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 6th-9th 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,...

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