Tiruvaymoli (Thiruvaimozhi): English translation

by S. Satyamurthi Ayyangar | 388,514 words

This is the English translation of the Tiruvaymoli (or, Thiruvaimozhi): An ancient Tamil text consisting of 1102 verses which were sung by the poet-saint Nammalvar as an expression of his devotion to Vishnu. Hence, it is an important devotional book in Vaishnavism. Nammalvar is one of the twelve traditional saints of Tamil Nadu (Southern India), kn...

The Sublime and the Sensual have always co-existed in both the worlds-the mundane and the spiritual. There is, however, a fundamental difference in their inter-relationship, in the respective spheres. In the material world, the two are mutually exclusive, being diametrically opposed to each other. In the spiritual world, that which, in the language of aesthetics, is termed as ‘Śṛṅgār’, is nothing but the psychological imperative for man’s consciousness moving towards Him (Super-Soul) of ravishing beauty (as Bhāgavatā bears out), just the very inversion of the skin-deep, carnal variety of lust, stamping out the human lover-beloved union. If the love-smitten Parāṅkuśa (Nammāḻvār, who was like unto a goad wearing round his spiritual antagonists through his scintillating hymns and making the Lord Himself pliable, enraptured by his sweet, love-laden hymns) turns out to be a female, expressing herself now as Parāṅkuśa Nāyakī (God-lover), then as the Mother, the intuitive gnostic friend of the love-lorn daughter trying to keep the latter under sobering restraint and sometimes as the soothing Mate, it is but the natural corollary to his boundless love for God and the deep yearning, beyond words, for the Divine presence and lasting union. Actually, the Lord is the only Male or Husband (Loka bhartā), the ‘Puruṣottama’ the Kṣetrajña’ and all the Individual souls arc but marks of the feminine, the Kṣetras’ (Location),, the female centres of the creative activity of God. It is indeed quite some consolation that the lover-beloved theme is familiar ground for the worldlings and now, without adopting the austere Vedic approach, the Āḻvār would only want them to shift the base and turn the whole drama God-ward and be wholly absorbed in ‘Daiva Rasa’ (spiritual love), the ‘Brahmānubhava’. Even as the female anatomy plays a key role in the earthly variety of love, in the spiritual world, ‘Para Bhakti’, ‘Para Jñāna’ and ‘Parama Bhakti’, in the ascending scale of God-love, too deep for words, symbolise the breast of the God-lover, swelling up with God-love.

Songs attributed to the Mother and the Mate are all sung by the Āḻvār only. The Mate is the cementing force joining the lover and the Beloved; this Mate is only symbolic of the sense of fusion and belonging, the inalienable relationship of Master and Servant, between God and Man, inculcated by “Praṇava” (Aum) in ‘Tirumantra’. The Mother plays the role of ‘Namaḥ’ in the said Mantra which puts an embargo on the Individual soul indulging in egoistic self-effort to attain God-head, instead of awaiting the descent of His grace. Thus, she prevents the love-intoxicated Parāṅkuśa Nāyakī from trespassing, that is, breaking all norms of correct feminine conduct, and keeps her under restraint. In this decad, where the Āḻvār is seen transformed as ‘Nāyakī’ (female lover), some birds are sent by her as emissaries to the Lord. This is the first of the four decads in the whole work, where messages are sent by the Āḻvār to the Lord, the other three being VI-1, VI-8 and IX-7. The winged birds typify the efficient preceptors possessed of the mighty wings, a happy blending of knowledge and conduct. This technique of the Āḻvār has been adopted by the subsequent poets as well. C. F. Kālidāsa’s ‘Meghadūta’ and Vedānta Deśika’s ‘Haṃsa Sandeśa’.

Parāśara Bhaṭṭar would exclaim:

“The monkeys shot into fame with the advent of Śrī Rāma who employed Hanumān as His chosen emissary to Rāvaṇa’s court; likewise the the Āḻvārs have made the winged birds famous by commissioning them to carry messages to their Beloved God”.

The messages in the four decads, referred to above, were all despatched by the Āḻvār to the Lord but to different destinations, namely, (1) Vyūha or the milk-ocean, the seat of the Lord’s creative activity, (ii) the Vibhava or the Lord’s incarnate forms, (iii) ‘Paratva’ (transcendent) and ‘Antaryāmi’ (Internal Controller of all) and (iv) Arcā (Iconic manifestaion), in the chronological order. The Āḻvār is now in the same plight as Śakuntalā, left behind in the hermitage, after her initial meeting and union with King Duṣyanta and hence the necessity for this message invoking the Lord’s special trait of forgiveness, by way of overlooking the drawbacks noticed by the Lord in the Āḻvār during their erstwhile union.

And to end this preamble precisely as it was begun, here is an interesting anecdote. When the great Preceptor, Nañcīyar was discoursing on this Tiruvāymoḻi, one of his listeners abruptly left the place, murmuring that the discourse had assumed the complexion of a sensualist’s love-conversation. In the first three decads, the saint had expounded Divinity as the Exalted, the worship-worthy and the Easily-accessible.

The listener in question appreciated these and observed:

“Here is a grand theme, worthy of acceptance by the world-weary, and so long as it treats of the Almighty in His sublime character I am bound to listen to it, as a sensible man ought to”.

But, as soon as the Saint changed the Divine discourse into the form of love to God, love treated by analogies taken from the experience of mankind in this world, specially in its relation as Lover and the Beloved, Mistress and Spouse and so on, the disciple turned away from it, thinking that this kind of treatment was a shock to good taste, outrage to his wisdom and a violence to his common-sense. Nañcīyar couldn’t but deplore the failure of this unfortunate listener to see, in it, the explanation of the mysterious Divine Love (Bhakti), contained in the Commandment of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka upaniṣad (Maitreyi Brāhmaṇa, 44) to the effect that the Lord is to be lovingly, intensely meditated upon.

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