Periya Nambi: The Teacher Who Would Not Wait

The episode Periya Nambi is really remembered for, and it is the one worth the entry.

Who Maraneri Nambi was

A devotee at Srirangam, also called Vasudeva, and not a brahmana.

The sources describe him as of low caste, and the tradition does not soften it: he was outside the community that performed rites, and he could not have expected the community's rites to be performed for him.

And he was a serious devotee, of long standing, and Periya Nambi knew him.

What happened when he died

Periya Nambi performed his last rites himself.

Not arranged them. Not paid for them. Carried the body and did the antyeshti, personally, as a brahmana of the first rank in the town's leading tradition.

And Srirangam reacted.

The orthodox of the town objected, and the objection was formal and public: a brahmana had performed the funeral rites of a shudra, which was a violation of the rules as they were understood, and he was called to account for it.

What he said

He cited Rama.

Rama performed the last rites of Jatayu, who was a vulture.

And of Shabari, in the accounts that include it, who was a forest woman of no standing at all, whom he had received and eaten from.

The argument is complete in one move: if the standard is what Rama did, and Rama did the funeral rites of a bird, then the objection has no basis in the text the objectors claim to follow.

And Ramanuja backed him.

Which is why this episode matters

Because it is not a story about a saint being kind to a poor man.

It is a case, argued in public, on textual grounds, in which the head of a tradition performed a prohibited act and then defended it by citing the tradition's own foundational text against its own current practice.

Which is exactly the method this series has been documenting across every language: Basavanna, Ravidas, Kanaka Dasa, Narayana Guru, and here, in Tamil, in the eleventh century, a brahmana who does the same thing from the other side of the line.

And it should be said what it did not do.

It did not end caste at Srirangam. The town's practice continued, the objections continued, and the later history of the Srivaishnava community includes long and bitter disputes about exactly these questions.

What it did was put a precedent on the record, defended by argument, by a man whose standing made it impossible to ignore.

Which is what precedents are for.

The related Ramanuja material

The same argument runs through Ramanuja's own recorded conduct, and the tradition preserves it:

• He called the Dalit devotees Tirukkulattar, the people of the sacred lineage, which was a deliberate renaming
• He arranged for them to be admitted to the Melkote temple on specified days, an arrangement that still exists
• Thirukkachi Nambi, one of his own five teachers, was not a brahmana, and Ramanuja wanted to eat his leftover food, which Nambi refused to permit. That entry follows in this batch
• Dhanurdasa, a Dalit disciple, is one of the best known figures around him

And the honest note, again: recording that a tradition's founder held these positions is not the same as saying the tradition has lived up to them, and it mostly has not. The value of the record is that it is available to argue from, which is what reformers inside the tradition have done with it ever since.

The traditional account

A Chola king demanded that the Srivaishnavas of Srirangam sign a declaration that there is no god higher than Shiva.

Ramanuja was the target. In the account he was got out of Srirangam in disguise, or by exchange of robes, and went west into what is now Karnataka, where he spent years and where Melkote became his second centre.

And two men went to the court in his place: Kuresha, his closest disciple, and Periya Nambi, by then very old.

They refused to sign.

And they were blinded, in the account, on the king's order.

Periya Nambi died on the road back, attended by his daughter Attuzhay, and the tradition preserves the scene as one of its most painful.

Kuresha survived and lived blind, and his entry follows in this batch.

How this app treats that account

With the caution it requires, stated openly.

What is solid: the Srivaishnava tradition has held this account for very long, it is central to its self understanding, and Ramanuja's years in Karnataka and the founding of Melkote are historically visible.

What is disputed: the identity of the king, who is named in the sources by an epithet rather than a regnal name; the extent of any persecution; and whether the specific ordeal happened as described. Historians of the Cholas do not agree, and the sectarian shape of the story, a Shaiva king persecuting Vaishnavas, is exactly the shape a later community would give to a conflict it remembered imperfectly.

And there is a reason to be careful about it now, which should be said directly.

Stories of one Hindu tradition persecuting another are used, in the present, by people who want conflict, and they are used in both directions. Shaiva against Vaishnava, Vaishnava against Shaiva, and both against everybody else.

This app's position: Shiva and Vishnu are not rivals, the overwhelming weight of the Hindu traditions treats them as aspects of one thing, and Harihara exists as a form precisely to say so. Appayya Dikshita and others wrote at length to reconcile them. The Puranas contain both the sectarian claims and their reconciliation, and reading only the sectarian half is a choice.

What is worth taking from the story, and it is worth taking, is not that a Shaiva king was bad. It is that two men refused to sign a document about somebody else's god, and paid for it, and that the refusal was on a point of conscience.

Attuzhay

Periya Nambi's daughter, and she deserves her name recorded.

She attended him at the end, on the road, and the tradition remembers her by name, which is not something it does often for women who are not poets or saints.

Where to go

• Madurantakam, Chengalpattu district, Tamil Nadu, and the Eri Katha Ramar temple, where the initiation happened. The temple is also famous for a nineteenth century episode in which the tank's bund held during a flood, which is where the name comes from
• Srirangam, Tiruchirappalli, the Ranganathaswamy temple, where he lived
• The acharya shrines within the Srirangam complex
• Melkote, Karnataka, for the Ramanuja side of the story

One. He did not wait for the right setting.

Sent to fetch Ramanuja, he met him halfway and initiated him under a tree by a tank, on the road, without the temple, the community, the preparations or the chosen day.

The founding initiation of the largest Srivaishnava lineage happened outside every institutional frame, and the place became a pilgrimage site afterwards rather than before.

Applied: the thing you are waiting for the right conditions to begin is usually available now, worse.

Two. He performed the funeral of a man he was not permitted to touch.

And then defended it in public by citing Rama's funeral of Jatayu, a vulture, against the objectors' own scripture.

Which is the method: not sentiment, not defiance for its own sake, but the tradition's foundational text turned against the tradition's current practice, argued on the objectors' ground.

And it did not fix Srirangam, and it was not supposed to. It put a precedent on the record, defended, by somebody whose standing made it impossible to ignore.

Three. He refused to sign.

Whatever the historical detail, and this entry is careful about it, the point of the story as the tradition tells it is that two men were asked to certify a claim about somebody else's god and declined.

And the point is not that the other god was wrong. Shiva and Vishnu are not rivals, Harihara exists to say so, and stories of one Hindu tradition persecuting another are used in the present by people who want conflict, in both directions.

The point is the signature. They were asked to attest to something they did not hold, and would not.

Four. Five teachers.

Ramanuja was taught by five people, because the one man who should have taught him died first, and the five divided the work between them: initiation, mantra, the Ramayana, the Tiruvaymoli, and access to the deity at Kanchi.

Which is a better model of how anybody actually learns anything than the single guru of the popular picture, and the tradition that produced the most systematic theology in south India was built by five men splitting a job.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Om Namo Narayanaya, the Ashtakshara, which is the mantra of this tradition
• The Dvaya mantra, if you have been given it
• A verse of the Tiruvaymoli, in Tamil or in translation
• And the Periya Nambi test, when you catch yourself deferring something: is the delay for the sake of the thing, or for the sake of the setting

A closing thought

He was sent north to fetch a young man, and met him on the road coming south, and rather than take him to the temple he initiated him there, under a tree, because there was no reason to wait.

Years later a devotee died who belonged to none of the categories the community performed rites for, and rather than arrange something he carried the body himself and did the funeral, and when the town called him to account he said that Rama had done the funeral of a bird.

And at the very end he was old and he was asked to put his name to a statement about a god, and he did not, and he died on the road home with his daughter beside him.

Who: Periya Nambi, in Sanskrit Mahapurna, eleventh into twelfth century, one of the five acharyas of Ramanuja and the one who gave him initiation. The Srivaishnava line runs from Nathamuni, who recovered the Divya Prabandham, through Uyyakondar and Manakkal Nambi to Yamunacharya at Srirangam, and then to Ramanuja.

Why five teachers: Yamunacharya died before Ramanuja reached him, and his instructions were carried out after his death by five of his disciples, each taking a portion. Periya Nambi gave initiation, Thirukoshtiyur Nambi the mantra, Thirukkachi Nambi the link to the deity at Kanchi, Periya Thirumalai Nambi the Ramayana, and Thirumalai Andan the Tiruvaymoli.

Madurantakam: sent north to fetch Ramanuja, he met him coming south at the Eri Katha Ramar temple roughly halfway, and when Ramanuja asked for initiation he gave it there, under a tree by a tank, on the road, without the temple, the community, the preparations or a chosen day. The founding initiation of the largest Srivaishnava lineage happened outside every institutional frame, and Madurantakam became a pilgrimage site afterwards rather than before.

The pancha samskara he gave is still performed: tapa, the marking of the shoulders with conch and discus; pundra, the upright forehead mark; nama, a new name ending in dasa; mantra; and yaga, instruction in home worship.

Maraneri Nambi: a devotee at Srirangam, also called Vasudeva, who was not a brahmana and whom the sources describe as of low caste. When he died Periya Nambi carried the body and performed the funeral rites personally. Srirangam objected formally and publicly, and he answered by citing Rama's funeral of Jatayu, a vulture, and of Shabari. Ramanuja backed him. It did not end caste at Srirangam and was not going to, but it put a defended precedent on the record.

The end: the traditional account has a Chola king demanding a signed declaration that no god is higher than Shiva. Ramanuja left for Karnataka, where Melkote became his second centre. Kuresha and Periya Nambi went in his place, refused to sign, and were blinded, and Periya Nambi died on the road back, attended by his daughter Attuzhay. The identity of the king and the extent of any persecution are disputed by historians, and this app notes that stories of one Hindu tradition persecuting another are used in the present by people who want conflict. Shiva and Vishnu are not rivals, and Harihara exists to say so.