Kulaśekhara Āḻvār and the authorship of the Mukundamālā

These are my musings after I saw that the Mūvāyirappaṭi Guruparamparāprabhāvam mention the Mukundamālā as a poem composed by the Āḻvār. To be precise, it says, bhagavatguṇaṅkaḷai anubhavittu, avvanubhavattai saṃskṛtamāṉa mukundamālaiyālum centamiḻāṉa perumāḷ tirumoḻiyālum prakāśippittaruḷi… ‘[Kulaśekhara] enjoyed God’s qualities and graciously revealed that enjoyment by means of the Mukundamālā that is [in] Sanskrit and the Perumāḷ tirumoḻi, which is [in] refined Tamil’

We all know that this set of lovely verses in Sanskrit has been attributed to Kulaśekhara Āḻvār (BTW, you can find a nice translation of it here by Aleksandar Uskokov). For those who don’t know, the Mukundamālā is a set of around 30 (or many more) verses (depending on the version) in Sanskrit that praise Viṣṇu-Mukunda, and express a deep devotion for Him.

Now, some scholars, traditional and modern alike, have implicitly accepted this authorship (and nothing wrong with that). And a few from both sides have questioned it for various reasons. And a few scholars such as Velukkudi Swami have cautiously suggested that the poem may or not have been composed by Kulaśekhara, and if not by him, then probably from one of his descendants who bore the same name. Perhaps. A few scholars from Kerala add a layer of complication by suggesting that this Kulaśekhara is also the author of plays like Tapatīsaṃvaraṇam and Subhadrādhanañjayam.

When we have very little outside evidence (like inscriptions, although in this case, some scholars believe there are), we need to rely on a comparison of this poem with another work by Kulaśekhara. And in this case, the Perumāḷ Tirumoḻi is that other work. Well, it is very hard as it is to settle authorship-related issues when dealing with works composed in the same language. In this case, we need to compare works composed in two different languages. How, then, to spot the little linguistic quirks of the author, the peculiar use of a word, all the little idiosyncrasies and so forth that help us spot similarities?

Anyway, this is a topic that I have dealt with in some detail in my book on Kulaśekhara, so I won’t go into details here. In a subchapter dedicated to the question, I tried to consider the diverging opinions of various scholars and even made a chart that summarises the main ideas found in each verse, so as to compare them with the ideas found in the Perumāḷ Tirumoḻi. And I concluded that the epithets for Viṣṇu, the themes of the verses and so forth found in the Mukundamālā are too different from what we find in the Perumāḷ Tirumoḻi for us to conclude comfortably that the same person must have authored both works.

And I also looked for the first mention of this text in traditional sources. The Divyasūricaritam does not mention it. But then, some people don’t believe this work is all that early (I think it does). For some reason, I didn’t at that time check the Āṟāyirappaṭi Guruparamparāprabhāvam, which actually does mention the Mukundamālā as well. Si this identification of the author with the Āḻvār goes back to at least the medieval time. Why did the Divyasūricaritam, a Sanskrit work itself unlike the Guruparamparāprabhāvams that are in Manipravala, not mention the Mukundamālā? I wonder. Any ideas? And any ideas as to which work first associates this poem with the Āḻvār?

By the way, I realised while reading the praveśa of the Mūvāyirappaṭi Guruparamparāprabhāvam (= 3,000 paṭis or granthas) that it’s only an abridged version of the much larger Paṉṉīrāyirappaṭi (= 12,000): the author (Dvitīya Brahmatantra Svatantra Jīyar) clearly states that he abridged his Ācārya’s work to make it more accessible. And of course, as usual, we’ve let the other work vanish from the face of the earth. A real tragedy, the loss of a work. Anyway, I know that there was some attempt to trace it. Was the effort fruitful? Anyone knows?