TIRUPPAVAI--16

TELUGU VYAKHYANAM

naayaganaay ninRa nandhagOpan udaiya 
kOyil kaappaanae! kodi thOnRum thOraNa- 
vaayil kaappaanae! maNik kadhavam thaaL thiRavaay 
aayar siRumiyarOmukku aRai paRai- 
maayan maNi vaNNan nennalae vaay naerndhaan 
thooyOmaay vandhOm thuyil ezhap paaduvaan 
vaayaal munnam munnam maatraadhae ammaa! nee- 
naeya nilaik kadhavam neekkaelOr embaavaay (16) 

Thus in ten pasurams Andal woke up girls of differing
         natures and thereby all the girls of Gokula were woken
         up and they all proceed to Sri Nandagopan's mansion and
         request the door keeper to let them in.
 
         Cowherd colonies in those days may have contained only
         huts and Nanda's mansion may be a big hut,without a 
         doorkeeper.And all this may be Andal's fertile imagination.
         But what she is doing is to tell us how one should enter
         a temple in Archavatara,and worship the Lord.Sri PARASARA
         BHATTAR in his SRI RANGARAJA STAVA lays down the procedure
         for temple entry based on this stanza.The door keepers
         are really our Acharyas.In our daily pooja we open the
         door of our 'koyil azhwar' (the box where the home idol
         is kept) by reciting the Acharya Parampara and finally
         this verse without fail.
 
         TUYOMAAY VANDOM - we have come with purity. What is
         the purity meant here ? Not the usual physical or even
         mental purity.The physical purity of cowherds is
         well known,say the commentators.The purity referred to
         here is the fact that they have come to do service to
         the Lord WITHOUT ASKING ANYTHING IN RETURN.Kainkarya
         itself is the end (Swayam Purushaartha) and is not the
         means to an end.This point should be ever fixed in
         the heart of a Sri Vaishnava.