dayā śatakam

Vedanta Desika's hundred verses on compassion itself — not on Venkateswara directly, but on his daya, treated throughout as a person and addressed as one. The opening takes refuge in the hill of Tirumala, saying that the mercy of Srinivasa has run down it like a river of sugarcane juice until the whole mountain has turned to sugar. The second plunges into that mercy as an ocean fed by a lineage of teachers; the third salutes those wholly devoted to the compassion of Lakshmi's dwelling-place. The closing verse lets the roar of the Vrishadri waterfall stand for the surge of the divine couple's mercy toward the helpless. Central to the Srivaishnava tradition of prapatti.