Swami Sri Desikan’s “thaniyan“
It is customary for all Sri Vaishnavites reciting the Sanskrit hymns of Swami Desikan to commence with a invocatory verse called “thaniyan“, and it runs as follows:
“Sriman Venkatanatharya: kavi-tharkika-kesari,
Vedhanthacharya-varyome Sannidhatham Sadha-hrdi!”
The above ‘thaniyan‘ for Swami Desikan was composed by his son, and one of foremost disciples, Sri. Kumara varadacharya“. It is an epigrammatic verse that has for long served as a traditional, prefatory tribute to all of Swami Desikan’s Sanskrit verses.
There is another ‘Thaniyan‘ composed by another equally famous disciple of Swami Desikan, “Sri.Brahma-thantra-swathanthra-swami”. This disciple, known to be the founder of the Parakala Muth lineage of today, sang his “thaniyan” (“Ramanuja-Dhaya-pathram.“) which traditionally prefaces the recitation of Tamil hymns or sukthis of the Azhwars.
The ‘Thaniyan‘ for the Sanskrit hymns, the subject of this essay, is commonly known to serve three purposes.
First, it introduces the reciter of the hymn to its author.
Secondly, it gives a biographic glimpse of the greatness of the author.
Finally, it also serves as a quick and quiet prayer to the author beseeching him to let the Creative Spirit that inspired composition of the hymn also guide the reader or reciter to its proper understanding and appreciation.
The recitation of a “Thaniyan” prior to a hymn implies that the author of the hymn is a great and venerable soul; the hymn has been divinely inspired; and that a genuine appreciation of the hymn is not possible without the wholehearted blessings of the author’s spirit and which the reader must devotedly seek.
A ‘Thaniyan‘ is also essentially reflective of a cardinal Sri Vaishnavite belief that spiritual mentors, ‘gurus’ or ‘Acharyas’, are to be regarded as God-on-earth and one of the five “means” or ‘panchOpAya‘ by which Godhead may be attained by a disciple — the other four ‘upayas‘ being ‘karma‘, ‘gnyana“, ‘bhakthi‘ and ‘prappatti’.
The “Kasyapa-samhita” is often quoted as follows to support this belief :
“guruve parabrahmam guruve param-dhanam guruveparaha kamo guruve- parayanam || guruve-paravidhya guruve-paragathihi |
yasmath ~ dupadeshta ~ so tasmad-gurutharo guruhoo |l
Meaning:
“The guru is God Himself; he is the real Wealth;
The guru is the fit object of love; he is the sole refuge.
The guru is true Wisdom; he is the only Way;
A Savior is he and verily, the Savior of Saviors!
Now, by introducing the author to a reader/reciter, a ‘Thaniyan‘ holds the ‘Acharya‘ up as a symbol of “upeya” (the Ultimate Human Goal); then, by providing a biographic snapshot of the author it provides the reader with “upaya” the means, to know more about the Reality of ‘upeya‘; and lastly, by incorporating an element of “prayer” within itself, the “Thaniyan” reminds readers of the nature of the “sambhandham, or relationship, subsisting between “upaya” and “upeya“, between Supreme End and temporal means.
Because of the very special purpose above that a ‘Thaniyan‘ serves, it is often believed by devout Sri Vaishnavas to be an esoteric ‘manthra‘ in its own right (which is perhaps why it is called ‘Thaniyan‘ in Tamil, i.e. “separate” or “independent“! It is said that even if one were to be, for whatever reasons, unable to recite the whole of the holy hymns of Swami Desikan, mere repeated chanting of ‘Thaniyan‘, in a spirit of desperate devotion, would be the “manthric‘ equivalent of realizing fully all the truths couched in the ‘Acharya’s‘ original hymns!
The first word “Sriman” in the ‘Thaniyan‘ refers to one who is blessed by “Sri” — the Goddess of Plenitude and Prosperity. One would tend to think this particular epithet is rather inappropriate to describe Swami Desikan who was known to have lived all his life in a state of utter penury. He was known to have spurned wealth by summarily rejecting opportunities for advancement in the secular world (vide. his “Vairagya-panchakam“).
In Swami Desikan’s case, thus, the term “Sri” refers instead really to a state of being characterized by “auspiciousness” i.e. being in a constant state of “heavenly existence on earth” uncircumbscribed by the wants, desires, hope, fears and despair of common humanity.
Swami lived all his life as a truly ‘liberated’ and ‘fearless’ soul ever in service to the Supreme Lord (‘mukthaanu-bhuthimiha daasyati me mukundaha’ vide his famous Sanskrit hymn the “dhaya-satakam”). All the fine qualities of ‘head and heart‘ — virtuousness, nobility, integrity, leadership, compassion and high idealism — were exhibited by the Swami in several incidents and events in his long career in life as a colossal spiritual preceptor of the 13th/14th-century world (CE).
The next word, ‘Venkatanatharya‘, refers to Swami Desikan’s first naming as “Venkatanathan” by his parents. Now this would have been a very pedestrian way of introducing the ‘Acharya‘ in the ‘Thaniyan‘ but for the suffix “Arya” being included in this epithet. The word “Arya‘, in Sanskrit, is said to denote “acquisition of exalted status in any field of human endeavor“.
Venkatanathan’s early life is known to bear ample testimony of his having acquired such ‘exalted status‘ by having been initiated into all the right ‘samskaras‘ (holy rites of passage or sacraments) and by undergoing apprenticeship under very able and scholarly mentors. He then mastered every single discipline that he chose to pursue and which included all branches of philosophy and theology, humanities, sciences, languages, arts and crafts (‘sarva-thanthra‘). Even at a very early age he commenced expounding and commentating on daunting and abstruse matters on the frontiers of philosophical thought. It was thus that he came to be designated “Arya“.
The next word “Kavi-tarkika-kesari” is a title and it is a tribute to Swami Desikan’s poetic genius and the formidable array of his superior skills as a dialectician and debater.
Now, as a poet Swami Desikan was a maestro of euphony, sonority, metric-rhythm, syntax, vocabulary, prosody and grammar. By a mere phrasing he could evoke a whole world of cascading ideas and imagination. Language was his slave; idiom and style were his lackeys; allegory and alliteration were his mere minions. There were no limits of poetic experience that he did not cross; no peaks of verbal fancy that he left unscaled; and of the great VisishtAdvaiti-c theme of the human search for spiritual redemption, there was little Swami Desikan, in a literary sense, left unexplored.
The towering majesty of his poetic script in “hamsa-sandesham” or “yadhavabhyudayam” is said to be matched, word-for-word, by the intense feeling which we know is the hall-mark of his shorter poems like “Gopala-vimshati” or “Godha-sthuthi“. Swami Desikan wrote thus for the common laity as well as for the cognoscenti and captured both their hearts and imaginations.
As a ‘dialectician and debater‘ – ‘tharkikan‘ — Swami Desikan was deeply feared as a veritable “simham” or fierce lion by the adversaries in his times.
In his days the philosophical underpinning of the Visishtadvaitic school of Sri Ramanuja or his precursors was still being subjected to critical onslaughts by monists and other thinkers known to advance superb technical refutations of Sri Vaishnava doctrines.
Swami Desikan’s singular contribution to VisishtAdvaita was that he protected it, by providing an insulation of sheer logic for it, against intellectual marauding. He thereby established its shining truth in vigorous and unambiguous terms. A great advaitic scholar of those times, Appaya Dikshitar, was known to have remarked that but for the “great fence of irrefutable logic built by Venkatanathan around the lush pastures of Sri Vaishnava truth, advaitic-dialecticians could have simply devoured it all up for breakfast like goats gobble grass!”.
The word ‘Tharkikan‘ also refers Swami Desikan’s efforts to formulate sound philosophic basis for t doctrine of “prappatti“. His magnum-opus, the “Srimad rahasyatrayasara‘ , is known to be a monumental contribution towards the distillation of what indeed is the core of Vaishnava faith.
The next word in the ‘thaniyan‘ “Vedantacharya” and this is a designation believed to have been conferred by Lord Ranganatha Himself on Swami Desikan for his outstanding polemic work, the ‘Sata-dhushani’ – a master rebuttal of several ‘advaitic‘ postulates and doctrines . It denotes Swami’s famous ability to provide true, correct and fair interpretation of matters related “Vedhanta-sastra”.
The suffix “varya:” added to this epithet is to indicate that this title, having been given by Lord Ranganatha, is hence non-pareil or “unequaled” by any other honour bestowed by mere mortals on Swami Desikan.
The last phrase is “varyomay sannidhatham sadha hrdi“. This phrase is truly the most essential in the ‘Thaniyan‘. It is a sort of prayer to Swami Desikan beseeching him to forever come and dwell inside the reciter’s mind and guide him to proper appreciation of the truths propounded in the hymn.
The ‘thaniyan‘ of Swami Desikan, recited with devotion, is believed confer on disciples enlightenment of the highest order required for the discovery of truths that the “Vedantacharya” himself held dear and cherished all his life.
Kavitharkika Simhaya Kalyana Gunasalin Srimate Venkatesaya Vendhantha Guran nama:
Sudarshan Madabushi
