Knowledge of the Self

Thiruppallāṇḍu & Periyāzhvār Thirumozhi

Periyāzhvār was a humble gardener of Srivilliputhur who wove garlands for the Lord each day. When he was honoured before a king, his first instinct was not pride but fear — fear that the world's evil eye might fall on his beloved God. So he sang the Thiruppallāṇḍu, a blessing upon the Lord himself: “Many, many years to you!” It is the rare hymn where the devotee, like a doting parent, worries for the safety of the Divine. The Periya Thirumozhi that follows watches Krishna grow up through a mother's eyes — his cradle, his mischief, his first steps.

Thiruppāvai

Āṇḍāḷ, the only woman among the Alvars, was found as a baby in a garden of tulasi and raised by Periyāzhvār. She refused every earthly suitor, declaring she would marry none but the Lord himself. In the Thiruppāvai she imagines herself and her friends as cowherd girls of Gokula, rising before dawn in the cold month of Mārgazhi to bathe in the river and wake the sleeping Lord with song. Thirty verses, sung to this day at dawn through that whole month, turn a simple village vow into one of the most beloved poems of devotion.

Mudhal Thiruvandhādhi

The first of the three earliest Alvars. Tradition tells that Poigai, Bhūtham and Pey took shelter from a storm in a tiny doorway at Thirukkovilur, one by one, until there was no room even to stand — and felt a fourth presence press in among them. It was the Lord himself. In the dark, Poigai “lit a lamp” of words: “The earth is my lamp, the wide sea its ghee, the blazing sun its flame.” So begins this hundred-verse hymn, each verse linked to the next by its closing word (anthādhi).

Irandām Thiruvandhādhi

The second of the three. Where Poigai lit a lamp of the elements, Bhūtham Āzhvār lights a lamp of love itself: “Love is the vessel, longing the ghee, the melting mind the wick — I lit this bright lamp for the Lord.” His hundred linked verses sing of a God who can only be reached through the heart's own warmth.