The story

The second of Sri Yamunacharya's three unfulfilled vows was the preservation and exposition of the Dravida-āmnāya — Nammalvar's Thiruvaymozhi, the Tamil Veda. Sri Ramanujacharya discharged this charge twice over: he learned the Thiruvaymozhi directly from Mālādhara (Thirumalai Āṇḍāṉ) and from Parāṅkuśa-dāsa (Thirumalai Nambi) — the naama mālādhāryasujñātadrāviḍāmnāyatattvadhiye (#40) commemorates this reception — and then ensured that it would be set in writing for every generation that came after.

The disciple he chose for that labor was Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ. The Guruparampara Prabhavam and Govindacharya's biography agree on the closeness: Pillan was born in Alvar Thirunagari, the very village of Nammalvar, and was regarded by Sri Ramanuja with such affection that tradition names him the acharya's mānasa-putra — mind-born son. He grew up steeped in the Tamil verses and in the acharya's oral expositions of them.

Under Sri Ramanuja's direction, Pillan composed the Āṟāyirappaḍi — the "six-thousand pada" commentary on the Thiruvaymozhi. The scale of the work is what the name records: its prose extent, measured in the traditional pada unit, is six thousand. It was the first systematic Tamil vyākhyāna on Nammalvar, and it opened the door through which every subsequent commentary — Nanjeeyar's Onbadhinaayirappadi, Periyavachan Pillai's Irupattunaalaayirappadi, Vadakku Thiruvidhi Pillai's Muppatthaarayirappadi — passed.

Without Pillan's labor, the āmnāya-vāk of the Alvars would have remained an oral inheritance alone, fragile in the face of centuries. With it, the Tamil Veda was given a written tradition of commentary equal in standing to the Sanskrit Vedanta-vyakhyanas. The naama mālādhāryasujñātadrāviḍāmnāyatattvadhi — "he whose intellect grasped the truth of the Tamil scripture well, learned from Mālādhara" — though spoken of Sri Ramanuja himself, flows outward through Pillan to the entire vyākhyāna tradition that followed.

Sri Ramanujacharya's related naama, vararaṅgānukampāttaddrāviḍāmnāyapāragāya (#39) — "one who became a master of the Tamil scripture through the compassion of Sri Ranganatha" — names the grace that made the whole lineage possible.

Contemplation

A tradition's survival depends on the written word almost as much as on the breath of the acharya. Sri Ramanujacharya did not keep the Thiruvaymozhi as a private treasure; he arranged, through Pillan, that it would be fully expounded and preserved so that the devotee in any century — including our own — could enter its meaning. The contemplation for us is that the Lord's name in our mother tongue is not a lower form of scripture, but veda in its proper sense, worthy of the same exegetical labor. Offer the 108-chant of this naama for those who labor to translate, teach, and preserve the dravida-prabandham for the next generation.