Vallalar: The Life of Ramalinga Swamigal

Ramalingam was born on 5 October 1823 at Marudur, a village near Chidambaram in today’s Cuddalore district. He was the youngest of the five children of Ramaiah Pillai and Chinnammai, with two elder brothers, Sabhapathi and Parasuraman, and two elder sisters.

His father died within months of his birth. His mother took the children to her family home near Ponneri, and the family later settled in Chennai, in the Seven Wells (Ezhu Kinaru) area, where the eldest brother, Sabhapathi, supported them.

Family tradition recalls that when he was five months old his parents carried him to the Nataraja temple at Chidambaram, and that the baby laughed with joy as the camphor flame was shown before the shrine. He later spoke of that moment as his first sight of the Light.

Sabhapathi arranged lessons for him, including with the Kanchipuram scholar Sabhapathi Mudaliar, but the boy was drawn to worship more than to the classroom. He spent long hours at the Kandaswami temple, Kandakottam, in George Town, and sang his early hymns to its Murugan. His teacher is said to have decided that this pupil needed no ordinary schooling.

His sister-in-law cared for him and gave him a room of his own upstairs. There, meditating before a lit lamp and a mirror, he is said to have had a vision of Lord Murugan. In one of his verses he speaks of all that he had received “from my twelfth year until today”.

In Chennai he became known for his devotional verse, and he often walked to the temple at Thiruvottiyur, whose deity many of his early hymns praise. Under family pressure he married his niece, his sister’s daughter, but he did not take up household life.

Over the years his worship grew beyond particular forms and temples. He came to see God as one and formless, present in every being as light, and named that God Arutperunjothi, the Supreme Grace-Light, and Thanipperungkarunai, the boundless and unique Compassion.

In 1858 he left Chennai. After a stay at Chidambaram he accepted the invitation of a devotee, Ramakrishna Reddiyar, and settled at Karunguzhi, a village near Vadalur, where he lived for about nine years.

In 1865 he founded the Samarasa Vedha Sanmarga Sangam, a fellowship open to everyone, later renamed the Samarasa Suddha Sanmarga Sathya Sangam. It stood for one God worshipped as light, compassion for all lives, no killing and no meat-eating, and food for the hungry.

In 1867 his disciple Thozhuvur Velayudha Mudaliar, a Tamil scholar, published the first four books (Thirumurais) of his hymns under the title Thiruvarutpa, “the divine song of grace”. The fifth and sixth books, the sixth holding his mature teaching, were published later.

On 23 May 1867, Vaikasi 11 in the Tamil calendar, he opened a free house of food at Vadalur on land given by the villagers: the Samarasa Vedha Dharma Salai, known today as the Sathya Dharma Salai. Anyone who is hungry is fed there, without being asked about caste, religion or country.

On the first day he lit the kitchen hearth and asked that it never be put out. It has been kept burning ever since, and the Salai still feeds visitors every day with the help of donors and volunteers. Read his teaching on feeding the hungry.

Nearby he built the Sathya Gnana Sabhai, the Hall of True Knowledge, which opened on 25 January 1872, a Thai Poosam day. It is not a temple with an idol: worship is offered to a lamp, the sign of the Arutperunjothi.

The hall is octagonal. Seven screens of different colours hang before the lamp, standing for the veils that hide the soul’s own light, and the enclosure is fenced with a chain of 21,600 links, said to match the number of breaths a person takes in a day. Each year on Thai Poosam the screens are drawn aside one after another, and thousands gather for the Jothi darshan, the sight of the light.

In his last years he lived at Siddhi Valagam, a small house at Mettukuppam near Vadalur. There, on 22 October 1873, he raised the flag of the Sanmarga and gave his last public address, the Great Sermon (Peruupadesam). He urged his listeners not to waste their time but to inquire into the truth, and not to rest their faith in the scriptures and customs that had hidden it. (Some accounts give the date as 20 October; the sermon’s own heading, Wednesday, 7 Aippasi of the Srimukha year, matches 22 October 1873.)

On the night of 30 January 1874 he entered his room at Siddhi Valagam, asked his followers not to open the door, and was not seen again. When the room was later opened it was found empty; accounts differ on when that was. The event is recorded in the colonial district books of South Arcot: Garstin’s district manual of 1878 and the district gazetteer of 1906. For his devotees he did not die; he merged into the Arutperunjothi.

His hymns, about 5,800 verses in six books, are gathered as Thiruvarutpa. Their summit is the Arutperunjothi Agaval, a single poem of 1,596 lines in the sixth book. His prose includes Jeevakarunya Ozhukkam, “the discipline of compassion for living beings”, and Manu Murai Kanda Vasagam, the story of the just Chola king Manu Needhi Cholan. He also edited older Tamil works. Read verses in his own words.