other dieties: ref dileepan's article
From the Bhakti List Archives
• February 16, 1995
It is sort of strange that dileepan mentioned that: *On the contrary, I have heard in more than one upanyaasam *that Siva must be respected as one of the aachaaryaas of sri *vasihnava faith. I read in rahasyatrasaram by vedanta desika and also one sreevaishnava pundit's view, that sivan is left out of the acharya lineage of vaishnavas. I would like to know whose upanyaasam is dileepan referring to. One other view supports this view point: show me any sreevaishnava temple, which is orthodox, which has a siva's idol just like the idols of other acharyas and alwars along with the vishnu and his retinue. except in some strange svayam vyakta kshetras and 108 kshetras : particularly in badri and saligram (nepal) you can see other dieties right beside vaishnava dieties. but in recent temples the orthodox ones do not have any dieties other than the some bhaktas : such as hanuman, garuda, vishwaksena etc. One other support to this view is that in vaishnava acharya parampara we pay respects to all the acharyas of vaishnavas but leave out siva! (this is the list of acharya tanians : a remembrance of acharya parampara a devoted sree vaishnava has to adhere to atleast twice a day) in fact, in the smartha tradition siva is included (sometimes as the ultimate diety or sometimes as a slightly subbordinate diety.) In fact shankaracharya in his Gita bhasya, last verse of 6th chapter distinctly reserves the highest place for the devotees who pray to vaasudeva as the ultimate God, as opposed to those who pray to Rudras, Adityas etc. By the way, this view is a true to the words of sri shankaracharyas' bhasya on Gita. Nonetheless, even rahasyatrayasara and other sreevaishnava texts do state: that all other dieties should be respected as elevated souls and hatred should never be entertained since it is against the nature of a true bhagavatha. everything belongs to the almighty narayana so nothing should be despised. every other diety should be treated as the glory and (vibhuti) or roughly the wealth of narayana. strangely, even sort of contradicting vedanta desika's views, sreemad bhagavatam states: vaishnavanam yatha sambhuhu: which regards siva as one of the foremost vaishnavas!!. How come then, remembrance of siva or a verse in devotion to siva (as an acharya . not as para devatha )is not included in the sreevaishnava list of acharya parampara?? May be the practice in sree vaishnavism sort of was over cautious to avoid mistaken perception that some people may assume siva to be the ultimate diety? (which is not acceptable to the vedic view or to the alwars) It is interesting to note that in SMS Chari's book "Vaishnavism" in the introduction he has mentioned that "SAivism" is sort of independent of the vedic origin. In fact a saivite guru named "Aghora shivaacharya" is quoted to have stated that " the recent line of pundits have mistakenly mixed up saivism, particularly because of their vedanta vaasana (or familiarity) in fact, saivism is not vedic in origin and saivism has independent origin. Of course, there may be tons of other view points from other saivite scholars. my request to dileepan and the prabandham folks was to know straight from the alwars' works what their views were as opposed to recent scholars. Of course the views of recent scholars would be helpful but should be dealt independently from the views of alwars to retain their true view. krishna
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