Kulacēkara Āḻvār’s ‘The Lament of Daśaratha: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

Kulacēkaraṉ (Kulaśekhara in Sanskrit) was probably a minor king in the Koṅku-Cēra line who seems to have ruled from the area around modern-day Karūr in Tamilnadu around the 9th c. CE.2 His sole extant composition, the Perumāḷ Tirumoḻi (PTM), made up of 105 pācurams (stanzas) in Tamil, finds a place in the first 1,000 of the 4,000 pācuram-long nālāyira tivviya pirapantam (NTP).3 And though often considered a minor Āḻvār, Kulacēkaraṉ stands out by his devotion to Rāma, which hagiographies extol much:4 thus,
three whole decades (sets of ten stanzas) out of ten are devoted to his favourite Deity, including the 9th (PTM 9), known as ‘The Lament of Daśaratha.’