Desika's enjoyment of arangan and thiruppaaN aazhvaar

[Guest guest]

Dear bhaktas,

 

I would like to record here the immense joy I experienced

while reading a very short excerpt of Swami Vedanta Desika's

``munivAhanabhogam'', his maNipravALa commentary on the

``amalanaadhipiraan'' of thiruppaaN aazhvaar.

 

I happened to receive yesterday my first copy of the Journal of

Vaishnava Studies (subscription information to follow),

in which Professor Steven Hopkins, a Desika scholar at

Swarthmore University, Pennsylvania, has written a thoroughly

engrossing paper on Desika's unique and mesmerizing contribution

to Vaishnava poetry.

 

Here is the relevant section that so moved me:

 

Along with writing Sanskrit and Tamil poems modelled after

the Alvars, Desika also composed at least one maNipravALa

prose commentary on an aazhvaar poem (it is claimed he wrote

many more, but only one survives). Desika wrote a separate

maNIpravALa commentary on thiruppaaN aazhvaar's poem that

is itself studded with original Tamil and Sanskrit poems

that leap out of the body of his commentary, part of a

complex polyphonic texture of gloss, prose paraphrase, and

original poems. In his commentary he calls thiruppaaN's

poems a spontaneous ``outpouring of ecstatic enjoyment''

(anubhava parivAham Aha), the ``thick juice of experience''

(anubhava ghana rasa), but not before he has begun the

commentary with his own Tamil poem about the poem he

intends to gloss and ``enjoy.'' But Desika's metatext is not

merely a serviceable finger pointing to the other poet;

its exuberant imagery points a finger at itself:

 

After we see him joined to our hearts

as our creator,

standing in his temple, mingling with his loving slave,

our protector and husband,

in the ten stanzas sung by the Lord of bards

that bestow the fruits of the Vedas

in Tamil song---

 

we take a hint from the cowgirls who did their kuravai dance

that day long ago

for the Lord who became

their cowherd

and king:

 

we leave behind the loneliness of sinners,

uniting with him

like the hen with her cock!

 

As I read this, enjoying Desika's enjoyment of thiruppaaN, who

in turn was enjoying Ranganatha, who in turn was enjoying

Himself, I realized that this was perhaps only slightly

different from Nammalvar's statement in thiruvaaymozhi that

about being the servant of the Lord's servant, seven times

removed from PerumaaL:

 

adiyaarntha vaiyamuN daalilai

yanna sanceyyum,

padiyaathu milkuza vippadi

yenthaipi raan_dhanakku,

adiyaar adiyaar thamadi

yaar_a di yaardhamak

kadiyaar adiyaar tham,adi

yaaradi yOngaLE. 3.7.10

 

As I thought about this chain of love and admiration this

morning, I felt a supreme sense of satisfaction and pride

in my relationship to such great saint-poets.

 

namo nArAyaNAya,

Mani

 

P.S. I suggest people to The Journal of Vaishnava Studies.

It is a scholarly publication, i.e., not always devotional in intent,

but always interesting. It is published four times a year, in

December, March, June and September. Send a check payable to

"FOLK Books" with a short note asking to to the Journal

of Vaishnava Studies. The address is

 

FOLK Books

P.O. Box 400716

Brooklyn, New York 11240-0716

USA

 

Subscription rates for one year are US$35.00.

 

 

P.P.S. If anyone has Desika's munivAhanabhogam, I would love

to get a copy.