A Different Kind of Antal Story: The Divyasuricaritam of Garudavahana Pandita

Abstract

The miraculous legend of the ninth-century poet Āṇṭāḷ’s love affair and eventual marriage to Viṣṇu of Srirangam is first recounted in the 13th-century Śrīvaiṣṇava Maṇipravāḷa hagiography, the Guruparamparaprabhāvam 6000 attributed to Piṉaḻakiya Perumāḷ Jīyar. Some three centuries later, Garuḍavāhana Paṇḍita of Srirangam elaborated on these brief biographical sketches of the āḻvārs in his Divyasūricaritam, a Sanskrit kāvya-hagiography. The five Sargas devoted exclusively to describing the birth, childhood, life, and marriage of Āṇṭāḷ depart radically from the concise narrative of its Maṇipravāḷa predecessor. In this article, I analyse the Divyasūricaritam’s Āṇṭāḷ story to argue that the text’s many inventions and elaborations encode articulations of Āṇṭāḷ’s place as a poet-saint-goddess within emerging Śrīvaiṣṇavism, particularly as it pertains to the female devotee’s ability to secure liberation for herself as well as for others.

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