Conclusion

These studies reveal to us Arurar rising before us with an integrated personality, if one may use that term, like a fully blossomed flower, fresh and fragrant, soft and sweet, lovely in colour and beautiful in form. He is a learned Brahmin steeped in the lore of his age, prince and warrior, statesman and politician—a companion of the king ‘Tampiran Tolar’— one who has known the splendour of royal life—one of the fortunate few blessed with the wealth of learning and riches—though not with a political success to the end. He has known adversity and misery, physical, material and political, both in the domestic and public life but then like the ordinary fire that gives temper to the iron, this fire of suffering shaped him well and made him firm and useful. He lives in an age of political wars and turmoils, dynastic revolutions and depressing famines; but undaunted he goes through this life, making himself useful in one way or another. It is his proper attitude and not the ephemeral success that is important.

His domestic life is full of love and service—he is an ardent lover, a dutiful husband, a loving father. It is not all smooth sailing but he is proud of his wives—the very gift of God as he looked upon them, and the chilaren who are spiritually great. He lives in the presence of God and looks upon everything and every act as proceeding from and inspired by God—the material wealth, food and luxuries, the help of others, his very wives and their enjoyment. He is a poet and philosopher and as such looks at the world in a discerning mood which has harmonized conflicting feelings and experiences as a living art and as the beautiful expression of God’s Grace. He feels he is ordained for the service of God and his loving and sympathetic heart goes to all; he goes about singing his musical compositions of great Tamil Poetry from temple to temple creating thereby a band of Shaiva devotees, full of love and sacrifice. He is a proud prince to start with, but he becomes humble to take pride in the service of God and Shaivites, Miseries he has known but the spiritual progress and mystic experience all through his rich and varied life, make him feel certain of salvation—no more death, no more sufferings, no more sins. This perfection reached is not a negation but an enrichment

He has been greatly moved by the lives of the great saints of the Tamil land; he walks in the footsteps of Campantar and Appar, his two great illustrious leaders. He realizes the Grace of the Lord and he is all kinaness. He sings in his inimitable but simple Tamil for the people at large; his music and poetry are soul-stirring. The crest-fallen Tamilian is inspired with a new hope and the certain Grace of the Lord. The Lord is the Lord of Tamil, fond of this Southern corner of the earth. He is proud of the Tamil language and its culture. Has not the Tamil country produced a galaxy of saints, so many lode stars in the darkness of our worldly life, leading us all to the perfection of Shiva?

His sincere nationalism has thus a pragmatic value to the Tamilians who cannot but forget their ancient glory and history in the stress and strain of political upheavals and foreign invasions. The poet brings out a harmony of the new culture of the life divine. It is, therefore, possible for him to escape the narrow parochialism and to become the citizen of the world—nay the citizen of the universe looking upon the whole community of the living beings—the plant life, the animal life, the bird life and the human life—with all their cruelties and horrors—as one happy family of God. That is his great universal vision.

The Agamas are coming to prominence. This spiritual way appeals to the common man and to the spiritually great. The temple is the real community centre. Rituals have not become dead formalities; they are as yet the satisfying concrete expressions of the inner urge—sublime and reverential. The social worship becomes poetry and music in the hands of our poet. Royal pomp and power, wealth and grandeur sublimated as it were in the service of God, flow as festivals and temple, full of divine Grace—a wonderful way of converting private and individual property into public and social property through a spiritualizing power. The ritual is the loving communion with God and the poems of Arurar give expression to this experience of his; we have a glorious vision of this religion through this coin of vantage—his poems.

His religion aims at this spiritual perfection of man and the divine sublimation of matter. There, God is everywhere both within and without and in this process every speech is a prayer, every act a worship and every thought a meditation—Sahara nista.

The common man enjoys his folklore which has been by this time enriched by the Puranas. Our poet in his appeal to the common man speaks this language of mythology, at the same time vivifying them with divine life. Their spiritual significance thrills the common man through poetry and music. Horrid stories are re-interpreted and represented as concrete expressions of God’s love—the love that God who is the energizing dynamism of dance and the very ‘Santi’ and silence of the unchanging Absolute. Bhikshatana form becomes an art motif of his poetry of love. If Kailasanatha Temple is the frozen music of this divine mythology, Arurar’s poetry is the free flow of this divine music.

The hymns reveal a progression—a history of his spiritual struggle and victory. They write as it were his autobiography and his poems form thus a lyrical outburst. It is no more individual; it is universalized as poetry appealing to the heart of all men hankering after something—beyond human reach something sublime, in short God, the Almighty. His religion is thus not a creed or a dogma but a living faith; his life itself becomes Religion. From this point of view the poems assume an epic grandeur—the wars and victories of the soul. God’s Grace transforms this epic into a drama—a divine drama of His Love. Creation becomes the magic transformation of souls into God. Nature, full of beauty, becomes the background, the theatre, the temple of God but at the same time showing the divine glimpses which reveal, that, there being nothing but God this Nature is in a way God, though He transcends it. This universe of space, time and causation is but the poetic harmony of the complications and resolutions of this divine drama. That is the vision of the Object—the philosophy of Nature or Paso,.

As for the Subject—the Soul, we have the philosophy of Soul. We ascend with our poet the gradations of its real significance till it sheds all its seeming faults and becomes one with the true light and love of the Absolute. This is the plot of the drama with all its complications and ultimate resolutions by deus ex machina. Our poetic spiritual progress stands revealed. His mystic experience becomes significant, viewed in the light of the experiences of other mystics of the world. The law of karma is seen from various ascending levels as the law of Dharma and the law of Love based on the Grace of God. There are here Purgation, Illumination and Bliss.

Illumination and Bliss are expressed in terms of love—in terms of the divine story of the loving couple—the Soul and God. Here crimes the Philosophy of God. The ‘Akappattu’ so beautifully put into proper form by the Cankam poets, and Tiruvalluvar comes in handy as the only vehicle of this kind of divine experience and thought. Bhikshatana form as an art motif becomes important. Arurar and God become one in love—a spiritual communion and identity. But this is not a love which loses its ethical grandeur. Arurar’s is also an ethical mysticism. This final goal is expressed in so many ways as may be easily understood by the common man who is the great concern of our poet. There is possibly a suggestion of universal salvation, some kind of Bodhisattva idea. One cannot escape using spatial and temporal metaphors in describing this final goal. Bhakti itself is Mukti; the very company of the saints is paradise full of their songs. But the final stage is communion or identity with Shiva; there is no misery, no fetters—it is all perfection—there is also no sin. Thus, in our poet, Nature mysticism, Religious mysticism, Art mysticism, Bridal mysticism and Ethical mysticism become one in revealing the divine perfection of his integrated personality—a personality which becomes the Absolute in that very process of perfection.

The Religion and Philosophy of Arurar enriched by the other studies reveal the full stature of our poet. It has not been possible to label him as belonging to any particular Philosophy. Perhaps we are fortunate, his harmony has a lasting value to the generations to come. His God, he is fond of addressing as Shiva. In that sense he is a Shaivite but not as the Kapalikas, Pasupatas and others have thought of it. Shaivism has assumed a rich significance through his life and through his poems as the great divine path of love—the golden path of all the mystics.