{"id":2330,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2330"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:54","slug":"57-namalwar-the-supreme-vaishnava-saint-and-poet-vol-05-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/05-translations\/57-namalwar-the-supreme-vaishnava-saint-and-poet-vol-05-translations","title":{"rendered":"-57_Namalwar – The Supreme Vaishnava Saint and Poet.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe Supreme Vaishnava Saint and Poet <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nM<\/font>ARAN,<\/b> renowned as Nammalwar (“Our Saint”)
\namong the Vaishnavas and the greatest of their saints and poets, was born in a small town called Kuruhur,
\nin the southernmost region of the Tamil country
\n\u2014 Tiru-nelveli (Tinnevelly). His father, Kari, was a petty prince who paid
\ntribute to the Pandyan King of Madura. We have no means of ascertaining the date of the Alwar’s birth, as the traditional
\naccount is untrustworthy and full of inconsistencies. We are told that the infant was mute for several years after his birth.
\nNammalwar renounced the world early in life and spent his time singing and meditating on God under the shade of a tamarind
\ntree by the side of the village temple. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nIt was under this tree that he was first seen by his disciple, the
\nAlwar Madhura-kavi,
\n\u2014 for the latter also is numbered among the great Twelve, “lost in the sea of Divine Love”. Tradition says
\nthat while Madhura-kavi was wandering in North India as a pilgrim, one night a strange light appeared to him in the sky and
\ntravelled towards the South. Doubtful at first what significance this phenomenon might have for him, its repetition during three
\nconsecutive 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
\nspiritual greatness he thought that it was to him that the light had been leading him. But when he came to him, he found
\nhim absorbed in deep meditation with his eyes fast closed and although he waited for hours the Samadhi did not break until he
\ntook up a large stone and struck it against the ground violently. At the noise Nammalwar opened his eyes, but still remained<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

Page \u2013 585<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsilent. Madhura-kavi then put to him the following enigmatical
\nquestion, “If the little one (the soul) is born into the dead thing (Matter)1 what will the little one eat and where will the little
\none lie?” to which Nammalwar replied in an equally enigmatic style, “That will it eat and there will it lie.”
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nSubsequently Nammalwar permitted his disciple to live with him and it was Madhura-kavi who wrote down his songs as they
\nwere composed. Nammalwar died in his thirty-fifth year, but he has achieved so great a reputation that the Vaishnavas account
\nhim an incarnation of Vishnu himself, while others are only the mace, discus, conch etc. of the Deity.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFrom the philosophical and spiritual point of view, his poetry ranks among the highest in Tamil literature. But in point
\nof literary excellence, there is a great inequality; for while some songs touch the level of the loftiest world-poets, others, even
\nthough rich in rhythm and expression, fall much below the poet’s capacity. In his great work known as the Tiru-vay-moli
\n(the Sacred Utterance) which contains more than a thousand stanzas, he has touched all the phases of the life divine and
\ngiven expression to all forms of spiritual experience. The pure and passionless Reason, the direct perception in the high solar
\nrealm of Truth itself, the ecstatic and sometimes poignant love that leaps into being at the vision of the “Beauty of God’s face”,
\nthe final Triumph where unity is achieved and “I and my Father are one” \u2014 all these are uttered in his simple and flowing lines
\nwith a strength that is full of tenderness and truth. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe lines which we translate below are a fair specimen of
\nthe great Alwar’s poetry; but it has suffered considerably in the translation, \u2014 indeed the genius of the Tamil tongue hardly
\npermits of an effective rendering, so utterly divergent is it from that of the English language.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 The form of the question reminds one of Epictetus’ definition of man, “Thou art a 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.”<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

Page \u2013 586<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nammalwar   Nammalwar   The Supreme Vaishnava Saint and Poet   MARAN, renowned as Nammalwar (“Our Saint”) among the Vaishnavas and the greatest of their…<\/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-2330","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\/2330","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=2330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}