Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
Translation by Ravi Shankar
Andal, the 9th century mystic poet of Tamil Nadu was elevated to goddess status within a few centuries of her birth. She was the only woman among the twelve Alvars who “dived deep and drowned themselves in the love of god,” implying their complete devotion to Narayana/Vishnu (The Preserver in the Hindu pantheon). The Alvars are among the earliest proponents of the bhakti movement, a devotional and socially radical form of personal worship that emerged in medieval South India and spread to the rest of the subcontinent. However, plural practices flourished under the bhakti rubric. For instance, the South Indian mystics privileged the senses of taste, touch and smell, they sang of eating, scenting, even being pawed by the Divine; while those of the North favoured hearing or seeing God.
Unique among mystics, Andal demands Vishnu takes her as his bride, not merely in spirit, but as a living maiden; she craves the ecstasy and terror of this visceral transformation. Her first work, Tiruppavai (The Path to Krishna), composed when she was thirteen, is a song of congregational worship. In Nacciyar Tirumoli (The Sacred Songs of The Lady) , her second and last work at age fifteen or sixteen, Andal sings of her individual need for spiritual and sexual congress with her chosen god, and of an abundant female desire that is explicitly sited in the body, which, too, is holy. Her work calls to question all markers of identity and boundaries as she passionately sings for bliss to enter her body and spirit.
Translators’ Note:
Nacciyar Tirumoli is a work of layered suggestion and unambiguous wild passion wedded to an overwhelming enchantment with the divine. Andal’s unconditional surrender (prabati) to Narayana-Vishnu is of such intensity and anguish that she scolds and even rages against god while demanding his caress.
Most translators concentrate on expounding Srivaishnava philosophy or render literal translations that exhibit remarkable fidelity to the original. We, however, have attempted to do something different. We concentrate on the aesthetic properties of her songs, reimagining them as lyric poems and foregrounding the metaphoric and sensory valences of her words, while keeping the more esoteric and philosophic meanings in the background, informing but never conscripting us. Our translations are very much a poet’s translations, rather than a scholar’s.
Andal composed richly alliterative, complex songs in cen (Old Tamil), largely faithful to 2 BCE-3 CE Tamil Sangam-era poetic conventions that favoured coded allusiveness. Sangam poetics meticulously charts the progression of sexual love from infatuation to fatal lovesickness. Andal largely follows this spiral though her spiritual anguish, coursing like a tongue of lava, both illuminates and devours its literal boundaries. Her shifting registers, cadences and moods exact from the translator a range of forms and voices to ground her ascending emotional and spiritual voltage.
Ravi attempts to refine a line possessed of a geometric intricacy that can speak to the tension between divine order and disorder, while Priya evolves a triple layered approach. She first does a literary translation, followed by two further levels of prizing out embedded layers of significance, eraichi /parallel and ullurai/ inset. Thus, it is hoped the body of each translated verse retains its multi-hued complexity and extends the expansive reader receptivity Andal demanded.
Ravi translates Song Six, I Dreamt this Dream, my Friend.
My first interaction with Andal was in attending Vaishnavite weddings in India, where I saw her words set to music and recited in glorious fashion. Never did I imagine that she was such a unique presence, the only female Alvar saint, but also a prodigy who composed all of her work in her early teenage years before disappearing into a burst of divine energy. Initially I saw her in the bhakti tradition with a poet like her North Indian counterpart Mirabai, since both composed poems that partake of a trancelike ecstatic state, akin to what the Sufis called hal, or discernment, a momentary pause in the stream of ordinary thoughts that illuminated the meaningfulness of life by the sudden discovery of participation in the presence of an universe quite beyond thought.
In my translations, I have taken some liberties, letting Andal’s spirit move me and using her language as a springboard into something colloquial and fervent in English. I’ve attempted to accommodate my formal reimagining of her poetry into a suppleness of expression, because of the fact that in Tamil poetry, there is a corollary to what T.S. Elliot called the “objective correlative,” or evocations of scene and landscape to signify both an allusion to other texts and a richly interior psychological and theological state of being. Ramanujan again has compared this trait in Tamil poetry to Gerald Manley Hopkin’s “inscapes.” Accordingly, I’ve attempted to penetrate the essence of what I sense in Andal’s devotional songs, even as I have played with the notion of fidelity to the original.
Among the corpus of fourteen hymns of the Nacciyar Tirumoli, the auspicious sixth song, I Dreamt this Dream, my Friend is part of every Tamil Vaishanava marriage ceremony even today. In this wedding hymn Andal envisioned herself as the bride, and Narayana, God of the Universe, as her groom who arrives to marry her with proper ceremony. Unlike her other songs, which offer the possibility of multiple interpretations, here, she gives a chronological and keenly observed account of the marriage rituals. Thus, by narrating her dream, she ‘documents’ reality, and merges fact and fantasy into a single song of desire. It is also a mark of her genius that the dream song ends with a benedictory verse that promises worshippers will bear noble children, again earthing dream in lived life, thereby suggesting the lila or cosmic play of the great god.
I Dreamt this Dream My Friend (Varanam aayiram)
How many elephants followed Narayana Nampi
the day he walked transformed by bliss
past the town adorned with flags, banners,
each threshold anointed with a golden urn—
I dream this recurrent dream, my friend.
Tomorrow will be the auspicious day when
the wedding should take place, where the awning
braided with shoots of palm and areca shaded
none other than Madhava, the lion, Govinda
the ox, and the dreamer dreaming but aware.
Indra and hosts of gods arrived to bless me,
to dress me in bridal garb, even Durga swung
a heavy garland around my neck, her gift.
Waters from the sacred rivers were sprinkled
on us: brahmins, siddhas and the dreaming bride.
The holy one stood adorned with white light.
Around our hands the sacred yellow thread
was knotted, young maidens came to welcome
us holding urns glowing like morning sunrise.
Sandal-clad, he entered to tremble the dream.
Drums thudded, conch shells lowed, the earth
shuddered beneath the awnings festooned
with pearls, and my beloved appeared to take
my hand. Learned Brahmins chanted Vedic
mantras. In dream, the language was thought.
They sprinkled darbha grass into the sacrificial fire
roused from twigs. My lord, stronger than raging
elephants, took my hand and we walked delicately
around the fire, the satapadi, seven times round
the leaping flame, nothing realer than this dream.
From that day onwards, through endless cycles
of birth, Nampi, our lord Narayana, would remain
my constant companion, sure as the lotus-hand
he placed at my feet, compelling as the appearance
of my handsome brothers who dreamt dreams
of their own, not mine, with archer’s eyebrows
curving around brightened eyes. They drew me
forward and placed my hand on his, heaping
handfuls of puffed rice into flames burning blue.
In dream, I had awakened to the dream in progress.
They smeared us with saffron and sandalwood paste,
as we rode out on an elephant to circle the water-
sprinkled streets, joyous cries and fragrant water
showered upon us, man and wife for the first time,
never to be apart again, even outside the dreamtime.
Kodai from Srivilliputtur, home to the tallest
Gopurams in Tamil Nadu, had this recurring dream
that she married the cowherd lord. Those who recite
this pure garland of ten Tamil verses will live in joy
and if dreamed about, will bear fine, noble children.
Song Eight, Dark Clouds Be My Messenger
Translation by Priya Sarukkai Chabria
*Excerpted with thanks from Andal The Autobiography of a Goddess, published by Zubaan, New Delhi in 2015 and University of Chicago Press, 2016