The Thiruppallāṇḍu opens the entire 4000-verse Nālāyira Divya Prabandham — the sacred canon of Tamil Vaiṣṇavism — and its gesture of reversal is extraordinary. Where most devotional poetry asks blessings from the Lord, Periyāḻvār blesses the Lord himself, wishing him long life: pallāṇṭu pallāṇṭu (countless years, countless years!).

This is vātsalya bhakti — the devotional mode of parental love — at its most tender and audacious. Periyāḻvār, a flower-garland weaver of Śrīvilliputtūr who is also the father of Āṇṭāḷ, is seized by a parent's instinctive urge to protect the beautiful child before him. The child happens to be the Lord of the Universe. He blesses him anyway.

Sung at the beginning of every complete recitation of the Divya Prabandham, the Thiruppallāṇḍu sets the key of the entire corpus: not servitude but love, not petition but blessing, not awe but intimacy. Each pāsuram is presented here in five layers — Tamil, transliteration, English, Tamil commentary, and an alternate rendering — with devotional theme and literary note.