{"id":2281,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:34","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2281"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:34","slug":"53-tamil-andal-the-vaishnava-poetess-vol-05-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/05-translations\/53-tamil-andal-the-vaishnava-poetess-vol-05-translations","title":{"rendered":"-53_Tamil – Andal – The Vaishnava Poetess.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nPart Three<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTranslations from Tamil<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nAndal<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nAndal<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Vaishnava Poetess<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nP<\/font>REOCCUPIED<\/b> from the earliest times with divine knowledge and religious aspiration the Indian mind has turned all forms of human life and emotion and all the phenomena
\nof the universe into symbols and means by which the embodied soul may strive after and grasp the Supreme. Indian devotion
\nhas especially seized upon the most intimate human relations and made them stepping-stones to the supra-human. God the
\nGuru, God the Master, God the Friend, God the Mother, God the Child, God the Self, each of these experiences \u2014 for to us
\nthey are more than merely ideas,
\n\u2014 it has carried to its extreme possibilities. But none of them has it pursued, embraced, sung
\nwith a more exultant passion of intimate realisation than the yearning for God the Lover, God the Beloved. It would seem as
\nif this passionate human symbol were the natural culminating-point for the mounting flame of the soul’s devotion: for it is
\nfound wherever that devotion has entered into the most secret shrine of the inner temple. We meet it in Islamic poetry; certain
\nexperiences of the Christian mystics repeat the forms and images with which we are familiar in the East, but usually with
\na certain timorousness foreign to the Eastern temperament. For the devotee who has once had this intense experience it is that
\nwhich admits to the most profound and hidden mystery of the universe; for him the heart has the key of the last secret.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe work of a great Bengali poet has recently reintroduced this idea to the European mind, which has so much lost the
\nmemory of its old religious traditions as to welcome and wonder at it as a novel form of mystic self-expression. On the contrary
\nit is ancient enough, like all things natural and eternal in the human soul. In Bengal a whole period of national poetry has<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

Page \u2013 577<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbeen dominated by this single strain and it has inspired a religion
\nand a philosophy. And in the Vaishnavism of the far South, in the songs of the Tamil Alwars we find it again in another form,
\ngiving a powerful and original turn to the images of our old classic poetry; for there it has been sung out by the rapt heart of
\na woman to the Heart of the Universe. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe Tamil word, Alwar, means one who has drowned, lost
\nhimself in the sea of the divine being. Among these canonised saints of Southern Vaishnavism ranks Vishnuchitta, Yogin and
\npoet, of Villipattan in the land of the Pandyas. He is termed
\nPerialwar<\/i>, the great Alwar. A tradition, which we need not
\nbelieve, places him in the ninety-eighth year of the Kaliyuga. But these divine singers are ancient enough, since they precede
\nthe great saint and philosopher Ramanuja whose personality and teaching were the last flower of the long-growing Vaishnava tradition. Since his time Southern Vaishnavism has been a fixed creed and a system rather than a creator of new spiritual
\ngreatnesses. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe poetess Andal was the foster-daughter of Vishnuchitta,
\nfound by him, it is said, a new-born child under the sacred tulsi-plant. We know little of Andal except what we can gather
\nfrom a few legends, some of them richly beautiful and symbolic. Most of Vishnuchitta’s poems have the infancy and boyhood of
\nKrishna for their subject. Andal, brought up in that atmosphere, cast into the mould of her life what her foster-father had sung
\nin inspired hymns. Her own poetry
\n\u2014 we may suppose that she passed early into the Light towards which she yearned, for it
\nis small in bulk,
\n\u2014 is entirely occupied with her passion for the divine Being. It is said that she went through a symbolic marriage
\nwith Sri Ranganatha, Vishnu in his temple at Srirangam, and disappeared into the image of her Lord. This tradition probably
\nconceals some actual fact, for Andal’s marriage with the Lord is still celebrated annually with considerable pomp and ceremony.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nWe give below a translation of three of Andal’s poems.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

Page \u2013 578<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part Three   Translations from Tamil     Andal   Andal The Vaishnava Poetess   PREOCCUPIED from the earliest times with divine knowledge and religious…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-05-translations","wpcat-48-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}