Periyalvar

Periyalvar, “the great Alvar”, was born Vishnuchitta in Srivilliputhur in the Pandya country, and spent his life in the humblest of temple offices: he kept a garden and strung garlands of flowers and basil for Vatapatrasayi, the form of Vishnu enshrined there. The tradition’s decision to call this gardener “great” above all the other saints rests on a single audacity of feeling, remembered in his most famous poem.

The contest and the Pallandu

Tradition relates that the Pandya king at Madurai, seeking to know the highest truth, summoned scholars to debate, with a purse of gold hung as the prize. Vishnuchitta, an unlettered gardener prompted by the god himself, went to the assembly and established the supremacy of Vishnu; the purse descended to him of its own accord. Paraded through Madurai on the royal elephant, he was granted a vision of Vishnu on Garuda in the sky — and his response was not petition but alarm for the god’s own safety, exposed to the world’s evil eye. He burst into the Tiruppallandu: many years, many thousands of years, may no harm come to you. The reversal — the devotee blessing and protecting God — became the signature of his sainthood, and the Pallandu is sung to this day at the opening of the Divya Prabandham’s recitation.

Father of Andal

His larger work, the Periyalvar Tirumoli, dwells with unusual tenderness on the childhood of Krishna: the poet sings as Yasoda, bathing, feeding, and scolding the divine child, bringing the Krishna of cowherd Vraja into Tamil in a mother’s voice. But his most consequential act, in the tradition’s eyes, was domestic. Digging in his basil garden, he found an infant girl, whom he raised as his daughter Kodhai — the future Andal, the one woman among the Alvars. It was his garlands she secretly wore before they were offered, and his shocked discovery and the god’s delight in the used flowers form the opening of her legend. Father and foster-daughter stand together in the canon, the gardener and the girl from the garden.