Other gods.

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>Being born as Vaishnavas is it a sin worshipping

>other Gods ,...

> Is there any harm in worshipping them...<

 

This was the query, to begin with. A recurring one

at that. Good that someone raises the question at all.

 

A doctrinal reply or clarification invoking a thousand

scriptures won't do at all. Two kinds of response could

be appropriate: an analogy from the commonplace world,

and a picture of what kind of prevarications and

manipulations obtain to-day in the name of faith and

religious practices.

 

The characteristic of vaishNava AkAram:

=======================================

 

The seeker and the sought are best visualised, as in the

relationship of a woman and her beloved husband,

the nAyikA and her nAyaka. The Lord is the 'purushOttama' (the only male

principle of creation)

and all the refugee souls ('prapanna') his avid brides.

This is the charming and dominant imagery of not only our 'darSanam' but of

other mono-theistic religions as well.

 

The periya-tiru-mozhi (8:9:3) text

"kaNNa-puram-onRuDaiyAnukku

aDiyEn, oruvarkku uriyEnO?"

is the testament of chastity,

the mystic's pAti-vratyam.

 

One has the choice of chastity or otherness.

 

Religious Equality and Sameness ?

================================

 

There is a false propaganda of equality or sameness

as between religions. Equality should obtain only in

the harmless and peaceful observance of different

religions.

 

To cite an illustration. There is the raucous,

cruel and disturbing 'festival' of slaughter (on public

land) of hundreds of goats before the totem called

kuzhumAyamman in uRaiyUr, followed by orgistic

guzzling of blood spouting off the decapitated,

twitching and brutalised animals.

 

The other scenario is in Srirangam which joyfully

participates in the time-honoured and soul-ennobling procession of namperumAL.

 

These two cannot be, and ought not to be, held as

equal kinds of religious observance.

 

Also, God conceived as the single primordial principle could be accepted as the

same as between different religions. Nevertheless, God identified by the vEda

as Sriman-nArAyaNa cannot be invoked in false propaganda to legitimise all kinds

of totems devised in diabolical or frivolous imaginations.

 

The cooked offering (prasAdam) made in SrivaishNava

worship can be called pudding of rice in milk, though

there is a range of dishes of this genre ~~ ksheerAnnam,

tiru-k-kannal-amutu (=pAyasam), Sarkkarai-p-pongal,

akkAra-atiSil, aravaNai etc.

 

When someone born or raised in SrivaishNava heritage

wishes to adore other totems also, it would be the same

as a helping of refuse to 'go with' the 'prasAdam'.

One has the choice.

 

Other gods be:

=============

I congratulate Sri Mani Varadarajan on his intervention

on this issue of 'devatA/ntara upAsanam'. I would

highlight just two of the points he has made.

 

<The way Advaita has evolved, for example, they worship

<Siva, Vishnu, Ganapati, Parvati, etc. equally....

<That is the way their acharyas have taught them....

<Our only quarrel with them should be if they challenge us.>

 

It is not as though Advaita theology has anything to do

with this kind of later-day poly/heno-theism going by the name of

'panchAyatanam'.

 

'gods' on sale:

===============

In India which is to-day characterised by a plethora of

pseudo-'religious' publication marked by stifling illiteracy and deplorable

language skills, and the endemic middle-class affliction of publicity-hunger,

any cult or practice passes if you can create for it a sanctimonious Sanskrit

name or pseudo-Tamil aggressive appellation, so long as you keep riveted to the

sanctified purpose of profiteering on the insecurities and greed of feeble

minds.

 

So, the 'panchAyatanam' keeps getting elastic (simply call it 'shaD-Ayatanam',

'sapt-Ayatanam' and so on as your god-creatures proliferate, if only you can

find someone to write out the Sanskrit ordinals) to include newer and lewder

cult-icons like 'ayapa', 'kubEra', 'pratyankira' (someone explain?).

 

Manufacture manual

==================

 

There are some studied steps whereby you can fabricate and 'sell' a god or two

in seasonal cycles. One can almost write a manual for this. Just anchor the

aberration with a 'shrine'

(painted in lurid colours ~~ this disease, alas, has struck the age-old

'gopuram' of even our divya-dESam-s) built anywhere on the roadside and public

land, preferably traffic 'junctions' / 'crossings' ~~

as you notice erupting everywhere in Srirangam,

evidently planned and funded from undeclarable sources.

 

Make sure to work out a morbid and mysterious

'sthala-purANam' (spot-miracle-episode), the sillier the better.

["kathA-SatAih, tadAnu-sAri-jalpAih api, pratAritam idam jagat"

~~ the hundreds of fibs and the prattle based on them

together make for subverting the world ! ~~

is how svAmi-dESikan expresses his contempt for this kind of stuff.]

Draw up a protocol of cult rites and practices, and lay thick with prohibitions

and votive offerings.

 

If you run out of ideas, simply appropriate for your god-creature (they come

much faster than barbie-doll issues) a word or name from the genuine scriptures,

as 'gaNAnAm patayE' was purloined from the vEda and applied to the neo-Saiva

deity, gaja-mukha ('piLLaiyAr'), which earned no mention in any work of the

great poet Kalidasa who was an avowed Siva-bhakta, or in any of the Tamil

sangham classics. The simple fact is that this is a much later-day device, and

the relevant (interpolated) account found in the skanda-purANam could be

classified for Adults only.

 

Last year, on the day of this worship, a huge plaster-of-paris pillaiyAr

painted lurid was installed right outside of the periya-nambi tirumALikai in

Srirangam. There is a virulent and vicious movement

to shout 'Hindu' to legitimise a host of malefics, and to promote piLLaiyAr as

'the' universal icon or emblem of the religion. The public-sector

art/handicrafts

emporiums stack only piLLaiyAr images floor to ceiling.

 

Marketing manual

================

The days of 'vijaya-daSamee' (which marked Sri Rama's

victory over rAvaNa) and 'deepAvali' (signalling the

celebration of Sri Rama's return to Sri ayOdhyA ~~

also, by the Padma Puranam account, of Naraka's salvation in being slain by Sri

Krshna) have come to be applied to sixpenny horrors centering on such

god-creatures.

 

You can even commission a 'su-prabhAtam'

(there is the pathetic 'krshNa-kumAri' su-prabhAtam

for karu-mAri amman) from the stuffy brahmin professional group of

Chennai-Mylapore ~~ never mind that they cannot tell a Family Planning folder

in Hindi from 'upanishad-bhAshyam'. Someone may eventually contend that

karumAri suprabhAtam was the original and genuine text and the

Sri-vEnkaTESa-suprabhAtam the imitation.

 

The Tamil cinema song-writers would readily spew out a

shrieking tune on the 'god'/'goddess' of your creation, and pepper the song with

epithets that the requisitioned god-creature is The God Supreme of the vEda. The

textile

wholesaler can advise you what colour of cloth to prescribe for the cultists;

the saffron cloth (which is sacred to the uttamASramam of 'san-nyAsam') has been

sullied by aiyap-ism which has stained blue cloth also, though I-ape cult is

enduring in its disgusting outfit of black drapery (despite that the SAstra

prohibits black, even in mourning - "krshNa-vastram sadA tyajEt"). The

brown-shirted and black-liveried European organisations of the 1940's were not

the last instance of human-herding into demoniac cults.

 

The extravagant and lurid cult of the crimson cloth is

doing well, thank you, and the runaway sales of green

lengths was promoted by the one who is called 'seer'

in the unvarying and somewhat passe hype of our

English-language press. An 'amman' has recently opted for lengths of lemon

yellow and willingly 'endorses' the sales.

 

The scam of spurious 'scriptures'

=================================

 

The second point I'd make on Mani's excellent posting is

on the observation

 

< Our only quarrel with them should be if they challenge us.>

 

Well, as I see it, the SrivaishNava has to be alert not so much to the 'advaita'

reading of Godhead

(~~ 'advaitam' is a philosophical concept and may be

accepted or refuted philosophically)

as to the craven manufacture of 'gods' of meretricious

mould, and the more subversive and brazen manufacture of

(evidently spurious) religious texts. We have been unedifyingly tolerant of

the visible history of interpolations in the vEda

("sa brahmA sa Siva: ~~ sa Hari:" in nArAyaNa-sooktam,

for those who know !),

Sri-rAmAyaNam, mahAbhAratam, the purANa corpus, the kamba-rAmAyaNam,

villi-puttoor-bhAratam, etc.

 

Historical events could be discreetly omitted or rewritten in due course, the

issues of fact and law and precedence confused, the noble and legitimate origin

of a practice suppressed, and a completely spurious religious/historical work

sustained by repeated and raucous quoting in religious observances, manipulated

seminars and simply over the street amplifiers. In recent memory, a well-known

public intellectual institution in Tanjavur had brought out the work 'Aindram',

the ostensibly ancient grammatical work

which was cited in genuine Tamil classics but was said

to have been lost. A person with appropriate paper

testimonials in Tamil studies, and well-placed with politically correct circles,

claimed to have been the sole person to have seen the only manuscript of this

work (never once mentioned or listed before), simply memorised it at a glance

(~~ this was stated when there was a demand to produce the ms) and reproduced it

for the press.

 

The Vatican in Rome used to maintain an

Index Expurgatorius (not sure of the Latin spelling)

as a master list of all books banned in orthodoxy.

The prevailing unchallenged eruption of neo-religious

publications in India seems to call for an

Index of Interpolations and Counterfeit Works.

 

Well, this be the present corruptive scenario.

The issue of diverse worship will repeatedly come up

to challenge the monotheism and urbanity of SrivaishNava

religion. Each person make his choice.

 

There could be no objection to anyone creating a god

newly and in his own image, and developing his kind of

religious practices and institutions. What is improper

and obnoxious is to claim antiquity, or scriptural identity,or authenticity for

obviously later-day writings palmed off in the name of venerated savants of old.

 

Sri Mani Varadarajan has attempted to be soothing

on such insecurities, and I can do no better.

 

<If you choose to worship anything other than

our Blissful Beloved Narayana, you must ask yourself why you are doing so. If

you really do not care for attaining the highest good in the most direct manner,

go ahead...>

 

Mani, you are so quotable !

 

aDiyEn rAmAnuja-dAsan,

tirumanjanam Sundara Rajan.