Who is
Andal?
(After reading the “Romance of Andal” by Sri J. Parthasarathy in the
June issue of the ‘Triveni’, C. R. wrote the following to us in the course of a
letter. As the interpretation offered by C. R. is not widely known, we are
publishing it with his kind permission.
C. R., however claims no originality–and wishes it to be known that an
“esteemed friend” brought this possible interpretation to his notice–Associate
Editor, Triveni.)
Andal was not any real girl or foster-daughter of
Perialwar. It was a creation of his poetic mind and he wrote verses as if they
were spoken by this child of his imagination. Perialwar modified the usual mode
of Bhakta poetry in which religious experiences are cast in the figure of a
love-sick girl’s anguish. We are all familiar with this rather common trick in
which the saint speaks the language of a love-lorn maid. Perialwar varied this
by creating a ‘daughter’ who was drawn to the great Sweet-heart and was
absorbed by Him. The enlightened self of the man on whom falls Divine Grace is
the ‘daughter’ whom he finds and brings up with care and affection. She is at
first shy and secretive (as people generally are with their first religious
experiences). That is the legend of the wearing of the garland in private. The
world never approves of desertion from social work. Marrying the Eternal
Bridegroom is desertion of the world. All Bhaktas enjoy the ecstacy of the
love-passion so thoroughly that they would fain continue in that state rather
than reach realisation and be absorbed. This is the ‘bereavement’ when Andal
joins her Lord. The person loses his individual dynamic joy when samadhi is
reached. The critical faculty struggles against the intuition grace that takes
one to God. Perialwar made Andal for the latter and reserved himself as
‘father’ to symbolise the doubts and the griefs of the former.
The literature attributed to Andal is thus probably
just Perialwar’s–a chapter corresponding to the Lover’s episodes in the other
saints’ compositions. But so effective and popular was this Andal chapter that
she became in tradition a real person and an additional saint. A figure of
poetry was vitalised into a separate legend–so effectively that perhaps now
this sort of interpretation would be put down as heresy. As if it were more
pious to keep an additional saint going than to make Perialwar both himself and
his daughter!