Taḷḷapāka Annamācārya
Taḷḷapāka Annamācārya lived at the great hilltop shrine of Tirupati in south India, in Andhra Pradesh, in the fifteenth century, and is said to have composed a pādam a day for the god of this temple, Veṅkaṭeśvara, Lord Viṣṇu. Late in his lifetime, or not long after his death, about thirteen thousand of these were inscribed on copper plates by his son and stored in a special vault inside the temple. The hagiographical tradition of Tirupati asserts that this surviving corpus is less than half of Annamayya’s original oeuvre. These poems are the Tirupati temple’s greatest treasure.
At the age of 16, Taḷḷapāka Annamācārya had a vision of the Lord of the Seven Hills through a dream. He woke up with a composition on his mind, befittingly in the rāga Bhūpalam.
“I beheld in my dream the Lord of Śri Veṅkaṭādri,
The father of all worlds..”
He then went to Tirupati and walked up the Tirumala Hills. On his way he composed several songs, and in his lifetime, a total of about thirty two thousand (32,000). In one of his compositions originally set to rāga Naṭa, he speaks of the impermanence and fleeting nature of śringāra or erotic love.
“Where is that love, that intimacy, those sweet nothings..
Like lightening that appears and disappears, love also vanishes.
Just as water in a mirage is an illusion, love is an illusion.
It is like wealth found in a dream that you do not have when you wake up,
Only one thing is stable, permanent and eternal, that is the thought of Śri Veṅkaṭeśvara…”
In one of his Ādhyātma (spiritual) compositions, he proclaims: “enta mātramuna euvaru dalacina anta mātrame nīvu..” which translates to:
“You are what people worship you as.
The Vaiṣṇavas worship you as Viṣṇu.
Whatever one thinks of you, that you become, O Lord,
isn’t is obvious that the size of the pancake depends on the quantity of batter?
The Vaiṣṇavas lovingly adore you as Viṣṇu;
while those who profess Vendānta hail you as Parabrahman;
Devout Śaivites look on you as Śiva;
and the Kapālikas sing your praises as Ādi Bhairava.
The Śaktas worship you as the goddess Śakti;
and the darśanas visualize you in countless ways.
To those that show little regard, you look small;
and to those that think nobly of you, you appear lofty..
The weakness does not lie with you;
you are like a lotus in the pond that rises and falls with the level of the water.
The waters of the river Ganga alone are to be found in all the wells by the riverside..
You hold us under your sway,
O Lord of Veṅkaṭādri, I surrender myself to you,
and this to me is the ultimate reality.”
Annamācārya effectively created and popularized a new genre, the short pādam (also saṅkīrtana, “poem of praise”), that spread throughout the Telugu and Tamil regions and later became a major vehicle for Carnatic musical composition.
References:
- Vēṇugōpāla Rāvu, Pappu. Flowers at His Feet: An Insight Into Annamacharya’s Compositions. India, Pappus Academic & Cultural Trust, 2006.
2. God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati. United States, Oxford University Press, 2005.
