Andalआंडाळ

Andal is the only woman among the twelve Alvars, and the only one of them worshipped as a goddess. Found, tradition holds, as an infant beneath a basil plant in the temple garden of Srivilliputhur, she was raised by the garland-maker saint Periyalvar under the name Kodhai. Her two poems, the Tiruppavai and the Nachiyar Tirumoli, are among the most loved works in Tamil, and her insistence that she would wed no mortal but only Vishnu himself gave South Indian devotion one of its central images: the soul as bride.

The worn garland

The founding episode of her legend concerns her father’s garlands. Each day, before they were carried to the temple, the girl would secretly wind them about her own hair and study her reflection, imagining herself the god’s bride. Discovered, Periyalvar was horrified at the defilement and offered fresh flowers instead — but the god refused them, declaring that only the garlands worn first by Kodhai were sweet to him. From this she is called Chudikodutta Nachiyar, the lady who gave what she had worn. The tradition read the story as a reversal of ritual purity itself: love had made the used offering the purer one.

The Tiruppavai

The Tiruppavai, thirty verses, transposes a vow of the cowherd girls of Vraja into the Tamil month of Margali: girl after girl is wakened before dawn, and the singing company proceeds through the sleeping town to the house of Krishna to beg the drum of his service. Compact, formulaic, and rapturous at once, it is recited across Tamil households and temples every Margali morning, and holds an honoured place in the Adhyayanotsava festival at Srirangam and in daily Srivaishnava liturgy. The Nachiyar Tirumoli, 143 verses, is fiercer and more inward: love-madness, messages sent by clouds and birds, and the celebrated dream-sequence Varanam Ayiram, in which Andal narrates her own wedding to the god — verses still sung at Srivaishnava marriages.

The bride of Ranganatha

Tradition relates that when her foster-father pressed the question of marriage, Andal declared she would die rather than take a human husband; the god of Srirangam commanded in a dream that she be brought to him. Carried in bridal procession to Srirangam, she entered the sanctum and merged into Ranganatha. The Srivaishnava tradition accordingly reveres her as an incarnation of Bhudevi, the earth goddess and consort of Vishnu, and grants her what no other Alvar receives: shrines of her own, with her image beside the god’s. Her temple at Srivilliputhur stands on the site of her legend, its towering gopuram among the emblems of the Tamil country, and her festival marriage to the deity is celebrated annually. In the poetry of medieval and modern South India alike she remains the pattern of a devotion so absolute that the tradition could only call it marriage.