Introduction to Section 3.9

(1) Among the myriads of the Lord’s Creatures the human form is a rare gift of the Lord. Even so, the human form, thus dowered, has to be free from physical and mental handicaps. Even then, acquisition of a high degree of learning is rare and rarer still is the capacity for writing Verses. And then again, this extremely rare gift of verse-making has to be put to proper use but, more often than not, this talent is prostituted for the poet’s selfish ends, by indulging in praise of the petty humans, as, for example, the Sanskrit work, entitled ‘Pratāpa Rudrīyam [Rudṛyaṃ]’. The Āḻvār naturally deplores such misguided poets and advises them to give up their low base and elevate themselves to their legitimate stature, as the Lord’s bards, soaring high, singing exclusively His great glory, in beautiful, meTical compositions. The Āḻvār mostly bemoans his separation from the Lord during those moments when communion with Him gets snapped, for one reason or another. But now and then, he turns his attention on the worldlings around, moved by their sad plight. In this decad, he exhorts the poets to harness their literary excellence to useful purpose by singing the many auspicious traits and wondrous deeds of the Lord and not to go the wrong way, eulogising the frail humans.

(2) The Āḻvār had addressed the worldlings earlier too, but with little success. In stanza 25 of his ‘Periya Tiruvantāti he exclaimed, in sheer disgust, that it was impossible to correct the worldlings and that he would, therefore, leave them severely alone, free to do whatever they liked. But then, his fellow-feeling asserts itself; his deep compassion for the suffering humanity wallowing in worldly life, was such that he just could not be indifferent to them and abandon them to their fate. That is why he turned his attention on them, now and then, in the midst of his own mystic experiences, alternating between union with and separation from God.

The reasons prompting the Āḻvār to exhort the worldlings are three-fold, namely,

(i) the inter-relationship between Man and God is the same as that between God and the denizens of the high heaven and yet, while those in heaven partake of that perennial bliss emanating from the Lord, all the time, the worldlings are straying away from Him, bogged down in the difficult and miserable terrain of worldly life. The fundamental relationship between them and God, therefore, needs to be impressed upon the worldlings so that they may also be turned towards God;

(ii) The Āḻvār’s inability to stand the sight of the suffering humanity caught up in the unenviable meshes of worldly life and

(iii) The Āḻvār’s tender solicitude for the Earthlings overflows its continent and seeks to sustain itself by reclaiming even those given up by the Almighty Lord, as ‘Incorrigibles’. (See aphorism 203 of Ācārya Hṛdayam).

(3) In the realm of God-love, the lovers’ thoughts are always rivetted to Him, their lives are nestled in Him and they sustain themselves through mutual joy and enlightenment derived by talking about His great glory and listening to it by turns. The Āḻvār turns round in search of such enlightened company but he is sadly disappointed. He advises the men around, hoping to bring them round to his way of thinking, but finds that his advice has once again fallen on deaf eats. He, however, ends up this decad on a complacent note, satisfied with his own role as God’s poet, unlike the Earthlings who misuse their poetic talents.