- Lived:
- by scholarly reckoning somewhere around 880–930 CE, in Kurukūr (Āḻvārtirunakari) on the Tamiraparani river in the deep Tamil south — tradition says he never once left the tamarind tree he was born beside
- Field:
- Tamil Vaiṣṇava devotional poetry — the greatest of the twelve Āḻvārs, the "immersed" saint-poets of Viṣṇu
- The Big Idea:
- Revelation does not have to arrive in Sanskrit. A farmer's son's 1,102-verse poem of longing, the Tiruvāymoḻi, was placed beside the Veda itself — and a whole theology, Rāmānuja's included, was built on a village boy's love songs.
- In their words:
- "I, your servant, who have no other refuge, have entered beneath your feet — and settled there." (Tiruvāymoḻi 6.10.10, the tradition's charter of surrender; the rendering is ours)
- If you remember one thing:
- The boy who did not speak for sixteen years finally answered a stranger's riddle — and then did not stop until he had sung a Veda in Tamil; today, in Viṣṇu temples across the world, a silver crown bearing the god's feet is set on every bowed head, brahmin heads included, and that crown bears his name.