Excerpt from 'At the Feet of Bhagavan'- Uma Sahasram

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Excerpt from

"At the Feet of Bhagavan"

(Leaves from the Diary of T. K. Sundaresa Iyer)

 

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Bhagavan as a Classical Sanskrit Poet

 

Sri Kavyakanta had composed 700 stanzas on Uma in some thirty

different metres, and had announced to his devotees in various parts

of the country that this poem would be dedicated on a certain Friday

in the Shrine of Sri Uma in the great Temple of Sri Arunachaleswara.

Over a hundred persons gathered at the Pachaiamman Temple so as to be

present on the occasion. Now these Sanskrit verses were not a mere

intellectual display by Sri Kavyakanta, great as he was in Sanskrit

composition. Proof of his great intellectual capacity may be had from

the very fact that in the presence of the heads of the

Udipi 'Math's, he composed extempore in a single hour the hundred

verses of the 'Ghanta sataka,' giving the cream of the teaching of the

three main schools of Hindu Philosophy.

 

His 'Uma Sahasram' is different from other compositions in that it is

pasyanti vak, i.e., revealed by the Divine Mother to one who is adept

in the Kundalini Yoga and in her own words.

 

At about 8 p.m. on the evening before the dedication day, after

supper, Sri Maharshi asked Sri Kavyakanta whether the dedication would

have to be postponed to some other Friday as 300 verses were still to

be composed to complete the thousand. But Sri Kavyakanta

assured Bhagavan that he would complete the poem immediately.

 

The scene that followed can hardly be believed by one who did not

actually witness it. Sri Maharshi sat silent and in deep meditation

like the silent Lord Dakshinamurthy.

The eager disciples watched in tense admiration the sweet flow of

divine music in Sanskrit verse as it came from the lips of the great

and magnetic personality of Sri Kavyakanta. He stood there delivering

the verses in an unbroken stream while disciples eagerly gathered the

words and wrote them down. Oh, for the ecstasy of

it all! Life is indeed blessed if only to experience those divine moments.

 

The 'Sahasram' was finished in several metres - Madalekha, Pramanika,

Upajati, Aryagiti, etc. For a while the disciples present enjoyed the

deep ecstasy of the silence pervading the atmosphere, as Sri

Kavyakanta concluded with the normal type of colophone. Then Sri

Bhagavan opened His eyes and asked,

"Nayana, has all I said been taken down?''

>From Sri Ganapati Muni came the ready reply and grateful response:

"Bhagavan, all that Bhagavan inspired in me has been taken down!''

 

It is thus clear that Sri Bhagavan inspired the final 300 verses of

the 'Uma Sahasram' through the lips of Sri Kavyakanta, without

speaking a word, as usually understood, or rather in the silence

characteristic of the Silent Sage of Arunachala.

It is noteworthy that whereas Sri Kavyakanta revised the first 700

verses of this monumental work some

six times; he did not revise any of the last 300. This being Sri

Bhagavan's own utterance, there was no need to "polish them.'' These

300 verses are to be considered as Sri Bhagavan's

unique contribution to Sanskrit poetry.

 

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Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

 

ramasamy