Arutpa Marutpa Debate

Arutpa Marutpa debate (1867 - 1904) is a debate initiated by Arumuga Navalar of Jaffna against the compilation of the songs of Ramalinga Vallalar under the name Arutpa. He argued that only the Saiva Thurumuraigal can be called Arutpa and Ramalinga Vallalar's songs would have to be categorized as Marutpa. Various scholars joined the debate by taking either sides and each side published criticisms on the opposite side. Even defamation suits were filed by both sides.

Basis of the debate

When the songs of Ramalinga Vallalar were compiled and published as a text by his principle student Ubayakalanidhi Thozhuvur Velayutha Mudhaliar, he named the text as Thiru Arutpa. Ramalinga Vallalar did not dispute this. Thozhuvur Velayutha Mudaliar has mentioned this in his poem titled Thiruvarutpa Varalaaru. The word Thiru indicates wealth, respect, auspicious nature.

Thozhuvur Velayutha Mudaliar split the songs of Ramalinga Vallalar into 6 Thirumurai. The word Murai indicates arrangement, order, structure, assemblage. The categories were named as Thirumurai since the complete text was called Thiruvarutpa.

The publication work of Thiruvarutpa started in 1860 and ended in 1867. The letters written by Ramalinga Vallalar show that the first 4 Thirumurai were published with his consent and oversight. Thozhuvur Velayitha Mudaliar mentions that Ramalinga Vallalar was furious on seeing the author's name was mentioned as Thiruvarutprakaasa Vallalar, as he had asked the author's name to be published as Chidambaram Ramalingam Pillai only. Later Ramalinga Vallalar pacified himself by splitting the author name as Thiruvarutprakasa + Vallal + R and justifying that only the last part of "R" referred to him and the "Vallal" referred to the God addressed in the poems.