TIRUNAVUKKARASU SWAMI

(More commonly referred to as APPARSWAMI)

SAMBANDAR, whose works we have been studying, had a friend older than himself, named Appar, or Tirunavukkarasu, belonging to that Vellala caste which to this day makes a very solid element in the population of the Tamil country. Left an orphan at an early age, Appar was brought up by a loving elder sister as a pious devotee of Siva. Great was the sister's grief when Appar forsook the faith of his fathers and became a religious teacher among the Janis. But her earnest prayers at last prevailed, and Appar not only came back to Saivism himself, but was the means of reconverting to Saivism the king of his country. His full name was Tirunavukkarasu, or 'King of the Tongue', but his young friend Sambandar called him Appar, or Father, and the name stuck to him. He too wandered throughout the Tamil country, sometimes alone, sometimes in company with Sambandar, singing his way from shrine to shrine. Pictures show him holding in his hand a little tool for scraping grass, with which he used to scrape the stones of the temple courts. The Jains persecuted him, and many stories tell of his miraculous escapes from their hands.

His hymns show a truly religious nature, with a deep-rooted sense of sin and need, and an exalted joy in God. There is real critical acumen in the old epigram which represents Siva as appraising the three great writers of the Devaram, or Saivite hymn-book: "Sambandar praised himself; Sundarar praised Me for pelf; My Appar praised Me Myself."

God, the essentially unsearchable, in His grace will reveal Himself to men. (See the first of the legends told in the Introduction.) Athihai Virattanam, in the South Arcot District, is the shrine here commemorated.

25. Vishnu, spouse of Lakshmi, and four-ways-facing Brahm,
Searched the heights and depths, but Thy feet could never sec.
Yet, O only Lord, who in Athihai dost dwell,
Formless, in Thy grace, grant the sight of them to me.

The notable thing about our next verse is not so much the legend of the crushing of Ravana, who tried to storm the mountain Kailasa, where Siva had His heaven, but rather the thought of the devotee being stamped as the property of his god, a thought which recurs in other hymns. According to tradition Apparswami did receive the Hindu equivalent of St. Francis' stigmata, the mark of Siva's bull as if branded on his body. We cannot help recalling St. Paul's expression in Galatians vi. 17.

26. All other worlds his sceptre swayed,
But when Kailasa he would rule
Thy crushing foot presumption paid.
O stamp me with. Thy sacred bull,
White as Himal'ya's snowy hill.
Accent me, O our truth divine,
There where the moon outsoareth still
Groves of Tunganaimadam's shrine.

Here is the divine vision as the enraptured Saivite sees it.