The sailent features of this work are: 1. The Thiruvaachakam of Saint Maanickavaachagar, a book of mystic theology is composed of 51 poems. All the 51 poems or Decads comprising in all of 659 stanzas have been translated into English prose. 2. The Tamil Text and its English version have been printed alongside each other i.e., Tamil stanzas on the left hand pages and the English version on the right hand side pages. 3. All the 51 Decads (including 10 sub-decads of the 5th poem) summarised and critical abstracts have been written at the end of each decad. They are based on their respective sub-titles depicting the content of the Decads. The relevance of the titles of the Decads to their sub-titles has been brought out wherever necessary, with appropriate quotations from the Thiruvaachakam itself. 4. The book of Thiruvaachakam has been divided into 4 chapters as follws: Chapter 1 contains the first 4 poems (of 648 lines) or Decads which have been sung in “Aagaval” metre. Chapter 2 contains the fifth and the sixth poems of 150 stanzas. The fifth poem called the Sacred Cento contains 100 stanzas under 10 sub-decads and the sixth poem is made up of 50 stanzas Chapter 3 covers 14 Decads from the 7th (Thiruvempaavai) to the 20th (Thiruppalliezhuchchi). All these Decads forming one unit, deal with the love theme of bridal mysticism in which the Saint Maanickavaachagar is the beloved bride who has fallen in love with God-Civan. The peculiarity of this chapter is the opening Decad (7) which deals with arousing the lady-love from her divine slumber and the
