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Re: Ananda Ramayanam - author and translator

From the Bhakti List Archives

M K Sudarshan • June 28, 1997 


At 10:00 PM 6/24/97 -0500, you wrote:
>>I am feeling very depressed right now because, I found a lot of interesting
>stories about Rama and family and there are wonderful slokams and mantrams
>(one is the Ramashtakam by Agastiyar); I was going to give a short 
>descriptions of each kandams and concentrate on these newly found slokams,
>stories etc, not paying much attention to controversial areas.
>
>I just wanted to let you all know how I feel about these whole new revealings.

>Please let me know if I am wrong in my thinking.
>Kalyani Krishnamachari

Dear Madam,
 Apropos all the correspondence on the list regarding the controversy
surrounding the authorship of AR. I'm not sure it really matters to anyone
except deep research-scholars as to who really wrote the AR.

Let me assure you that many on the list like myself are not research
scholars or literary historians in SriVaishnavism but only lay students. For
us it is the spirit of religious literature that matters .... not so much
its letter. If one can find true "rasa" in AR and if it helps one savour, in
any humble way, true "bhagavath-kalyANa-guNam" it matters little if it was
written by Sage Valmiki or his thrice-removed fifth cousin descended from
twelfth-generation forbears !

Do not get depressed needlessly. It is not your fault that the origins of AR
are hopelessly mired in the mists of history. If AR is enjoyable to you and
to your readers do persist with it. At the end of it all, tell me, which is
more important to us --- the Glory of Lord Rama or AR's doubtful parentage
or even your own scholastic correctness ?

Regards,
adiyEn/dAsan,

sudarshan