Alwars : literally “those immersed in God”, were Tamil Vaishnava mystic-poets who sang praises of Vishnu as they travelled from one place to another; their songs rank among the world’s greatest devotional literature. The most famous of them was Nammalwar. They established temple sites such as Srirangam. Their bhakti-songs, compiled as Alwār Arulicheyalgal or Divya Prabhandham, developed into an influential scripture for the Vaishnava bhakti & is mentioned in Bhāgavata Purana.
... South, that there is a strong influence of the learned or classical temperament and habit; but even here there is a very considerable popular element as in the songs of the Shaiva saints and Vaishnava Alwars. The field here is too large to be easily known in its totality or to permit of a rapid survey, but something must be said of the character and value of this later literature that we may see how vital... Ramprasad and of the Bauls, the wandering Vaishnava devotees, the poetry of Ramdas and Tukaram, the sentences of Tiruvalluvar and the poetess Avvai and the inspired lyrics of the southern saints and Alwars were known to all classes and their thought or their emotion entered deeply into the life of the people. I have dwelt at this length on the literature because it is, not indeed the complete, but ...
... of national poetry has Page 465 been dominated by this single strain and it has inspired a religion and a philosophy. And in the Vaishnavism of the far South, in the songs of the Tamil Alwars we find it again in another form, giving a powerful and original turn to the images of our old classic poetry; for there it has been sung out by the rapt heart of a woman to the Heart of the Universe ...
... Jatakas, the Panchatantra, Tulsidas, Vidyapati and Chandidas and Ramprasad, Ramdas and Tukaram, Tiruvalluvar and Kamban and the songs of Nanak and Kabir and Mirabai and the southern Shaiva saints and the Alwars,—to name only the best-known writers and most characteristic productions, though there is a very large body of other work in the different tongues of both the first and the second excellence,—must ...
... was halted after the second issue of the Arya , September 1914. South Indian Vaishnava Poetry Sri Aurobindo published these essays on Andal and Nammalwar, two of the alwars or Vaishnava devotional poets of Tamil Nadu, in the Arya in May and July 1915. In the same issues he published translations of some of their poems, which he executed with the help of the poet Subramania ...
... 5 February 1932 Page 100 Spiritual Poetry in India But what a change in India. Once religious or spiritual poetry held the first place (Tukaram, Mirabai, Tulsidas, Surdas, the Tamil Alwars and Shaiva poets, and a number of others)—and now spiritual poetry is not poetry, altogether অচল But luckily things are সচল and the movability may bring back an older and sounder feeling. Page ...
... national poetry has been Page 159 dominated by this single strain and it has inspired a religion and a philosophy. And in the Vaishnavism of the far South, in the songs of the Tamil Alwars we find it again in another form, giving a powerful and original turn to the images of our old classic poetry; for there it has been sung out by the rapt heart of a woman to the Heart of the Universe ...
... live in now. It is the last of the four Yugas, or Ages, which form a cosmic cycle. This fourth Age is a Dark Age, after which a new cycle will start again, with a Golden Age or Satya Yuga. 4. Alwars: Twelve poet Bhaktas of Tamil Nadu, who lived in the second half of the first millenium AD, and composed beautiful devotional hymns. Page 220 A few dates 1486 (February) ...
... of the ānanda of Divine love. We have appended in the Appendix XIII (p. 168) a few poems which relate to different stages of the yogic experiences of the Bhakti yoga. One of the Tamil Alwars describes the condition of the mother of a love-stricken girl (symbolising the human soul yearning to merge into the Godhead). She complains to her friend of the sad plight of her child whom love for ...
... southernmost region of the Tamil country—Tiru-nelveli (Tinnevelly). His father, Kari, was a petty prince who paid tribute to the Pandyan King of Madura. We have no means of ascertaining the date of the Alwar's birth, as the traditional account is untrustworthy and full of inconsistencies. We are told that the infant was mute for several years after his birth. Nammalwar renounced the world early in life and... and spent his time singing and meditating on God under the shade of a tamarind tree by the side of the village temple. It was under this tree that he was first seen by his disciple, the Alwar Madhura-kavi,—for the latter also is numbered among the great Twelve, "lost in the sea of Divine Love". Tradition says that while Madhura-kavi was wandering in North India as a pilgrim, one night a strange... my Father are one"—all these are uttered in his simple and flowing lines with a strength that is full of tenderness and truth. The lines which we translate below are a fair specimen of the great Alwar's poetry; 2 but it has suffered considerably in the translation,—indeed the genius of the Tamil tongue hardly permits of an effective rendering, so utterly divergent is it from that of the English ...
... English some pieces from Tamil literature. A few lines from the Kural of Tiruvalluvar; two pieces— Hymn of the Golden Age and Love-Mad —by Nammalwar, a poem by the Chera king and saint Kulasekhara Alwar, and three pieces by Andal. In all his literary works a double action came into play. Sri Aurobindo notes on 7 January 1913, "The only work done in the day was a grammatical commentary on the fifth ...
... Veda ought to be possible. It is a keen sense of this possibility which has taken different shapes and persisted through the centuries,—the perfectibility of man, the perfectibility of society, the Alwar's vision of the descent of Vishnu and the Gods upon earth, the reign of the saints, sādhūnāṁ rājyam , the city of God, the millennium, the new heaven and earth of the Apocalypse. But these intuitions ...
... Aurobindo puts it: It is a keen sense of this possibility which has taken different shapes and persisted through the centuries, - the perfectibility of man, the perfectibility of society, the Alwar's vision of the descent of Vishnu and the Gods upon earth, the reign of the saints, sādhūnām rājyam, the city of God, the millennium, the new heaven and earth of the Apocalypse. But these intuitions ...
... Mookerji, Hindu Civilization, II p. 340, fn. 2. Page 425 Their neighbours the Ārjunāyanas who "have been assigned to the region lying west of Agra and Mathura about the Bharatpur and Alwar States of Rājputana" 1 may have been, according to some scholars, 2 the Agalassoi who fought Alexander after the submission of the Sibae (Sivis) near the Jhelum in the Punjāb and who are called by ...
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