Tirukkalirruppadiyar

Tirukkalirruppadiyar lets us stay with Tiruvundiyar's brief sayings until their meaning opens.

The second of the fourteen Meykanda Sastras, Tirukkalirruppadiyar belongs with the first, Tiruvundiyar. Both precede Meykandar. The earlier work gives its teaching in three-line songs with the returning refrain undi para. The companion gives it room to unfold in venbas, four-line verses whose closing line is shorter.

This is an expansion in verse, rather than a prose explanation beneath each line. The younger teacher repeats phrases from the earlier work, draws out their implications, and adds examples from the lives of the Nayanmars. The Lord whom the soul cannot measure comes within its reach as guru. Worship becomes knowledge through love. Knowledge returns as service.

✦Hymn, experience and doctrine

The book keeps devotional experience close to its argument. Verse 52 takes up Manikkavasagar's words about Kannappar's love in Tiruvasagam 8.10.4. Verse 86 draws on Sambandar's hymn at Tiruveezhimizhalai (திருவீழிமிழலை), Tevaram 1.11.2. The teaching listens to what the hymns say about Siva and asks what follows for the soul.

Meykandar later sets out the relationships of Lord, soul and bond in the twelve sutras of Sivagnana Bodham. Tirukkalirruppadiyar approaches those relationships through instruction addressed to a disciple. It is a useful companion when the words of a hymn are familiar but the doctrine carried by them is still taking shape.

A teacher in Tiruviyalur Uyyavandadeva's line gave the earlier work a hundred-verse companion.

His life is told as the tradition remembers it, in the account preserved with Tillai Chitrambalavar's old commentary. Aludaiya Deva Nayanar, a disciple of Uyyavandadeva of Tiruviyalur, came to Tirukkadavur. Recognising the readiness of a devotee there, he initiated him, taught him Tiruvundiyar, and gave him his own teacher's name: Uyyavandadeva.

The younger Uyyavandadeva travelled to Chidambaram. There he met a seeker who had taken up residence at the shrine to receive spiritual knowledge. For that disciple he unfolded Tiruvundiyar in a new work of one hundred verses.

✦The book on the steps

Some people rejected the book because of its author's caste. Others carried it to the five sacred steps before Nataraja's shrine. They placed the work there. The stone elephant at the steps raised it in its trunk and laid it at the Lord's feet. The work came to be called Tirukkalirruppadiyar: the book of the sacred elephant steps.

The story joins the work's name to its reception. Those who objected had looked at the author's social standing. The book was carried before the Lord to whom its teaching belonged.

✦His time and his teachers

He is usually placed in the late 12th century, before Meykandar; 1177 CE is the customary date given for the work. The basis is the received literary chronology and the earlier succession of teachers, together with the Nayanmar narratives he uses, familiar from the age of Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam.

The two Uyyavandadevas belong to this earlier succession, rather than to the four Santana Kuravars beginning with Meykandar. Verse 3 speaks of teaching heard and passed onward; verse 96 honours Aludaiyan and names Tiruviyalur.

1. 1

   Uyyavandadeva of Tiruviyalur

   Composes Tiruvundiyar

2. 2

   Aludaiya Deva Nayanar

   Receives it and teaches it onward

3. 3

   Uyyavandadeva of Tirukkadavur

   Expands it as Tirukkalirruppadiyar

Uyyavandadeva Nayanar of Tirukkadavur · All the poets and teachers ›

One hundred venbas follow the movement of Tiruvundiyar, with several verses often opening one brief saying.

The main work has 100 venbas. Each has four lines: the first three carry four metrical units each, and the last line carries three. The fixed shape holds questions, explanations and images together without the play-song's repeated refrain.

The movement is continuous. It opens with Ammai-Appar, Siva as mother and father, then the transmission of teaching and the coming of the guru. Worship and inward practice follow. Near the close, the teacher speaks of Siva's relation to souls, remembers the grace that reached him, and offers his gratitude.

✦Read the two works together

These selected pairs show how a short saying becomes a longer meditation. They are reading connections, rather than separate chapters of the book.

Tiruvundiyar remains the companion throughout. The additional space lets Tirukkalirruppadiyar ask how a statement is lived, as well as what it means.

Siva comes as guru so that the soul can receive what its own instruments cannot give it.

✦Verse 4: the formless Dancer comes

Tiruvundiyar, verse 1, says that the reality no one could know as formless came in a form and gave itself. Tirukkalirruppadiyar 4 names the purpose of that coming: the removal of Anavam, the root impurity that constricts the soul's knowing.

The guru's human presence makes the teaching hearable. The Lord's grace makes it liberating. The verse brings those together: the Dancer of the Hall has come to the disciple's world without being confined to the body through which He teaches.

✦Verse 6: sea water and thirst

The next question concerns study. Can reading the Sastras alone give what the true guru's instruction gives? Verse 6 answers with thirst and sea water.

Study gives words, distinctions and a direction for attention. The guru addresses the soul that is using those words. This expands Tiruvundiyar, verse 2: the old habit is overcome through a changed way of abiding, rather than through restless effort alone.

Sivagnana Bodham, sutra 8, later explains why the Lord comes as guru when the soul is ready. Tiruvarutpayan develops the relation between grace, the teacher and the soul's knowing. Tirukkalirruppadiyar makes the need felt through a bodily fact: thirst remains until water can actually be received.

The outward act of worship becomes a path to freedom when the heart enters it.

✦Verse 52: what only Kannappar and Siva know

Verse 51 repeats the opening words of Tiruvundiyar, verse 26, about thoughts directed inward and outward falling quiet. It then addresses the disciple through knowing and through love. Verse 52 turns to Kannappar, taking up Manikkavasagar's words in Tiruvasagam, Tirukkothumbi, verse 4.

Kannappar's actions can be narrated. The love in which he offered them cannot be measured by an onlooker. The verse asks us to distinguish knowledge of an act from knowledge of the heart that performed it.

Kalahasti, the setting of Kannappar's love: The Pancha Bhoota Sthalams.

✦Verse 55: love and the fruit of worship

Verses 53–56 open out Tiruvundiyar, verse 27, on bondage loosening when the soul stands in awakened knowing. They bring that freedom into acts of love. Verse 55 asks what bathing in sacred waters, meditation and offering flowers accomplish when love is absent.

The verse brings knowing into devotion. The soul no longer stands apart from its love of the Lord, claiming its action and attainment as its own. Love turns it towards the Lord whose presence already sustains it. Worship, meditation and knowledge belong to that movement together.

Earlier, verses 16–21 distinguish ordinary acts of service from the demanding acts remembered in saints' lives. Their force lies in the devotee's surrender. These narratives call for understanding the love they express; they do not set extreme acts as a daily discipline to imitate.

Sivagnana Bodham, sutras 11–12, brings knowledge to unfailing love, the company of devotees and temple worship. Tiruvarutpayan unfolds love in the soul's reception of grace. Tirukkalirruppadiyar adds a question to carry into worship: how much of the heart has entered the act?

Grace brings Siva intimately present without turning the soul into the Lord by nature.

✦Verse 92: the tree and what grows upon it

Tiruvundiyar, verse 40, says that the Lord becomes this soul through His grace, while the soul remains the soul. Tirukkalirruppadiyar 92 repeats that distinction and adds a living image.

The surrounding verses concern the Lord's coming as guru. Verse 91 says the disciple recognises the teacher as Siva; verse 92 guards the meaning of that recognition. Siva's gracious presence does not make an individual independently possess the Lord's nature and powers.

The same distinction governs release. Siddhanta calls the inseparable relation Advaitam: the soul knows and enjoys Siva through grace, with its bondage overcome. Its separate claim to mastery falls away. Its existence as the receiving soul remains.

✦Freedom lived as service

Verse 98 says that even if release and bliss come at once, the speaker remains in service to the Lord and His consort. Verse 99 brings that service among those who know Him. The work's closing gratitude grows from this dependence, rather than from a claim to have outgrown the giver.

Sivagnana Bodham, sutras 10–12, develops this as the Lord's service, unfailing love and worship among devotees. Sivaprakasam gives a fuller account of the soul's changing conditions and its freedom. Tirukkalirruppadiyar keeps the relationship before us through the guru, the tree image and the voice of gratitude.

The work lives through paired reading, commentary and spoken exposition.

Recorded Tamil expositions by Siva Saurirajan and Seegampatti Ramalingam make the hundred verses available for listening and sustained study. A listener can pause at a verse, read its words and return to the corresponding saying in Tiruvundiyar.

The two works also have a history of being read together with commentary. Tillai Chitrambalavar's old commentary preserves their teaching succession. K. Vellaivarananar's Tiruvundiyar–Tirukkalirruppadiyar, Mulamum Uraiyum places the brief verses and their expansion beside one another.

✦A way to read and practise

1. Read Tiruvundiyar 1 and Tirukkalirruppadiyar 4–5 together. Attend to why the Lord comes as teacher.
2. Read Tirukkalirruppadiyar 55 before worship. Let its question about love enter an ordinary offering or act of service.
3. Read Tiruvundiyar 40 and Tirukkalirruppadiyar 92 together. Return to verses 98–99 to see how freedom is lived in service.

These are ways of attending to the text. The work gives an orientation for study and worship, rather than a timetable for attainment.

Read the hundred venbas beside Tiruvundiyar, with a commentary close at hand.

✦The Tamil text and its explanations

• Project Madurai: Tirukkalirruppadiyar and Tiruvundiyar, the Tamil text used for the five quotations.
• Shaivam: complete Tamil text and recorded expositions, including the series by Siva Saurirajan and Seegampatti Ramalingam.
• Tillai Chitrambalavar's old commentary, read with the companion texts; its account of the teachers and the elephant steps is preserved in the later combined commentary.
• K. Vellaivarananar, Tiruvundiyar–Tirukkalirruppadiyar, Mulamum Uraiyum: the opening explanation of their relationship.
• Ranganathan Balasubramanian, The Tirukkalirruppatiyar: Transition from Bhakti to Caiva Cittantam Philosophy, an English translation study, McGill University, 2007; also catalogued in PhilPapers.

✦Continue through the Sastras

Return to Tiruvundiyar for the sayings the work expands. Read Sivagnana Bodham for their later arrangement as doctrine and argument, Unmai Vilakkam for the tattvas and five letters, Sivaprakasam for the soul's conditions and ripening, and Tiruvarutpayan for grace and the guru.