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Re: some doubts on siRiya thirumadal

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Badrinarayanan Seshadri • March 26, 1996 


---------  Received message begins Here  ---------

Vijay Triplicane (vijayt@acuson.com) wrote:

* Sri Varadhan had brought up an interesting subject for
* discussion. Before going into the details of ninda stuthi
* and all i have a basic doubt here. can anybody please
* clarify.

[...]

* My question is this:
* 
* arraar ivaRRin idai adhanai eydhuvar      
* cheeraar irukalaiyum eythuvar.

* Doesn't this "ivaRRin idai adhanai" mean the center of
* these three which is poruL? (aRam - poruL - inbam) OR am
* i missing something????

'idai' here means 'among'. Thus "ivaRRin idai adhanai"
should read as "among these [three]" and not as "the one in
the middle".

* In the last few lines the aazhwaar even doubts the
* existence of mOksham and thereby highlights the
* significance of the archaa moorthy in this earth.  Could
* this be bcos the aazhwaar takes the role of an innocent
* bhaktha ( a girl) for whom all those concepts of mOksham
* and everything is like greek and latin and hence chooses
* the one easy maargam to reach HIM which is uncontrolled
* love towards HIM.

This is a very common motif in aazhvaar paasuram. Compare
this with 'ichchuvai thavira yaan pOy indhira lOgam aaLum
achchuvai peridhum vENdEn aranga maa nakar uLaanE' by
thoNdar adippodi aazhvaar.

* 'adhunirka
* yeraarmuyalvittu kaakkaippin povadhe?'

The two 'madal' works by thiru mangai aazhvaar are
extremely beautiful, and in fact "revolutionary" in the
sense that they were completely against the existing
thamizh tradition (aazhvaar "herself" mentions that in the
work) prompting later day thamizh grammarians to add
special categories in their book.

I eagerly look forward to Sri Sadagopan's postings on these
exquisite works from thiru mangai aazhvaar.

--badri

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S.Badrinarayanan 
Graduate Student
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University
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