Manavala Mamunigal: The Teacher Whose Student Was the Deity

The teaching of the Eedu for a year is worth thinking about as a practice in itself.

What the Eedu is:

• The Muppathaarayirappadi, the thirty six thousand, the great commentary on Nammalvar's Thiruvaymozhi
• Compiled by Vadakku Thiruvidhi Pillai from the discourses of Nampillai
• The largest and most authoritative of the five commentaries on the Thiruvaymozhi
• In Manipravala
• Not published for centuries and transmitted only by teaching

The scale of what he did:

• 1102 verses of Tamil poetry
• With a commentary of thirty six thousand units
• Taught in sequence, aloud, to a gathered community
• Over one full year
• With the temple's ordinary activity suspended for it

Why a whole year on one text. Because that is what the material takes.

The Eedu does not summarise. It goes phrase by phrase, considers what each word does, brings in parallels from the Sanskrit scripture, and records the readings of earlier acharyas including where they disagreed.

A commentary of that kind cannot be read quickly and was never meant to be.

The kalakshepam tradition. This is the method, and it survives.

Kalakshepam means the passing of time, and in Sri Vaishnava usage it is the formal oral exposition of a text by an acharya to students.

• The teacher reads and expounds
• Students attend regularly over months or years
• The text is not simply explained; the tradition of its explanation is transmitted, including the received readings
• It cannot be substituted by reading the book

That method is why texts like the Eedu remained unpublished for so long. They were not withheld out of secrecy so much as understood to be inseparable from the teaching relationship.

The modern situation. Most of these texts are now published and available, including in translation.

That is a substantial gain in access and it changes what the kalakshepam is for. What a printed Eedu cannot give you is the received tradition of how it is read, which is what a teacher supplies.

What a reader today can do:

• The Thiruvaymozhi is available in translation
• Portions of the commentarial tradition are available in English and Tamil
• Kalakshepams are held, and are attended by people who are not scholars
• Recordings and online expositions exist

The general principle here, which applies well beyond this tradition:

A long text taken slowly, in company, over a long period, with somebody who knows it, is a different thing from reading it alone quickly. Most religious traditions have some version of this and most people never try it.

A year on one poem sounds excessive until you consider what people spend a year on.

The relationship in the story. The point of the deity appearing as a student is worth drawing out.

The tradition could have had Ranganatha praise the teaching, or bless it, or confirm it. Instead it has him enrol.

That places the teaching relationship above everything, and it is the Tenkalai emphasis on acharya abhimana, described in the Madhurakavi entry, stated in its strongest possible form: even the Lord takes a teacher.

Upadesa Ratnamalai. The garland of instruction, seventy four Tamil verses, and the one to start with.

What it does:

• Gives the birth stars and months of the Alvars and acharyas, so that their observances can be kept
• States why the Prabandham matters and why Nammalvar is central
• Names the acharya lineage in order
• Sets out the essentials of the doctrine in plain Tamil
• Ends with instruction on how a devotee should live

Why it is used. It is effectively the tradition's own summary of itself, in a form short enough to learn.

Sri Vaishnava households recite it, children learn it, and the festival calendar of the sampradaya follows the birth stars it lists.

Thiruvaimozhi Nurrandadi:

• A hundred verses, one for each decad of the Thiruvaymozhi
• In the antadi form
• Each verse summarising the corresponding decad

That is a compressed version of eleven hundred verses in a hundred, and it is used as a way into the larger work.

Arthi Prabandham:

• Sixty verses, addressed to Ramanuja
• A work of longing, asking to be taken
• Composed late in his life
• Direct, personal and among the most affecting things in the tradition

Yatiraja Vimsati:

• Twenty Sanskrit verses, again addressed to Ramanuja
• Recited daily in Tenkalai practice
• Its content is a plea to be accepted, on the basis of having no other qualification

The commentaries. This is the bulk of his work.

He wrote commentaries, in Manipravala, on the tradition's principal doctrinal texts:

• Mumukshuppadi of Pillai Lokacharya, on the three rahasyas
• Tattva Traya of Pillai Lokacharya, on the three realities
• Srivachana Bhushanam of Pillai Lokacharya, the tradition's densest doctrinal work
• Acharya Hridayam of Azhwan Pillai
• Periyalvar Thirumozhi
• Ramanuja Nootrandadi of Thiruvarangathu Amudanar

Pillai Lokacharya. Worth naming since Mamunigal is his principal expositor.

• Thirteenth to fourteenth century
• Author of the Ashtadasa Rahasya, eighteen esoteric works, including the three above
• The Srivachana Bhushanam is the central Tenkalai doctrinal text
• He is credited with saving the Srirangam deity during the 1323 attack, leading the party that carried the image away, and dying on that journey

Ramanuja Nootrandadi. Also worth naming.

• A hundred and eight verses on Ramanuja, by Thiruvarangathu Amudanar
• Included in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham itself, as its final item
• So the four thousand verse canon of the Alvars closes with a work about Ramanuja, who lived after all of them

The orientation to Ramanuja. It is the consistent feature of everything Mamunigal wrote.

The Arthi Prabandham, the Yatiraja Vimsati and the commentary on the Ramanuja Nootrandadi are all addressed to or about Ramanuja rather than directly to the Lord.

That is the acharya abhimana position again: the approach is through the teacher, and the teacher's own teacher, back along the line.

And the story of Ranganatha enrolling as his student is the tradition's way of closing that circle.

Since Manavala Mamunigal is the principal Tenkalai acharya, the position deserves a fair statement in its own terms, as the Vadakalai position was given in the previous entry.

The central emphasis: that the Lord's grace is nirhetuka, without cause, and that nothing the soul does is a condition of it.

What follows from that:

• Prapatti is not an act with prerequisites. Even the disposition to surrender is given
• The marjara nyaya, the cat analogy: the kitten is carried and does nothing at all
• Any claim that the soul contributed is a claim of merit, and merit is precisely what has been ruled out
• Acharya abhimana, the teacher's taking up of the disciple, is the highest of the means, because it involves the least from the person saved

On Sri. The Tenkalai position, stated technically, treats her as the mediator, and there is a long argument about whether she is herself a means to liberation or the one who recommends.

The argument is genuinely technical and this guide will not adjudicate it.

On social access. This is where the Tenkalai emphasis has a practical dimension worth noting.

The logic of unconditional grace has been read within the tradition as bearing on who may be received, and the Tenkalai texts, particularly the Srivachana Bhushanam, contain strong statements about the status of devotees regardless of birth.

What the Srivachana Bhushanam says. Among its most quoted passages are ones holding that:

• The devotion of a person of low birth is worth more than the birth of a person without devotion
• Contempt for a bhagavata is the gravest fault
• The tradition's own saints included people from excluded communities and this is not incidental

That is in the tradition's own doctrinal literature and it is worth knowing, particularly alongside the honest account given in the Thiruppaan Alvar entry of how institutions actually behaved.

The eighteen differences, once more. The ashtadasa bheda between the schools cover doctrine, ritual and practice.

A reader outside the tradition does not need to master them. What is worth knowing is:

• Both are Sri Vaishnava and both follow Ramanuja
• The differences are of emphasis within a shared framework
• The institutional conflicts have sometimes been severe and have involved litigation
• At any given temple, one tradition's practice prevails, and a visitor follows it

How to be a decent visitor:

• Observe what is done at the temple you are in
• Do not argue the point with anybody
• If somebody explains their practice, listen rather than correcting
• Note that the urdhva pundra, the forehead mark, differs between the schools in shape, and that this is a visible marker people carry

On the general question of sectarian difference. A closing note, since this series will meet many.

Indian traditions divide, argue, write against each other, and produce large polemical literatures. That is normal, it is a sign of seriousness, and much of the best philosophical writing exists because somebody was disagreeing with somebody.

What is worth avoiding, as a reader and as a devotee, is treating an argument you have not studied as an identity you must defend.

Most people who hold a sectarian position strongly have not read the eighteen differences and could not state the opposing case. That is the condition in which arguments become quarrels.

The acharyas on both sides could state the opposing case in full, and generally did so before answering it. That is the standard to hold to.

The taniyan attributed to Ranganatha is worth setting out, because a very large number of people say it daily without knowing where it came from.

What a taniyan is:

• A single invocatory verse in praise of an acharya or an Alvar
• Recited before their work, as a salutation
• Every Prabandham work has one or more
• They are composed by other acharyas, and reciting the taniyan before the work is standard practice

The Sri Sailesa taniyan:

• Composed, by tradition, by Ranganatha himself
• In praise of Manavala Mamunigal
• Recited at the beginning and end of all Prabandham recitation in the Tenkalai tradition, and at temple recitations

What it says, in substance:

Salutation to Varavaramuni, who is the object of the compassion of Sri Sailesa, who has taken refuge at the feet of Ramanuja, and who is devoted to the lotus feet of his master.

Sri Sailesa is Thiruvaimozhi Pillai, Mamunigal's own teacher.

Why that structure matters. Read the sentence again.

It does not praise him for what he knew, wrote, built or achieved. It identifies him entirely by relationships:

• He is the recipient of his teacher's compassion
• He has taken refuge at Ramanuja's feet
• He is devoted to his master's feet

That is a person defined by who he received from and who he served, with nothing said about his own attainments.

And it is composed by the deity, about a teacher, and recited before four thousand verses by other people.

The circularity is deliberate. The Lord praises a man for being somebody's disciple. The tradition then recites that praise before reciting the poetry the man expounded.

Where it is used:

• At the start of daily Prabandham recitation
• At the start and finish of the Adhyayana Utsavam
• At Sri Vaishnava household observances
• Before kalakshepam

On learning taniyans generally. They are short, they are the traditional way in, and learning them gives you the lineage.

Each one names an acharya. Learning the sequence of taniyans is, in effect, learning who taught whom, which is what the tradition wants you to have before you have the doctrine.

Places

Srirangam:

• Where he taught the Eedu, restored the temple and lived
• His shrine is there and is prominent
• The Ani Thirumoolam festival, in the Tamil month of Ani, June or July, is his birth star observance and the principal one

Sikkil Kidaram and Alwarthirunagari:

• His birthplace, near Alwarthirunagari in Thoothukudi district
• The Nammalvar connection is direct, since he expounded the Thiruvaymozhi

Thirunarayanapuram, Melukote:

• Where Ramanuja spent years and where the Srirangam deity was sheltered during the exile
• Connected to the whole story

A practice from him:

• The Upadesa Ratnamalai, seventy four Tamil verses, which is the tradition's summary of itself
• The taniyan, one verse, before whatever you recite
• And the harder one: take a single text and stay with it far longer than seems reasonable

A closing thought. He taught one commentary on one poem for a year, with the temple shut for it, and at the end the deity of that temple came and asked to be enrolled.

The verse that deity composed praises him for nothing except whose student he was.

And that verse is now said, out loud, before the four thousand verses, every morning, in temples across the south and wherever Sri Vaishnavas have gone.

This entry closes the sequence this batch has been following, and it is worth stating what it adds up to.

The sequence:

• Twelve Alvars, over roughly three centuries, singing in Tamil at 108 temples
• Nathamuni, recovering the scattered verses and building the system that preserved them
• Yamunacharya, giving the tradition its philosophical and institutional defence
• Ramanuja, writing the commentaries and organising the temples
• Pillai Lokacharya, Vedanta Desika, and the acharyas who systematised the doctrine
• Manavala Mamunigal, restoring, expounding and closing the lineage

What it produced:

• A canon of four thousand verses treated as revelation alongside the Sanskrit Veda
• A philosophical school, Vishishtadvaita, which is one of the three principal Vedanta positions
• A network of temples with continuous worship
• A daily recitation, the Nitya Anusandhanam, still performed
• A performance tradition, the Araiyar Sevai, nearly a thousand years old
• And a doctrine, stated repeatedly and consistently, that the way in does not depend on what you are

Who was in it. Worth listing once more, since it is the tradition's strongest claim about itself.

The canon contains a king, a chieftain who robbed travellers, a garland maker, a girl found in a garden, a man from a community forbidden to enter the temple, a saint who fell and was retrieved, a poet who wrote only about his teacher, a farmer's son who did not speak for sixteen years, and three men who appeared in flowers.

And the doctrine built on their verses says that qualification was never the mechanism.

How the tradition failed its own doctrine. Also worth saying once more.

The institutions maintained caste exclusions for centuries while reciting daily the verses of a man they would not have admitted. That gap between the canon and the practice is real and it took reform movements, legislation and the Constitution to close it in law, and it is not fully closed in behaviour.

A tradition can be honestly loved while that is known. Pretending otherwise is not devotion; it is just an inaccurate account.

What a reader can take from the whole sequence:

• The daily practice is small and available: a lamp, a name, a verse
• The texts are in print and translation and are not hidden
• The temples are open and are addresses, not ideas
• The teachers matter and can be found, and the warning signs of a bad one are known
• And the doctrine, stated by every figure in the line, is that nobody qualifies and that this was never the point

Where this series goes next. The Alvars and their acharyas are one lineage among many.

Running parallel in the same country were the Nayanars, sixty three Shaiva saints with their own canon, their own recovery story, and their own social range. They are next.

And after them, the Vedanta acharyas, the Varkari saints of Maharashtra, the Sharanas of Karnataka, the Haridasas, the Carnatic composers, the Bengal Vaishnavas, the Odisha Panchasakha, the Kashmir Shaivas, the Naths, and the saints of the north.

They argued with each other constantly. They also, with striking consistency, arrived at the same practical conclusion: say the name, serve where you are, and do not measure anybody.

A closing thought on Manavala Mamunigal specifically. He is called Yatindra Pravanar, the one inclined toward Ramanuja.

His works are addressed to his teacher's teacher's teacher. The verse recited before all his tradition's scripture praises him only for whose student he was. His great act was to teach somebody else's commentary on somebody else's poem for a year.

And the tradition made him its last acharya.