பெரியாழ்வாரின் பக்தி நெறி: The Devotional Path of Periyāḻvār

The poets of the Tamil bhakti movement carried forward the inner conventions of Sangam literature, especially its akam (interior, love) themes, and anticipated later minor genres such as piḷḷaittamiḻ, ulā and ammāṉai. Among the twelve Āḻvārs, Periyāḻvār holds a distinctive place as the poet who sang of God as a child he himself was raising. This paper examines the 461 verses of the Periyāḻvār Tirumoḻi through descriptive and analytical methods. It studies the poet's identification with Yaśodā, the stages of Kṛṣṇa's infancy and boyhood, the adaptation of akam themes such as the mother's lament and elopement, the girls' game-song untipaṟattal, the Rāma episodes, the praise of sacred shrines (divya dēśam), the glory of devotees and the power of the divine name. The study argues that Periyāḻvār's devotion is founded on vātsalya, the parental mode of love, and that his Tirumoḻi laid the foundation for the piḷḷaittamiḻ genre in Tamil.