Anantārya Mahimākathā

Born in 1053, Kali year counted as Vijaya, month Cittirai, star Cittirai, at Siruputtur (Kirangur) on the Kaveri near Mysore. Father Keśavācārya, Yajur Veda, Bhāradvāja gotra. The child was named Ananthan. Lost in bhagavad-bhāgavata-ācārya bhakti, he was called Āḻvān, as Kūrattāḻvān had been called.

He surrendered at the feet of Śrī Rāmānuja at Srirangam. In a discourse on Nammāḻvār — the flower-thick Tiruveṅkaḍam — Rāmānuja asked which of the seventy-four would lay a garden on the Hill. The forest, the cold, and the tigers held them. Ananthalvan rose. Rāmānuja called him Āṇ Piḷḷai, the man of courage, and sent him. From that name the line is Ananthanpiḷḷai.

He laid the garden, a tank, and a lake, and named them for Rāmānuja. The trees the book names are vakula, pāṭala, punnāga, and śenbaga. His wife, near her time, carried the earth. A young brahmachari asked for the basket. Ananthalvan refused: a soft youth could not bear that labour, and if he crossed the work he would meet the crowbar. The boy took the basket. Ananthalvan struck. The boy hid in a tree, then ran into the temple.

At the evening worship the chin of the Lord was bleeding. Camphor was laid on it. The crowbar remains at the gate. The camphor is given as Śrī Pādarēṇu. The honours named are the worn cloth, the diamond ring, and the golden earring. When Śrī Rāmānuja climbed, the book says he took the flight still called muḻaṅkāl maṭippāṉ on his knees, not on his feet. Periya Tirumalai Nambi met him with tīrtha: he had searched the four mada streets and found no one younger to carry it.

Word of the service reached the south. A brahmin came, bathed, and received pañca-saṃskāra from Ananthalvan. He was named Śrīvaiṣṇavadāsa. He stayed and heard.

Ananthalvan asked the Lord to keep the promise made to one who comes with faith — mā śucaḥ. The Lord gave tīrtha and Śrī Śaṭhakopa, and said that when the body was left, Śrīvaiṣṇavadāsa would reach paramapada.

Plucking tulasī in the Rāmānuja nandavanam, he was bitten. He bathed and went on with the service. Asked which poison he meant — the snake in the grass, or the snake of “I” and “mine” — he said the Lord of the Hill was his physician, as Dhanvantari. The book says that on this day he showed himself an aṃśa of Ādiśeṣa.

Called at midday to the Lord while the garland was still unfinished, he finished the flowers first. He would not leave the Hill against Śrī Rāmānuja’s command. Like Madhurakavi, he knew no God but the one his ācārya had set him to serve. The Lord took the garland. From this the line is called Madhurakavidāsa.

The garden was torn in the spring. He caught a young woman among the trees and tied her to a campaka: she looked like Mahālakṣmī, and he asked for the husband she called the king of the Hill. At dawn she was Alarmelmaṅgai, the consort on the chest. He took her with the flowers to the temple. She returned to her place. The garland he then received is read as the kanyāśulka. The line calls him father of Alarmelmaṅgai and father-in-law of the Lord of the Hill.

Coming south with Varadācārya, he opened the rice brought from the Hill and found it full of ants. Remembering Kulaśekhara’s wish — to be born even as a small life on the Hill, so as to see the Lord — he would not eat their portion. He set them back toward Tirumala.

The book then takes him through the southern country and into Kerala, teaching what Śrī Rāmānuja had taught, and back toward the Hill. A young brahmachari served him on the road. Another time, Śrīvaiṣṇavas climbing from Srirangam were given prasāda by a youth who recited the taniyan placing Ananthalvan with the lotus feet of Śrī Rāmānuja. At the gate Ananthalvan said he had not sent the boy. The company understood that the Lord had said it.

When he heard that Śrī Rāmānuja had left the body, he did not go to the worship for a year. The Lord sent the arcaka: the loss was the Lord’s as well, at Tirupati, Kanchi, Srirangam, and Tirunārāyaṇapuram, and He would stand where the ācārya had stood. Ananthalvan asked two things. Irāmānuja Nūṟṟantāti is recited the day after Madhurakavi’s Kaṇṇinuṇ Ciṟuttāmpu. The image of Śrī Rāmānuja was consecrated, by the Vaikhānasa rite, on the left of the garbhagṛha. The satari of that shrine carries the name Ananthalvan.

Parāśara Bhaṭṭar sent a man to ask what a true Śrīvaiṣṇava is. Ananthalvan kept him six months. Then he said: like a crane, like a cock, like salt — and like you. Bhaṭṭar explained. The crane waits, white, by the water, for the great fish and not the small. The cock gathers the grain for its young, as the ācāryas gathered the meaning of the Veda into the Divya Prabandham. Salt disappears into the food. So the Śrīvaiṣṇava disappears into kainkarya.

At Siruputtur he received Bhaṭṭar on the way to Melkote, went with him, and was there when the debate was won. He did not take saṃnyāsa as the path. Asked why a delicate man should renounce, he said surrender and service were enough. To his own people he spoke of satsanga, and told Śaunaka’s night of two parrots — one reared by hunters, one by a ṛṣi.

He spent the last days in the service of Tiruveṅkaṭamuḍaiyān. On Āḍi Pūram, the birth star of Āṇḍāḷ, he merged with the Lord. The book says the magizha in the garden is still given the temple honours, on the ground where he left the body.