A curiosity arising out of my ignorance

[Guest guest]

Dear Sri madhav vasudevan swamin,

Thank you very much for your enthusiastic reassurance about my ability to

be a good student of Srivaishnava Works, in spite of lack of

Sanskrit-knowledge. I agree with you that Vedam Tamizh Chei Maran and

other Azhwars have made our tasks easy by distilling their erudite

scholarship of the Vedas into the great Divya Prabhandam. My regret is due

to the fact that some of the finest knowledge/conclusions about the

Universe as found in the Prabhandams are so pithy that I thought Sanskrit

knowledge would have allowed me to delve into their source and understand

better. One such thing which is agitating my mind for several years is

with respect to the following beautiful two lines which almost every

Srivaishnava is familiar with as they form the first two lines of the

Satrup-Pasurams of Tiruvaimozhi:

`Choozhnd-aghanr-azhnd-uyarnda mudivil perum pazheyo

Choozndadanil peria viya nanmalarch choteeyo...'

This describes the structure of the universe and this is actually the

picture of the universe which was discovered observationally a decade ago

by using the most powerful telescopes after several years of hard work. I

am very curious to know how this knowledge was revealed to Nammazhvar

several centuries ago. I am interested in knowing the source of this

knowledge -where exactly is this mentioned in the Vedas? As far as I know

the Purusha Sooktham is supposed to talk about the creation of the

universe. My knowledge acquired from the English translation of the

Purusha Sooktham published by the Ramakrishna Mutt tells me that such a

clear picture about the structure is not found in Purusha Sooktham. Now

perhaps you can see the reason for my regret of lack of knowledge of

Sanskrit. I hope I am not wasting your time by bringing up my

ignorance. The only reason I bring this up is the hope that some of the

great scholars in the Srivaishnava e-group may enlighten me on my

curiosity about the source of the knowledge about the Structure of the

Universe revealed by Nammazhvar. Regards

Adiyen Ramadurai Dasan