already-risen impetuous one calls to the lazy lax, enacting a play between two states of con­sciousness: the up and the down, the vigilant and the oblivious. There is humor in the recalcitrant human snorers “dead to the world” in dreams and the impatient leader rounding them up anyway. No doubt spontaneous experiences of the old folk custom in which the lyricist took part inspired her to turn the situation and dialogues into an occasion for holy art.

Godaa had the creative genius to know that the dawnsong could stand for bhakti life, and to seize: that insight and sing the event. The idea appealed to the people, and they kept the song alive, to delight in, and to remind themselves that one must rouse oneself and join others in service and praise while time is ripe. Godaa perfectly rhapsodizes the vigilant virgin eager and enthusiastic to meet her destiny, and we can hear touching voice yet today.

My part in the following translation has been a humble one. Having versified Sri Satya Sai Baba’s tellings of the child Krishna’s stories (published as Sai Krishna Lila, 1980), and having translated Tyaagaraaja’s Boat Story (Triveni, 1986), about ‘Krishna’ and the gopis, I was moved by the charm and vitality of the Tiruppaavai. I feel that it “chose” me to take this form in English. I based my rendering on translations, including V. Rajagopalan’s and Vinjamuri Varaha Narasimhacharya’s which I was able to study, just as poets Ezra Pound and Robert Bly had done with Chinese poetry and Kabir’s verses. I welcome constructive comments.

But for now, while much of humanity waits – anxiously “Waiting for God”, as Simone Weil wrote, or absurdly “Waiting for Godot”, as Beckett depicts modernity, or sleepily awaiting Godaa ­- we have an invitation: come along, join the dawn song of Aandaal.