Harināma Kīrtanam · Verse 49

The forty-ninth verse continues verse 48's diagnosis with an arboreal image. From inside the great tree of pride some branches sprout and bear endless fruits and shoots. To not live on this tree, the way is devotion at your feet. The verse names dambha (pride) as a tree, and the various social/intellectual/spiritual successes the seeker accumulates as the tree's branches and fruits. The anpoḍit-tar-uvil vāḻāy-vatinnu, to not live on this tree, is the seeker's plea: let me not be one of the creatures who lives in the branches of pride. The way out, the verse names plainly, is bhakti at your feet.

If you have come to this verse aware that some of your accumulations have become identifications you cannot easily set aside, the verse names them as the tree of pride and offers the only escape: bhakti.

The Living Words

Dambhāya van-maram-atinn-uḷḷil ninnu cila kompum taḷirttu avadhi-illātta kāy-kanikaḷ. From inside the great tree of dambha (pride/hypocrisy), some branches sprout and bear endless fruits and shoots. Van-maram is great tree; kompu is branch; taḷir is new shoot; kāy-kanika is fruits, vegetables; avadhi-illātta is limit-less.

Anpoḍ itu-attar-uvil vāḻāy-vatinnu gati nin pāda-bhakti Hari Nārāyaṇāya namaḥ. Lovingly, to not live on this tree, the way is devotion to your feet. Anpoḍu is lovingly; vāḻāy-vatinnu is for not living on; gati is the way; pāda-bhakti is devotion to the feet.

Scripture References

The Heart of It

Verse 48 named the ahaṁ-buddhi and its consequence. Verse 49 names the structural metaphor: the tree of pride. The branches of the tree are the various accumulations the seeker has produced and now is identified with: I am a successful person, I am a learned person, I am a virtuous person, I am the one who renounced wealth. Each branch produces new fruit; each fruit produces new branches. The tree, once planted, grows endlessly, and the seeker, once living on it, cannot easily come down.

The verse's escape is pāda-bhakti, devotion to the Lord's feet. The image is precise. To bow at the feet is, structurally, the opposite of climbing the tree. The bow lowers the seeker; the tree raises him. The bow brings the seeker into contact with the ground (the Lord's feet); the tree raises him into the branches (of his own pride). The verse offers the bow as the only structurally available exit from the tree.

The Bhagavad Gītā 15.1-3 gives a related Sanskrit image. Ūrdhva-mūlam adhah-śākham aśvatthaṁ prāhur avyayam, the aśvattha (banyan/peepul) is described with roots above and branches below, the inverse of an ordinary tree. The tradition reads this as the saṁsāra-vṛkṣa, the tree of repeated worldly existence: it must be cut by the asaṅga-śastreṇa, the sword of detachment. Verse 49's van-maram is the same tree at the level of personal dambha. The bhakti at your feet is the Sanskrit asaṅga-śastra in Malayalam.

If you have come to this verse identified with some quality you accumulated by hard work, the verse does not ask you to dismantle the quality. The verse asks you not to live in its branches. The bow is what keeps the seeker from climbing.

The Saints Who Walked This Road

Two saints whose practice was the verse-49 coming-down.

Sant Tukārām (already in verses 25, 27, 29, 45), in his abhangas, repeatedly named the dambha-vṛkṣa, the tree of pride, and described his own coming-down. He had been a small grocer with some wealth; he was ruined twice; he describes the ruination as the saint's gift, because each ruin took him further down the tree. The body image is the grocer at the foot of the cymbals, the wealth gone, the pride gone, the bhajan arriving on the riverbank because there was nothing left for it to arrive into except the bare ground.

Kāraikkāl Ammaiyār (already in verses 18, 24), the Tamil Nāyaṉār, asked Śiva to take her beautiful body away because she could no longer bear the dambha it produced in her merchant-class household. The skeletal peyy-form she received is the verse-49 coming-down in body: she was given the body that could not climb the tree of pride because no one could take pride in it. The body image is the saint dancing on the cremation ground, the body that has been brought to the lowest social position so that the bhakti in the throat could be the only place to live.