The Secret Garland is the latest volume in the American Academy of Religion-Oxford University Press Translation Series. This volume is a stellar addition to the series that is now ably edited by Anne Monius of Harvard Divinity School. Āṇṭāḷ (or Kōtai) is a south Indian Tamil poet, the sole female among the twelve 6^th-9^th century Vaiṣṇava saints (āḻvārs), and arguably the most well known. By tradition she is the daughter of another āḻvār, Viṣṇucittaṉ (Periyāḻvār). Her devotion is oriented particularly to the Vaiṣṇava deity Kṛṣṇa, known in poetry and image as the cowherd, dancer, beloved of village women.

Two works are attributed to Kōtai First, there is Tiruppāvai (“The Holy Vow/Prize”), thirty verses which trace the progress of a group of young village women as they leave their homes on a winter morning to fulfill their vows — not by fasting and bathing in the cold river, but by awakening one another and together approaching the dwelling of Kṛṣṇa, asking him to give them what they most deeply desire. Each verse ends with the mysterious words, ēl ōr empāvāy, which may mean something like, “Accept our vow” (although Venkatesan thinks it wiser not to translate it at all. At Tiruppāvai's climax, no other prize, no drum, is sought; it is only Kṛṣṇa in whom they bathe: “We came at the break of dawn / to worship you / to praise your lotus feet / bright as gold. / Listen to the reason for our prayers: / You were born among simple folk / whose livelihood was tending cows / So you cannot refuse our small services. / Know this Govinda / We have not come here / for the paṟai-drum / For all time: for this birth and every birth that follows / We are only yours. We serve only you. / Direct our every other desire toward you ēl ōr empāvāy.” (verse 29)

Second is her longer and more complex Nācciyār Tirumoḻi (“The Lady's Holy Words”), a fascinating (and possibly incomplete) work of 14 songs, mostly 10 verses long, that present widely varied emotions toward Kṛṣṇa, ranging from flirtatious play to dreams of marriage to angry near-despair. She dreams of marrying her divine beloved: “Virtuous Brahmins sang the Vedas and chanted sacred verses / they kindled the sacrificial fire with perfect dry twigs and encircled it with grass / My lord of great prowess, that mighty elephant / clasped my hand and circled the fire. / Such a vision I dreamed, my friend.” (6.7) But later there is tortured and tumultuous anger at this lover who will not fulfill his promises: “In this unscrupulous world / Tirumāl / the harsh and cruel son of Nandagopāla / inflicts such agony that I cannot move / or even turn on my side. / Quickly bring me the dust from his footsteps / smear it on me and prevent my life from fleeing.” (13.6) In the end, all that remains is hope for something better, at least for the reader of such poems: “Those who live considering / the words of Kōtai of Viṣṇucittaṉ / as balm for the pains of the world, / will never be separated / from the splendid feet of the lord / who graced the great elephant. / that supreme lord / who is glimpsed on this earth in Vṛndāvana.” (14.10) If the women come very near to Kṛṣṇa in Tiruppāvai, in Nācciyār Tirumoḻi vivid memories of nearness tantalize and then torment the woman who can never safely and surely be with her beloved, nor forget him in his absence. This is surely a source of the Vedānta teacher Rāmānuja's teaching that devotion is long and loving meditation on what we remember.

Even translations as good as these — the best we now have of Āṇṭāḷ — are not to be read alone, particularly when canonized in a tradition as rich as the Śrīvaiṣṇava. As with the other songs of the āḻvārs, both of Āṇṭāḷ's works were richly interpreted from medieval times on, most notably by the 13^th century commentator Periyavāccāṉ Piḷḷai, and by the 20^th century commentators Uttamur Viraraghavachariar and P. B. Annangarachariar. Each work is accompanied by ample notes drawing on their commentaries, so the reader is given a feel for the original and yet too for its place in tradition.

The volume's long introduction situates well the entire project and summarizes the state of our knowledge of Āṇṭāḷ, her place among the women poets of India, and the genre of her compositions. Appendices cover the myths alluded to in the songs, and also traditional verses prefatory to the songs. Altogether, we have the verses well-rendered for the sake of a straightforward reading, and yet too the information necessary for us to make sense of them in their cultural and religious contexts. This volume will therefore will be of value to Indologists and Tamil scholars, to those studying women saints and their writings, and yet too be of value in undergraduate classes.