A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s2.23

c19.s2.23

Vaishnava religious literature during this period was mostly composed in Sanskrit. It is possible that the last two āḻvārs lived far into this period, but the ācāryas who succeeded them, Nāthamuni, the redactor of the 4,000 hymns, his grandson Āḷavandār or Yāmunācārya and the great Rāmānuja himself wrote almost all their works in Sanskrit, a rather strange transformation for a movement which began with a more popular appeal than Śaivism. Even the commentators on the early Tamil hymns like Piḷḷān, the author of the shortest extant commentary on Tiruvāymoḻi, Nañjiyar, Nambiḷḷai, Periyavāccān and Vaḍakkuttiruvidippiḷḷai, all authors of more elaborate commentaries, developed a quaint style, *manipravāla* (lit. crystal and coral), loaded with Sanskrit words not easily understood outside the narrow learned circle. The centum of verses in praise of Rāmānuja, the *Rāmānuja-nūṛṛandādi*, by his disciple Tiruvarangattu Amudanār is a conspicuous exception; it is a poem in simple devotional style held in great esteem to this day and often repeated as a daily prayer; the central idea of the poem is that there is no way to salvation without the grace of the guru.