To Plunge Within (Selections from Nammaazhwaar's Thiruvaimozhi)

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Thiruvaimozhi, a significant work in the Tamil Vaishnava canon, was composed in the eighth century by Natumaazhwaar, our one who goes deep', the most prominent of the twelve Vaishnava Aazhwaar saints. The poet ascribes this impressive 1,100-verse work not to himself but to one whom he visualizes as the very spirit of truth, from whose mouth it emerges as "holy utterance'. Taken as a whole, Thirwanozhi reflects a broad view of what the poet saw as the inmate human need to venerate, and his belief that the god of the sky, of all-encompassing space itself Vislinu was the 'original god, containing in himself all others.

Superbly translated by Vasantha Surya, this book brings together a selection of 110 verses of the Thirwaimazhi, showcasing its intricate weave of sense and syllable and its sparkling insights that echo the highs and lows of the enquiring human spirit. Using an interlinear format, the book provides an English translation along with the Tamil.

VASANTHA SURYA is a writer, translator, poet, and journalist. She has translated novels, short stories, and poetry from and into Tamil. Her iranslations from Tamil include novels by Cho Dharman, R. Chudamani, Sa. Kandasamy, Vaasanthi, and A. Madhaviah, and A Place to Live, an anthology of contemporary Tamil short fiction. She has translated the poems of Brecht and Rilke from German into Tamil, and a narrative folk poem from Bundeli Hindi into English The Ballad of Budhni). The Stalk of Tons, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and A Word Betusen Us are her two poetry collections in English. Over the last forty years, her investigative articles and reviews, many of them focusing on issues of social and cultural change and education, have appeared in major Indian publications. Her works for children. include Mridu is Madras, translated into Tamil by Prema Srinivasan and herself in aree volumes as Medraail Miruda, and Ramayana, serialized in Chatterbex magazine.

Nammaazhwaar's Thiruvaimozhi consists of 1,100 quatrains (paasurangal.), which are arranged in 100 decads (paththugal.) of ten quatrains each, plus an eleventh. A decad is a paththu, that is, a set of ten quatrains, to which an eleventh quatrain has been added. Each set of 100 eleven-quatrain 'paththugal. is referred to as a 'nooru' (hundred). The verses are arranged in sets of hundred (nooru) and sets of ten (decad, or paththu), followed by the number of the particular verse-thus, 1-1-1 would be the first verse in the first decad of the first hundred.