Nammālvār A H U N D R E D M E A S U R E S O F T I M E Tiruviruttam Translated from the Tamil by Archana Venkatesan Contents About the Author Dedication A Note on Transliteration Praveśam: Entering the World of the Tiruviruttam Part I: A Hundred Measures of Time Part II: The Measure of Time Part III: Periyavāccān Piḷḷai’s Commentary on the Tiruviruttam Appendix 1: Index of Characters Appendix 2: Index of Motifs and Typology of Verses Appendix 3: Indices of Myths, Places and Names Footnotes Praveśam: Entering the World of the Tiruviruttam Appendix 2 Annotations to Nammālvār’s Tiruviruttam Notes Glossary Bibliography Acknowledgements Read more Follow Penguin Copyright Page PENGUIN CLASSICS A HUNDRED MEASURES OF TIME ARCHANA VENKATESAN is associate professor of Comparative Literature and Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis. She has received numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies and Fulbright. Her research interests are in the intersection of text and performance in south India, as well as in the translation of early and medieval Tamil poetry into English. She is the author of The Secret Garland: Āṇṭāḷ’s Tiruppāvai and Nācciyār Tirumoli (2010), and is collaborating with Francis Clooney of Harvard University on an English translation of Nammālvār’s Tiruvāymoli. for my teachers A Note on Transliteration I have transliterated Tamil words according to the conventions of the Tamil Lexicon. Sanskrit-derived Tamil words are generally in their most easily recognizable form—so, Mādhavan instead of Mātavan. Place names that occur in the poems or in the commentary have been transliterated. In all other instances, place names adhere to their most common spelling. Names of contemporary authors and informants are rendered as they choose to spell them in English. I have transliterated the names of all historical personalities. Tamil has twelve vowels, which are classied into ve short vowels (a, i, u, e, o), ve long vowels (ā, ī, ū, ē, ō), and two diphthongs (ai and au). There are eighteen consonants. Below is a pronunciation guide. Vowels a pronounced like the u in cut ā pronounced like the a in father i pronounced like the i in it ī pronounced like the ee in feet u pronounced like the u in put ū pronounced like the oo in root e pronounced like the e in set ē pronounced like the a in rate o pronounced like the uo in quote ō pronounced like the o in go ai pronounced like the ie in pie au pronounced like the ow in cow Consonants k (guttural) pronounced like the k in kite. Tamil e.g. kal (stone) c (palatal) pronounced like the ch in chalk. It can also be pronounced as a sibilant, like the s in sieve. Tamil e.g. col (word) ṭ (retroex) pronounced like the t in toe. Tamil e.g. vaṇṭu (insect) t (dental) pronounced like the t in thing. Tamil e.g. vantu (having come) p pronounced like the p in prop. Tamil e.g. pāl (milk) ṅ (nasal paired pronounced like the nk in link. Tamil e.g. maṅkai with k) (girl) ñ (nasal paired pronounced like the gn in gnosis. Tamil e.g. neñcu with c) (heart) ṇ (nasal paired pronounced like the n in friend. Tamil e.g. vaṇṭu with ṭ) (insect) n (nasal paired pronounced like the n in now. Tamil e.g. vantu with t) (having come) n (alveolar Also pronounced like the n in now, but with nasal, occurs at tongue pressed closer to the tongue. Tamil e.g. the end of Tamil avan (he) words) m (nasal paired pronounced like the m in marriage. Tamil e.g. with p) mayil (peacock) y pronounced like the y in your. Tamil e.g. yār (who) r pronounced like the r in your. Tamil e.g. yār (who) r pronounced like the dr in drill. Tamil e.g. anru (then) l pronounced like the l in light. Tamil e.g. il>ai (leaf) ḷ (retroex) pronounced like the l in blah, but with more emphasis. It is pronounced with the tongue curled back, akin to a kind of gargling sound. Tamil e.g. avaḷ (she) v pronounced like the v in victory. Tamil e.g. vil (bow) l No English equivalent. Pronounced as a gentle rolled sound similar to the North American use of the r sound as American. Tamil e.g. elil (beauty) PRAVEŚAM Entering the World of the Tiruviruttam The Tiruviruttam is a compact, hundred-verse poem composed by the remarkable Tamil Vaiṣṇava mystic and poet, Śaṭhakōpan- Nammālvār (c. eighth–ninth century CE).1 Rendered in a series of interlinked verses, the poem maps and traverses a complex emotional terrain. It is framed as a love story that unfolds between an anonymous heroine (talaivi) and her beloved hero (talaivan), while friends, fortune tellers, bees, birds and the poet’s own heart play important supporting roles, acting as messengers, lamenters and audiences in a story everyone knows well. These stock characters are what A.K. Ramanujan referred to in his translation of Nammālvār as ‘returning voices’, pointing out the contiguity of antecedent Tamil Caṅkam poetics and Tamil bhakti poetry.2 Traditional Śrīvaiṣṇava exegesis too recognizes this debt, identifying the Tiruviruttam’s frame as the anyāpadeśārtha or ‘other’ meaning. From this vantage, the anyāpadeśa is the poem’s outer shell, serviceable and necessary, protecting the ripe, mature fruit of esoteric import (svāpadeśārtha) which it encases. Thus the poem can be read either as a beautiful and moving love story, which according to generations of Śrīvaiṣṇava scholars is to miss the point entirely, or as speaking certain fundamental and essential truths about the most pressing existential questions: the nature of life, of birth, of god, of one’s own self. The poet himself oscillates between these two poles: the heroine’s plaintive voice expressing the corporeal and emotive textures of her love for Viṣṇu, while a direct contemplative address reects on Viṣṇu’s unimaginable, inexpressible grandeur. The Tiruviruttam is a quintessential Tamil bhakti poem. The object of love, of desire, of dedication, is god, identied by the poet as Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa. The expression of that love is corporeal, emotional and ecstatic, its expression poetic, abstract and symbolic. Viṣṇu is the divine, omnipresent sovereign and also the intimate, often absent, beloved. The relationship between the poem’s chief participants is one of dependence, like a bard who relies on a generous king’s largesse, and a woman who trusts in the inviolable love of her beloved. The divine king is the poet’s sole refuge and the largesse sought is grace. Tiruviruttam 85 is an apt illustration of the ideology of dependence and subservience that gives Tamil bhakti poetry so much of its emotive force: Like a monkey tossing aside a ruby evening falls casting aside the golden sun O precious gem who measured worlds my beloved emerald golden one who has no equal you’re the sole refuge of your servant’s life. Here Viṣṇu is the world-strider, an illustration of his awesome and indisputable supremacy, and the poet assumes a suitably abject position when approaching this supreme deity as the exclusive source and site of refuge. Yet it is the unique intimacy that they share which emboldens Nammālvār to dare such a bold petition. Viṣṇu is his, possessed by him and possessing him. He is his gem, his glittering ruby and, in other verses, his honey, his sweetness, his beloved. Even as the Tiruviruttam is representative of the genre of Tamil bhakti poetry, it can be seen as both heir and progenitor in a long and illustrious lineage of Tamil poetry. The poem’s frame, its succinct phrasing, its evocative and striking imagery and the seamless integration of the aesthetic principles of the public (puram) and private (akam) Caṅkam genres reveal its debt to what we know today as the Tamil classical literary traditions. The manipulation of these very principles to craft a narrative of love and loss, of separation and union, places the Tiruviruttam at the forefront of literary innovations that give us later medieval Tamil genres such as the kōvai, the ulā and, as David Shulman suggests, the kalampakam. I discuss these streams of inuence in depth in Part II (The Measure of Time) of this book, and therefore refrain from repeating them here. Below, I oer a brief overview of ālvār poetry and Nammālvār’s place within it. The Poetry of the Ālvārs A.K. Ramanujan titled his landmark translation of selected Nammālvār verses Hymns for the Drowning. It is an allusion to the title ‘ālvār’, ‘those who are immersed’, granted to the twelve pioneering saints of the Śrīvaiṣṇava saṁpradāyas (lineages). The epithet expresses the uid, emotional and immersive experience that characterizes the poetry of the Tamil Vaiṣṇava tradition. Yet, like Ramanujan’s title, it also plays on the metaphor of the world as an ocean of sorrow in which Viṣṇu and his heavenly Vaikuṇṭha are the sole life-rafts. Āṇṭāḷ, a later contemporary of Nammālvār, says this in Nācciyār Tirumoli 5.4: My bones melt and my eyes long as spears resist even blinking. for days now, I am plunged into a sea of distress and I ache to attain that great boat, Vaikuṇṭha, but I cannot see it. O kuyil, you too know the anguish of separation from a beloved. Summon the immaculate lord whose body is like gold whose banner bears Garuḍa to me3 Āṇṭāḷ’s verse evocatively captures the existential crisis at the centre of ālvār poetry. As ecstatics, their experience of Viṣṇu is totalizing and complete, but as human beings the caprices of human birth are inescapable.