Nammalwar
THE SUPREME VAISHNAVA SAINT AND POET
MARAN, renowned as Nammalwar
("Our Saint") among the Vaishnavas and the greatest of their saints
and poets, was born in a small town called Kuruhur,
in the southernmost region of the Tamil country - Tiru-nel-veli
(Tinnevelly). His father, Kari, was a petty prince
who paid . tribute to the Pandyan King of Madura. We have no means of ascertaining the date of the Alwar's birth, as the traditional account is untrustworthy
and full of inconsistencies. We are told that the infant was mute for several
years after his birth. Nammalwar renounced the world
early in life and spent his time singing and meditating on God under the shade
of a tamarind tree by the side of the village temple.
It was under this tree
that he was first seen by his disciple, the Alwar Madhura-kavi, - for the latter also is numbered among the
great Twelve, "lost in the sea of Divine Love". Tradition says that
while Madhura-kavi was wandering in North India as a
pilgrim, one night a strange light appeared to him in the sky and travelled towards the South. Doubtful at first what
significance this phenomenon might have for him, its repetition during three
consecutive nights convinced him that it was a divine summons and where this
luminous sign led he must follow. Night after night he journeyed southwards
till the guiding light came to Kuruhur and there
disappeared. Learning of Nammalwar's spiritual
greatness he thought that it was to him that the light had been leading him.
But when he came to him, he found him absorbed in deep meditation with his eyes
fast closed and al- though he waited for hours the Samadhi did not break until
he took up a large stone and struck it against the ground violently. At the
noise Nammalwar opened his eyes, but still remained
silent. Madhura-kavi then put to him the following
enigmatical question, "If the little one (the soul) is born into the dead thing
(Matter)¹
¹ The form of the question reminds one of Epictetus'
definition of man, "Thou art a
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what will the little one eat and where will the little one lie?" to which Nammalwar replied in an equally enigmatic style, "That
will it eat and there will it lie."
Subsequently Nammalwar permitted his disciple to live with him and it
was Madhura-kavi who wrote down his songs as they
were composed. Nammalwar died in his thirty-fifth
year, but he has achieved so great a reputation that the Vaishnavas account him
an incarnation of Vishnu himself, while others are only the mace, discus, conch
etc. of the Deity.
From the
philosophical and spiritual point of view, his poetry ranks among the highest
in Tamil literature. But in point of literary
excellence, there is a great inequality; for while some songs touch the level
of the loftiest world-poets, others, even though rich in rhythm and expression,
fall much below the poet's capacity. In his great work known as the Tiru-vaymoli (The Sacred Utterance) which contains more
than a thousand stanzas, he has touched all the phases of the life divine and
given expression to all forms of spiritual experience. The pure and passionless
Reason, the direct perception in the high solar realm of Truth itself, the
ecstatic and sometimes poignant love that leaps into being at the vision of the
"Beauty of God's face", the final Triumph where unity is achieved and
"I and my Father are one" all these are uttered in his simple and
flowing lines with a strength that is full of tenderness and. truth.
The lines which we
translate¹ below are a fair specimen of the great Alwar's
poetry; but it has suffered considerably in the translation, - indeed the
genius of the Tamil tongue hardly permits of an effective rendering, so utterly
divergent is it from that of the English language.
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little soul carrying about a corpse." Some of our readers may be familiar
with Swinburne's adaptation of the saying, "A
little soul for a little bears up the corpse which is man,"
¹ The translation, Nammalwar's Hymn of the Golden Age, is given in Volume No,
VIII, Translations: From Sanskrit and Other Languages,
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