Tiruppavai

The story

The Tiruppavai is a set of thirty Tamil Hindu hymns attributed to the female poet-saint Andal, one of the twelve poet-saints called the Alvars. Its stanzas, called pasurams, praise Perumal, that is Vishnu, and the work forms part of the Nalayira Divya Prabandham, the collection of the Alvars' works and an important part of the devotional literature of Tamil. The last stanza names the poet as the daughter of Vishnucitthar, Periyalvar, who made this garland of thirty pasurams.

The hymns belong to the pāvai genre of songs. The genre grew from a Tamil tradition in which unmarried girls performed rites and kept a vow (vrata) through the month of Margazhi; the vow is already mentioned in the late-Sangam anthology Paripatal. Andal speaks in the guise of a cowherd girl who means to keep such a vow in order to marry Vishnu and stay in his company for ever, and who calls her friends to join her. Each day of Margazhi takes its name from one of the thirty verses.

In the Sri Vaishnava tradition the hymns are read as carrying a hidden teaching. Andal's call to her friends to wake and seek Krishna is held to contain the essence of the tradition's three basic mantras, the Tirumantram, the Dvayam and the Charama Sloka, and the 27th pasuram is read as teaching the need for an acharya, a teacher, to receive them. The tradition calls the Tiruppavai the seed of all the Vedas, whose meaning only a teacher well versed in them can unfold. Later authors added three taniyans, standalone verses that introduce the text: one in Sanskrit by Parashara Bhattar and two in Tamil by Uyyakondar.

The hymns travelled beyond Tamil. Mullapudi Venkataramana translated them into Telugu as Melupalukula Melukolupu. In Thailand an annual Giant Swing ceremony called Triyampavai-Tripavai was held in the major cities until 1935, when it was abolished for safety reasons. Its name came from two Tamil hymns, the Thiruvempavai, a Shaivite hymn by Manikkavacakar, and the Tiruppavai. Tamil verses of the Thiruvempavai are known to have been recited at the ceremony and at the coronation of the Thai king; according to T. P. Meenakshisundaram, the name suggests that the Tiruppavai may have been recited as well.

What it says

The poet, speaking as a cowherd girl, wakes her friends before dawn to keep the month's vow together: to bathe, to give up comforts, and to go to the god's house and wake him with their songs. The early stanzas promise rain and plenty to those who pray, the middle ones draw the morning life of a village, and the last ones ask for the god's grace and a lasting place in his service. The mood is joyful, eager and devout.

The words