Guru Vachaka Kovai (The Garland of Guru's Sayings) is the most profound, comprehensive and reliable collection of the sayings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, recorded in 1255 Tamil verses composed by Sri Muruganar, with an additional 42 verses composed by Sri Ramana. These verses contain a wealth of ideas and clues to guide anyone who seeks to experience the non-dual state of true self-knowledge by means of self-investigation (atma-vicara, scrutinising oneself to know 'who am I?') and self-surrender (relinquishing one's ego).
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Guru Vachaka Kovai is the most profound, comprehensive and reliable collection of the sayings of Sri
Ramana, recorded in 1255 Tamil verses composed by Sri Muruganar, with an additional 42 verses composed by Sri Ramana.
The title Guru Vachaka Kovai can be translated as The Series of Guru’s Sayings, or less precisely but more elegantly as The Garland of Guru’s Sayings. In this title, the word guru denotes Sri Ramana, who is a human manifestation of the one eternal guru – the non-dual absolute reality, which we usually call ‘God’ and which always exists and shines within each one of us as our own essential self, our fundamental self-conscious being, ‘I am’ –, the word vachaka means ‘saying’, and the word kovai is a verbal noun that means ‘threading’, ‘stringing’, ‘filing’ or ‘arranging’, and that by extension denotes a ‘series’, ‘arrangement’ or ‘composition’, and is therefore also used to denote either a string of ornamental beads or a kind of love-poem.
It has been rightly said by Sri Sadhu Om in his preface to Guru Vachaka Kovai (The Garland of Guru’s Sayings) that Upadesa Undiyar, Ulladu Narpadu and Guru Vachaka Kovai are the true Sri Ramana Prasthanatraya, the three fundamental scriptures of Sri Bhagavan’s revelation. And all these three great works owe their existence primarily to the inspired poetic and spiritual genius, Sri Muruganar.
It was Sri Muruganar who earnestly beseeched Sri Bhagavan to write in a few Tamil verses the upadesa given by Lord Siva to the rishis in the Daruka forest, who had been led astray from the path to Liberation by following the path of kamya karmas prescribed in the Purva Mimamsa In reply to this earnest entreaty of Sri Muruganar, Sri Bhagavan composed the Tamil work Upadesa Undiyar, which He afterwards wrote in Telugu, Sanskrit and Malayalam under the title Upadesa Saram.
It was again Sri Muruganar who elicited Ulladu Narpadu by praying to Sri Bhagavan, “Graciously reveal to us the nature of Reality and the means of attaining it so that we may be saved”. Though Ulladu Narpadu began to form around a nucleus of twenty stray verses which Sri Bhagavan had composed earlier, within three weeks (that is, between 21-7-1928 and 11-8-1928) Sri Bhagavan composed more than forty new verses, and all but three of the Sri Muruganar earlier verses were deleted and added to the Supplement {anubandham). Moreover, all the verses were carefully revised and arranged in a suitable order by Sri Bhagavan with the close co-operation and assistance of Sri Muruganar.
