The Åntal Story: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

So begins the earliest Ûrîvaishnava hagiography, the Guruparampara Prabhåvam 6000 (henceforth, 6000) composed by Pinpalakiya Perumå¬ Jîyar in the twelfth century around Srirangam, the great temple on the banks of the Kåviri regarded as the cosmic center of the Tamil Ûrîvaishnavas. This praise poem is a preface to the short Ma∫ipravå¬a1 account of the Åntal story and mentions all the major points of her remarkable sojourn. It paints her as a divine being whose love for God was so profound that he accepted a garland that she had already worn; that as his wife she was Vasumatî, the goddess earth who manifested miraculously in a forest of sacred tulasi in På∫†ya country. Though the preface appears to stress Åntals divine origin and her divine nature as a goddess, it calls equal attention
to her mortal life—a tension that becomes more apparent in the actual narrative of the story.