HE wrote almost nothing. HE spoke for eighty-seven years, and others wrote it down.
The result is Deivathin Kural (தெய்வத்தின் குரல், “The Voice of God”), compiled by the Tamil writer Ra. Ganapathi — who in those pages refers to Maha Periyavaa simply as Sricharanar — and published by Vanathi Pathippagam, Chennai, under its proprietor A. Thirunavukkarasu.
Its origin deserves telling. From about 1955, Ra. Ganapathi ran a weekly column called “Arul Vakku” in the Tamil magazine Kalki, setting down what Maha Periyavaa had said. Thirunavukkarasu read that column and proposed a collected volume. From a magazine column grew, over the following decades, a corpus of seven volumes running to many thousands of pages — one of the great bodies of religious discourse in any modern Indian language.
The English distillation is Hindu Dharma: The Universal Way of Life (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1995), with a foreword by P. S. Mishra, Judge of the Madras High Court, and an introduction by A. Kuppuswami. The Bhavan also published, under HIS name: Aspects of Our Religion (1966), The Vedas (1998), Adi Sankara: HIS Life and Times, The Guru Tradition, and Kanchi Mahaswami on Poets and Poetry. Introduction to Hindu Dharma appeared from World Wisdom in 2008.
The subjects range across Vedic ritual, the sastras, Tamil literature, temple worship, social duty, music, language, astronomy and the conduct of daily life. It is not systematic theology. It is a very long conversation with everyone who happened to be sitting in front of HIM — preserved because one devotee had the good sense to take notes.
HE also wrote one thing HIMSELF: a short autobiographical essay, “What Life Has Taught Me”, composed when HE was nearing seventy. C. Rajagopalachari was the first to congratulate its editors on having obtained it. Its closing line is the finest short sentence HE ever produced about other people:
And in a birthday message in 1991, at ninety-seven:
Asked why HE insisted so strictly upon rules that people had largely abandoned:
In HIS own words, as displayed at the Peetham:
Maha Periyavaa lived HIS entire adult life through the rise of the rationalist and Dravidian movements in Tamil Nadu. For some of the most powerful currents of the age, HE was the symbol of everything to be dismantled. The hostility was organised, and public.
The record of how HE met it is remarkably consistent.
When images were being broken. During a campaign to break Pillaiyar images, the Saiva devotees of Kumbakonam came to HIM at HIS camp near Mayiladuthurai and asked what retaliation they should mount.
HIS instruction was this: let every devotee go to a Pillaiyar temple the next day, break a coconut, and perform abhisheka and aradhana — and let the Vinayagar Agaval be distributed free, in bulk.
Not a counter-attack. A counter-offering. Meet the breaking of images with the worship of images, and hand out a poem.
HIS critique of atheistic ideologies was argumentative, never abusive. Of the Soviet system HE observed that it too had “officers and clerks who do not enjoy the same status”; that “in the higher echelons of power there must be greater rivalry in the communist lands than elsewhere”; and that only “a dictatorship that comes down heavily on those who voice any opposition” could keep such a system quiet. HE argued. HE did not revile.
And HE was harder on HIS own community than any critic was. In the same body of discourses in which HE upholds the traditional order, HE blames Brahmins for “the ruin of Hindu society”; condemns dowry outright; demands that the state be held guilty if a Sudra lacks food or shelter; disclaims any power whatever to excommunicate anyone; and tells an atheist to his face that he may attain salvation.
HE held to the sastras without compromise, and HE was courteous to every person who came before HIM without exception. Those who expected either half of that to give way were disappointed in both.
By 1983 the Peetham that Maha Periyavaa had entered as a boy of thirteen had three living Acharyas: HIMSELF; HIS successor Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, the sixty-ninth; and — anointed on 29 May 1983 — Sri Sankara Vijayendra Saraswathi, the seventieth. HE had settled the succession twice over while still living, and then withdrawn from administration. The Peetham calls it “the monumental testimony to HIS vision and wisdom.”
HIS hundredth year was marked through 1993:
Maha Periyavaa attained Maha Samadhi at the Sankara Matham, Kanchipuram, on Saturday, 8 January 1994, at 2.58 in the afternoon, in HIS hundredth year. HE left the mortal body a few months short of the centenary that had been prepared for HIM.
Prime Minister Narasimha Rao cancelled his engagements to be present, and the interment was held back an hour to await his arrival. The queue of those who came for a last darshan ran three miles, and included — as one contemporaneous report recorded — “numerous Muslims in traditional headgear and several Christian nuns.” Hundreds of Tamil odhuvars, who had come to Kanchipuram that very day for a function held in their own honour, poured forth the Thevaram instead. HE was interred in a pit ten feet deep, of salt, sandal powder, flowers and medicinal herbs, and HIS danda was snapped into three pieces. HE was the first Acharya of the Kanchi Peetham to be interred within the precincts of the Math itself. The Adhistanam was opened for public worship on 11 January 1994.
The possessions HE left were placed in a glass case. They were these: a cot, a woollen blanket, a flashlight, spectacles, an alarm time-piece and a wall clock.
Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma, President of India: “HE symbolised humankind's quest for truth, peace and harmony.”
R. Venkataraman, former President — reported to have been seen in tears: “a lamp unto humanity, who led them on the path of dharma and offered solace to millions.”
Jayalalithaa, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu: “The liberation of HIS Holiness marks the end of a great epoch in the spiritual history of India. HE was a great sage in every sense of the term.”
Justice M. Mohammed Ismail, former Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, and among the first to reach the Math: “The pontiff is simply beyond praise. We were all supremely privileged to be his contemporaries.”
Nani A. Palkhivala, jurist and former Ambassador to the United States — and the tribute that the reporting magazine called the most perceptive of them all:
HE had held one seat for eighty-seven years. HE acquired nothing, wrote almost nothing, never once left the shores of Bharat, and refused every honour that would have placed HIM above another human being.
Nadamadum Deivam, Tamils called HIM. The walking God.
Maha Periyavaa arranged, while HE was still among us, that nothing HE had begun should stop. That is why the Peetham had three living Acharyas from 1983. Sri Jayendra Saraswathi, the sixty-ninth Acharya, had described the division of labour between them in a sentence devotees still quote:
The thought was HIS. The deeds have not ceased.
The trusts HE founded continue to do exactly what HE founded them to do. The Veda Rakshana Nidhi Trust and the Veda Pata Nidhi Trust still fund pathasalas, conduct the annual and Poorti examinations, pay honoraria to teachers, and provide for aged Veda pandits — the constituency for whom HE raised a trust at the age of eighty-nine. The Peetham's network of Veda pathasalas continues across Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, with named adhyapaks teaching the Rig, Shukla Yajur, Krishna Yajur and Sama recensions, and sastric graduates honoured on completion of their studies. More than fifteen hundred vidwans are enrolled as Veda parayandaars at Tirumala through the Peetham's certification. The Guruvara Sadas HE directed continues to gather scholars and honour them.
At Puri, the Atharva Paippalada patasala HE wished into existence in 1937 has multiplied — as HE instructed one of its first students it must.
Every one of those chanting voices exists because an old man in a hut asked for one rupee a month.
Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi Viswa Mahavidyalaya (SCSVMV) at Enathur, Kanchipuram, established in HIS name during HIS centenary years, teaches thousands of students and describes HIM on its own pages as “revered as Walking God.”
Sankara Nethralaya at Chennai — “The Temple of the Eye,” founded on Vinayaka Chaturthi, 6 September 1978, under Dr S. S. Badrinath at the call of Sri Jayendra Saraswathi — has restored sight to a very great number of people who could never have paid for it, and with the Sankara Eye Foundation network carries that work across India and abroad. The hospital's own words on Maha Periyavaa are that HE “has been Sankara Nethralaya's guiding light and the inspiration for our dear founder” — and it observes HIS Aradhana every January, a hospital pausing to remember a sage.
The Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Child Trust Hospital at Chennai, the network of Sankara Vidyalaya schools, the Pidi Arisi Thittam and the continuing annadanam all carry forward what HE began.
At Orirukkai, on the northern bank of the Palar near Kanchipuram, stands HIS memorial temple. Construction began on 9 June 1997, worked by an average of seventy-five silpis and fifteen assistants every day. Its maha mandapam carries 151 granite pillars, each depicting scenes from HIS life, together with images of each of the seventy Acharyas of the Peetham. The granite was purchased from the Ramakrishna Matha, which had stockpiled it for a temple of its own. Its architect, S. M. Ganapathi Sthapati, explained his design:
The Trust describes it as “an all-granite marvel in sculpture, providing a visual running commentary of the times and achievements of our adorable Maha Periyaval.” Its Rajagopuram and Nandi Mantapam were consecrated on 22 June 2018.
Devotees have also raised Manimandapams and shrines to HIM abroad, so that families far from Kanchipuram may still have HIS darshan.
Within the precincts of the Sankara Matham at Kanchipuram is HIS Adhistanam — the shrine over the place where HIS mortal body was interred on 8 January 1994, and opened for public worship three days later.
It has never since been empty of people.
They come every day of the year, and in very great numbers on HIS Aradhana in January and on the monthly Anusham — the star under which HE was born in 1894. They come with the ordinary, urgent business of human life: a child's examination, a daughter's marriage, a court case, an illness, a job, a debt, a decision that will not resolve itself. They sit on the stone. They say Jaya Jaya Sankara, Hara Hara Sankara. Many simply sit in silence, which is what HE most often gave people while HE was in the body.
Devotees across the world testify that dharmic prayers offered at the Adhistanam are answered — that what is asked for in the right spirit, and for the right purpose, is granted. Those testimonies are countless, they span four generations now, and they come from every kind of family. Devotees hold, and have always held, that HIS anugraha did not end when HE left the mortal body — that HE simply became available to everyone at once, in a way HE could not be while HE was walking from village to village.
What is beyond any dispute is the practice itself. A place where an unbroken stream of people have come for over thirty years to place their burdens down, and have gone away lighter, is doing something real, whatever name one gives it.
Devotees who cannot travel to Kanchipuram observe the same faith where they are — which is the subject of the next section, and perhaps the truest measure of what HE built.
Ask any family that reveres HIM where Maha Periyavaa is, and they will not point to Kanchipuram first. They will point to the puja room.
HIS photograph is there — the one with the hand raised in blessing, or the one of HIM seated on the floor in the dhoti and the rudraksha, looking directly at whoever is looking at HIM. It is in millions of homes, in shops, in the cabs of lorries, above shop counters, in wallets and on phone screens. No committee arranged this. Families put HIM there because they wanted HIM in the house.
HIS words are read aloud. Deivathin Kural is read in the evenings, a page or two at a time, in Tamil and in translation, and there is not a household question — a marriage, a ritual, a doubt about how something ought properly to be done — on which somebody will not say, let us see what Periyavaa said about this. It has become, for a great many families, the last word.
HIS name is chanted. Jaya Jaya Sankara, Hara Hara Sankara — the cry that lined the roads at Tiruchirappalli in 1923 “irrespective of religion, caste or creed” — is said at the beginning of journeys, at the end of prayers, over the sick, and under the breath in difficult moments.
HIS simplest instruction is still followed. Children and grandmothers still fill notebooks with Sri Rama Jayam, line after line, page after page — the practice HE gave to those who had no Sanskrit, no leisure and no learning, and which asked nothing of a devotee but a pen and the willingness to sit down. It costs nothing. Anyone can do it. That was the entire point.
HIS observances are kept. The monthly Anusham is marked in homes and temples. The Paavai Nonbu recitation of the Thiruppavai and Thiruvempavai in the month of Margazhi, which HE revived and made into a contest for children, still puts the greatest Tamil devotional poetry into young mouths every December. The handful of rice is still set aside in the morning in households that were doing it before their present occupants were born.
And the stories are told. Every family that came near HIM has one, and they are told at weddings and funerals and on long train journeys and now on the internet: the thing HE said that could not have been guessed; the letter that arrived on the day HE was thought of; the illness that turned; the small, exact, personal kindness to somebody of no importance whatever. Devotees do not offer these as proofs. They offer them the way one speaks of a grandfather — as a presence still felt in the room.
That is the final and largest of HIS works, and HE built it without a single institution.
HE asked for one rupee a month, and HE got a civilisation's Vedas kept alive. HE asked people to write Rama's name, and they are still writing it. HE walked so as not to tread on insects, and thirty years after HE left the mortal body, tens of millions of people who never saw HIM say HIS name before they begin anything that matters.
Jaya Jaya Sankara. Hara Hara Sankara.
This account has been compiled from published records, and we gratefully acknowledge the following sources.
Published in the Peetham's commemorative souvenir volumes and reproduced on kamakoti.org:
With gratitude to the devotees who have preserved and translated so much of this material:
The “Ten Codes for Living” and the testimony of the Sringeri Acharya are reproduced from Peetham publications.
Compiled with reverence for Periyavaa.org. Where accounts differ, we have followed the Peetham's own dated chronicles. Corrections and additional documented material are warmly welcomed.
Jaya Jaya Sankara. Hara Hara Sankara.
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