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Subject: thiruppalliyelucci 3 english
Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 20:22:40 +0530
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From: "Ramani Naidu"
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THIRUPPALLIYELUCCI – DAY TWENTY THREE – SONG THREE
Translitaration
kUnina pUnkuyil kUvina koLi
kurukukaL iyampina iyampina sankam
Ovina thArakai oLi oLi uthayathu
oruppatukinRathu viruppotu namakkuth
thEva naR ceRikaLal thALinai kAttAy
thirupperunthurai uRai civaperumAnE
yAvarum aRivariyAy emakku eLiyAy
emperumAnE paLLi eLuntharulAye.
Translation
The grove-koels coo and the cocks crow;
The cranes cry and the conches boom;
The stars lack lustre and light gathers to greatness.
Pray show us Your Divine Feet!
Civaperuman of Thirupperunthurai!
The inscrutable and yet the Condescending!
Our Lord! Wake up and grace us!
The third song of the Thiruppalliyelucci has great verbal felicity. It
celebrates the condescending grace of the inscrutable God.
The tamil word that is normally used to refer to the cooing of the koel and
the crowing of the cock is the same “kUvina”. And yet in effect the
referential meanings are different. Manickavasakar seems to have become
acutely sensitive when he uses two different words in the first line of the
song - kUnina and kUvina. In the second line we see the reverse - “iyampina”
is used to refer to both the sound of the cranes and the sound of the conch.
The word used to refer to the disappearance of the stars is very curious in
context.
“Ovina” means lost their lustre in degrees. Yet more curious is the word
used to refer to the spreading of the brightness of the sun -
oruppatukinRathu.
That reminds me of “gathers to greatness” in ‘God’s Grandeur’ by Hopkins. He
speaks about how the grandeur of God gathers to greatness like the ooze of
oil crushed. When the oilseeds are crushed, in less than drops, oil is
squeezed and it gathers to greatness. So also the grandeur of God is there
to be squeezed from everything that is there in nature - that is one
interpretation given to the line from Hopkins. I had been using the Tamil
word “thiralkinrathu” to interpret it in Tamil until I read this
Thiruppalliyelucci. ‘Thiralkirathu’ is a word used to refer to the way in
which butter gathers to greatness as milk is churned. Perhaps,
‘oruppatukinrathu’ is a better word in Tamil to explain what Hopkins meant.
The koel is in the grove. The cock is on the rooftop. The cranes are in the
waterbeds. The conches boom from the temples. The stars are losing their
lustre in the sky. The brightness of the sun keeps spreading through the sky
and the earth. When one tries to visualise the whole scene, one could see
how the song in a sweep takes in the entire universe. As the eyes see and as
the ears hear, we realise a universal scene. Such is the verbal felicity of
the song.
Tamil literature is known for its nature description but with a difference.
Nature is described not as an entity in itself. It is always seen as
providing a scene for human actions. They are in the nature of dramatic
monologues but the parallel stops with the nomenclature. They are not the
expressions of out of the way psychological phenomena which need a
justification as in Browning’s dramatic monologues. They are in the nature
of talks addressed to a listener or a few listeners or in the form of
responses to questions. Such speeches are always placed in a backdrop of
nature. The speaker in one of the songs in the Love Poetry of Cankam Period
known as AkananURu is on his way back to his house which he had left for
purposes of business.
He had asked his charioteer to hurry back home. As the chariot speeds
towards his house and his thoughts speed faster than the chariot, the
speaker is lost in thoughts about the bliss of union with his wife. But
then, he has not lost himself so much as to fail to notice something
happening in the world of nature. The bells on his chariot ring so loud
because of the speed of the travel that the bees by the roadside hovering
around flowers are disturbed and they fly frantically. So he asks his
charioteer to stop the vehicle and remove all the tongues of the bells. Such
is the nature of Cankam poetry and nature in it.
In the general context of such sensitivity to nature, the third song of
Thiruppalliyelucci falls very much in place.
As the light and sound indicate the dawn, the pavai maids pray to Siva to
wake up and grace them. The inscrutability apart, God has chosen to be
reachable and realisable to the maids and other devotees. Such condescending
grace of God is celebrated in the song and the song concludes with the
prayer to wake and bless them with the grace of His presence among them.
Thayumanavar would ask, “How is it we seek You here and there and regret
when You are everywhere?” The Saiva pantheon would declare that He is the
One who so prevails everywhere that one cannot say that He is here or there.
He is spread everywhere as a bright, perfect Being. The maids are aware of
the nature of such existence of God and yet declare that He has condescended
to be such as to be available to them. The firmness with which the
declaration is made by the maids makes one wonder about the firmness of
their conviction.
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