thamizh recitals

[Guest guest]

This is regarding the tamil Vs Sanskrit archanas in the Hindu

temples of Tamil Nadu. I don't think the intention of the article was

to say that sanskrit is better than Tamil. It is more of a political

article criticizing the government's action in interfering with the

Hindu temple and their tradition, i think.

 

While leaving the issues of whether the Govt can interfere?,

why only Hindu temples and why not mosques? ... to the political

critics, I wish to bring out some of the language related issues.

(BTW, there are many many churches in Tamil NAdu which perform their

prayer in local thamizh. This is definitely with the intention to

attract the masses and also to convey the meaning of the prayers

easily to them. Nobody imposed this on them, i guess. The themselves

felt it logical! )

 

An important thing that has to be brought to attention is that

as i understand this issue, it is not being 'imposed' as somebody

might think. Let me quote from the article:

 

***************start quote******************************

"Let me make one thing very clear," said the chief

priest. "The government is not coercing or compelling us to do the

archana in Tamil. We do so only at the insistence of the devotees.

 

***************end quote **********************************

I haven't been to a temple in India for more than two years now, so i

can't really comment on how this system works. But, i don't think it

is wrong to give an option to the devotee. I also heard that the Govt

is paying the temple for teaching the tamil prabhandhams to students.

If thats true, it is to be considered as a good service!

 

 

There is this psychological issue that needs to be explained.

For all of us, there is a little extra crush on things that are

foreign. It doesn't mean they don't like their city or language. But

there is this extra special attention on foreign stuff. For Madrasis,

Bangalore is little too hip. For Bangloreans Bombay is more of a fun city.

Bombayites feel California is the paradise... (And Dr. George Hart of

California strongly feels TamilNadu is The Place to be !! ) )

So naturally there is this extra 'affection' to sanskrit (not being

their mother tongue and is considered dhEva bhAsha...), esp for such

a traditional purpose. There is no question about it. This being the

'Godly issue', most of the people would strongly feel against changing

the tradition. They are superstitous and are terribly afraid that the

Lord will prick their eyes while they sleep ("ummAchchi kaNNa kuththum")

So it is not surprising that most of them are against.

 

The fact is that most of the people who oppose this do NOT

know the vast richness of tamil. Most often they are not aware of

tamil literature at all. Let me quote this from the article:

***********start quote******************************************

 

Subramaniam's wife, Jaya, joins the tirade. "The essence of the words

are lost when Sanskrit is translated into Tamil because Tamil is just

not as rich a language, not does it have as many alphabets.

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

 

***********end quote *********************************************

 

I PITY JAYA

I do not want to go defensive and write pages describing the richness

of the tamil language. But I bet that she (most of such people) do not

know who an azhvAr is. ("What?? AzhvAr?? is that a new movie released

for Deepavali?" would be their response ) Or what dhivya

prabhandham is... (even the so called iyengars don't know. One of my

'iyengar' friend asked me ,"dEy Viji, there are 108 AzhvArs,right?". I

said,"No. that is the number of dhivya dhEsams." Then he hesitantly

continued, "is it 63?", for which i said it is the number of nAyanmArs

and then he settled at 18 or something as the total number of AzhvArs!,

18 being one of the famous numbers. He is a perfect thamizh iyengar

who spent 27 years of his life in tAmilnadu. )

 

Another point of interest is that, srivaishNavam is unique in

this respect of attributing equal importance to thamizh as it does to

sanskrit. There are definitely more srivaishNava temples where dhivya

prabhandham (in thamizh) is recited regularly than the vEdham. It is

because we srivaishNavas love the sweet nectar of dhivya prabhandham.

Whereas siva temples are not so. There are many beautiful thamizh

works by the nAyanmars. But very few siva temples recite them

regularly and traditionally. They are not thet very important to them

according to their AgamAs. Our Sri rAmAnujar made sure that we recite

dhivya prabhandham at the temples. The survey mentioned in the article

is mostly based on a siva temple, i guess. And you know how the

response would be, won't you?

 

Our dear perumAL who looks for any of your simple good deed,

even if done unintentionally, and use that as a reason to shower His

grace on you, would never bother which language you use to pray Him,

be it Hebrew or Arabic or thamizh. Our AzhvArs' devotional outpourings,

and many of our AchAryAs' works are in thamizh and hence it makes it

easier to experience our dear perumAL through these works in thamizh,

esp for somebody who can understand thamizh. It is upto one's ability

to read and understand either the thamizh or sanskrit works to enjoy

the Lord.

 

adiyEn

-Viji

(Vijay Triplicane)

(A sincere thamizh abhimAni (lover) ) )