In the seventh and eighth centuries a movement arose in South India, which stressed devotion to the supreme Vishnu. So devout were the major proponents of this doctrine that they were called Alwars, which meant one who dives into the divine, is immersed in God-bliss. Their creed has become famous as Srivaishnavism, because they had an important role assigned to Sri or Laxmi, wife of Vishnu. The Alwars are twelve in number and belong to all castes. Their teachings were called Ubaya Vedanta, as it was believed that they had managed to translate ancient concepts into the language of devotion and also provided a bridge between the Tamil and Sanskrit languages. The hymns of the Alwars were collected into a great work called the Divya Prabandham and comprise four thousand stanzas. Within the Dravida Prabandham the third thousand and part of the fourth thousand stanzas were composed by an extraordinary spiritual genius called Nammalwar. His verses are called the Tiruvaimozhi and it has even been called the Dravidiopnishad. More commentaries have been written on the Tiruvaimozhi than any other work of the southern saints. Very little is actually known about a man who was such a towering presence in the great Srivaishnava tradition. He was born in the modern Tirunelveli district to a ruling chieftain named Kariyar and his mother was called Udaya Nangai. What is undeniable is that his spiritual power seemed to radiate outwards from early childhood. India is the best country in the world for such matters to be taken seriously, and the serious demeanor of the child, who was sometimes mistaken to be dumb because of his habit of not speaking for its own sake, led him to be named Maran, 'different from the ordinary.' He also had the disconcerting habit of hardly ever opening his eyes, so rapt was he with his internal visions. So great is his spiritual detachment that a legend grew up that he was free of the 'Sata', the veil of ignorance that falls over the child at the moment of birth, for Maran alone had an unobstructed vision of the truth even before birth by renting the veil. Hence his name Satakopa - destroyer of the veil. The boy saint spent most of his time sitting under the tamarind tree outside the local Vishnu temple at Tirunagari. He might have achieved merely a local fame were it not for a Brahmin called Madhura Kavi, who was born in a village close to our saint's birthplace. He was ignorant of his existence however and was away on pilgrimage to Ayodhya, birthplace of the God Rama when he got an insistent vision that he should go to Tirunagari. Madhura Kavi was a great scholar and poet and he was somewhat skeptical of this silent sitting saint but he obeyed his inner voice and went to meet him. Tamil literature and poetry would never be the same. When he met the young saint the poet asked him the classic question of Vedanta, " If what is subtle is born in the world of mortals, on what will it subsist and how will it live here?" The answer completely floored him. "It will be hidden in the world, subsisting on what chance brings." This answer contains many subtle layers of inference and insight within it and has been parsed to death by commentators. It is worth noting that a votary of devotion was not at a loss to answer a complex philosophic query - unlike today when intellectual enquiry about the divine is regarded in far too many devout circles as being worse than atheism. The poet instantly declared the sitting saint to be his guru and it is owing to his diligence that we have the record of the utterances of the saint known as the Tiruvaimozhi. That is more or less what Nammalwar did in life, he sat under the tree and contemplated God. Madhura Kavi however has left us proof that such a life can be tremendously impactful on a society and people. Leaving aside the complexities of the philosophy what Nammalwar taught was called Arthapanchakam or the meaningful five principles. These are the nature of the soul, the glory of Vishnu, the goal of life, (liberation by the grace of Vishnu) the means of attaining that and the obstacles to be overcome along the way. He had an interesting interpretation of the nature of the Absolute or Paramatman, holding that it is at once Transcendent as well as immanent in all beings in their Inner Selves and, fresh perspective, easily accessible to all through the incarnations of Vishnu. In many ways this was pioneering theology, but in no way did it contradict the extant texts so he won through. The great Nammalwar died when he was only thirty-five years old. - Rohit Arya Archive