General.

[Guest guest]

Dear Devotees:

 

I have been unsuccessful in sending the next posting on Sri VishNu sahasranAmam

because of some mail difficulty at my end. I hope to succeed in sending it out

tomorrow. In the meantime, I would like to express my sincere thanks to

Sriman Sadagopan for his detailed article on the numerous occurrances of the

name visvam in Rg veda. This opportunity to learn more details on each of

these names is exactly what I had prayed and hoped for when I undertook this

effort, and I am glad that my wishes are materialising.

 

Sri Parthasarathy Ranganathan was kind enough to send me the writings of Sri

Srivilliputhur Gopalan Srinivasan sometime back in the Bhakti group on Sri

VishNu sahasranAmam along the lines of what I am attempting now. I was not

aware of this previous effort till I heard from Sri Ranganathan. I notice a

lot of redundancy because our sources are the same. I also do not know

whether Sri S. G. Srinivasan is still in the mailing list of our group, and

would very much like to hear from him and coordinate my write-ups with his if he

is

still planning to take up the effort where he left off.

My sincere thanks to Sri Ranganathan for

bringing this to my attention and also providing the electronic copy of the

earlier writings.

 

Sometime back I had requested our fellow members for guidance on the

pronunciation of the word Brahma. Last week, one of my friends pointed out to

me a passage in Volume 2 of Daivattin Kural by Sri Kanchi Kamakoti

Sankarachariar Swamigal (page 484 or thereabouts), which addresses this exact

issue. Therein, the Acharya has pointed out that this word is one of two

exceptions in Sanskrit where we write one thing but pronounce it differently.

Thus, we write the word as Brahma (with m coming after h) , bur peonounce it

as Bramha (with the h after the m). Unfortunately, he has not given the

reason for why it is done this way. The fact that he has explicitly referred to

this

word and indicated that this is an esception at least answers the issue of how

to pronounce the word. I have not yet understood why this word is pronounced

the way it is, and so there is still something more to learn on this issue.

 

-Dasan Krishnamachari