Tondaradippodi: Poet and Saint

Of the twelve Alwars, men of God, who by their saintly lives and poetic hymns in Tamil preached and practised the teachings of the Vedas, and spread Vaishnavism not only in Tamil Nadu but also in the North, two were Perialwar and his illustrious daughter Andal, the only woman to be included among Alwars. Nammalwar, the most revered of the Alwars, and his very ardent disciple Madurakavi are another pair. Poigai, Pei, Pootham, the contemporary trio, and their friend Tirumalichai may be grouped together. Tirumangai, Kulasekhara, Tondaradippodi and Tiruppa­nalwar comprise the remaining four. Nammalwar and Tirumangai each of them has sung about a thousand hymns, a moiety of the Divyaprabhandam. Madurakavi and Tiruppanalwar each ten stanzas only.

There are no authentic historic biographies of the Alwars. But a traditional account has come down to us and students of research find some internal and external testimony to corroborate here and there the traditional accounts.

Tondaradippodi–literally means speck-of-dust-at-the-feet-of ­devotees – originally known as Vipranarayana, was born in Tirumandangudi near Pullanpoothankudi in Chola Nadu. He was born of a Brahmin family noted among other things for their tufts at the front of their heads.

The boy was both diligent and intelligent and soon got well trained in the Vedas and the Vedangas and also in Tamil classics and grammar. But scholarship did not make him ambitious of worldly prosperity. Like Perialwar he would be a gardener and grow choice flowers, daily make garlands of those flowers and offer them to God Ranganatha at Srirangam, on the banks of the rivers Kaveri and Kollidam. His garden came to be envied by the people around and his name became a bye-word for godly devotion and good gardening.

But human life, alas, is so full of obstacles and obfuscations that they make erosions into one’s good nature and thrust one into the bramble bushes of seduction and sin.

Two pretty young girls of the dancing caste, both sisters, saw the healthy young bachelor radiant with charm and learning, watering the shrubs in his garden. Whereupon one of the two told the other, Devadevi by name, and who was looking lustily on him, that all her superior charms would not help her to attract him, as all his thoughts in God did rest. The sisters made a bet on this issue and parted.

Next day Devadevi came to the garden and went on helping him, voluntarily digging pits, clearing the weeds, watering and such like, and doing all this enthusiastically that the Brahmin had no mind to shut her out of the garden. And then this became a regular feature in Devadevi’s life, though she felt her presence did not make any other impression in his mind except that she too was a devotee in the service of Lord Ranganatha.

One day it suddenly rained. A thick shower. The Brahmin bachelor entered his cottage. He did not then see that the lady had also come to the garden and working. And she, drenched wet, her silk sari sticking closely to her body and treacherously revealing all the beauty of her bosom and her limbs, shivering with cold, came to the cottage and shouted to draw his attention.

Vipra saw her plight. His natural goodness to succour help in times of distress was aroused and he admitted her into the cottage. The rain did not stop. And the evening was mellowing into darkness. He offered her a spare dried up cloth that was kept and she leisurely wore it in the place of her wet sari, revealing to the helpless gaze of the man her seductive charms.

Devadevi won her bet. That night she became his mistress and soon his goddess. They lived on in this sort of Elysium for sometime during which she made him a pauper and shut the doors of her house against him.

God Ranganatha in his leelasent through one of the temple staff a gold cup used for his Pooja to Devadevi informing her that Vipra had sent it. Whereupon with great joy she told the man to ask Vipra to come to her.

The loss of the gold cup was located and Vipra was arrested for theft on hearing Devadevi’s version.

But God in his mercy had the truth revealed to the king who thereupon released the Brahmin and he once again became a gardener in his own garden as he did prior to the dancing girl’s advent. And once again he became a devotee of Ranganatha and spent all his days till death in serving him and singing about him.

He became a Vaishnavite saint, a poet and was included among the Alwars.

A memorial verse sung on him says:
Hail to thee, native of Mandangudi!
Born in Jyeshta, in Mrigasirsha,
Who worshipped Ranga, surrounded by rivers!
Hail to thee, the author of Tirumalai,
And the ten-stanza Tiruppalliezhucchi,
Hail to thee who repudiated a life of lust
And lived as a true devotee’s foot-dust!
Hail to thee, Tondaradippodi!

Of his only two poems one is Tiruppalliezhucchi. The ten stanzas of this poem purport to wake up God Vishnu–his favourite Ranganatha of Sriranga–out of his sleep in the morning for the good of the world. Some pious Brahmins repeat the verses every morning. They are all a rapsody to the glories of Nature and of God.

This poetic convention of praying to God to awake and arise is as old as the Vedas and the epics and other sacred books. The famous sloka of Viswamitra rousing up Rama –”Oh Rama, a tiger among men, beloved son of Kausalya, the early morning has dawned, so get up for the daily rites”–is sung in the mornings by young and old.

Today everybody knows how the Venkatesa Suprabhatam is a daily must in some Hindu homes.

This devotional song Tiruppalliezhucchi is a masterpiece rich with the description of Nature at dawn and richer with the spiritual emotions for which it is the best time of the day. A grand sublimity invests the poem from the first line to the last. The latter part of each stanza, especially the last line, is a refrain asking God – who is both father and mother – to rouse Himself from bed.

Here is the first stanza:

The sun has embraced the eastern horizon
And the heavy darkness has shifted
With the morning looming bright.
The lovely flowers, touched by the Devas,
Are dripping with honey.
The adoration of Nature in the early portion ofthe next stanza reads:
Is this the beneficent eastern breeze,
Come wafting over the rich jasmine shoots?
Here’s the swan rising from its lotus bed
And fluttering its dew-touched wings......

The third stanza:

Light effulgent spreads on all sides,
While the light of the twinkling star shrinks.
Is it the dewy moon that sheds its lustre round
Gone is the matted darkness......

And in the next we find:
Let loose are the tethered calves,
Their ringing neck-bells mixing with
The flute tunes of the shepherds and
Spreading in all directions.
The bees are getting into the fields.
Thou bowman divine who destroyed
The Lanka King’s entire family,
Oh thou who helped to finish the Yaga
Of the great Rishi, Oh thou our great
Ayodhya’s King, Oh Ranga, be pleased to wake up.

And so on flow the verses, with the chattering of birds, the buzzing of bees, the roaring of the waves, all subsiding, and the poet feeling elevated to a higher spiritual plane of poetic wonder and delight.

The last stanza touches one or two particular aspects of Nature’s glory.

Are these the sweet lotuses that have blossomed now?
Has the sun shot out of the grumbling sea?
Well, the thin-hipped damsels have drained
Their curly tresses and have worn their dresses...

The poem ends with an imploration to Ranga to make the poet a devotee of His devotees.

A similar poem on the same lines by Manikkavachakar, one of the leading Acharyas of the Saivas, is sung with equal ardent by ardent Saivites.

One of the stanzas speaks of­–

Aruna has reached Indra’s place,
The darkness has gone,
And the morning looks to the grace of your face.

In the third stanza we find­–
Warbles the nightingale amidst the flowers;
Hens are shouting and the sparrows prattling;
And the starlight is merging in the morn.

The poet finds beauty in many things, but most of all in Siva.

We do not definitely know which of the two is earlier in composition. Tirumalai, the Alwar’s other poem, has forty-five stanzas all in praise of Ranganatha. The Alwar concentrates his devotion to one spot, to one God. He finds no time or has no desire for any other deity or for anything else in life.

Only two poems but rose-like they are both in their beauty and their fragrance Tirumalaiis a garland of verses in his praise. But, apart from the significance of the title, the poem has an intrinsic autobiographic importance in that it lays stress on the trials of the flesh, trials, if not conquered in time by the grace of the Almighty, might mean a total annihilation of one’s spiritual progress and sink one into the mire of samsarawith its never-­ending cares and worries.

He lavishes praise on the beauty of Sriranga, the seat of Lord Ranganatha: “Gardens teeming with humming bees and strolling peacocks and overhanging clouds and melody-making nightingales, a quiet pleasure resort even for the Devas.” And Ranganatha Himself is praised thus:

Oh God presiding over Sriranga
Like a vast green mountain
With coral lips and lotus-red eyes

The saint would renounce even the lordship of the Devas and their world for the pleasures of remaining under His lotus feet in Sriranga.

He also speaks of his insignificance with becoming modesty: “No land, no relatives but God whose feet he adheres’ to.”
Of the worthlessness of human life with all its owes and miseries he speaks:

Even if people enter the Vedic age of hundred,
Half of it would have been spent in sleep,
And fifteen in boyhood, and after due allowance
For hunger, disease and distress, what remains?
So no more births for me, oh God!

According to the traditional accounts he lived for a little more than hundred years and spent all his years in the sacred soil of Sriranga, devoting himself to the worship of Ranganatha there.

It is also said that Devadevi soon adopted and followed, the life of a recluse and lived like Vipra.