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thiruppavai day sixteen song sixteen

From the Bhakti List Archives

Ramani Naidu • December 30, 2002 


THIRUPPAVAI - DAY SIXTEEN - SONG SIXTEEN

Transliteration

nAyakanAy ninRa nanthakopanutaiya
kOyil kAppOnE kotith thOnRum thOrana
vAyil kAppOnE manikkathavam thaL thiRavAy
Ayar cirumiyarOmukku aRaipaRai
mAyan manivannan nennalE vAy nErnthAn
thUyOmAy vanthOm thuyiLezap patuvan
vAyal munnam munnam mARRAthE ammA nI
nEya nilaikkathavam nIkkElOrempAvAy.

Translation

Guard at the gates of Nantakopan, our Lord!
Guard at the doors next to the flagstaff!
Unbar the decorated doors.
The inscrutable Manivannan has already promised us
The proceeds of the pavai.
We have assembled in all purity
To wake him up with our songs.
DonÂ’t keep on questioning us, dear.
Throw open the hospitable doors.

As has been stated earlier, with the fifteenth song, a phase of pavai comes
to a close and with the sixteenth song, the next phase begins. Between the
two songs, the maids take bath and wear the vaishnava marks. They also
become pure of heart.

Cleanliness at the physical level and purity at the spiritual level are at
one and the same time an achievement and a qualification. It enables the
maids to demand admittance into the abode of the Divine as we understand
from the sixteenth song.

This purity needs an explanation. It can best be understood in the context
of Nammalvar’s songs. ‘mananaka malam ara malar micai elutarum’ is a line in
the second song of Tiruvaymoli by Nammalvar. When God makes his presence
felt in the mind, it is cleansed of all its impurities.
nALum ninRu atum nam pazamaiyamkotu vinaiyutanE
mALumOr kuRaivillai mananaka malmaRak kazuvi
naLum thiruvutaiyatikaLtham nalam kazal vananki
mALum Oritatththilum vanakkotu vAzvathu vaLame.

When each day we cleanse the mind of its impurities and worship the feet of
the Divine, the cruel effects of fate are nullified. To live so is to live
this life valorously.

Thus purity is a state of preparedness to receive divine grace. The present
experience of rapturous communion with God in the temple provides the basis
of hope for the future redemption. Though GodÂ’s grace is extended as an
unmerited benevolence, the soul has to achieve a certain poise that is
called purity. In such a poise, the human self is to express the life of the
soul, the godly life, and is not to engage in the egoistic satisfaction of
desires. Body and soul are not to be antagonistic to each other, competing
for the life of the human. Rather they are to become one harmonious unity,
as the life of God is lived out through the totality of human life. Thus the
maids qualify themselves as those who have cultivated devotion to god and
replaced an inferior life with a superior one.

The idea of achieved purity is to be found in Saiva Siddhantha also. In
fact, there is a beautiful metaphor that explains the point. Life is like a
pond in which moss is so overgrown that the water never shows to the eyes.
Throw a stone into the pond and the water is to be seen for a brief moment
only to be held away from sight again by the moss coming together. The stone
thrown into the waters overgrown with moss is bhakthi and what is revealed
is the soul in its essence.

Curiously, there is a Sivan temple at Erramannur in Kerala. The devotees who
go to the temple are not supposed to pray for anything in particular. The
mood should be one of preparedness to give up all of the self and become
pure enough to gain admittance into the abode of God.

The guards at the gate and the doors know that the maids are matured enough
in spiritual cultivation. And yet, like masters in spiritual cultivation,
they seem to delay entrance of the maids into the temple. Krishna was being
brought up in the context of the atrocious days of the reign of Kamsa. That
in effect is the binding confinements of bodily existence in which the
devotees live. Therefore the maids have to assure the guards that they are
not the evil forces like Surpanakai or Bhutanai. They identify themselves as
the innocent maids of Ayppati. – ayar cirumiyarom. They also refer to the
promise of GodÂ’s grace in terms of the proceeds of the pavai. They identify
their mission with waking up God with their songs.

Thus the song is the dramatisation of a situation of gaining admittance into
the abode of God, the Divine presence.







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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