Re: Dispute about the God at Tirumala
From the Bhakti List Archives
• August 30, 2001
Dear Sri Bala Sundaram, You are right. The claims by the saivaites only based on the iconographic details. However, some clever people interpreted our own AzhwArs pAsurams to concoct a story as to the deity there is a combination of VishNu and Siva. They take the reference to the 3rd ThiruvandhAdhi pAsuram, " thAzh sadaiyum, neeN mudiyum, oN mazhuvum, chakkaramum......". Their claim is because of the reference to the sadai and mazhu, which are considered as attributes to Siva. While actually the meaning of the pAsuram is different. I request members to give the correct meaning as I am not confident about my translation skills for this pAsuram. No where in any saivaite literature, to my knowledge, there is a reference to this deity as Siva. Some also claim that it is Sakthi and not Siva or VishNu. As you very correctly pointed out, SilappadhikAram, which was written even before the time of AzhwArs and nAyanmArs, very clearly indicates this deity as not only VishNu, but THE SUPREME GOD Sriman nArAyaNan. AzhwAr emberumAnAr jeeyar thiruvadigaLE saraNam adiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan Thirumalai Vinjamoor Venkatesh ---- Begin Original Message ---- From: "D Bala Sundaram"Sent: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 23:30:31 -0700 To: "Bhakti-List NG" Subject: Dispute about the God at Tirumala We are aware of the dispute raised about the God at Tirumala and the role played by Swami Ramanuja in establishing it as the archa of Sriman Narayana. I am intrigued about this dispute. The Tamil kappiyam Silappathikaram mentions  Tirumala as a temple of Thirumal. There are copius references to the temple in Nalayira Divya Prabhandam. Surely those who raised the dispute shoud be aware of these references during Swami Ramanuja's time. Are there any references in other literature to the contrary? Is the claim of those who dispute rests only on the iconograhic details? I am also intrigued by another remark attributed to famous Tamil scholar Mahavidwan Tirisirapuram Meenakshisundaram Pillai who also claimed that the god at Tirumala was Sri Subramanya. This remark is in the biography of Sri U Ve Swaminatha Iyer, "En Charitram". I am sure that Sri Pillai was aware of the references in Silappathikaram and Prabandham. Can the scholars in the group comment? adiyen Ramanuja dasan D Bala sundaram [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --------------------------------------------------------------      - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH - To Post a message, send it to:  bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com Archives: http://ramanuja.org/sv/bhakti/archives/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ---- End Original Message ---- Enjoy being an Indyan at http://www.indya.com -------------------------------------------------------------- - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH - To Post a message, send it to: bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com Archives: http://ramanuja.org/sv/bhakti/archives/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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