Sri Alawandar"s Geethartha Sangraham (GS)

[Guest guest]

Dear Members of the Prapatti Group:

 

Among the source documents for Prapatti , Lord Krishna"s Gita occupies a very

special place. It is generally recognized that the Bhagavat Gita is one of the

greatest "spiritual and metaphysical scriptures " of the world.It comments on

abstruse Vedantic principles in a lucid and satisfactory manner. It is

structured in the form of a dialog between Lord Krishna and Arjuna prior to the

start of the great war at Kurukshetram between Pandavas and Kauravas. There

are 700 verses in Gita that are enshrined in 18 chapters. Among the 700 verses,

Lord Krishna accounts for 572 of them; the remaining 128 are associated with

Arjuna (85) ,Sanjaya(42) and King Drithirashtra (1).

 

The Message of Lord Krishna

**********************************

The illustrious message thatr Lord Krishna as Parthasarathy gave to Arjuna in

the battlefield teaches us clearly and completely all that is needed to lead a

throroughly fulfilled and righteous life.The message expounded by Geethaachryan

contains invaluble teachings relevant to overcome the various crisis and

dilemmas associated with all stages of Human spiritual development. Lord Krishna

used Arjuna as a medium to bless us all with His teachings,that are global in

scope and all -encompassing in content to obtain practical solutions for our

every day problems. Through His short discourse enshrined in Gita, Our Lord

taught us in a quintessential manner ,the Universal Science of Life. He analyzed

for us brilliantly and convincingly the nature of Human life and its recurring

problems ; He did not stop only with an analysis of the problems of Life,but

also as a compassionate Acharyan taught us an elegant way to overcome the

powerful problems that we encounter in all stages of our life on this Earth.

 

Prapatti Message

*********************

The powerful message of Lord Krishna comes at the very end of Gita and is found

as the 688th verse among the 700 verses of the Bhagavad Gita:

 

SARVA DHARMAN PARITYAJYA MAAMEKAM CHARANAM VRAJA I

AHAM TVAM SARVA PAPEPYOH MOKSHISHAYAMI MAA SUCHA: II

 

The Lord's message contained in the above profound verse is the Charanagathi

method, which is also known as Prapatti Dharma, Bhara Nyaasam, Atma Nikshepanam

or Self-Surrender.

 

Up to the 688th verse, Lord Krishna explained to Arjuna the different concepts,

that lead to God Realization and liberation for the cycles of Births and

Deaths.These concepts relate to Karma Yoga, Gyana Yoga and Bhakthi Yoga as

sound routes to attain Moksham or liberation form the cycles of Births and

deaths. Arjuna listened carefully and realized his incompetence and powerlesness

to practise any of the above three Yogas to attain Moksha siddhi and despaired

about his inadequacies as a practioner. Lord Krishna out of His infinite mercy

for Arjuna and all of us, then taught the secret of the easy -to-practise

Prapatti Yoga thru the 688th verse.After that Lord Krishna assured Arjuna that

there was no reason for Arjuna to despair over the enormous difficulties in

practising Karma or Gyana or Bhakthi Yoga to receive His blessings. Our

compassionate Lord asured Arjuna that the boons of Moksham are assured ,when

latter followed the Prapatti margam. He asked Arjuna to discard all his sorrows

resulting from his anxieties about the certainity of salvation.Sri Krishna

reveals to Arjuna that the full responsibility of saving him AFTER Prapatti is

HIS ,befitting His duties as the supreme Lord of the Universe(Sarveswaran). He

asks Arjuna to perform the Prapatti and then cast aside ALL of his doubts and

to become possessed by unshakablle and complete faith

(Maha Viswasam) in HIM as Sarveswaran to save him. Lord Krishna points out that

Prapatti is an instantaneous act (Kshana Kartavyam) and is totally different

from the other three routes of reaching Him.He states that the Karma, Gyana and

Bhakti Yoga routes are ardous to practise and it takes too long to realize the

desired goals of Moksham.

 

Sri Geethaacharyan asks Arjuna to cast away ALL doubts about

realizing the FULL fruits of

Prapatti and assures him that there is nothing to worry anymore about his status

as Mukta Prapanna thru the last paadam of His sacred Charama slokam(Maa Sucha:).

We have thus the quintessence of Gita"s message in the Charama Slokam.

 

The Visishtadvaita intrepretation of Bhagavad Gita

**********************************************************

Inview of the sacred and the timeless nature of the profound message of Lord

Krishna enshrined in the Gita , the Acharyas of the three different

philosophies of Vedantha--Sri Adi Sankara, Sri Ramanuja and Sri Madhvacharya--

and the other teachers that followed them have written commentaries on Gita.

Sri Sankara"s commentary follows the Advitic doctrine,which holds that Brahman

is the "only true really-existing being and all the rest are illusory." Sri

Ramanuja"s commentary is based on the Visishtadvaita philosophy ,which teaches

that "the sentient souls(Jeevas) and the nonsentient objects (Achetana) are as

real as Brahman", but the Jevans and the Achetana are attributes or Viseshana

of the Parabrahman and are not independent of the Parabrahman as the Dvaitins

believe. Sri Ananda Teertha (Sri Madhvaacharya) has intrepreted Gita in the

light of Dvaita philosophy ,which teaches that Sri Krishna(Hari) is the supreme

being and that the Jeevas are real and absolutely distinct from HIM , the

Parabrahman.

 

It is amazing that the terse message outlined in Gita could be used by

the three Acharyas of three distinctly different Vedic philosophies to find

support for their individual points of view and to establish their

siddhanthams.We will not attempt any comparitive evaluation of the three

intrepretations here.In this essay, we shall focus on the Visishtadvaita

approach . The predecessor of Ramanuja by the name of Sri Alavandaar was the

first one to condens the profound messages of the 18 chapters of Gita. He used

THIRTY TWO Verses to accomplish htis task. His work is known as GITAARTHA

SANGRAHAM(GS). Ramanuja wrote a commentary on Gita along the lines established

by Alavandaar. Swami Desikan continued that tradition.His commentary on Gita

is known as Taatparya Chandrikai. This was a comparitive, critical evaluation

to establish that Ramanuja's exposition in the Visishtadvaita tradition was the

most consistent one with the true message of Lord Krishna in Gita.Swami

Desikan also blessed us with a commentary in Sanskrit on Alavandar"s GS and

named it " GS Raksha". For the benefit of the Tamil speaking followers, Swami

Desikan created yet another commentary on GS . This Tamil version has 21 verses

to summarize the 32 verses that Alavandaar used to summarize the essence of the

18 chapters of Gita .

 

We shall quote the individual verses of Alavandaar"s GS and elaborate on them in

the light of Swami Desikan's Tamil work on GS ,which is a part of his Desika

Prabhandam compendium.

 

V.Sadagopan

[Guest guest]

Sadagopan wrote:

 

<deleted>

 

* We shall quote the individual verses of Alavandaar"s GS and

* elaborate on them in the light of Swami Desikan's Tamil work on GS

* ,which is a part of his Desika Prabhandam compendium.

 

Thank you very much Sadagopan. I am anxiously waiting for the

remaining parts of your posting.

 

About two month back, I came across Sri aaLavandhaar's GS and

Sri Ramanuja's Gita Bhashya and am reading them with delight.

 

--badri

 

-----------------

S.Badrinarayanan

Graduate Student

Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Cornell University

-----------------

[Guest guest]

On 07 Nov 95 20:09:04 EST Sri. V.Sadagopan said:

>

>

[..snip..]

>We shall quote the individual verses of

>Alavandaar"s GS and elaborate on them in the

>light of Swami Desikan's Tamil work on GS,

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>which is a part of his Desika Prabhandam compendium.

>

>

 

 

[1] I am grateful to Sri. V. Sadagopan for undertaking

this task in the midst of his busy schedule. I have

formatted his last post into a WORDPERFECT document.

With the permission of Sri V. Sadagopan I will share

this and future posts with anyone interested.

 

 

[2] During my trip to India last summer I was fortunate

enough to produce a recording of the entire

Desika Prabhandam recited in the traditional way.

I have now converted the Geethaarththa sangraham

into a WAV file and saved it in the Ahobilam page.

The text of this prabhandam in ASCII and MS-WORD for

Windows v.6.0a format are also available from the page.

To view the ASCII text in Tamil you will need

Sri. K. Srinivasan's THIRU/TAMILVU. For the Word

document to appear in Tamil you will need to install

Sri K. Srinivasan's ADHAWIN.TTF font for Windows.

All of these can be downloaded from:

 

http://www.utc.edu/ahobilam

 

 

Note: THIRU/TAMILVU and ADHAWIN are Shareware programs

not Freeware.

 

 

-- Dileepan