Near Madurai in Tamilnadu,is a VishnuTemplein Villiputtur,where Vishnu is worshipped as Vatapatrasayee.A Brahmin named Vishnuchitta,offered garlands to the god on this temple every morning. One day he found a newborn girl lying under a Tulsi tree in the garden of this temple. He brought the baby home and brought her up as his own child,and named her Goda,or the giver of wealth and prosperity.As Goda reached her teens,she grew up into a beautiful maiden and had the talent of writing beautiful poems whose subject was her love for Vishnu. She had the courage of her conviction,that she was the chosen one,who was destined to marry the god himself,and no mortal man.She used to wear the garlands which Vishnuchitta wove for the god,before they were offered to him. One dayVishnuchotta found a long hair,interwoven with the flowers of the garland and identifying it as Goda's,he was furious and scolded Goda in scathing terms because it was a sacrilege to wear the garland made for the gods,before offering it to him
Goda felt sad and was on tears as she wove a new garland for the god. That night Vishnuchitta had a vision of God,telling him that he preferred to wear the garlands that Goda had worn to the freshly woven ones. From the day after Vishnucitta gave Vishnu the garland after Goda had worn it. Goda's poems throb with her love for the god,which is not spiritual but intensely physical, the kind of love that a wife bears for her man. She taunts him,calls him a cheat,is jealous of the objects that are close to his body,like his conch,and desires him with a wildness of passion that remains unmatched in the whole canon of divine poetry. She even writes a poem that describes all the rituals of her marriage with Vishnu which she visualises in a dream. Determined to marry Vishnu, she goes to the temple of Srirangam, in Tiruchirapalli,nineteen kilometres away from Villiputtur,escorted by Vishnucitta
As she enters the sanctum sanctorum,or garbhagriha,where Vishnu is worshipped as Shesnagsayee,or lying on a serpent,dressed as a bride, she disappears,never to be seen again.Vishnu takes her as his bride,body and soul. She came to be known as Andal,or the woman who rules or has her own ways.Even to this day all Vishnu temples has an idol of Andal worshipped as a goddess,a bride of Vishnu with Shree Devi and Bhudevi.Lets conclude with some lines from the poems written by Andal:" Manmatha,my breasts swell for that lord alone,who holds aloft flaming disc and conch.If there is even talk of offering my body to mortal men I cannot live."There is another interesting story. While on her way to Srirangam, Andal stopped at another Vishnu temple and promised to offer the god in that temple sweet rice cooked in milk and butter if she is married to Sriranganath Swamy of Srirangam. Ranganathswamy took her as his bride but Andal could not fulfill her promise as her body merged with the god.It was years later that her promise was fulfilled by SriRamanujamswamy another Vishnu devotee.After that when SriRamanujaswamy visited Stivilliputtur,where there is a temple dedicated to Andal,she came out of her shrine to greet him, and called him 'anna'or elder brother.
