thiruppavai day sixteen song sixteen

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THIRUPPAVAI - DAY SIXTEEN - SONG SIXTEEN

 

Transliteration

 

nAyakanAy ninRa nanthakopanutaiya

kOyil kAppOnE kotith thOnRum thOrana

vAyil kAppOnE manikkathavam thaL thiRavAy

Ayar cirumiyarOmukku aRaipaRai

mAyan manivannan nennalE vAy nErnthAn

thUyOmAy vanthOm thuyiLezap patuvan

vAyal munnam munnam mARRAthE ammA nI

nEya nilaikkathavam nIkkElOrempAvAy.

 

Translation

 

Guard at the gates of Nantakopan, our Lord!

Guard at the doors next to the flagstaff!

Unbar the decorated doors.

The inscrutable Manivannan has already promised us

The proceeds of the pavai.

We have assembled in all purity

To wake him up with our songs.

Don’t keep on questioning us, dear.

Throw open the hospitable doors.

 

As has been stated earlier, with the fifteenth song, a phase of pavai comes

to a close and with the sixteenth song, the next phase begins. Between the

two songs, the maids take bath and wear the vaishnava marks. They also

become pure of heart.

 

Cleanliness at the physical level and purity at the spiritual level are at

one and the same time an achievement and a qualification. It enables the

maids to demand admittance into the abode of the Divine as we understand

from the sixteenth song.

 

This purity needs an explanation. It can best be understood in the context

of Nammalvar’s songs. ‘mananaka malam ara malar micai elutarum’ is a line in

the second song of Tiruvaymoli by Nammalvar. When God makes his presence

felt in the mind, it is cleansed of all its impurities.

nALum ninRu atum nam pazamaiyamkotu vinaiyutanE

mALumOr kuRaivillai mananaka malmaRak kazuvi

naLum thiruvutaiyatikaLtham nalam kazal vananki

mALum Oritatththilum vanakkotu vAzvathu vaLame.

 

When each day we cleanse the mind of its impurities and worship the feet of

the Divine, the cruel effects of fate are nullified. To live so is to live

this life valorously.

 

Thus purity is a state of preparedness to receive divine grace. The present

experience of rapturous communion with God in the temple provides the basis

of hope for the future redemption. Though God’s grace is extended as an

unmerited benevolence, the soul has to achieve a certain poise that is

called purity. In such a poise, the human self is to express the life of the

soul, the godly life, and is not to engage in the egoistic satisfaction of

desires. Body and soul are not to be antagonistic to each other, competing

for the life of the human. Rather they are to become one harmonious unity,

as the life of God is lived out through the totality of human life. Thus the

maids qualify themselves as those who have cultivated devotion to god and

replaced an inferior life with a superior one.

 

The idea of achieved purity is to be found in Saiva Siddhantha also. In

fact, there is a beautiful metaphor that explains the point. Life is like a

pond in which moss is so overgrown that the water never shows to the eyes.

Throw a stone into the pond and the water is to be seen for a brief moment

only to be held away from sight again by the moss coming together. The stone

thrown into the waters overgrown with moss is bhakthi and what is revealed

is the soul in its essence.

 

Curiously, there is a Sivan temple at Erramannur in Kerala. The devotees who

go to the temple are not supposed to pray for anything in particular. The

mood should be one of preparedness to give up all of the self and become

pure enough to gain admittance into the abode of God.

 

The guards at the gate and the doors know that the maids are matured enough

in spiritual cultivation. And yet, like masters in spiritual cultivation,

they seem to delay entrance of the maids into the temple. Krishna was being

brought up in the context of the atrocious days of the reign of Kamsa. That

in effect is the binding confinements of bodily existence in which the

devotees live. Therefore the maids have to assure the guards that they are

not the evil forces like Surpanakai or Bhutanai. They identify themselves as

the innocent maids of Ayppati. – ayar cirumiyarom. They also refer to the

promise of God’s grace in terms of the proceeds of the pavai. They identify

their mission with waking up God with their songs.

 

Thus the song is the dramatisation of a situation of gaining admittance into

the abode of God, the Divine presence.