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78
The Arvārs
CH.
Thou who art strong to make them brave in fight, Going before the three and thirty gods, Awake from out thy sleep! Thou who art just,
Thou who art mighty, thou, O faultless one, Who burnest up thy foes, awake from sleep! O Lady Nappinnāi, with tender breasts Like unto little cups, with lips of red And slender waist, Lakshmi, awake from sleep! Proffer thy bridegroom fans and mirrors now,
And let us bathe! Ah, Elõrembāvāy!1 In describing the essential feature of the devotion of an Arvār like Namm'-ārvār, called also Parāňkuśa or Sathakopa, Govindāchāryar, the author of The Divine Wisdom of the Drávida Saints and The Holy Lives of the Âzhvârs, says that according to Nămm'-ārvār, when one is overcome by bhakti-exultation and self-surrendering devotion to God he easily attains truth? Nămm'-ārvār said that God's grace is the only means of securing our salvation, and no effort is required on our part but to surrender ourselves to Him. In the following words Nămm'-ārvār says that God is constantly trying to woo us to love Him:
Blissful Lord, heard I; anon my eyes in floods did run, Oh what is this? I asked. What marvel this? the Perfect one, Through friendly days and nights, elects with me to e'er remain, To union wooing me, His own to make; nor let me “lone.”
Nāmm'-ārvār again writes that God's freedom is fettered by His mercy. Thus he says: “O mercy, thou hast deprived God of the freedom of His just will. Safe under the winds of mercy, no more can God Himself even of His will tear Himself away from me; for, if He can do so, I shall still exclaim, I am Victor, for He must purchase the freedom of His will by denying to Himself mercy.” Illustrating the position, he refers to the case of a devout lady who clasped the feet of the Lord in Varadarāja's shrine at Kāñci and said: “God I have now clasped thy feet firmly; try if thou canst, spurn me and shake thyself off from me.”
Nămm'-ārvār used the term Tuvalil or Ninsu kumirume, a Tamil expression of love, which has been interpreted as signifying a continuous whirling emotion of love boring deeper and deeper, but never scattering and passing away. This circling and boring of
1 Hooper, op. cit. p. 55.
2 Bhagavad-vishayam, Bk. I, p. 571, as quoted in Govindācharyar's Divine Wisdom of the Dravida Saints.
