Tirumankai Alvar's eighth-century magnum opus, the Periya Tirumoli, consists of 1084 quatrains of Tamil verse which focus predominantly on sacred sites devoted to the god Visnu, depicting landscapes and temple towns with superb imagery, animation and almost tangible verisimilitude, affording the reader with the experience of a mental pilgrimage. This publication provides the full metrical Tamil text, a transliterated version indicating word boundaries, and an English translation that tightly adheres to the original as much as possible, but also endeavours to provide a pleasant poetic experience for the reader. Ample annotations offer insight into grammar, prosody, mythology, and religious content, with further details in appendices on grammatical and prosodic features, episodic content and on the sacred sites.
Le Periya Tirumoli, œuvre majeure de Tirumankai Alvar du VIIIe siecle, se compose de 1084 quatrains en vers tamoul portant sur des sites sacres dedies au dieu Visnu, decrivant les paysages et les villes-temples avec une imagerie et une animation exceptionnelles et une vraisemblance presque tangible, procurant ainsi au lecteur l'experience d'un pelerinage mental. Cette publication fournit le texte tamoul metrique complet, une version translitteree precisant les limites des mots, et une traduction anglaise qui respecte autant que possible la langue originale, tout en s'efforcant d'offrir au lecteur une experience poetique agreable. De nombreuses annotations eclairent la grammaire, la prosodie, la mythologie et le contenu religieux. Des details supplementaires sur la grammaire, le contenu episodique et les sites sacres sont presentes en annexe.
Lynn Ate is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Asia Program of Washington State University, having completed a PhD in South Asian Language and Literature, University of Wisconsin Madison (1978). Her previous publications include Tirumankai Alvar's Five Shorter Works: Experiments in Literature (IFP/EFEO, 2019) and Yasoda's Songs to her Playful Son, Kyrna: Periyalvar's 9th century Tamil Tirumoli (SASA Books, 2011).
Lynn Ate est membre adjointe de la faculte du programme Asie de l'Universite de l'Etat de Washington, suite à un doctorat en langue et liserature nud asiatiques, Universite du Wisconsin- Madison (1978). Parmi ses precedentes publicutions, on compte Tirumankai Alvar's Five Shorter Works: Experiments in Literature. (IFP/EFEO, 2019) et Yasoda's Songs to her Playful Son, Krsna: Periyalvar's 9th century Tamil Tirumoli (SASA Books, 2011).
My initial attraction to Tirumarikai AlvAr's Periya Tirumoli stems from its display of many and varied types of Tamil meters, a particular interest of mine. With numerous verses written in unambiguously patterned viruttam meters which appeared during the Bhakti Period, it is possible to identify anomalous feet in the text which, more often than not, are indicative of changes in the language from the Late Old Tamil of the original text to the modern Tamil of the published editions which I used. With each line in the 1084-quatrain Periya Tirumoli needing to be scanned and set into metric feet, the text provided much interesting information on prosody and grammar, some of which appears in Appendix 1 of this volume and some of which drives my further research.
As I read, it soon became apparent that the AlvAr was a master craftsman at creating vivid descriptions that breathe life into the places he visited in his spiritual journey. With carefully curated language, he conjures images and impressions with specificity and precision that immerse the audience in a total experience of a sacred site. Sensory details of sight, smell, and sound fully engage the mind; use of dynamic verbs, as well as adjectives, places the listener directly into the life of a temple community. These features together create such an enticing appeal to join him in his travels to the sacred places of Tamil Nadu that I found him impossible to resist.
Tirumankai Alvar 'the poet-saint of sacred Mankai' called himself Kaliyan 'the warrior,' king of the land of Ali (PT 7.6.10) whose spear is covered with the flesh of his foes (PT 3.3.10) and who is skilled with battle elephants who subdue his enemies (PT 5.8.10). He depicted his early military life as one of depravity, 'thinking only of the embraces given by young women' (PT 1.1.1), hunting and killing animals (PT 1.6.6), slaying people (PT 1.9.3), and committing a variety of 'hell-bent sins' (PT 1.9.2). Realizing he had been a fool (PT 1.6.1), he decided to give up his worldly life (PT 6.2.5), leaving his military career to devote himself to religious and intellectual pursuits, and ultimately reinventing himself as 'Kaliyan, master of artful literature' (PT 9.6.10).
Among Tirumankai Alvar's six 8th c. CE compositions, the Periya Tirumoli is his obvious masterwork. Through it, he exhibits his considerable literary skill in 1084 quatrains employing varied lines from three to eight feet in length, using twelve separately defined meters in a total of 52 different metric patterns and structures. And thus it is periya 'great' in size, interest, and appeal. That it is a tirumoli 'sacred speech' not only acknowledges its devotional content, but defines its configuration: a text devoted to the god Narayana in a series of decades (tirumolis with a small 't') within which the quatrains are linked by a repeated phrase, refrain, or theme, all having the same meter, and having as the final quatrain of each decade a signature verse in which the name of the poet and often the location of his residence are stated, along with the religious benefits of reciting or listening to the verses. This text constitutes one-quarter of the Nalayira Tivviyappirapantam 'The Four Thousand Sacred Compositions' (hereafter Pirapantam), a collection of 6th to 10th c. CE Vaisnava devotional Tamil texts of twelve Alvar poet-saints. Though the Periya Tirumoli's quatrain configuration is similar to a great many other verses in the Pirapantam, and though it shares the title Tirumoli with three other texts of similar structure, it makes its mark in its zealous focus on sacred places in South India.
The concept of 'place' shapes the Periya Tirumoli (PT) at multiple levels. The vast majority of tirumoli decades are devoted to a divya desam 'sacred place' with the name of the site repeated in each of ten verses, providing internal coherence within the structured set. At a macro level, the tirumolis are arranged by place, charting Tirumankai Alvar's pilgrimage from one sacred site to the next, starting geographically in North India and quickly progressing south, with many tirumolis being devoted to religious sites in the Tamil region, in particular, to places in the Cola country of the poet's birth. At the deepest level within each verse, the concept of and even the word 'place' (Tamil itam) play a central and technical function. The most common structure of a fourline tirumoli verse consists of 1) two lines referring to the deity with a description of the deity's divine nature or a retelling of a mythological episode, and 2) two lines naming a geographic place itam or city ur, vividly and tangibly describing its features and characteristics; with the word 'place' as a central fulcrum, these 'couplets' are then equated. For example:
My heart, worship Manimața Temple in Nankur where fisher girls with bangled arms barter at [each] housefront, Arriving in streets surrounded by mansions with banners that play in the broad moonlight, [where] they call, "Excellent pearls for white paddy," The place of the lord who, having entered the spring[-fed] pond where lotuses stand, their bud knots loosened, Put his feet on the head of an unsubmissive serpent, which spit poison, playing vigorously so that it yielded.
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