The Garland of the Guru's Sayings

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Guru Vachaka Kovai Part II

5. Guru Vachaka Kovai 502-871 (Verses 502 through 871)

Guru Vachaka Kovai

http://www.davidgodman.org/rteach/gvk_intro.shtml

Guru Vachaka Kovai

(The Garland of the Guru’s Sayings)

by Muruganar

Sri Muruganar

In the late 1920s Muruganar, an accomplished Tamil poet who had

lived with Bhagavan for several years, began to collect the verbal

teachings of his Guru, Ramana Maharshi. He recorded them in four-line

Tamil verses. No questions were recorded, just the answers and

statements on a wide variety of spiritual topics. By the late 1930s,

Muruganar had completed over 800 of these verses, virtually all of

which recorded a direct teaching statement that Bhagavan had uttered.

In 1939 a decision was made to publish these teachings in book form.

Bhagavan then asked Sadhu Natanananda, a Tamil scholar and devotee,

to arrange the verses by subjects since there was no particular order

or sequence in the material that Muruganar had amassed. After

Natanananda had done this work and shown it to Bhagavan, Bhagavan

himself thoroughly edited the work, modifying the sequences and

adding many revisions. In addition to making these textual

corrections, Bhagavan also composed new verses that he added at

appropriate places in the text. Because of the care and attention

that Bhagavan put into checking and revising these verses, we can be

sure that their contents have his full approval.

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