svAmi deSikan's tAtparya ratnAvaLi - Parts 1 and 2.

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SrImate SrI ra'nga rAmAnuja mahA deSika pAdukAbhyAm namaH |

 

svAmi deSikan's tAtparya ratnAvaLi - Parts 1 and 2.

 

The topic of the series that is starting with the current submission

is " dramiDopanishad tAtparya ratnAvaLi " . This is a work by svAmi

deSikan, and reflects on the guNa-s of bhagavAn that are described by

nammAzhvAr in his tiruvAimozhi. The current series will draw from

several sources:

The vyAkhyAnam for tAtparya ratnAvaLi by SrI uttamUr vIrarAghavAcAr

ya svAmi (hereafter denoted in short as SrI UV), the vyAkhyAnam in

maNi pravALam by SrI ve'nkatTeSAcArya incuded in the publication

titled " bhagavad vishaya sAram " by tirukkuDanthai SrImad ANDavan,

SrImad ANDavan's simple and easily understandable vyAkhyAna-s for the

pASurams in his bhagavad vishaya sAram, a handwritten manuscript

containing meanings in tamizh for all the Sloka-s of tAtparya

ratnAvaLi by Sri V. K. RamAnujAcArya which was made available to me

through the kindness of SrI Srinivasan Soumyanarayanan from New

Delhi, a translation for the Sloka-s of tAtparya ratnAvaLi in the

form of English poems by R. Rangachari, which again was traced and

provided to me by another bhAgavata, SrI Robert Evans of Chicago, and

the meanings given by SrI P. B. aNNa'ngarAcArya for the Sloka-s of

tAtparrya ratnAavaLi in his divyArtha dIpikA. Rather than a verbatim

translation of any of the vyAkhyAna-s above, the current write-up

will draw from all the above sources. The drawback is that the write-

up will be limited by aDiyEn's very limited knowledge – in fact by

the lack of any knowledge. But because of the infinite Blessings of

asmad AcAryan, I am sure that this write-up will fulfil the objective

of immersing the devoted readers in the enjoyment of the delightful

kalyANa guNa-s of emperumAn as presented by svAmi deSikan in his SrI

sUkti in the form of tAtparya ratnAvaLi, which he has selected from

nammAzhvAr's tiruvAimozhi.

 

tAtparya ratnAvaLi is a work in samskRt, composed in the form of

Sloka-s by svAmi deSikan. svAmi deSikan points out that his

composition lists the thousand guNa-s of bhagavAn as reflected in the

thousand pASuram-s of nammAzhvAr in his tiruvAimozhi, and also

explains

the importance of each of these guNa-s for cetana-s like us.

 

SrI UV points out that the original palm-leaf manuscript of svAmi

deSikan's work is not available any more for this grantham, and only

a moth-eaten copy is available. The earliest vyAkhyAnam for tAtparya

ratnAvaLi is by SrI ra'nga rAmAnuja muni, also known as `upanishad

bhAshya kArar'. His work on tAtparya ratNavaLI was not a stand-alone

and full-fledged vyAkhyAnam for this grantham; instead, he has

interspersed his vyAkhyAnam for this grantham in his work on

tiruvAimozhi in samskRt (onpadinAyirappaDi). An AcArya by name

SrISaila ve'nkaTAcArya svAmi has provided a vyAkhyAnam for tAtparya

ratnAvaLi in maNipravALam. One of the parakAla maTham svAmi-s has

written a `padineNNAyirappaDi " vyAkhyAnam for tiruvAimozhi

based on SrI ra'nga rAmAnuja muni's work mentioned earlier, and thus

has attempted a vyAkhyAnam for tAtparya ratnAvaLi as part of his

vyAkhyAnam for tiruvAimozhi.

 

Based on a critical review of all the above works, SrI UV concludes

that it is unfortunately evident that even before the 16th century

work by SrI ra'ngarAmAnuja muni, the full text of svAmi deSikan's

work had been lost to us because of damage by moths etc.; SrI UV is

able to make this deduction based the following:

 

- While SrI ra'ngarAmAnuja muni has included the Sloka-s from

tAtparya ratnAvaLi in his work, he has not mapped the tAtparya

ratnAvaLi Sloka-s with nammAzhvAr's pASuram-s in a consistent manner

for all the Sloka-s. This indicates that he had difficulty in making

such a mapping, which in turn suggests that the version that was

available to him in the 16th century had already undergone some

changes compared to the original work of svAmi deSikan. A possible

explanation for this situation might be that the original manuscript

had been corrupted by moths, and some scholars must have substituted

their own words for the damaged parts, and in the process, they might

have introduced errors.

- SrISaila ve'nkaTAcArya svAmi has indicated some difficulty in

filling in the missing guNa-s in the manuscript that he had access

to, which is the same version that was available to SrI

ra'ngarAmAnuja muni.

 

Expert search for available manuscripts by a devotee at the

University of Chicago reveals that manuscripts are available for

tAtparya ratnAvaLi in libraries in India. However, I do not have the

means to access these manuscripts and benefit by them for this write-

up.

 

SrI UV has made an attempt to fill in the missing guNa-s in the

currently available copy of the original palm-leaf manuscript, and

thereby attempting a correction of possible errors in the manuscript

that was available to him. The result is what he gives us in his work

titled `sAra ratna prabhAvaLi', which is the title he has given for

his vyAkhyAnam for svAmi deSikan's `dramiDopanishad tAtparya

ratnAvaLi'.

 

All the above history has led some to question the authorship of the

original work itself. Based on SrI UV's vyAkhyAnam and the other

available limited resources that I am able to access, I am unable to

figure out the extent of the loss to the original manuscript. It is

the domain of research scholars to figure out how much of the

original text has been lost, based on the currently available version

of the original palm-leaf manuscript. However, SrI UV categorically

points out that there is no need to question the original authorship,

and that the grantham is definitely a composition of svAmi deSikan.

SrImad tirukkuDanthai ANDavan has included the Sloka-s from tAtparya

ratnAvaLi in his bhagavad vishayam vyAkhyAnam, and has included SrI

ve'kaTeSAcArya's maNipravAla vyAkhyAnam. A similar word-for-word

meaning is included by SrI P. B. aNNa'ngarAcArya svAmi in his

tiruvAimozhi vyAkhyAnam as well for the first three pattu-s. A couple

of nAlAyira divya prabandham books have the Sloka-s of tAtparya

ratnAvaLi, and one of

them has a simple mapping between the guNa-s in tAtparya ratnAvaLi

with the corresponding guNa in the pASuram-s of tiruvAimozhi. A

couple of bhAgavata-s (one from the U.S. and one from India) have

tried to support me by finding resources to help me with the write-

up. Among the vyAkhyAna-s available to me, SrI UV's commentary is

more detailed than the others.

 

Just for the sake of completeness, it should be pointed that this

work of SrI UV is probably his last one before he attained parama

padam. SrI UV has noted in his Introduction that he could not

personally review the contents of his work becuse of failing health,

and that there are likely to be errors because of this. In the

vyAkhyAnam itself, the level of detail included for the different

Sloka-s differs in detail (for example, some Sloka-s in the

Introductory section include word-word meanings, while others are

just summaries for the Sloka-s). This inevitably means that the level

of detail in my English presentation will also be fluctuating.

 

We will see in Slokam 4 of the avatArikA (Introduction) of svAmi

deSikan to his tAtparya ratnAvaLi, that he profusely praises the

tamizh language, and gives various reasons for its greatness. And

yet he has taken the effort to write a summary of the tamizh

tiruvAimozhi in the samskRt language in the form of tAtparya

ratnAvaLi. This leads one to wonder about the reason for this work.

One writer notes that the reason might be found in the relative

status accorded to the two languages at the time of svAmi deSikan.

samskRt was the common language used for communicating religious and

philosophical ideas at that time. This was even more true at the

time of rAmAnuja, partly explaining why he had used samskRt as the

sole language to communicate his ideas and philosophy, especially to

his advaitic opponents. The samskRt language had established itself

as the language of the royal courts throughout the country. svAmi

deSikan wanted to share the divine joy given to us by nammAzhvar,

with the community of devoted scholars, especially non-vaishNavaite

scholars, who did not understand tamizh. This could also explain why

he extracted the essence of tiruvAimozhi into a condensed form (one

Slokam for each decad, with one phrase in the Slokam for each pASuram

of tiruvAimozhi giving the key guNa that is enjoyed in that pASuram),

and presented it in the form of tAtparya ratnAvaLi.

 

As much as svAmi deSikan chose the samskRt language to communicate

the message of nammAzhvAr's tiruviAomizhi to the devoted among the

non-tamizh knowing people, he probably also had as his target those

who did not accept tamizh as a valid language for praising the

Lord. svAmi deSikan's vociferous defense of the appropriateness of

the tamizh language for praising the Lord, as expressed in Slokam 4

of the avatArikA that we will study in the near future, confirms that

this latter view was prevalent at his time. He uses the language

that they considered `appropriate' - samskRt, and praises the

devotional outpouring of nammAzhvAr in the tamizh language as the

dramiDopanishad – the upanishad in the tamizh language, and gives it

the status of vedAnta. He has also referred to tiruvAimozhi

as `samhitA', and as `dramiDa nigama', in different places. In fact,

svAmi deSikan has expressly stated that he has found that AzhvArs'

SrI sUkti-s (divine outpourings) have helped him clarify many points

of doubt in the vedic texts.

 

In addition to tAtparya ratnAvaLi, svAmi deSikan has composed another

companion work called dramiDopanishad sAram. As the name conveys,

this is a further level of extraction (sAram) of the bhagavad-guNa-s

(attributes of bhagavAn) conveyed in tiruvAimozhi, perhaps for the

benefit of those who may not find the time to go through and enjoy

the guNa-s extracted from each pASuram and conveyed through tAtparya

ratnAvaLi. While tAtparya ratnAvaLi consists of 130 Sloka-s, the

dramiDopanishad sAra consists of only 26 Sloka-s. In this work,

svAmi deSikan only describes the guNa conveyed by each `pattu' (the

group of approximately 100 pASuram-s). For each groups of 100

pASuram-s, he has allocated two Sloka-s. The first one describes the

guNa sung in the given pattu (group of 100), and the second Sloka

gives the connectivity between this pattu and the previous one. We

will get into the details of the organization of the Sloka-s when we

deal with the dramiDopanishad sAra, after completing the tAtparya

ratnAvaLi.

 

SrI azhagiya maNavALa jIyar has also composed a work in samskRt,

titled dramiDopanishad sa'ngati, consisting of one Slokam for each

tiruvAimozhi (each decad). However, this gives only the sequence of

the theme in each tiruvAimozhi, and does not identify the key guNa of

emperumAn that is praised in each pASuram.

 

The vyAkhyAnam in maNipravALam that is found in the four-volume

publication titled " bhagavad-vishayam " published by SrImad Periya

ANDavan ASramam in SrIra'ngam, is by SrI ve'nkaTeSAcArya. It may be

recalled that SrI UV had made a reference to a vyAkhyAnam in

maNipravALam for tAtparya ratnAvaLi by a SrISaila ve'nkaTAcArya.

Because of the similarity of the names, and the very few scarce

vyAkhyAnams available for tAtparya ratnAvaLi, one wonders if the work

referred to by SrI UV is the same as the one that is included in the

ANDavan ASramam publication.

 

With this Introduction, and with my AcArya's ever-present blessings,

I commence this write-up describing the guNAnubhavam of bhagavAn as

revealed to us by svAmi deSikan that he has extracted for us from

nammAzhvAr's divine outpourings in the form of tiruvAmozhi.

 

In the next write-up, we will start looking at the ten Sloka-s that

are given to us by svAmi deSikan as the Introduction to his tAtparya

ratnAvaLi, and that describe the greatness of tiruvAimozhi in ten

simple Sloka-s.

 

-dAsan kRshNamAcAryan

(To be continued)