Thayumanavar: The One Who Became a Mother

Two words in Tamil, and they are the centre of everything he wrote.

Summa iru.

Which is difficult to translate and the difficulty is instructive.

Literally: just be. Be still. Remain without doing.

And in ordinary Tamil it is what you say to a fidgeting child, or to somebody who keeps interfering, and it means something between be quiet and stop it and leave it alone.

Where he got it

From his teacher, Mauna Guru, also called Mauna Desika, the silent teacher, a wandering ascetic who came to Trichy.

And the instruction was of a piece with the name: the teacher taught in silence, and what he told Thayumanavar to do was to stop.

And also to stay.

The other half of the instruction, which the accounts preserve, was that he was not to renounce, not yet, and was to remain in the world and in his post for a period.

Which is worth noticing: the silent teacher's instruction to the court officer was to keep the job.

Why summa iru is hard

Because it removes the thing a practitioner most wants, which is something to do.

Every practice offers a method: repeat this, sit like this, breathe like this, read this, go here, give this up.

And methods are comforting because they convert an impossible situation into a set of tasks, and tasks can be performed, measured and improved.

Summa iru withdraws the tasks.

And Thayumanavar's poetry is largely about how impossible this instruction is, which is why the poetry is fifteen hundred verses long and the instruction is two words.

He complains, at length, that he cannot do it. He describes the mind refusing, the effort to be effortless collapsing into effort, and the whole apparatus of practice reasserting itself the moment he tries to put it down.

Which is honest, and it is why people read him rather than simply reading the instruction.

The connected phrase

Ellam unadhu seyal: everything is your doing.

A refrain that runs through his work, and it is the other side of the same coin: if everything that happens is being done by something other than you, then the thing you are exhausting yourself trying to manage was never yours to manage.

And it is not fatalism, which is the obvious misreading. It does not say do nothing about your life. It says stop treating the outcome as your production.

Ramana Maharshi and Thayumanavar

Worth recording because it is a real and documented line.

Ramana Maharshi, in the twentieth century, quoted Thayumanavar constantly. Visitors' records of the conversations at Tiruvannamalai are full of him, and summa iru in particular is a phrase Ramana used repeatedly when asked what the practice was.

Which is a two hundred year link, in Tamil, from a Nayak court officer to the best known modern teacher of self enquiry.

And Ramana has an entry in this series.

The verses

About fifteen hundred, in a number of forms, and they are known by their refrains rather than by titles:

• Paraparakanni, verses ending in para parame
• Ananda Kalippu, the dance of joy
• Chinmayananda Guru
• Karunakara Kadavul, the compassionate god
• Ennaninaindhu, thinking of what
• Ellam Unadhu Seyal

And they are sung, not only read, and there is a large recorded tradition.

The position he is most important for, and the one that had consequences.

The word

Sama, equal; rasa, essence or flavour. Equal essence, or the state of being of one taste.

What he does with it

He refuses to choose between Shaiva Siddhanta and Vedanta.

Which requires context. These are two systems with a genuine disagreement, set out in the Meykandar entry in this batch:

• Shaiva Siddhanta holds that three things are eternally real, that the soul is never identical with Shiva, and that liberation is inseparable union in which both terms remain
• Advaita Vedanta holds that Brahman alone is real and that the sense of being a separate self is what liberation removes

And they had argued for centuries, with the Siddhanta texts devoting whole chapters to refuting Mayavada, which is what they call Advaita.

Thayumanavar's position is that at the level the argument matters, the two are describing the same thing, and that the dispute is a dispute about how to say it.

And he does not resolve it philosophically. He does not produce a synthesis, or show that one reduces to the other, or split the difference.

He writes as though the question had stopped being interesting, which is a different move, and it is available to a poet in a way it is not available to a commentator.

Why it mattered

Because the phrase he used was picked up.

Samarasa and its extensions run forward from him through Tamil religious history, and most importantly into Ramalinga Swamigal, Vallalar, whose organisation was called the Samarasa Suddha Sanmarga Sangam and who has the last entry in this batch.

A hundred and thirty years separate them, and the word travels intact.

And it went further than religion. Thayumanavar is quoted in ordinary Tamil, in speeches, in schoolbooks and in political rhetoric, and his line about all beings living in joy is one of the most repeated sentences in the language.

The honest note on harmony language

Because it is worth saying and this app has said versions of it before.

Claiming that all religions say the same thing is usually false and is often lazy, and it tends to be said by people who have not read the ones they are harmonising.

Thayumanavar is not doing that, and the difference is worth marking.

He knew both systems in detail. He had the Siddhanta texts and the Vedanta texts, in Tamil and in Sanskrit, and his verses show it. His harmony is arrived at from inside the technical material, not from a comfortable distance from it.

And what he is claiming is narrower than it looks. He is not saying that all doctrines are equivalent. He is saying that the state the two schools are pointing at is one state, and that the descriptions diverge because description is hard.

Which is a claim somebody could disagree with, and the Siddhanta traditionalists did, and it is a real position rather than a mood.

The mother again

And it is worth closing where the entry started.

A tradition that names its deity the one who became a mother, because of a story about a woman alone in labour on the wrong side of a river, is a tradition with a particular idea of what the divine is for.

And Thayumanavar's poetry keeps that register. It is not a poetry of conquest, or of the fire and the burning ground, though he has those images available.

It is a poetry of somebody who is tired and cannot manage and is asking to be helped, and it says so directly and at great length and without embarrassment.

Which is why it is quoted in ordinary speech while more formidable poets are quoted in temples.

Who: Thayumanavar, 1705 to 1742, one of the most quoted poets in Tamil, who lived thirty seven years. He was named after the deity of the Rockfort temple at Tiruchirappalli, Thayumanaswami, thaayum aanavar, the one who became even the mother.

The story behind the name: a woman named Ratnavati was near her time and her mother lived across the Kaveri, and the river was in flood so nobody could cross. Her mother came anyway, stayed with her, delivered the child, and went. When the real mother arrived afterwards, once the flood had dropped, she had not been there at all. Shiva had come as her mother. What matters is what the deity does in the story: no miracle at a distance, the river is not parted and the flood is not stopped, but somebody came and sat with a frightened woman and did the practical work, in the form of the person she was actually asking for, which was not a deity.

His life: born into a family in service to the Nayak court at Trichy, where his father Kediliyappa Pillai held an office that Thayumanavar took over, so he spent a substantial part of his adult life as a civil servant. He married Mattuvar Kuzhali and they had a son, Kanakasabhapathi. His wife died young, and after that he left the court, wandered, and died at Ramanathapuram, where his samadhi is.

Summa iru: two Tamil words at the centre of everything he wrote, meaning roughly just be, be still, remain without doing, and in ordinary speech what you say to a fidgeting child. He got them from his teacher Mauna Guru, the silent teacher, whose other instruction was that he should not renounce yet but stay in the world and keep his post. Summa iru is hard because it removes the thing a practitioner most wants, which is something to do: every practice offers a method, and methods are comforting because they convert an impossible situation into tasks. His fifteen hundred verses are largely about how impossible the two word instruction is, which is why people read him rather than simply reading the instruction.

Ellam unadhu seyal: everything is your doing, a refrain running through his work and the other side of the same coin. It is not fatalism and does not say do nothing about your life; it says stop treating the outcome as your production.

Ramana Maharshi quoted Thayumanavar constantly two hundred years later, and summa iru in particular is a phrase he used repeatedly when asked what the practice was.

Samarasa: sama, equal, and rasa, essence. His refusal to choose between Shaiva Siddhanta, which holds three things eternally real and the soul never identical with Shiva, and Advaita Vedanta, which holds Brahman alone real. He does not resolve it philosophically or produce a synthesis; he writes as though the question had stopped being interesting. He knew both systems in detail, so his harmony comes from inside the technical material rather than from a comfortable distance, and his claim is narrower than it looks: not that all doctrines are equivalent, but that the state the two schools point at is one state and the descriptions diverge because description is hard. The word travelled: a hundred and thirty years later Ramalinga Swamigal's organisation was the Samarasa Suddha Sanmarga Sangam.