The Tirumurai in the Sastras

The Sastras do not leave the hymns behind; they think with them.

Across thirteen of the fourteen Sastras, the research behind this site has gathered 102 places where a Sastra meets a Tirumurai verse. This is the set collected here, not a full count: a close reader will find more. Only one Sastra, the six short verses of Unmai Neri Vilakkam, has none in this set. Each link is one of three kinds:

A link says that the two texts meet. It does not by itself prove that one author borrowed from the other: both may draw on a shared language of devotion. Where a later commentator is the one who points a link out, the full list says so.

Three times a Sastra takes Manikkavasagar's words almost exactly, and each time the words carry the argument.

Thirsty in the flood. In Tiruvarutpayan, couplet 38, Umapathi describes the soul that has grace all around it and does not drink: வெள்ளத்துள் நாவற்றி, parched in the middle of the flood. The words are Manikkavasagar's, from the Neethal Vinnappam: வெள்ளத்துள் நாவற்றி ஆங்கு உன் அருள் பெற்றுத். The saint's confession becomes a doctrine of why grace can be present and still not received.

No love like Kannappar's. In Tirukkalirruppadiyar, verse 52, the Sastra says கண்ணப்ப னொப்பதோ ரன்பின்மை, and announces that it is quoting: "since it was said". The source is Tiruvasagam 8.10.4: கண்ணப்பன் ஒப்பதோர் அன்பின்மை கண்டபின். Manikkavasagar, seeing that he has no love like Kannappar's, is still taken by the Lord; the Sastra makes it a teaching on what love is.

Body, life and awareness. In Sankarpa Nirakaranam, section 17, a debater says Siva is ஊனாய் உயிராய் உணர்வாய், body, life and awareness: the exact words of the Tiru Ammanai (Tiruvasagam 8.16). Here the quotation is in an opponent's mouth, and Umapathi has to show what the hymn means. That debate has a page of its own below.

Tirumular's verses already speak in doctrine, and the Sastras build on them more than on any other Tirumurai.

Of all the Tirumurai, the Tirumantiram is nearest to the Sastras: it already names Pati, Pasu and Pasam, the malas, the guru and the five acts. The Sastras return to it again and again.

• The dance. Unmai Vilakkam reads the five acts in Nataraja's form: creation in the drum, preservation in the hand, withdrawal in the fire, concealment and grace in the feet. Tirumantiram 2799 had said the same: அரன்துடி தோற்றம் அமைத்தல் திதியாம். All eight of Unmai Vilakkam's links are to the Tirumantiram, on the dance and the five letters.
• The three realities. Tiruvarutpayan and Sivaprakasam both build on Tirumantiram 115, பதியினைப் போற்பசு பாசம் அனாதி: soul and bond are beginningless, like the Lord. Sivaprakasam adds its own image, the paddy grain whose husk and sprout are there from the start.
• The sunstone. Tirumantiram 117 compares grace to the sun and the sunstone: the stone gives fire only in the sun's presence. Tiruvarutpayan, couplet 50, uses the same image for the guru: liberating knowledge does not arise without him.
• The potter. Tirumantiram 443 speaks of the potter, his wheel and the clay. Sivagnana Siddhiyar takes the same three to separate the Lord as maker, His power as the instrument, and Maya as the material.
• The guru who purifies. Tirumantiram 1578, சுத்த சிவன்குரு வாய்வந்து தூய்மைசெய், the pure Siva comes as guru and purifies, is echoed in Tiruvundiyar, Tirukkalirruppadiyar and Sivaprakasam.

The Tiruvasagam is the hymn the Sastras hear most often, above all in Umapathi.

Many of the echoes are of a few Tiruvasagam lines that the Sastra authors evidently carried with them.

• "You gave Yourself and took me." Koyil Tiruppathigam 8.22.10, தந்ததுன் தன்னைக் கொண்டதென் றன்னைச், is heard in Tiruvundiyar and twice in Arulnandi's Irupa Irupathu, which goes one step further: the Lord gives Himself, and gives me also to myself.
• The formless One comes as guru. Pottri Tiruagaval, அருபரத்து ஒருவன் அவனியில் வந்து குருபரன் ஆகி, stands behind Tiruvarutpayan 43, Tirukkalirruppadiyar 90, Potrippahrodai and Nenju Vidu Thoothu. It is the hymn line closest to the Sastras' doctrine of the guru.
• A life from the womb. The same Pottri Tiruagaval follows the soul from the mother's womb through the dangers of birth; Umapathi's Potrippahrodai follows the same road, with an image of its own, dew on the grass.
• The cord and the house of flesh. Sivapuranam's அறம்பாவம் என்னும் அரும் கயிற்றால் கட்டி, bound by the cord of merit and sin, returns in Potrippahrodai's "strong cord of attachment".
• The undi refrain. Tiruvundiyar, the oldest Sastra, shares its play-song refrain with Manikkavasagar's own Tiruvundiyar (Tiruvasagam 8.14), turned to doctrine.

The Sastras point to the saints' lives as proof that the doctrine is true.

Tirukkalirruppadiyar argues with lives as much as with words. To show what love and surrender are, it recalls the saints one after another: Kannappar's love; Sundarar asking the Lord to give back the child the crocodile had swallowed (Tevaram 7.92.4); Chandesvara; Siruthondar; Arivattaya; Kalikkamar; Murkka; Appar carried across the sea on the stone he was tied to (4.11.1); the Lord on horseback for Manikkavasagar (8.37.1). Each is a story the reader already knows from the Tirumurai and the Periya Puranam.

Sankarpa Nirakaranam uses one of these stories in a sharper way. A school claims that the freed soul gains Siva's own powers. Umapathi answers with Sundarar and the child: the saint did not raise the child himself; he asked, and the Lord gave. The life becomes evidence that the soul receives, and does not become, the Lord.

Sivagnana Siddhiyar meets the Periya Puranam in another way: the commentary on Sakkiya Nayanar's story (Periya Puranam 3636) itself quotes Siddhiyar's verse on the Lord standing behind every faith.

In Sankarpa Nirakaranam both sides cite the saints, and the debate turns on what the hymns mean.

The most striking use of the hymns comes in the last of the Sastras. In Sankarpa Nirakaranam, section 17, a school that holds everything to be Siva makes its case almost entirely from the Tirumurai. It quotes Manikkavasagar's நாம்ஒழிந்து சிவமான, "we ceased and became Siva", and நான்கெட்ட, "the I was lost"; Appar's fruit, flavour and the one who tastes (6.94.5); Karaikkal Ammaiyar's knower and known (Tirumurai 11); and the Tiru Ammanai's "body, life and awareness". Nine hymns in a row.

Umapathi does not reject the hymns. He re-reads them. Sambandar had sung that the Lord makes those who reach Him தாமே தானாக, "they themselves become That" (1.126.7). Section 18 takes the one word தாமே, "they themselves", and finds four truths in it:

1. 1

   Not perished

   The ones who reach Him are still there to be spoken of.

2. 2

   Not become that very reality

   They are "they themselves", not the Lord.

3. 3

   Not apart from it

   Nothing stands between them and Him.

4. 4

   Not separated

   The union is real and lasting.

The loss of "I" in the hymns, he argues, is the end of the soul's claim to stand on its own, not the end of the soul. The work closes on another Tiruvasagam line, சென்றுசென் றணுவாய்த் தேய்ந்துதேய்ந் தொன்றாம், "dwindling and dwindling to an atom, becoming one" (8.22.7), and reads it the same way.

The full list keeps every link, with the Tamil on both sides and the basis of each.

• Every link: the Tirumurai and the Sastras: all 102 links collected here, filtered by Sastra, by Tirumurai, or by kind, each with the Tamil phrase on both sides, the shared teaching, and the commentator who points it out where there is one.
• Siddhanta in the Tirumurai: the other direction, the doctrine already in the hymns.
• The Sastra pages themselves, from Tiruvundiyar to Sankarpa Nirakaranam.