Nammalvar
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Nammalvar (also Nammaazhvaar, Nammazhvar, Nammaalvaar) is the most outstanding of the twelve Alvars, well-known for his many hymns on devotion to Vishnu. Tradition gives him the date 3102 B.C. (i.e., the beginning of the kali yuga), but scholars give him a date 880–930 A.D which is more realistic based on the events recorded. He was born in the asterism Visakham, in what is now Alvartirunakari (also known as Tirukkurugur), Tamil Nadu. His name means "our own alvar" (alvar means "one immersed in God"). He was also known as Maran and Catakopan.
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[edit] Child Prodigy Discovered
It is better to make a distinction between traditional scholars and academic, or critical, scholars. The academy does not own the term scholar, which does carry some prestige. In the politics of representation, traditional scholars want to be identified as such, not excluded from "scholarship".
He must have been born fully enlightened because as a baby he never cried or suckled and never opened his eyes. According to tradition, as a child he responded to no external stimuli and his parents left him at the feet of the statue of Vishnu. The child then got up and climbed into a hole in a tamarind, sat in the lotus position, and began to meditate. It appears he was in this state for as long as sixteen years when a Tamil poet and scholar in North India named Maturakavi saw a bright light shining to the south, and followed it until he reached Nammalvar's tree. Unable to elict any reaction from the child, he asked him a riddle: "If the subtle is embodied in the gross, what will it eat, where will it rest?" Nammalvar broke his lifelong silence and responded, "That it will eat, and there it will rest!" Madhura-kavi realized the holiness of this child yogi then and there.
[edit] First Disciple
Madhura-kavi was himself in a state of high spiritual evolution when he asked Nammalvar the "right" question and made him speak. Immediately he took him for his Acharya (Teacher, Guru). Nammalvar consented to being his guru, instructed him in the secret doctrines of Vaishnavism and thereafter could not resist the urge of singing about God and trumpeting about Him. He composed on the spot a thousand hymns praising Vishnu, each one starting with the last word of the previous poem. We owe it to Madhurakavi for setting them to music. Madhurakavi became the boy's student and went on to compose poems about his prodigal master.
[edit] Tiruvaymozhi, the Tamil Veda
Nammalvar's thousand devotional poems are collected in the Tiruvaymozhi. His contribution of four works (numbering 1298 hymns) to the four thousand of the Divya Prabhandham includes the entire fourth thousand and part of the third thousand; these works are TiruvAymozhi (1102 verses), Tiruviruttam (100 verses), TiruvAsiriam (7 verses) and Periya Tiruvanthadi (87 verses). In the Vaishnava canon these four represent in the Tamil language the four Sanskrit vedas, respectively, the Sama Veda, Rig Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda. He poured the cream of these vedas into his songs of scintillating Tamil and matchless poetry that came out of his deep mystic experience. Though Nammalvar did not visit any of the 108 divyadesam temples talked about in the Vaishnava religion it appears from his works he must have had the vision of all the archa forms in the temples he had glorified in his hymns.
[edit] Acme of Devotion
The subject matter of the four works was certainly the five principles, namely, the Lord, the soul, the means, the end, and the obstacles to spirituality. Through all this ran a thread of the acme of devotion to Lord Krishna. Whatever Krishna ate, whatever He drank, whatever betel He chewed was the dearest to the saint. The supreme object of life was to be at the Lord’s lotus feet and to serve him eternally in blissful love. Therefore seek Him all your life, praise Him, surrender to Him, speak of His glories and exploits, revel in His majesty and continue the recitation of His names. This was his message to the world at large. Like the Buddha who appeared in the northernmost part of India and finally engulfed not only India but Asia and the whole world by his teachings, Nammalvar was the star of the southernmost part of India whose work engulfed the whole world of Vaishnavism.
[edit] A sample hymn
- Makes me serve him all the time and everywhere;
- Anchors me thus by seating himself in my mind;
- Swerves me not by gracing me in his service alone;
- Krishna’s wish is my wish, my pleasure, my glory.
(#3102 of Sacred Book - By Sri. Srirama Bharathi Araiyar)
[edit] Sources
- A.K. Ramanujan, introduction, in Nammalvar, trans. A.K. Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Vishnu.
- Sri Srirama Bharathi Araiyar 'Sacred Book'. 1995: Dhivya Prabhanda Pathasala, Jalladam Pattai - Chennai, India 601 302.
[edit] External links
- Alvars and Srivaishnavism http://www.srivaishnavan.com
- Temple associated with Nammalvar - Thrikodithanam Mahavishnu Temple
