Kulasekhara Alvar: The King Who Wanted to Be a Step

The best known decad of the Perumal Thirumozhi is the fourth, and it is one of the most striking passages in the Prabandham.

What it asks for. Not liberation. Not heaven. Not even darshan.

In verse after verse, Kulasekhara asks to be born at Srirangam as something that does not leave.

The list, in substance:

• Let me be a fish in the temple tank, so I never have to be away from it
• Let me be a crane standing in that water
• Let me be a tree growing in the temple grounds
• Let me be a flower in the garden that is made into a garland for him
• Let me be the step at the gate, which the devotees tread on as they come in
• Let me be a lamp burning in the shrine
• Let me be a path in that town

The step is the one people remember. He asks to be the stone at the entrance that people put their feet on.

A king asks to be a step.

Why the request is theologically interesting. Because of what it declines.

The standard hierarchy of goals in the tradition runs: worldly good, then heaven, then liberation, then service in Paramapadam.

Kulasekhara skips all of it and asks for something lower than human birth: an animal, a plant, an object. Fish, tree, stone.

And the reason given, consistently, is proximity. A fish in the temple tank never leaves. A step is walked on by devotees every day. A tree in the grounds hears the recitation.

A human being, with all the advantages of human birth, can walk away, and does.

The theological term for this is kainkarya, service, taken to its limit: service so complete that the servant does not need to be conscious of it or to receive anything from it.

The related emphasis on bhagavatas. The step is not asked for because the Lord walks on it. It is asked for because the devotees do.

That is consistent with the whole Sri Vaishnava emphasis, described in the Thirumazhisai entry, that service to the devotees ranks above service to the Lord.

Srirangam. The place he is asking to be part of.

• On an island between the Kaveri and the Kollidam, near Tiruchirappalli
• The foremost of the 108 Divya Desams
• The largest functioning temple complex in the world by area, with seven concentric enclosures and twenty one gopurams
• The deity is Ranganatha, Vishnu reclining
• A living town sits inside the outer enclosures, with houses, shops and streets within the temple walls

That last point matters for the verse. Srirangam is not a monument you enter and leave. Thousands of people live inside it. There are groceries and bicycles and school children inside the temple.

So when Kulasekhara asks to be a step there, he is asking to be part of an inhabited place, walked on by ordinary people going about their day.

The Rajagopuram. The southern gateway tower at Srirangam is around 72 metres, among the tallest temple towers in Asia. It was left unfinished for centuries and completed in the twentieth century.

Vaikunta Ekadashi at Srirangam. The great annual event.

The Paramapada Vasal, the gate of the supreme abode, on the northern side, is opened once a year on Vaikunta Ekadashi, and enormous numbers pass through it.

It is the culmination of the twenty one day Adhyayana Utsavam in which the whole Prabandham is recited, including Kulasekhara's request to be a step.

Three stories are told about Kulasekhara Alvar, and all three are about a king behaving in a way kings are not supposed to.

One. The snake pot.

• His ministers disliked the Sri Vaishnavas he kept around him and the time he spent with them
• To discredit them, the ministers hid a valuable jewel from the temple treasury and accused the Vaishnavas of theft
• Kulasekhara did not believe it
• To prove their innocence, he called for a pot of snakes and put his hand into it
• He was not bitten
• The ministers confessed

What the story is for. It is about bhagavata honour again: the king stakes his own life on the character of the devotees, rather than investigating them.

The tradition treats the snake pot not as a magic trick but as a demonstration of where his confidence lay.

Two. The Ramayana and the army.

• He had the Ramayana recited to him daily
• At the point in the story where Rama faces the fourteen thousand rakshasas at Janasthana alone, Kulasekhara stood up, called for his army, and prepared to march to Rama's assistance
• His attendants had to arrange for the reciter to continue quickly and reach the part where Rama wins, so that the king would stand down

How to read it. As comedy, and as something the tradition finds admirable rather than foolish.

The point is that for him the story was not a story. He heard that somebody he loved was outnumbered and he called out the army.

The tradition has a term, bhava, for the condition in which the distance between narrative and reality collapses. This is its most concrete illustration.

Three. The leaving.

• He found the demands of ruling increasingly incompatible with what he wanted to do
• He handed the kingdom to his son
• He left for Srirangam
• Traditional accounts have him spending his last period at Mannarkoil or in the Chera country, and place his end at Mannargudi or Thiruvanjikkalam depending on the source

On the abdication. It is worth thinking about honestly, because a guide should not simply admire it.

A king walking away from government leaves the government to somebody else. The tradition presents this as renunciation. It is also, in plain terms, the transfer of a responsibility.

What the tradition does record is that he transferred it properly, to his son, in order, rather than simply abandoning it. That distinction matters and the story keeps it.

The general question of renunciation. Since it comes up throughout this series.

What the tradition actually holds:

• Sannyasa, formal renunciation, is one ashrama among four and is not required of everybody
• The grihastha, the householder, is described in the texts as the ashrama that supports all the others
• The Gita's whole argument to Arjuna is that he must act, in his position, rather than withdraw
• Renunciation of the fruit of action, rather than of action, is the Gita's actual instruction

So a reader should not conclude from Kulasekhara's story that leaving your obligations is the devotional ideal. The tradition's dominant position is the opposite, and the Gita states it directly.

What Kulasekhara did was available to a king with an heir. Most people do not have that option and are not expected to want it.

The Kerala connection. Since he was a Chera king.

• Thiruvanjikkalam, near Kodungallur in Thrissur district, is one of the Divya Desams and is associated with him
• It is one of the very few Divya Desams in Kerala, of which there are thirteen
• The Kerala Divya Desams include Thiruvananthapuram, the Padmanabhaswamy temple, and Thirunavaya and Thrikkakara
• Kodungallur was the ancient port of Muziris, the great Roman trade port of the Malabar coast

So the Alvar who was a king came from the country of the pepper trade, and asked to be reborn as a stone at a temple gate five hundred kilometres east.

The Sanskrit work deserves its own treatment because it circulates far beyond the Alvar tradition and very many people recite it without knowing its author.

What it is:

• A short stotra in Sanskrit, of around forty verses depending on the recension
• Attributed by tradition to Kulasekhara
• Widely recited across sampradayas, including by people with no connection to Sri Vaishnavism
• Commentaries exist, including in the Gaudiya tradition

Its central claims, which are why it lasted:

One. Devotion, not liberation, is the request.

The famous verse asks not for kingship, not for heaven, not for moksha, but only that devotion should continue through every birth.

That is a considerable theological move. It says the relationship is the goal, and that a liberation which ended the relationship would be a loss.

Two. Say the name now.

The verse about the throat closing at the end is the practical core:

Say it while your faculties are sound, because at the last moment the body may not cooperate.

Three. No qualification is required.

Several verses state directly that the poet has none of the usual credentials, has done none of the disciplines, and is asking anyway.

Four. The name works.

The insistence throughout is on nama, the name, as sufficient. That is the standing position of the entire bhakti movement across India, and the Mukundamala is one of its earliest crisp statements in Sanskrit.

Why it travelled. Three reasons.

• It is in Sanskrit, so it crossed linguistic regions in a way Tamil works did not
• It is short, and can be learned
• It makes no sectarian demands beyond devotion to Vishnu, and asks nothing of the reciter

On the deathbed use. Worth handling with care.

The verse about the throat closing is recited at deathbeds and by people who are ill or afraid, and it is genuinely comforting to many.

What it is doing is not promising an outcome. It is saying: the time to establish the habit is now, while you are well.

And what it is not:

• It is not a substitute for medical care, palliative treatment or pain management
• It does not mean that somebody who could not speak at the end has failed. The tradition is explicit that the Lord knows what was in the person, and the Gita's own statement about remembering at the end is followed by the reason: because whatever has been practised is what surfaces
• Nobody should be made to feel that a family member died wrongly because of what did or did not happen in the last hours

If somebody is dying. The practical, humane things: pain relief, company, familiar sounds, permission to go, and whatever the person themselves found comforting.

If the person had a practice, the practice. If they did not, silence and presence are enough. The tradition does not require a performance from a dying person.

On grief. Since this is where the verse is most used.

Grief is not a devotional failure. The Ramayana has Dasharatha die of it. The Mahabharata has Yudhishthira unable to be consoled. The tradition's own literature is full of people who could not be reconciled to loss and were not told to stop.

If you are grieving and finding that practice has stopped working, that is ordinary, it is documented in the tradition, and it does not mean anything has gone wrong with your devotion.

And if grief becomes something you cannot carry, help exists. Tele MANAS is 14416 in India, free, in many languages.

Srirangam

• On an island between the Kaveri and Kollidam, near Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
• The foremost Divya Desam, with Ranganatha reclining
• Seven enclosures, twenty one gopurams, and a living town inside the outer walls
• The Rajagopuram at around 72 metres
• The step Kulasekhara asked to be is at the gate, and the Kulasekharan Padi is pointed out
• Vaikunta Ekadashi in Margazhi, when the Paramapada Vasal is opened
• Adhyayana Utsavam, twenty one days of the full Prabandham

The Kulasekharan Padi. There is a step at Srirangam identified with his verse, and devotees are careful about how they treat it. Ask at the temple.

Thiruvanjikkalam

• Near Kodungallur, Thrissur district, Kerala
• A Divya Desam, associated with Kulasekhara Alvar
• Kodungallur was the ancient port of Muziris
• The Kodungallur Bhagavathy temple is nearby and is a major Kerala shrine with the Bharani festival

Thiruvithuvakodu

• Thiruvithuvakkodu in Palakkad district, Kerala, a Divya Desam sung by Kulasekhara Alvar
• The deity is Uyyavantha Perumal

Tirupati

• Kulasekhara sang Venkatam, and his decad on it is among the well known
• The step verses are echoed in his wish to be part of the hill

Chitrakuta

• He sang Thillai Chitrakutam, which is the Vishnu shrine at Chidambaram
• Which means one Divya Desam sits within the precincts of the great Shaiva temple of Chidambaram, and the two traditions share the ground

Chidambaram is worth the detour for that reason. Govindaraja Perumal at Chidambaram is a Divya Desam, inside the complex of the Nataraja temple, and the arrangement has a long and sometimes contentious history.

What a visitor sees is two major traditions occupying one site, which is more common in India than the usual accounts suggest.

Practical:

• Tiruchirappalli airport and railway station for Srirangam, around 10 kilometres
• Srirangam needs at least half a day and rewards more
• October to March for weather
• Margazhi, December to January, for Adhyayana Utsavam and Vaikunta Ekadashi, which is the peak and is extremely crowded
• Dress modestly, footwear off, and note that the innermost sanctum has restrictions on entry for non Hindus at some temples in the region

On Vaikunta Ekadashi crowds. Very large numbers pass through the Paramapada Vasal at Srirangam.

If you go: arrive early, follow the queue system, do not push, keep children close and identify your exit. Crowd incidents have occurred at large south Indian temple events. The tradition's own view is that darshan taken safely is worth more than darshan taken dangerously.

Combining:

• Tiruchirappalli rock fort and Uchi Pillayar temple
• Thiruvanaikaval, the Jambukeswarar temple, one of the Pancha Bhoota Sthalams, very close
• Thanjavur, 60 kilometres, and the Chola temples
• Kumbakonam and Darasuram
• Chidambaram, further along the coast
• Sri Rangam to Alwarthirunagari is a long but rewarding route through the Divya Desams of the Kaveri delta and the far south

One. The request that asks for less.

Most prayer asks for more: health, security, success, and at the higher registers, liberation.

Kulasekhara asks to be a fish. The move is to want proximity rather than status, and to notice that the two are not the same thing.

That is transferable. A person can ask, in ordinary prayer, for less rather than more, and find it changes the character of the practice.

Two. Say it now.

The Mukundamala verse is the most practical thing in this entry.

Establish the habit while you are well, because habits are what remain when the rest goes. That is true of the name, and it is true of everything else you would want to have available to you when things are difficult.

Three. Stand up for the devotee.

The snake pot story is about a man who staked his life rather than let people be falsely accused.

The transferable version is smaller and harder: do not join in when somebody is being run down, and be willing to be inconvenienced for it.

Four. The story can be real.

He called out his army for Rama. The tradition tells it fondly.

What it points at is that these narratives are meant to be entered, not analysed from outside, and that a person for whom the Ramayana is genuinely present is in a different relation to it than a person who has read it.

Five. And the counterweight.

He left his kingdom. Most readers should not draw the obvious conclusion.

The Gita's whole instruction to Arjuna is to act in his position, and the tradition's dominant position is that the householder's ashrama supports every other. Kulasekhara transferred his responsibility properly, to an heir, in order.

Devotion that leaves your family unsupported is not what the tradition asks for, and the texts say so directly.

A daily form from this Alvar:

• The Mukundamala verse about the throat, once, in the morning
• A lamp in the evening
• Krishna Govinda Hare Murare, which is that verse's own list, as a name to keep
• Ekadashi, twice a month, modified for your health
• If you can, a decad of the Perumal Thirumozhi in translation, and particularly the fourth

A closing thought. A man who had a kingdom, an army, a treasury and a court sat down and wrote that he would rather be a step at a gate in a town five hundred kilometres away, so that devotees going in to see the Lord would put their feet on him.

He was not being modest. He had worked out that the step is closer than the throne, and he was asking for the better position.