இல்லையில்லை சாவுமில்லை தாழ்வுமில்லை
இல்லையில்லை நோயில்லை நொடியுமில்லை
இல்லையில்லை தொல்லையில்லை துயரமில்லை
இல்லையில்லை தோல்வியில்லை துன்பமில்லை
இல்லையில்லை விதியுமில்லை வினையுமில்லை
இல்லையில்லை யாதுமில்லை யேதுமில்லை
இல்லையில்லை யென்றுகழித் திட்ட எல்லை
இல்லையில்லை யென்றிருக்கு மிருப்பே ஞானம்
illaiyillai saavumillai thaazhvumillai
illaiyillai noiyillai nodiyumillai
illaiyillai thollaiyillai thuyaramillai
illaiyillai tholviyillai thunbamillai
illaiyillai vidhiyumillai vinaiyumillai
illaiyillai yaadhumillai yedhumillai.
illaiyillai yendrukazhith thitta ellai
illaiyillai yendirukku miruppae gnaanam
No—no: there is no death, there is no humiliation/decline.
No—no: there is no disease, there is not even an instant (nodi).
No—no: there is no affliction, there is no sorrow.
No—no: there is no defeat, there is no suffering.
No—no: there is no fate (vidhi), there is no karma/deed-result (vinai).
No—no: there is nothing at all—there is not anything.
The boundary/limit that has been cast off by declaring (and extolling) “no, no”—
To abide as the abiding that remains saying “no, no”: that abiding itself is wisdom/gnosis (ñānam).
By relentless negation—“not this, not that”—the Siddhar denies every ordinary category that binds identity: death, disgrace, illness, time’s bite, trouble, grief, loss, pain, fate, and karmic necessity. When the last “something” is refused, what remains is not a new object but sheer abiding presence. That unobjectifiable “being” which persists after all negations is named ñānam: direct knowing beyond the reach of fate and action-result.
The verse is built as an apophatic (via negativa) instruction: repeating “illai, illai” functions like the pan-Indic method later glossed as “neti, neti” (not this, not this). On the surface it reads as a total denial of human vulnerabilities (death, illness, sorrow). At a deeper level it is a targeted dismantling of the assumed self that experiences these conditions.
1) Ontological negation: “death/decline,” “disease,” “sorrow,” “defeat,” and “pain” are not merely events but markers of embodied individuality and temporality. Denying them points to a standpoint prior to body-mind identification.
2) Temporal negation: “nodi” can indicate the smallest unit of time (an instant). “No nodi” can thus imply a state beyond time-succession—where experience is not parcelled into before/after.
3) Ethical-causal negation: “vidhi” (fate, decree, necessity) and “vinai” (karma as binding action-result) are the twin frameworks that explain suffering within ordinary causality. Denying both suggests a realization in which the knower is not the doer-enjoyer (kartṛ/bhoktṛ), hence not bound by causal accounting.
4) The ‘limit’ that is removed: “ellai” (boundary/limit) can be read as (a) the conceptual boundary that makes ‘self vs world,’ ‘being vs non-being,’ or (b) the existential boundary of fear (especially death-fear). Repeated negation ‘throws away’ that limit, not by producing a new theory, but by collapsing grasping.
5) Ñānam as ‘iruppu’ (abiding): the closing claim is crucial—wisdom is not a conclusion (“nothing exists”), but an ‘abiding’ that remains when all object-claims are negated. In Siddhar idiom this can also be heard pragmatically: when identification loosens, the body-mind may be said to become free of disease and death; yet the verse keeps this ambiguous by rooting the end-state in “iruppē ñānam” (being itself is knowledge), not in a promised biography of the body.