Aksharamanamalai

Composed by Bhagavan Ramana, Akshara mana malai means the Scented garland arranged Alphabetically in praise of Arunachala. Arunachala” literally means “Mountain of the colour of the red.”. This mountain is situated in Thiruvannamalai of Tamil Nadu. Devotees consider the mountain itself as a form of Lord Shiva. Arunachala can also refer to Lord Shiva who is consecrated in the temple near Arunachala. Aksharamanamalai is the 108-verse poem in praise of Arunachala that Bhagavan composed while he was living in Virupaksha Cave. It belongs to the bridal mysticism genre, expressing the yearning of a devotee for union with the divine. Parts of it are autobiographical, but most of it contains exhortations to Arunachala to take the jiva of the person chanting it and absorb it in himself. Bhagavan noted years later that it was primarily written from the standpoint of a devotee, not from the perspective of the jnani.

Words of Sri Michael James on Akshara mana malai
ஸ்ரீ அருணாசல அக்ஷரமணமாலை (Sri Arunachala Aksharamanamalai), the ‘Bridal Garland of Letters to Sri Arunachala’, is a song composed in the metaphorical language of bridal mysticism or madhura bhava (the affectionate attitude of a girl seeking union with her lover, the lord of her heart) and consists of 108 couplets, each of which begins with a consecutive letter of the Tamil alphabet and ends with a vocative case-form of the name ‘Arunachala’.

In the title of this song, akshara is a Sanskrit word that means both ‘imperishable’ or ‘immutable’ and a ‘letter’ of an alphabet, manam is a Tamil word that means ‘union’, ‘marriage’ or ‘fragrance’, and malai is a Tamil form of the Sanskrit word mala, which means a ‘wreath’ or ‘garland’, particularly one made of flowers, so the compound word akshara-mana-malai means the ‘marriage garland of letters’, the ‘garland of immutable union’, the ‘fragrant garland of letters’ or the ‘garland of imperishable fragrance’.

In these 108 verses, Sri Ramana pours out his intense love for God in the form of the sacred hill Arunachala, praising his boundless grace and praying to him for the imperishable state of absolute oneness with him, which can be gained only by means of true self-knowledge, since the true form of God or Arunachala is nothing other than our own essential self, the pure consciousness of being that we always experience as ‘I am’.

Though Sri Ramana had actually surrendered himself and merged completely in the egoless state of true self-knowledge at the age of sixteen, on the day in 1896 that he was overwhelmed by an intense fear of death, which was about eighteen or nineteen years before he composed Sri Arunachala Aksharamanamalai, in many of these verses he sings from the perspective of a devotee who is still struggling to overcome his ego and its finite desires and thereby to surrender himself entirely to the infinite love of God.

However, though many of these verses are therefore prayers, in some of them Sri Ramana clearly praises the grace of Arunachala for destroying his mind or ego and thereby absorbing him completely in the non-dual state of immutable union or true self-knowledge.
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Akshara Manamalai is a garland exuding a sweet and auspicious fragrance, woven with the letters of the alphabet as its flowers, and fitting to be worn by Lord Arunachala; further, it is a garland which will unite the devotees who sing it, fully comprehending its import, in wedlock with the eternal Reality, Arunachala. (akṣara poruḷ [means] Reality, absolute, imperishable Reality.) That this second meaning is acceptable to the author, Bhagavan, is made clear in a later verse, which says, ‘Arunachala, bestow upon me through your grace union with the supreme Brahman, so that my mind, which carries the scent of the world, may take on the scent of that Brahman,’ [ibid v. 69].

Kunju Swami has narrated the circumstances that led to its composition.

… when devotees started staying with Sri Bhagavan in Virupaksha Cave, the food obtained from the sadhu’s choultry was found to be insufficient for everyone. The devotees then decided that they would get their food by begging in town. Each day they would go to town in the late afternoon to beg for and collect food. Begging for food in this way is called ‘going for bhiksha’. Bhiksha is the food that is offered.

Kunju Swami continues:

Later that day, they dined on the bhiksha food back at Virupaksha Cave and any leftovers were used the next morning. Instead of waiting in front of each house and asking for food, which is the traditional way that religious mendicants beg in India, the devotees would walk along each street singing Akshara Malai Vigraha Amasadeeswara, a hymn composed by Adi-Sankara. It was only necessary to beg in the evenings because the food eaten at midday was brought by Echammal, Mudaliar Patti, Kannakammal and others.

When the householders in town heard this Sankara song being sung, they would know that the group was Sri Bhagavan’s devotees. They would then come out of their houses and offer clean, fresh food. However, some local sadhus from the town came to hear about this routine. They started singing the same song and began collecting the ashram’s food before Sri Bhagavan’s devotees had even got to town. Only when Sri Bhagavan’s devotees came singing for bhiksha did the householders realise that they had been deceived by the other sadhus.

Palaniswami, Perumal Swami and some others went and told Sri Bhagavan that if he composed some other songs for their use while going for bhiksha, it would put an end to the problem caused by the other sadhus. They also told him that such songs would help those who offered bhiksha to identify the group. Acting on their suggestion and request, Sri Bhagavan composed Aksharamanamalai, a Tamil poem of 108 verses in praise of Arunachala. The devotees then began to sing it regularly when they went into town for bhiksha. (The Power of the Presence, 2nd edition, pp. 25-27)
some days later he set out on pradakshina round the Hill, taking a pencil and paper with him, and, on the way, composed the hundred and eight verses.

Tears of ecstasy streamed down Bhagavan’s face as he wrote, sometimes blinding his eyes and choking his voice. The poem became the great devotional inspiration of the devotees. All the pain of longing and all the bliss of fulfillment are mirrored in its glowing symbolism. The perfection of Knowledge is combined with the ecstasy of devotion. And yet this most heartfelt of poems was composed from the standpoint of the devotee, of one who is still seeking. It is also an acrostic, its hundred and eight verses beginning with the successive letters of the Tamil alphabet. Nevertheless, no poem could be more spontaneous. Some devotees asked Sri Bhagavan the interpretation of some of the verses and he replied: “You think it out and I will too. I didn’t think while I was composing it; I just wrote as it came.” [1]

Bhagavan would occasionally joke that ‘Aksharamanamalai fed us for many years’. See Day by Day with Bhagavan (9.12.45) for Bhagavan’s own description of how the devotees begged while singing this song.