Page:Life and Teachings of Sri Ramanujacharya.djvu/30

CHAP. I] wide to all, without any distinction of caste, creed or sex; he was a real “Friend of Man.” He tried the novel experiment of giving out to the masses the Divine Mysteries in Tamil—the language of all in Southern India, high and low, man and woman. The Tiruviruttam, Tiruvâsiriyam, Peria Tiruvantâdi,® are, respectively, an epitome of the Teachings of the Rig, Yajur, and the Atharva Vêdâs; and Tiruvâimoli, the best known and the most popular of his works, is an expression of the Grand Truths echoed in the Sâma Vêdâ—the most esoteric of the four. “Of the Vêdâs, I am the Sâma,” says the Lord. It consists of 1,102 stanzas, divided into ten chapters; and is the clearest and the most succinct exposition of the eternal truths of the Vêdâs. The five Great Truths of which all the Vêdâs and, the Sâstrâs are but an amplification, and the Sacred Two Truths, the Holiest of the Holy, that faintly voice forth the final mystery of Surrender to the Divine Will, find their clearest expression in it.

Thereafter, the various manifestations of the Lord in the Sacred Shrines all over Âryâvarta, presented themselves before the opened eyes of the Master under the Holy Tamarind; the Spirits before the Throne and the Divine inhabitants of the White Island (Swêta Dweepa) came to pay him their respects and do him honour. For five and thirty years did this Great Being * ^ inhabit his tabernacle of

10 Tim Virattam loo stauzas.

Tiru VAsiriyain .. ... 7 do.

Peria Tiruvant&di (Ouifc/ 87 do. Tirav&iinoli «. .. 1,102 do,

1 i His superior excel lenot lieil' in the fact that he was en- dowed with all perfections even from his very birth» and had not the slightest touch with the world and its ways, quite unlike the ^ther Alv&rs, who were blessed at some period of their lives or on i|E>me e»ccasions only. Hence he is described as the soul of the grdtip and the other AlvArs as his body Bhdt^AlvAr. ., • Head.