Arunagirinathar: Caught on the Way Down

Thiru pugazh: sacred praise.

How many: the tradition says sixteen thousand. About thirteen hundred survive, which is still an enormous body of work, and they are sung wherever Tamil Murugan devotion exists: Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa and everywhere the Tamil diaspora went.

What makes them unlike anything else

Chandam.

And this needs explaining because it is the whole point.

Tamil poetry has metre, like every literary tradition, and the classical metres are well defined and were used for a thousand years before him.

Arunagirinathar does something else.

Each Thiruppugazh song has its own rhythmic pattern, a specific sequence of long and short syllables, often extremely intricate, and the patterns are not drawn from a standard list. He invented them.

And the songs are built rhythm first.

Which is why they are learned by chanting the rhythm before the words. Students of Thiruppugazh are taught the chandam as a pattern of syllables, often using tha na tha na style vocables, and only then are the actual words fitted to it.

And it is why they are impossible to translate. A translation gives you the content of a Thiruppugazh song and loses the entire reason it exists.

What the songs are about

Two things, alternating, and the alternation is the structure.

One. The world, described without flattery.

The body, its appetites, its decay, the pursuit of money, the pursuit of sex, the wasting of a life on things that do not last, and the poet's own record in all of it. He does not exempt himself and he is specific.

Two. And then Murugan.

The vel, the spear. The peacock. The rooster on the banner. The six houses, the arupadai veedu, which this app has entries on. Valli and Devasena. The killing of Surapadman. The teaching of the meaning of Om to his own father.

And the turn between the two is usually abrupt, and it is what gives the songs their force: forty lines of unsparing description of what a human life is actually spent on, and then the name.

His other works

Kandar Anubhuti, fifty one verses, and the most intense thing he wrote.

It is short, it is compressed, and it is recited as a practice in itself, daily, by a very large number of people. Where the Thiruppugazh is expansive, the Anubhuti is stripped: it asks, repeatedly and in different ways, for the ending of the sense of separateness.

Kandar Alangaram, a hundred and eight verses.

Kandar Andadi, a hundred verses in antadi form, where the last word of each verse begins the next, so the whole poem is a chain and the last verse returns to the first.

Vel Viruttam, Mayil Viruttam, Seval Viruttam: on the spear, the peacock and the rooster, each treated as a subject in its own right.

Thiruvaguppu: a set of songs in yet another rhythmic form.

The parrot

The other story about him, and it is very strange.

At Thiruvannamalai, at the court of the Vijayanagara governor, he was challenged by a rival named Sambandhandan, and the contest was over whose deity would manifest.

Murugan appeared, in the accounts, and Arunagirinathar was vindicated.

And then the version most told: he was asked to fetch the parijata flower, and to do it he left his body and entered a parrot, and while he was out of it his body was destroyed, so he remained in the parrot.

And there is a shrine to him at Thiruvannamalai where the parrot is part of the iconography.

How to hold that: as tradition, reported. What it is doing is marking him as somebody who did not have an ordinary end, which is the standard treatment for poets in this literature.

Where the songs are sung

• Thiruvannamalai, the Arunachaleswarar temple, where he lived
• The arupadai veedu, the six houses of Murugan: Palani, Thiruchendur, Swamimalai, Thiruparankundram, Thiruthani, Pazhamudircholai, all of which have entries in this app
• Thaipusam, wherever it is kept
• Thiruppugazh groups meet weekly in Tamil towns and in the diaspora, and they are open, and they will teach you the chandam if you show up

Before anything else: if you are having thoughts of ending your life, talk to somebody today. Tele MANAS 14416, free and twenty four hours in many Indian languages. Emergency 112. AASRA 9820466726. Vandrevala Foundation 9999666555. If somebody you know is in that state, what helps is not advice but staying with them, taking it seriously, not leaving them alone, and getting a doctor involved.

Who: Arunagirinathar, fifteenth century, of Thiruvannamalai, the greatest poet of Murugan in Tamil. His parents died when he was young and he was raised by his sister Adhi, who worked and kept the household. By the tradition's own account he spent her earnings, kept the company of courtesans, and became ill with a disease the accounts attribute to how he was living. This app does not treat illness as a moral verdict: a disease is a disease, shame about illness makes people hide symptoms and avoid doctors, and government facilities treat infections free and confidentially, with 1097 as the national helpline.

The tower: he went to the Arunachaleswarar temple at Thiruvannamalai, one of the great temples of the Tamil country and the agni sthala of the five pancha bhuta temples, climbed the gopuram named for Vallala Maharaja, and went off it. The tradition says Murugan caught him, held him, healed him, and gave him the first word of a song, Muthai tharu, which Arunagirinathar finished, and then wrote thirteen hundred more. What the story does not do matters: nobody lectures him, no accounting of his conduct is demanded, no condition is attached, and he is not required to become a better person first. He is caught, treated and handed a job, which is a good description of what a person in that state actually needs. The story is about being caught, not about jumping, and all three of the things he received are available without a tower.

The Thiruppugazh: sacred praise. The tradition claims sixteen thousand songs and about thirteen hundred survive, sung wherever Tamil Murugan devotion exists. What makes them unlike anything else is chandam: each song has its own rhythmic pattern of long and short syllables, often extremely intricate, not drawn from any standard list but invented, and the songs are built rhythm first. That is why they are learned by chanting the rhythm before the words, and why they cannot really be translated, since a translation gives the content and loses the reason the thing exists.

What the songs do: they alternate. Forty lines describing the world without flattery, the body and its appetites and decay, the pursuit of money and sex, the wasting of a life, with the poet's own record included and no exemption for himself. And then Murugan: the vel, the peacock, the rooster, the six houses, Valli and Devasena, the killing of Surapadman. The turn is abrupt and it is what gives the songs their force.

His other works: Kandar Anubhuti, fifty one compressed verses recited daily as a practice in itself; Kandar Alangaram, a hundred and eight verses; Kandar Andadi, a hundred verses in antadi form where each verse's last word begins the next and the last returns to the first; and Vel Viruttam, Mayil Viruttam and Seval Viruttam on the spear, the peacock and the rooster.

One. Nobody asked him to fix himself first.

The account has no lecture, no accounting of his conduct, no conditions and no requirement that he become a better person before being helped.

He was caught, treated, and given something to do.

Which is worth holding on to if you have ever felt that you are too far gone to begin, or that you would have to sort yourself out before you were allowed to start. The tradition's most famous account of a beginning starts at the bottom of a tower with a man who had wrecked everything.

Two. He was given the first word and had to finish the line.

Not the whole song. One phrase.

Which is the shape the tradition chose, and it is a specific claim about how help arrives: enough to start with, and then the work is yours.

Three. The rhythm carries it.

The Thiruppugazh songs are built rhythm first, in patterns he invented, and they are learned by chanting the pattern before the words are attached.

Which is a practical fact about devotion that gets underrated: the body responds to rhythm before the mind responds to content, and a tradition that has something to sing has an advantage over one that only has something to think.

Four. He does not exempt himself.

The unsparing forty lines about appetite, money, sex and the wasting of a life are in the first person. He is describing his own record, and the songs are not somebody looking down at the world.

Which is what makes the turn to Murugan land rather than sounding like a lecture.

Five. And the sister.

Adhi worked and kept the household and raised him, and he spent what she earned.

The tradition mentions her and moves on, and it should not. Somebody paid for those years, and it was her, and the poems that came out of it were made possible by a woman who is a line in the biography.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Om Saravana Bhava, or Vetrivel Muruganukku Arohara
• One Thiruppugazh, learned by rhythm first. Suri thanaya or Muthai tharu are where people usually start, and recordings are everywhere
• The Kandar Anubhuti, fifty one verses, which many people read daily and which takes a few minutes
• At Thaipusam or Karthigai Deepam, if either is yours

And once more, because it is the most important thing in this entry

If you are in the state Arunagirinathar was in, the help he received is available and it does not require a tower.

Tele MANAS 14416. Emergency 112. AASRA 9820466726. Vandrevala Foundation 9999666555.

And if it is somebody else: stay with them, take it seriously, do not leave them alone, and get a doctor.