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Thirumalai Anandanpillai • March 21, 1997 


It is rather unfortunate that some members of the group chose to
interpret my words in a totally biased & sectarian manner.

Neither do I have the intention of denying the existence of the
vadakalai
school, nor did I 'carefully choose' words to do the same. 
All I was doing was translating PB Annangaraachaariyaar's words.

Here are the actual tamizh words of PBA:

'srivaishnavaachaaryakaLin sampradaayaththiRkE thennaachaarya
sampradaayamenRu peyar. srutikaL paanYcharaatra samhithaikaL,
smrithikaL, ithihaasa puraaNankaL, aazhwaar aruLichcheyalkaL
enRa palavakaippatta pramaaNankaLuL aazhwaar aruLicheyaLkaLaana
divyap prabhandhankaLukkE adhisayiththa praamaaNyamuLLathenRu
koLLupavarkaLE sri vaishnavarkaLenpaar. annavarkaLayE ikkaaraNam
paRRiyE thennaachaaryarkaLenpadhu.'

Based on the above words of PBA, my understanding is that the word
'thennachaarya sampradaayam' is a term referring to the SV sampradaayam
itself. Therefore there is no question of 'trying to deny the existence
of the vadakalai school' or 'claiming to be the only SV sampradaayam'.

Let me give you an example. I hope Sri. Sadagopan will forgive me  
for using his postings as an example. Sri. Sadagopan normally ends 
most of his postings with salutations to the person whose works he 
is describing, for example if he writes about thondaradippodi 
aazhwaar's works, he ends his postings with
thondaradippodi aazhwaar thiruvadigaLE saranam.
Now he is writing about Yatiraaja Vimsati. He is ending his postings
with 'Aazhwaar, aachaaryan thiruvadigaLE saranam'.Should I interpret
this to mean that he is not paying respect to MaNavaaLa MaamunigaL
because he did not end his posting with 'MaNavaaLa maamunigaL
thiruvadigaLE saranam'? Obviously not. But if I were to apply a similar
logic to what some members of the group applied to my posting, and try
to read between the words with some bias,  I might have to think that
Sri.Sadagopan is not paying his respect to MaNavaaLa maamunigaL. Before
someone jumps at me saying that I am  trying to accuse Sri.Sadagopan of
disrespect to MaNavaaLa MaamunigaL, let me say this - I am not in any
way trying to cast aspersions on Sri.Sadagopan. I am just using the 
above situation as an example.

I request the members of the group not to arrive at some conclusions
based on a skewed interpretation of what is said. The first thing that
I would do is to ask the person who wrote the article for a 
clarification before accusing him/her with 'trying to deny the existence
of the vadakalai tradition' or 'claiming to be the only SV traditon',
etc..

Varadhan