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Re: kamba rAmAyanam

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Lakshmi Narasimhan Venkatapathy • October 24, 2002 


Srimathe Ramanujaya Namaha

Dear Sri Hari,
I am able to understand your devotion to Kamba Ramayanam. To my knowledge, no one rejected Kamban's Ramayanam at all. It is the position that is a point of controversy. Why Kamban was not escalated to the level of Azhwars is the point. No one could say Kamban did nara sthuthi and hence his 12500 verses have been rejected. Well, the possible reason(s) why he was not escalated to the level of azhwars are:
He was trying to re-write Valmiki Ramayanam in Tamil i.e he wrote the tamil version of Ramayanam, which was different from the work of Azhwars. All the Azhwars were in the highest state of bhakthi and saranagathi. They sang what they enjoyed through their soul. Their intention was not to tell stories to people or show their poetic skill. No one could ever disagree that Kamban did not want to show off his poetic skill - the obvious proof is the ARANGETRAM. None of the azhwars did arangetram of their prabandhams nor did they want people to listen or evaluate the same. They had no intentions. They had no "humanly" goals in their life, like, they should complete some kavyam or translate something etc. Their only goal was to enjoy the paramathma and attain him and it is the supreme who sang all those prabandhams through them. In case of Kamban, it was definitely a nara-sthuthi (this is different from rejecting it:). Like other poets, Kamban definitely tried to sing few verses in praise of sadayan. Unlike Azhwars 

Of-course Kamban did worship Rama as the supreme and there is no doubt about that. But the "state" was different. There was an intention to accomplish i.e translate and to do arangetram, which was the humanly desire. Again, this has nothing to do with rejection and to my knowledge no body ever rejected kamba ramayanam. If my memory is correct, my grand father used to tell that he was more or less called as kamba naattazhvan. The only thing is that he was not placed in position equivalent to the "Panniru Azhwargal". There is no doubt that Kamaba Ramayanam is one of the greatest work in the literature in the world and no one denies that.

For example, Thiruarangatthamudhanar wrote iramanusa nootrandhadhi. He was a 'typical' vaishnavite. His prabandham is part of the 4000 prabandhams. But, he was not escalated to the level of Azhwars. And this doesn't mean that Amudhanar or his work was rejected. In fact Amudhanar wrote a nootrandhadhi before the iramanusa nootrandhadhi that we see now. That work was completely in praise of Sri Ramanujar. And when he read it out to Sri Ramanujar, Sri Ramanujar was so annoyed and he burnt the entire work saying "Paramatman irukka kevalam ennai pol oru naranai thuthi seyyum padal iruppadha?"(When the supremo is there, why would some poem exist that praises a human like me). And then, amudhanar re-wrote the nootrandhadhi. This time he made sure the first two lines were in praise of the lord and the next two lines would be in praise of Sri Ramanujar who is a strong devotee of that lord who was described in the first two line. And this time Sri Ramanujar just let him have that. This work still contained a thuthi on

One last thing! Honestly, I felt a little bad when I read the statement "And we are witnesses to the shameless display of names on every tubelight in our temples". It is usually the work of the kovil archagars who put the name of the ubhayadhars in items they had contributed. PLEASE, DO NOT GENERALISE THINGS. I have seen in umpteen places where people's name are written. But, neither can I, judge the intention behind these, nor could any body else in this world. These statements might offend people, which is not the intention of this forum. In trying to defend kamban please don't offend others:)

If I had offended you by means, my humble apologies.

Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan,
Lakshmi Narasimhan



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