The Secret Garland (Andal's Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli)

Aims to capture the lyricism, beauty and power of the original poems. Archana Venkatesan's detailed notes, based on traditional commentaries, and discussions of the ritual and performative lives of the two poems contextualize the significance and influence of Andal's continuing legacy. An essential addition to the classical library

Archana Venkatesan is associate professor of comparative literature and religious studies at the University of California, Davis. She was selected as a UC Davis chancellor's fellow in 2014. Archana has also received numerous grants, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Institute of Indian Studies and Fulbright. Her research interests are in the intersection of text and performance in south India, as well as in the translation of early and medieval Tamil poetry into English. She is the author of A Hundred Measures of Time (Penguin Classics, 2014), with Crispin Branfoot, the forthcoming In Andal's Garden: Art, Ornament and Devotion in Srivilliputtur (Marg, 2015), and a version of The Secret Garland: Andal's Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli was published by Oxford University Press in 2010). She is also collaborating with Francis Clooney of Harvard University on an English translation of Nammālvār's Tiruvāymoli.

The remarkable legend of Kotai-Andal recorded in oral and written hagiographies since at least the eleventh century reveals very little that is historically verifiable about her. It is a wellknown story that charts the journey of a young girl who swears to marry none but Vishnu. The defining moment of Kotai's tale is her appropriation of a garland meant for Vishnu, an act that is at once a ritual transgression and a sign of singular devotion. She becomes cutikkotuttaval (She who gave that which she had worn), an epithet that appears in some of the earliest inscriptions about her. Her all-encompassing, boundless love for god finds expression in two remarkable poems - the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli. Eventually, her love finds its mark, and she wins Vishnu for herself, becoming his bride at the great temple of Srirangam. For this extraordinary feat, she earns the title Andal, She Who Rules.

Legend aside, the biographical information about KotaiAndal is sparse, and is primarily culled from the benedictory verses of phala sruti that close the Tiruppavai and each of the fourteen sections of the Nacciyar Tirumoli. They offer nothing more than a silhouette of the poet who called herself Kotai.? She probably lived in a town called Puduvai (lit. New Town) that she also referred to as Villi's Puduvai? and which she praised for its beauty and prosperity. She was related in some way to the Alvar poet, Vishnucittan (commonly referred to as Periyalvar), who is identified in the hagiographic traditions as her father. Based on a verse like this,

Vishnucittan has heard these words of truth spoken by the mighty and righteous king of Tiruvarankam: 'Those who love me I will love in return. If even his words are proved false what is left to believe?

the Srivaishnava commentarial literatures on the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli also assert that Vishnucittan was Andal's teacher (acharya). Vishnucittan does not mention Andal (Kotai) by name in his composition, the Periyalvar Tirumoli, while Andal herself only obliquely alludes to their relationship in the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli by using a generic possessive such as Vishnucittan's lovely Kotai (Vishnucittanin viyan Kotai). However uncertain the exact nature of the relationship between these two, the internal evidence of Vishnucittan's Periyalvar Tirumoli (The Sacred Words of Periyalvar) reliably places him in the ninth century, making Andal his contemporary, and part of the devotional milieu of Tamil bhakti poets.

**Contents and Sample Pages**