A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s2.11.2

c19.s2.11.2

The daughter claimed that the Lord of Śrīrangam was her lover, and her poems are suffused by her passionate longing for companionship with the Lord; she is reputed to have been accepted as his bride, and her poems, with her father's are placed first in the canon. The cycle of Krishna stories is most effectively used to rouse the devotion of the hearer, and to a Hindu the repeated allusions to the tales in different settings constitute not the least attractive feature of her work. The hymn of Āṇḍāḷ which starts with the words vāraṇam-āyiram (' one thousand elephants '), telling of her dream-marriage with Vishnu, is sung at all Vaishnava Brahmin marriages to this day. Tiruppāṇ and Toṇḍar-aḍip-poḍi may be placed next; the former has only one hymn while the latter has two, Tirumālai and Tiruppaḷḷiyeḻucci, to his credit. The last-named presupposes the existence of the order of worship in temples as the offering of royal honour, rājopacāra, to the deity; it is a song meant to rouse the god from his sleep at break of day. Tirumangai, Toṇḍar-aḍip-poḍi and Kulaśekhara are said to have been contemporaries, but we may well doubt this. Kulaśekhara calls himself king of Kongar, Kūḍal and Kōḷi in his poems. He was the author of a notable devotional poem in Sanskrit, Mukundamālā, besides the 105 Tamil verses forming the Perumāḷ Tirumoḻi in the Tamil canon of the Vaishnavas. The Veḷḷāla saint Nammāḻvār, also called Śaṭhakōpa, and his Brahmin pupil Madhurakavi were the latest of the āḻvārs.