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Re: a ? on vaishnavism

From the Bhakti List Archives

tvv1 • June 7, 2001 


Srimathe Ramanujaya namaha

Dear Sri Sampath,

This is absolutely false. The first and foremost scriptures for the parama
vaidhika matham (the present Hinduism) is the vEdAs. No where in any of the
vEdAs it is said that Sriman Narayanan worshipped any other Gods. There are
a lot of verses upholding the Supremity of Sriman Narayanan. A very few
examples are

" divyO dEva ekO nArAyaNa :" (There is one and only one Divya dEva who is
nArAyaNA)

" AgniravamO dEvathAnAm, paramO VishNu :" (Amongst the dEvas, the lowest is
Agni and the Supreme is Vishnu)
(This obviously is a very good example that the claim of Vishnu worshipping
other gods is false)

"EkO ha vai nArAyaNa Aseeth, na brahmA nEsAna :" (There was [at the
beginning] one and only one Existant who is nArAyaNa, not brahmA, not even
Siva)

Now the second line of pramANAs for us (for the followers of the vEdic
religion) is the smruthis. The purport of the smruthis is to explain the
sruthi or vEdas. In all the smruthis, for ex., manu, yAgnya valkya .. etc,
(my knowledge of this is very less) nowhere it is claimed that Vishnu
worshipped any other gods,

The third line of the pramANAs are the itihasas. Obviously there are only
two itihAsAs. The great rAmAyaNa and mahAbhAratha. In the originals by Sri
Valmiki and Sri Veda Vyasa respectively, there is no claim that either Rama
or Krishna worshipped any other god. In Ramayana, the now existing stories
like, Rama worshipping surya (Adithya hridayam), doing pooja for Linga at
Rameswaram, etc are totally false claims. None of these is supported in
Srimadh Valmiki Ramayanam. These are the stories which were framed by the
later date Saivaites, during & after the time of Appayya dhIkshitar, who
had a natural hatred for the Supremity of Vishnu as told in vEdAs, but
realising the truth during the old age, wrote some verses on Sri
Varadarajar of ThiruAtthigiri and also did a vyAkhyAnam for one of Swami
Desikan's works ( I do not remember the name of the work.).

The fourth line of the pramANAs is the purANAs. The purANAs, take the last
place in the hierarchy for the following reasons as expounded by Sri
Manavala Mamunigal in his vyAkhyAnam for SriVachana bhooshaNam of Sri
Pillai LokacharyAr. When swami starts explaining the sutra " vEdArthAm
aRudhiyiduvathu smruthi ithihAsa purANAgaLAlE", he explains it as follows:
      As per the Rules of putting sequence of words together, the rule
"alpAcha tharam poorvam" should be followed. This means that in the
sequence of words, which are used as examples, the word with least
character should be used first. If that is the case then it should have
been only "smruthi purANA ithihAsangaLAlE" and not as said above. But there
is an exception to the above rule, which is "abyarhitham poorvam". This
means that though the word may be longer, it can take the first position,
due to the trueness of the meanings it conveys..

As it is well known, the 18 purANAs are classified as "sAthvika (6), rAjasa
(6) and tAmasa (6)" while the sAthvika purANAs uphold the true meaning of
the vEdAs, the rAjasa and tAmasa purANAs are said to have emerged during
the respective state of mind of brahmA and hence it talks about the
supremity of the god belonging to that guNa. It is also well known that
BrahmA has rAja guNa and Siva has tAmasa guNa.

Due to the above fact the purANAs take the last place in the hierarchy of
pramANAs. Now going back to our discussion about some myths saying that
Vishnu worshipped other gods, this appears only in this tAmasa purANA.
There is also  a comical saying in tamizh "endha puLugum kanda purANathil"
means, all the false claims are in kanda purANa.

Our SrivaishNava poorvAchAyAs have very clearly said that we have consider
only the sAthvika purANAs and renounce the remaining two. In fact this
verse is taken from the purANA ratnam "VishNu purANAm".

Hence the claims of the Srivaishnavas that we should not pray anybody other
than Sriman Naryanan is very valid.

However for greater details, I suggest , who ever is interested, to read
the following books of Sri Puttur Krishnaswamy Iyengar, who has dealt such
things in a very apt manner.

1) Sri Vishnu chitta vijayam (I think 4 parts)
2) Sankararum Vaishnavamum
3) sAthi madha arAichi.

AzhwAr emberumAnAr jeeyar thiruvadigaLE saraNam

adiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan
Thirumalai Vinjamoor Venkatesh



> > hello friends,
> > i've been subscribing to this list for quite some
> > time
> > and this is my first query.
> >
> > acc. to mythology, there have been many instances
> > where Lord Vishnu / avatar(s) had worshipped other
> > gods like Lord Shiva, Agni .  then why does (sri)
> > vaisnavism insist that ONLY  the supreme Lord
> > Sriman
> > Narayanan ( and his consort) be worshipped ?why
> cant
> the followers of vaishnavism worsip other gods?
> > I hope the member(s) of this grp will give me a
> > satisfactory answer.
> > Thanking you
> > rgds
> > Cadambi Srinivasan Sampath
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
____________________________________________________________
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>
>
____________________________________________________________
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http://in.news.yahoo.com


____________________________________________________________
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